Hebrews 5:11-14-A little hard to chew?

The author of Hebrews, writing (or speaking) primarily to a Jewish audience, explains to his audience the connection between the priestly line of Melchizedek and that of Christ. Being a very weighty discussion, he stops right in the middle of it to give a stern warning to his audience—probably out of necessity as well as frustration. He says this:

Hebrews 5:11-14

11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food,

13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.

14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

This passage has been a great challenge to me in the past year or so in my walk with Christ—my maturation in the spiritual life. It has caused me to ask this question often: how is it that I, growing up in a Christian home, going through a Christian school (K-12), now in my 3^rd year at a Christian college, still have such a long way to be considered as a mature believer in Christ? I think this passage has an answer to my dilemma.

The author says that what he is speaking of—the priestly line of Christ—that this is too heavy—too deep for them to understand—too much for them to grapple with. Why was this? Well, the author says “you have become dull of hearing” or basically, slow to learn. How so? He goes on to explain: “By this time you guys should be able to teach, yet you still need someone to tell you the very basic principles of Christianity—the very basic teachings of God’s Word!” He sums it up in this phrase: “You need milk, not solid food.”

Ok, I need milk. So what’s the big deal? Well, it is a big deal according to the author. He goes on to tell the ramifications for “babying” ourselves with only the milk of the Word: “Everyone who lives on milk is UNSKILLED IN THE WORD OF RIGHTEOUSNESS, since he is a child”—or since he only eats baby food. So, the big deal is that if I only feed myself with the very basic things of Christianity—if I content myself with only “a thought for the day” (i.e. be joyful, be forgiving, be loving, etc.), then I will remain as an immature babe in Christ because I cannot understand the Word of God! So how does this work?

It works in a cyclical pattern. Because I feed myself with the basic teachings of Christ, I will remain as a babe, and can only handle the basic teachings. Because I can only handle the basic teachings, I can and will only feed myself with the basic teachings of Christ. So what will bring us out of this cyclical pattern that keeps us from maturing—maturing to the place where we can handle deep things of God?

First, I think we need to realize that we cannot remain as a babe. We see all over in the New Testament that we must “grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ”—we must “press on to maturity”. The New Testament is full of evidence that our purpose is to grow in our love of Christ—to grow into knowing Him better and better—to get as close as we can to a glorified state in Christ—by His strength and grace! But if we are going to fulfill this purpose as Christians, we CANNOT be contented to live a casual Christianity—to be contended with our current spiritual state and in this cyclical pattern of immaturity as a babe! Indeed, if we are in the Word every day and digging, we WILL NOT be contended with our spiritual state, since His Word will show us how far we are from perfection (which is what we are to strive for).

Once we realize our necessity for maturing as a believer, then we will be concerned with the solution to our problem of immaturity. Here is the solution according to verse 14 of Hebrews chapter 5: “Solid food is for the mature”. Who are the mature? The ones who are mature are the ones who— here’s the solution—the ones who “have their powers of discernment (ability to discern) trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” So how do we become mature Christians? We must give ourselves—our minds, our souls—to the practice of discerning what is right and wrong—namely, through the Word of God. We immerse ourselves in the book which is the only true and sure standard of right and wrong. We give ourselves to studying every part of the book which will teach us what is right and wrong. This is the only way we can know how to discern truth from untruth.

What does this imply? It implies that we must immerse ourselves and give ourselves to the deep things in the Scriptures. If remaining in the basic stuff keeps us as babies, we must get a taste of the deep stuff to mature our senses—to mature our “discerners”—to mature us as Christians. We will never be ready for the double black diamond if we stay on the bunny hill.

I know there are a lot of thoughts here—but I hope it all logically connects. If there is one thing I have learned from this passage it is this: In order to attain maturity as a Christian, I must give myself to the study and understanding of every part of Scripture, not just what is familiar and easy. It helps when I see the very tight connection between our knowledge of the Scriptures and our maturity as believers. Without the right knowledge, we have nothing to work with (at least to advance in the right direction, Prov. 19:2) Obviously the right knowledge will not intrinsically produce maturity, but it will be a very large step toward it. And, I believe we will only advance as far as the knowledge that we have.

So, let us press on to maturity as believers by digging into the Word of God as deep as we can. It has been said that “the greatest treasures of Scripture are often buried the deepest.” I pray these things the Word of God has taught have been an encouragement and blessing.