Being a child of God is not the same as remaining childish in our faith.
When Jesus spoke about becoming like children, He was not calling His followers to remain immature. He was pointing us towards humility, trust and dependence. It is so beautiful about coming to God with the confidence that He is our Father and that we need Him.
But Scripture also calls us to grow.
A believer’s life is not meant to remain at the same level of spiritual understanding, character or obedience year after year. We are called to become more like Christ.
This is where the distinction between childlike, not childish becomes important.
A childlike faith says, “I need God,” but a childish faith says, “I want my own way.”
One is an expression of healthy dependence, the other reveals immaturity.
Childlike Is Not Childish
In 1 Corinthians 3:1-3, Paul addresses the Corinthians as people who are in Christ yet still behaving like infants in their faith. He tells them that he could not address them as spiritual because jealousy and quarrelling were still present among them.
Paul was not rebuking them simply because they were young believers, his concern was that their spiritual age and behaviour were not matching.
They belonged to Christ, but their relationships were still being shaped by jealousy, division and competition. Their faith had not yet produced the maturity that should have been evident in their lives.
That is a challenge for every believer.
It is possible to know Christ and still have areas where we remain spiritually immature. We can know Scripture but struggle to live it. We can hear teaching repeatedly but resist correction. We can spend years around the things of God without allowing them to transform our character.
This is why being a child of God and being childish in our faith must not be confused.
In Matthew 18:3-4, Jesus tells His disciples that they must become like little children and identifies humility as central to this posture.
Childlike faith is therefore not weakness, ignorance, or refusing to think deeply. It is the humility to recognise that we need God.
Childlike faith is marked by:
- Trust: believing that God is good even when we cannot see what He is doing.
- Humility: recognising that we do not have all the answers.
- Dependence on God: looking to Him rather than relying entirely on us.
- Openness to correction: allowing God’s Word to challenge and redirect us.
- Willingness to learn: remaining teachable as God develops us.
- Simple confidence in God’s character: trusting who God is even when circumstances are uncertain.
There is a simplicity in childlike faith that we should not lose.
As we grow in knowledge, we should not become less trusting.
As we grow in responsibility, we should not become less dependent on God.
As we grow in understanding, we should not become more impressed with ourselves.
Maturity should deepen our dependence on Him.
Growing Beyond Childish Faith
Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:11 give us another important perspective:
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
Paul is describing growth. There are ways of thinking and behaving that belong to one stage of life but should not remain forever.
The same is true spiritually.
There is nothing wrong with being a new believer, every Christian begins somewhere. The problem is not spiritual infancy; the problem is refusing to grow.
Childish faith can be marked by:
- Spiritual immaturity: remaining unwilling or unable to move towards greater understanding.
- Self-centredness: making everything about personal preference, recognition or comfort.
- Jealousy: struggling when someone else is celebrated, blessed or entrusted with responsibility.
- Quarrelling: allowing disagreement to become division.
- Dependence without growth: continually needing to be carried rather than learning to walk faithfully with God.
- Knowing truth without transformation: hearing God’s Word without allowing it to change our attitudes and actions.
This is what made Paul’s words to the Corinthians so serious. Their problem was visible in the way they treated one another.
Their jealousy and quarrelling were not personality clashes; they were evidence of spiritual immaturity.
That gives us something worth examining in our own lives:
- How do we respond when we are corrected?
- What happens when somebody else receives the opportunity we wanted?
- Can we celebrate another person’s success without comparing it with our own?
- Do disagreements lead us towards grace or towards resentment?
- Are we allowing God’s Word to change us, or are we simply collecting more knowledge?
These questions can be uncomfortable, but they are necessary.
Maturity does not mean graduating from dependence on God.
In fact, a mature believer becomes more dependent on God while becoming more responsible, discerning and obedient in faith.
Think about a child learning to walk. Growing does not mean the child stops belonging to their parent. It means they become increasingly able to walk, make wise choices and take responsibility while remaining secure in their relationship with their parent.
The same principle applies to our walk with God.
We should become more discerning without becoming proud, more responsible without becoming self-reliant, more knowledgeable without becoming unteachable, and more confident without becoming independent of God.
The direction of growth is not towards independence from God. It is towards Christlikeness.
Childlike dependence → spiritual growth → Christlike maturity.
As we grow, our dependence on God should produce obedience, trust should produce faithfulness, humility should make us teachable, knowledge should produce wisdom, and ur relationship with Christ should increasingly shape how we treat other people.
That is genuine growth.
Conclusion
God calls us to be childlike, not childish.
Jesus teaches us to approach God with the humility, trust and dependence of a child. Paul reminds us that there are childish ways of thinking and behaving that we must leave behind as we mature.
The Corinthians show us that spiritual maturity cannot be measured simply by how long we have been believers or how much Scripture we know. Our maturity becomes visible in the way we respond to God, handle correction, relate to others and live out what we believe.
So, the question is worth asking:
Am I childlike in my dependence on God, or childish in the way I respond to Him and others?
We never outgrow our need for God. Instead, as we grow, we should become increasingly aware of how much we need Him.
The goal is not to become independent of our Father; It is to become mature children who know their Father.