What Will You Be When You Grow Up?
Who am I? What will I be when I grow up? A simple and deep article about growth, spiritual maturity and Christ in us.
Airton Humber · 28/05/26 · 3 min de leitura
This is a question adults ask children.
Doctor?
Teacher?
Engineer?
Athlete?
Singer?
And almost always the child answers thinking about the profession they will have one day.
But maybe there is an even deeper question hidden in there.
Because growing up is not just getting taller.
Every human being grows.
But not every human being matures.
A baby is already a child of their family. They do not have to earn it. They do not have to take tests or deserve that place. They already belong.
But they still need to grow.
And to mature.
Now we are, but it has not yet been made manifest
Maybe there is something similar in the spiritual life.
The Bible says:
“Now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made manifest.”1 John 3:2
This is very beautiful.
John does not say that we are still nothing.
Nor does he say that everything is already complete.
He holds two truths together at the same time:
Now we are.
And it has not yet been fully made manifest.
This means that life keeps working in us.
We are still growing.
We are still maturing.
There is still something being revealed.
Growing is not the same as maturing
There is an important difference.
Growing and maturing are not exactly the same thing.
Every human being grows.
The years go by.
The body changes.
Knowledge increases.
But maturing is something else.
There are children who grow up, but keep acting like children.
And this does not happen only in childhood.
It can also happen in the spiritual life.
Time alone does not produce maturity.
Maturity is born when we learn to love, to listen, to serve and to make room for God to lead our lives.
Maybe that is why the Bible does not speak only of children.
It speaks of mature children.
Children in whom the Life of God begins to appear.
Who am I?
Maybe that is why it is so hard to answer fully the question:
Who am I?
Usually we answer with a name, a profession, a story or the things we like to do.
But all of this changes.
The child grows.
Thoughts change.
Opinions change.
The body changes.
So maybe the deeper question is not only:
Who am I?
But:
What is still being formed and revealed in me?
He must increase
This helps us understand a very well-known sentence from John the Baptist:
“He must increase, but I must decrease.”John 3:30
John was not talking about despising himself or losing his own worth.
He was talking about maturing.
When we are small, we think a lot about ourselves.
We want to control.
We want to be seen.
We want to be right.
But maturing is learning to make room for something greater than ourselves.
Maybe that is why Jesus showed such a different path.
He did not come only to teach rules or to create a religion.
He came to show how a human being can live guided by God.
The manifestation of the children
And this changes the meaning of the old question we ask children:
What will you be when you grow up?
Maybe the answer is not only a profession.
Maybe the answer is:
A mature child.
The apostle Paul wrote something striking:
“The creation waits, with great expectation, for the manifestation of the children of God.”Romans 8:19
Manifestation means making visible what was hidden before.
Like the seed that already has life, but still needs to grow to show what it carries.
The creation is not waiting only for people who are smarter, richer or more powerful.
Paul speaks of children revealed.
Mature children.
Children in whom the Life of God begins to appear.
Christ in us, the hope of glory
And then John concludes with hope:
“When he is made manifest, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.”1 John 3:2
To manifest is to make visible.
To reveal.
To bring to light what was hidden.
Maybe that is why Paul called it:
“Christ in you, the hope of glory.”Colossians 1:27
Glory is not just brightness or power.
True glory is the Life of God appearing in ordinary human beings.
When Christ is manifested in us, what was invisible begins to appear:
love,
joy,
peace,
patience,
kindness,
goodness,
faithfulness,
gentleness,
and self-control.
This is the hope of glory:
Christ in us.
Maybe this is exactly what the creation is still waiting to see.
The children of God are not born ready.
They grow…
they mature…
and, little by little, they let Christ appear.
