Hebrews 5:11-6:3
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.
1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits.
I have two older brothers, David and Condy. David is a couple of years older than Condy. My parents have long told the story of when they brought baby Condy home from the hospital. David, his toddler older brother, was as fascinated by Condy as he was concerned about him. One morning my mother got up to get Condy out of his crib. When she looked in the crib she suddenly stopped and stared in disbelief. There in the crib lay baby Condy on his back. His eyes were wide open…but his eyes were all of his face that my mother could see! This was because the rest of his face was covered by a large biscuit leftover from the night before. There it was, the biscuit, balanced perfectly on Condy’s face who lay there, not crying or moving, staring up at my mother over the edge. She quickly removed the biscuit and then picked him up only to find my oldest brother David standing there. David explained that he had grown concerned about Condy in the night. Specifically he was concerned that Condy go hungry. So David had gotten out of bed in the night, gone into the kitchen, found a biscuit from dinner from the night before and then positioned it oh-so-carefully on Condy’s face.
I love that story. I love thinking about what that must have looked like! The charm of that story resides in a brother’s love for his younger brother. The humor of it resides in the fact that there is no conceivable way that baby Condy could have eaten that biscuit!
Little infants cannot eat big biscuits. Rather, they need milk. And yet, little babies should grow up to be able to eat biscuits…and even steak! A baby who can only stomach milk is cute. A grown person who will only drink milk and refuses to eat is a real and dangerous problem. This is the pint that the writer of Hebrews will make to his listeners at the end of Hebrews 5 and the beginning of Hebrews 6: we must move past spiritual milk to spiritual substance. We must grow. We must cut our spiritual teeth. Otherwise, we will forever be stymied in our growth and effectiveness for Jesus.
Jesus expects His followers to grow.
We begin with a very simple and unavoidable implication from our text: Jesus expects His followers to grow. The writer of Hebrews has just finished talking about Jesus as our great high priest, and then he stops and says something most interesting.
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
Thomas Long writes of this text that the writer of Hebrews “begins by playfully putting dunce caps on the congregation.”[1] I am not sure how playful it is, but this is not a bad assessment of what is happening here. He wants, he tells them, to tell them and teach them so much more, but he cannot. Why? Because they “have become dull of hearing.” And why have they become dull of hearing? Because they have stopped growing. And how do we know that they should be growing? Listen:
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
Those opening words, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers…,” are deeply convicting. They carry with them certain clear assumptions:
- Our growth in Christ should increase the longer we walk with Jesus.
- This growth should be normal and natural (i.e., it “ought” to happen).
- The longer we walk with Jesus the more able we should be to teach others.
But the recipients of this letter had short-circuited this process. Far from growing in Christ, they had actually regressed. I am reminded of C.S. Lewis’ book The Pilgrim’s Regress, which turns John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress on its head. This is what had happened here. And it is not just that they had regressed back to square one. No, listen again: “you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.”
It is not that they went back to “basic principles,” they actually have forgotten those! They need to be taught those “basic principles” yet again! They need milk and cannot handle solid food. They have got to start all over again and get back to work in learning and practicing the faith!
Thomas Schreiner is correct when he writes:
The problem isn’t the readers’ lack of intelligence, nor is it even the case that the subject is intellectually stretching. The entire problem lies in the spiritual inclination, or better disinclination, of the readers. They are “sluggish”…or “dull”…or “lazy”…and lethargic in their hearing…The readers won’t understand the truth if they don’t want to understand it, and so the fundamental issue facing the readers isn’t intellectual but moral.[2]
How about you? Are you progressing as a pilgrim or regressing as a pilgrim? Are you advancing in Christ, growing in your faith? Here is a good litmus test based on our text: could you right now take a new believer and teach and disciple them in what it means to believe in and follow Jesus? You do not have to be a full-time vocational pastor. But could you disciple somebody right now? If you have been a believer for some time, then why not? Why can you not teach and disciple a young or new believer?
Our rejection of growth through indifference or rebellion stymies our effectiveness for Jesus in the world.
This failure to grow is a great tragedy. It is a tragedy because is stymies our effectiveness for the kingdom. The author writes:
13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child.
Do you see? To be stuck on milk and not to advance to solid spiritual food is to be “unskilled in the word of righteousness.” It is to be stuck in arrested development: “since he is a child.” And this is not merely intellectual in nature. The “word” that those who do not grow in Christ are “unskilled in” is “the word of righteousness.” It is a head and heart issue.
Let me repeat: this text is not talking about mere knowledge. No, it is the word of knowledge!
