Warning against Stagnation

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.

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 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.

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.

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.