²⁰ Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; rather, be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.^(A)

² Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation^(A)—

¹⁹ For your obedience is known to all; therefore, I rejoice over you, but I want you to be wise in what is good and guileless in what is evil.^(A)

¹¹ When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.

³ and said, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.^(A)

¹⁴ We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming;^{(A) 15} but speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,^(B)

The True Wisdom of God

⁶ Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed.^(A)

¹⁸ But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and to the day of eternity. Amen.^[a]

⁹ And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight^(A)

¹⁵ Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”^(A)