Warning against Stagnation

Hebrews 5:11-14

Main Idea: We must steadily pursue maturity in the faith by digesting the deep truths of God’s Word.

1. The Diagnosis: Dull Hearing (5:11)
2. The Symptom: Childish Understanding (5:12-13)
   1. A failure to know and grow
   2. Getting back to the basics
   3. Milk and moral immaturity
   4. The word of righteousness
3. The Remedy: Discerning Power (5:14)
4. Our Responsibility

Certain moments are crystallized in our memories. I vividly recall an event that occurred when I was just ten years old. I was complaining to my father about an ailment I was experiencing. When he asked me what was wrong, I replied, “I have a tummy ache.”

My father responded in a way I’ll never forget. “You’re ten years old,” he said. “You don’t have a tummy anymore, you have a stomach.” There was a little bite to my father’s words, but it was necessary. In my father’s eyes, the word tummy did not demonstrate my maturation into adolescence. I do not think he expected me to remember this story forty years later, but he certainly expected me to grow up a little by developing my vocabulary and learning to act my age.

Similarly, the author of Hebrews rebukes and exhorts his readers in a way that only a loving, spiritual father could. He admonishes them for their willful ignorance and immaturity in the faith. They still need milk when they should be eating solid food. The author urges them to leave behind their spiritual childishness and to move into spiritual adulthood by developing an appetite for the solid food of God’s Word. Like my father did with me over forty years ago, the author is telling his people, “It’s time to grow up.”

The Diagnosis: Dull Hearing

Hebrews 5:11

The phrase “about this” refers to the author’s previous discussion about the differences between Christ’s priesthood and Aaron’s priesthood (4:14–5:10). In that discussion, the author teaches us that the great high priesthood of Christ is infinitely superior to that of the priests of the old covenant since Christ is a priest according to the order of Melchizedek. The writer returns to the topic of Jesus’s priesthood later in the letter, but he interrupts the discussion here in order to exhort and chastise his people for their spiritual dullness and immaturity in the faith.

The author wants to continue talking about Christ’s priesthood, but he stops. Why? Is it because Christ’s priesthood is inherently difficult to understand? The author says the priesthood of Christ is “difficult to explain,” but is it because Christ’s priesthood itself is too perplexing? No. It is difficult to explain because the people have become “too lazy to understand.” They don’t have the mature ears, minds, or hearts for grasping the concept. Those who are trained in Scripture and are progressing in the faith are better equipped to understand Christ’s priesthood, but those who shut their ears to God’s Word regress in their faith and fumble in their comprehension. Spiritual concepts like Christ’s priesthood are difficult only for the spiritually immature, those who have become “too lazy.” The spiritually mature, on the other hand, have the energy to investigate and understand spiritual concepts that are hard to explain.

Believers have a moral responsibility to know and understand Scripture. We often act as if our biblical ignorance is merely a matter of God hiding or withholding knowledge from us. Yet Scripture teaches us that our ignorance of God’s Word is a moral problem, not an intellectual one. When we deliberately ignore God’s Word for whatever reason, we sin against the Lord. In the case of the Hebrews, the congregation became intellectually sluggish by their own negligence. Their spiritual immaturity was their fault. They grew intellectually dull because they became sluggish of heart. Christ’s priesthood became difficult to understand because their hearts became indifferent to Scripture. Thus, the author must stop explaining Christ’s priesthood in order to admonish his people and prod them out of their lethargy.

The Symptom: Childish Understanding

Hebrews 5:12-13

In verse 12 the author more acutely pinpoints the root cause of this congregation’s spiritual immaturity. Not only can they not understand spiritual concepts like Christ’s priesthood, but they have also forgotten the fundamental things of the faith! Even though they have had plenty of time to become teachers themselves, they actually need teachers to reteach them the elementary doctrines of the Christian faith.

A Failure to Know and Grow

This reference to “teachers” is not a reference to those who hold a particular teaching office such as a pastor or elder. Rather, by using the term teacher, the author is addressing their responsibility to disciple other believers. Not all Christians are expected to be pastors or elders. All Christians, however, are expected to be teachers in the sense that they should be prepared to train new believers in the fundamentals of the faith. The congregation should consist of willing and maturing disciples who are training up newer and less developed disciples. They ought to be teaching others. Instead, they are lapsing spiritually and need others to teach them the basics of the faith again.

