When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, ¹  I set aside childish ways.

¹  although we could have imposed our weight as apostles of Christ; instead we became ²  little children ³  among you. Like a nursing mother caring for her own children,

For everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced in the message of righteousness, because he is an infant.

an educator of the senseless, a teacher of little children, because you have in the law the essential features of knowledge and of the truth –

So, brothers and sisters, ¹  I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but instead as people of the flesh, ²  as infants in Christ.

Now I mean that the heir, as long as he is a minor, ¹  is no different from a slave, though he is the owner ²  of everything.

So also we, when we were minors, ¹  were enslaved under the basic forces ²  of the world.

So ¹  we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes. ² 

At that time Jesus said, ¹  “I praise ²  you, Father, Lord ³  of heaven and earth, because ⁴  you have hidden these things from the wise ⁵  and intelligent, and revealed them to little children.

and said to him, “Do you hear what they are saying?” Jesus said to them, “Yes. Have you never read, ‘Out of the mouths of children and nursing infants you have prepared praise for yourself’?” ¹ 

On that same occasion ¹  Jesus ²  rejoiced ³  in the Holy Spirit and said, “I praise ⁴  you, Father, Lord ⁵  of heaven and earth, because ⁶  you have hidden these things from the wise ⁷  and intelligent, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your gracious will. ⁸