Why So Many Christians Stay Spiritual Infants

Question 19.

Why are so many Christians still spiritual infants after years of faith? It troubles me, and I suspect it troubles you, that so many believers remain spiritual infants long after they should have grown up. They have been in church for a decade or more, they love the Lord in their way, and yet they are still on milk, still easily knocked about, still unable to feed themselves from the Word or to feed anyone else. The Bible names this problem honestly, and it also tells us why it happens. So let me face the question without flinching, because the answer is more hopeful than the diagnosis sounds.

The short answer is that spiritual infants stay infants not because they cannot grow but because the ordinary means of growth have been neglected. Growth is not automatic. It is the fruit of using what God has given, and where that use is missing, the years pile up without the maturity that should come with them.

The Bible is candid about spiritual infants

Paul faced exactly this in Corinth. “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:1). These were not new converts. They had received remarkable gifts, yet Paul has to call them spiritual infants because their lives were marked by jealousy and quarrelling. The writer to the Hebrews says the same thing with a hint of exasperation, telling believers that by now they ought to be teachers, but instead they still need someone to teach them the basics again.

So the first thing to say is that this is not a new problem, and it is not a rare one. The apostles dealt with whole congregations of spiritual infants. That should keep us from both panic and pride. If Paul’s churches struggled with it, ours will too, and the people you are tempted to look down on may simply be where the Corinthians were. The honest naming of the problem in Scripture is itself a comfort, because it means God is not surprised by it and has provided the remedy.

Why growth stalls

Why, then, do believers get stuck? The first reason is simple neglect of the Word. Peter says we are to “long for the pure spiritual milk” so that we may “grow up into salvation” (1 Peter 2:2). A baby that will not feed will not grow, and a Christian who never seriously reads, hears, and digests Scripture will stay a spiritual infant no matter how many years pass. You cannot grow on a starvation diet, and a sermon a week with no personal feeding in between is close to starvation.

The second reason is the absence of exercise. Hebrews tells us that discernment is trained by constant practice. Spiritual infants are those who have never had to use their faith under load, who have avoided hard truths, hard obedience, and hard service. Muscles that are never worked stay weak, and faith that is never stretched stays small. Many believers remain infants simply because their Christianity has cost them nothing and demanded nothing, so nothing in them has been strengthened.

The third reason is a settled comfort with milk. Some have made peace with staying small. They like a faith that is undemanding, that asks no questions and offers no challenge. They flinch at solid food because chewing is work. Over time this becomes a kind of arrested development, where the believer actively prefers the shallows. That is the saddest case, because the problem is no longer ability but appetite.

The cost of staying an infant

Why does it matter? Because spiritual infants are vulnerable in ways that grieve me to watch. Paul says that immature believers are “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine” (Ephesians 4:14). The infant cannot tell good teaching from bad, so they fall for whatever is loudest and most confident. Half the errors that sweep through the church spread because spiritual infants have no trained discernment to resist them. Their immaturity is not harmless. It leaves them open to being deceived and led astray.

There is also a cost to others. A church full of spiritual infants cannot reproduce, cannot disciple, cannot stand. Babies need care; they cannot give it. When believers who should be teachers are still being spoon-fed, the whole body is weakened, and the work of the kingdom slows because too few are mature enough to carry it. God means for yesterday’s converts to become today’s labourers, and where that does not happen, the harvest suffers.

How spiritual infants grow up

Here is the hope. No believer is condemned to stay an infant. The same Spirit who gave you life is at work to mature you, and the means are within reach of every Christian. Feed regularly and deeply on the Word, not just snacking on verses but taking in whole books and wrestling with hard passages. Sit under solid preaching and stay long enough to be stretched. Put your faith to work in service, in giving, in witnessing, so that your spiritual muscles are loaded and grow. And keep short accounts with God, because unconfessed sin stunts growth as surely as a poor diet does.

None of this is complicated, but all of it requires the one thing infants resist, which is effort. Growth comes to those who use what they have been given. I have written more on the shape of maturity in my answer on what spiritual maturity looks like according to Hebrews 5 and 6, and on why a believing heart produces a changed life in my answer on why right belief leads to right behaviour.

The difference between age and growth

One reason the problem of spiritual infants goes unnoticed is that we confuse age with growth. We assume that a believer of twenty years must be mature, simply because so much time has passed. But time alone grows nothing. A garden left untended for twenty years is not a glorious garden; it is a thicket of weeds. In the same way, years in the pew do not produce maturity unless those years are filled with feeding, exercise, and obedience. Many spiritual infants are not young believers at all. They are old believers who stopped growing long ago.

This is actually hopeful, because it means the length of time you have wasted does not have to define your future. A believer who has been a spiritual infant for thirty years can begin to grow this very month, if they will start to use the means God has given. Growth is tied to use, not to age, and use is something you can choose today. The clock you cannot turn back, but the choices ahead of you are entirely open.

It also guards us from a harsh spirit toward others. When I meet believers who are still spiritual infants after many years, my task is not to despise them but to help them grow, the way you would patiently feed a child rather than blame them for being small. The church is meant to be the place where spiritual infants are nourished into maturity, not shamed for their smallness. If we provided richer food and warmer encouragement, I suspect we would see far fewer believers stuck in infancy for so long.

A word to those who feel stuck

If you have read this far and felt a quiet ache because you recognise yourself, take heart. The very fact that you long to grow is a sign of life, and it is the Spirit who put that longing there. Spiritual infants who are content to stay small do not usually feel the ache. Your discontent is a mercy, a gentle pressure from God to move you out of the shallows and into the deep. Do not waste it on guilt. Use it as fuel.

And do not try to make up thirty years in a week. Growth is steady, not sudden. Begin with one habit, perhaps a daily portion of Scripture taken slowly and prayerfully, and let it do its work over months and years. The spiritual infants who become mature believers are simply the ones who started, and then kept going. The God who is patient with you is calling you forward, and He will supply the strength for every step you take toward Him.

So, now what?

If you suspect you have been a spiritual infant longer than you should have, do not waste energy on shame. Babies are not blamed for being babies; they are simply fed and helped to grow. Take the next step. Pick a book of the Bible and study it properly. Find a place to serve. Ask a mature believer to walk with you. The years behind you cannot be reclaimed, but the years ahead can be different.

So what would it take for you, this year, to stop being fed and start feeding others?

“Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation.”

1 Peter 2:2 (ESV)