The word again is critical here because it indicates that the congregation did not internalize the teaching they already received. They do not need to be taught for the first time. They have already been taught “the basic principles of God’s revelation.” The word again implies that the congregation has forgotten what they should know by heart by now. This is not a simple case of their needing review. Christians, no matter their maturity in the faith, should always review the elementary things of the faith. This congregation, however, needs more than recap: they need to relearn. Thus, we must be careful to internalize the teaching we receive and to take the fundamentals of the faith to heart so that we are established in the faith and able to fulfill our responsibility as “teachers,” that is, as disciples.

The issue the author addresses here is the Christian’s intellectual responsibility. But we must not limit this particular warning only to the Christian’s intellect. This warning is ultimately about the entirety of the Christian’s spiritual life. Our spiritual life should be such that we are learning to take responsibility for our own growth. We must be developing an appetite for grace, knowledge, and understanding. The more we know, the more we should want to learn. We are called to do this not only for ourselves but so that we can teach those who are less spiritually mature. Our spiritual growth has both inward and outward dimensions. We grow in the faith for our own sake and for the sake of others.

Getting Back to the Basics

This text also teaches another important truth about the Christian life. Certain fundamental principles and doctrinal foundations are prerequisites for understanding more mature and complex truths. Before we can handle the upper-level courses, we must master the entry-level classes. We must grasp basic truths at basic levels before we can move forward. What are these basic principles? The author lays them out at the beginning of chapter 6, so we will look at them more in depth in the next chapter. For now, it is sufficient to say that the basic principles are the truths that make up the basic storyline of Scripture.

Labeling these principles as “God’s revelation” communicates that Scripture is God’s spoken word. This also points to God’s self-disclosing and decisive acts in redemptive history. These acts, which the author lays out in fuller detail later on in the letter, are seminal moments in the history of Israel and the church. In these acts God reveals truths about himself that inform our understanding of who he is and establish the fundamental doctrines of our faith. The author’s readers are indicted for their failure to put this revelation into practice. As a result of their spiritual lethargy, they remain infants in the faith. Their digestive systems can only handle spiritual milk, not solid food.

Milk and Moral Immaturity

The writer of Hebrews speaks pastorally in these verses. We might even say he speaks paternally. What ought to be taking place in the spiritual lives of the congregation is not taking place. They ought to be feasting on the solid foods of the faith, not continuing to nurse on the milk of spiritual infancy. This is why the author rebukes them as he does. He rebukes them the way my father rebuked me when I told him my tummy hurt.

There is nothing wrong with giving milk to an infant. It is natural for an infant to live on a diet of milk. In fact, despite all of our scientific and technological advancement, we have never been able to develop something that can nourish an infant quite like a mother’s milk. It would be pointless to put a steak dinner in front of a baby. The child is simply not ready for it. But everything is wrong with offering mother’s milk when the child is ready for steak. That is why the word picture in this text is so powerful. This congregation ought to be eating spiritual steak by now. Instead, they’re still living on milk.

Paul uses the metaphor of milk in a similar way in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2. He writes,

For my part, brothers and sisters, I was not able to speak to you as spiritual people but as people of the flesh, as babies in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not solid food, since you were not yet ready for it. In fact, you are still not ready.

A remarkable symmetry between Paul’s statement and Hebrews 5:13 exists. Just as Paul contrasts the spirit and the flesh, the author of Hebrews contrasts those who are skilled and unskilled in the message about righteousness. When we place these two texts beside each other, we learn that spiritual immaturity leads to moral immaturity. Spiritual immaturity leads to believers who live according to the flesh rather than the spirit. To willingly remain an infant in Christ makes one a person of the flesh and unfit for righteousness.

The Word of Righteousness

“The message about righteousness” essentially means “the message that leads to salvation.” While there is a moral element to this message about righteousness, the context points us toward the gospel and God’s saving purpose. Believers who are childish are unskilled in the gospel because they lack the ability to turn to Scripture and see how God’s plan to save culminates in the priestly work of Christ. They lack the maturity to live in a manner worthy of the gospel. Christians are not to be ignorant about the gospel. Nor are we to be untutored in the Scriptures. We are called to be skilled in the message about righteousness and to walk in the ways we have been taught.

If the writer to the Hebrews were merely making a diagnosis, then those who are spiritually immature would have little hope of remedying their situation. But the writer states that it is the believer’s responsibility to become spiritually mature. He urges his readers to leave behind the milk of spiritual infancy and to draw near to God by feasting on the solid food of spiritual maturity. This moral imperative serves as good news because it implies that spiritual maturity is quite possible in the life of a believer. We cannot persist on a diet of milk when God offers us solid food.