Let me also be clear on this: the problem is not that spiritual milk is bad! Heaven forbid! The milk of the basics of the gospel is life to our born-again selves! In 1 Peter 2, Peter writes:
1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
“Pure spiritual milk” is good. It has great value! But even Peter observes that we should long for this milk “that by it you may grow up into salvation.” Here too is the expectation of growth and the advancement to solid food. Milk is crucial to babies, but grown people need more than milk!
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3, grieves over the immaturity of the church in similar terms:
1 But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. 2 I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, 3 for you are still of the flesh.
Paul exhibits the same frustration and exasperation as the writer of Hebrews (if, indeed, the two are separate people!). There is so much more the Lord wants to say to you and to reveal to you and to do in your life, but we so often shut the door to these greater experiences through our own selfishness and laziness and pride! And when we do we are unable to become all that we need to become for the kingdom and the world and the church!
Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. Imagine that a teenager in this church comes up to you, hands you a Bible, and asks, “Why do we say we believe that marriage is between a man and a woman? Where is that in here?” I ask you: what would you say? If (a) you have been a follower of Jesus for many years and (b) you cannot help that teenager then I ask you another question: What have you been doing? Where have you been? This is one of the great pressing issues of our day and that kid needs answers! Can you really not open the scriptures to Genesis 2 and sit down with that young person and talk them through the basic biblical picture of marriage and sexuality? Can you not turn to Matthew 19 and show them how Jesus quoted the language of Genesis 2 in confirmation of its abiding truthfulness? Can you really not turn to Ephesians 5 and show them how Paul quotes the very same?
What of issues of gender and transgenderism? What of questions arising out of this latest disastrous school shooting? They are handing you a Bible! Not me, not anybody else: you! And what are you going to do about it? Are you going to give them milk: “Well, I was saved at seven years old in Vacation Bible School?” That is great, but that is not an answer to what they are asking! Can you not do more? Are you not ready to do more?
Have you become “unskilled in the word of righteousness”? Oh, no! Have you? Why? Why? What are you doing?
Stop putting a ceiling on your effectiveness for Christ through your indifference toward Christ! Move forward! Grow! Advance! Progress!
This growth is a matter of both desire and constant practice in the things of God.
But how do we grow? How do we progress? Surely there is some obscure process for the hyper-spiritual to receive maturity in a miraculous flash, no? The answer, it turns out, is indeed no! There is no magic moment of growth. Rather, it is a matter of desire and constant practice. Put another way, we have to want to grow and then we have to take steps to grow!
5:14 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 phrase is foundational: “for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.”
Trained.
Constant practice.
Work.
Effort.
Following Jesus.
No, there is no magic, instantaneous moment. There is only what Eugene Peterson called “a long obedience in the same direction.”
This growth is more than studying the Bible…but it is not less than reading the Bible. It starts there. To be deeply immersed in the word and prayer.
Church, I fear that we have been so negligent that we need not worry about other steps until we take these most basic steps of training: (1) the word and (2) prayer.
Every day.
Every day.
Deep study and deep communion with God through prayer!
In truth, why worry about next steps when we are neglecting these? Are you deep in the word and are you intense, deliberate, and passionate in prayer?
“Trained by constant practice.”
And then we can begin to move forward.
6:1 Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 2 and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. 3 And this we will do if God permits.
The “elementary doctrine of Christ,” again, is not to be despised. This is pure milk and it is valuable. But moving forward means moving deeper into the reality of the kingdom!
We must repent of dead works and place our faith in Jesus, yes, but then we strive to “go onto maturity.” Not abandoning these things. Never! They are our “foundation”! But do you want more? Do you want to follow Jesus ever deeper into the realities of a Kingdom life? Do you want to see and know what it truly means to be a disciple, to be an ambassador, to live an incendiary life for the Kingdom?
May we grow discontent with our own complacency!
May the Holy Spirit agitate us out of our slumber and dullness into new vistas of the pilgrim’s progress!
Listen: Work! Try! Strive! Strain! Study! Weep! Cry out to God! Do not stop! Do…not…stop!
The world needs more than a baby church of baby Christians with a stunted understanding of the faith!
The church was intended to be and is called to be a mighty army of the living God! We cannot be an army if we are still wearing diapers! We cannot be what we are called to be if after decades of professed belief we are yet sucking our spiritual thumbs!
Church! Let us live! Let us grow! Let us see the gates of hell tremble before the advancing church of the living God!
[1] Long, Thomas G. Hebrews (Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching) (p. 71). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
[2] Thomas R. Schreiner, Hebrews. Evangelical Biblical Theology Commentary. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2020), p.169.