“And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52 KJV).
We have a serious problem with children in the adult age group. They are adults but continue to speak, understand, think, and act like children.
Chronological age has nothing to do with our state of maturity. A person can be eighty years old and still behave like a child. Becoming an adult is a natural process and requires nothing more than staying healthy physically; it is called physical anthropology. Our bodies grow and mature by putting food in our stomachs; our inner man grows by putting good things in our heart that are used to develop good character.
People are either living between their legs or between their shoulders. Gordon Allport distinguishes the fleshly desires as subjective and organic in character and shared with all animal life. These “viscerogenic desires” correspond with the “tissue needs” or appetites of the body. The “psychogenic desires,” which are needs of the inner spiritual man such as wisdom, understanding, knowledge, in our search for truth, and are objective, are ignored. Because they are ignored, the inner man is not nourished and never grows up. Kingsley Martin said, “That man is not governed by his mind, his intellect, his understanding, but by desires, impulses, and instincts, by what psychologists call ‘drives.’ These are the things that control and master a man; and the problem which is confronting the world in the present era is that of these instinctive ‘drives.’”
With each batch of adults, you have a few that actually grow up and become “the adult in the room,” but the vast majority are still children and will likely remain children until they die. They are rude, vulgar, disrespectful, conceited, inconsiderate, noisy, ill-mannered, must have their way, and all the other things addressed in 2 Timothy 3:1-5. The thirty-year-old is the new ten-year-old, and the sixty-year-old is the new thirty-year-old.
Satan loves these children in the adult age group. He can control these “snowflakes” and use them because they refuse to submit to any authority.
Satan and the world want us to remain children. God wants us to grow up. When the Spirit of Christ Jesus indwells us at salvation, He immediately begins to mold us into the likeness of the man Christ Jesus to where we think, understand, speak, and act the way a grown-up should (1 Cor. 13:11).
The church has been equipped and ordained for the specific purpose of turning out mature adults in the likeness of Jesus Christ (Eph. 4:11-13). But she has failed her calling. There are many Christians who, after years of being saved, are still “babes” that should be “teachers” (Heb. 5:12-14). We refuse to grow up because we want to keep having fun.
One of the signs of God’s judgment on a nation is children in the adult age group being in power—“I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them” (Is. 3:4). “Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child” (Ecc. 10:16).
A child should be taught how to behave like an adult while they’re still a child. It’s too late to teach them once they reach adulthood.
“Help, Lord; for the godly man ceaseth; for the faithful fail from among the children of men” (Ps. 12:1).