The Remedy: Discerning Power

Hebrews 5:14

We now arrive at the contrast between mature and immature believers. As we saw in 1 Corinthians 3, Paul refers to the meat of the faith as solid food—food that requires the hard work of chewing and digesting. Only by faithfully and diligently studying the Scriptures can we rightly train and exercise our spiritual power of discernment. Thus, only the mature can distinguish good from evil. The immature are too weak and have not had enough practice.

Discernment is critical to our lives. It often takes shape in ways that are not overtly intellectual. Think about it. We negotiate many of our day-to-day decisions on the basis of an intuitive discernment. To put it another way, discernment is like a theological grid or a worldview that helps us make instant moral and theological judgments about our circumstances. We would never get anything done if we made every decision on the basis of sheer intellectual reconstruction. Imagine a heart surgeon who has to stop and rethink cardiology in the middle of a surgery. Imagine how disastrous it would be if he needed to consult a textbook every time he entered the operating room. No one wants that kind of surgeon. We want surgeons who can use the intuition they have developed over years of dedicated practice. This need for discernment applies not only to surgeons but also to Christians.

Discernment is a higher order of thinking and can only be acquired through diligent training and experience. We want surgeons whose powers of discernment have been trained by constant practice. Similarly, if we want to mature as Christians, we must train our powers of discernment by constant practice. We should so thoroughly consider and internalize the fundamentals of the faith that we are able to teach them to others and discern good from evil. The author of Hebrews says that when we learn to practice discernment, we are ready for “solid food”—the weightier matters of God’s Word.

This does not mean Christians eventually reach the point where they no longer need to study Scripture. All Christians, even maturing ones, always need the Bible. Discernment simply means that we find ourselves in familiar territory when we open the Word of God. Discernment means the Bible doesn’t disorient us. We know how to read, study, understand, and reason from the Scriptures. When Christians possess discernment and can distinguish between good and evil, they have the capacity for spiritual reasoning. They can see how one doctrine relates to another and can logically apply those doctrines to aid decision making in all areas of the Christian life.

Our Responsibility

As we have seen, this passage indicts any Christians who are spiritually regressing when they should be growing. There is great and eternal peril in spiritual infancy, for it puts one in danger of falling away from God. Therefore, the author teaches Christians two important lessons about our responsibility to mature in the faith: (1) It is an individual believer’s responsibility to grow in spiritual understanding so that the congregation as a whole is better equipped to faithfully minister the gospel to those in need. (2) It is the church’s responsibility to teach the individual believer. Sadly, many congregations drink nothing but milk because that is all their pastors are feeding them. In other cases, congregations stubbornly refuse the solid food their pastors are offering them. Christians cannot accomplish what the author of Hebrews envisions if both of these barriers are not overcome. Healthy Christians serving in healthy congregations are essential to spiritual maturity.

The process of spiritual maturity is a long and challenging one. But the goal is to gradually move from a diet of milk to a diet of solid food. We may retain childish tendencies for a time, but we must be steadily growing out of them. We must learn to be mature in the faith as those who possess powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. If this is to happen, we can never stop feasting on the solid food of God’s Word.

Reflect and Discuss

1. Evaluate your own life. Can you think of any areas in which you are spiritually immature and are thus still an infant in the faith? Name them. Are you currently growing in spiritual maturity? If so, in what ways?
2. What excuses do you often hear regarding one’s ignorance of biblical knowledge or spiritual understanding? What excuses do you find yourself using? How does this passage address the excuses we usually give for our failure to grow in biblical literacy and spiritual maturity?
3. The author rebukes this congregation for needing teachers when they should be teaching others. Does this rebuke help you think differently about your responsibility to teach other Christians? If so, how? How is an individual Christian’s responsibility to teach others different from an elder’s or pastor’s responsibility to teach the church?
4. What are the fundamentals of the Christian faith? Why do you think Christians are so prone to forget the spiritual truths they have been taught? What are some ways we can fight this forgetfulness?
5. What is the purpose of discipleship? What should the process of discipleship look like? Are you currently discipling a younger believer? Why or why not? Think of a less mature believer in your life you could disciple.
6. What is the difference between childishness and childlikeness? What does it look like to be both childlike and mature at the same time?
7. In your own words, explain what it means to be unskilled in the message about righteousness. How is this related to our spiritual maturity?
8. In what ways do you practice spiritual intuition on a daily basis? How can you sharpen this intuition? How does the local church help us develop a spiritual intuition?
9. When you open Scripture, do you feel like you are in familiar or unfamiliar territory? What does Scripture have to do with our discernment and spiritual maturity? How can knowledge of the Bible help us discern good from evil?
10. Who ultimately is responsible for the spiritual maturity of a Christian—the individual or the church?