Pablum, Enfamil, Good Works, and Jesus
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.
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,
A real key change just happened in this here letter to the Hebrews. We were cruising along for 5 chapters about how great Christ is. He’s better than angels, Moses, the Law, and any priest ever.
Then the author says “There is a lot more to say about this, but you really aren’t going to get it.”
Ouch!
He goes on to say that they should all be teachers at this point, but instead, they need to learn – the literal idiom in the original language – their ABCs. He then tells them that the level of understanding that they at is like a baby that can only drink from a bottle. They aren’t even at a kid-level of understanding of Christianity.
That sounds like a horrible thing. We all want to grow and mature in our faith, not be told after we’re in it for a while that we’re just like spiritual babies. These folks weren’t new believers, but had already come to faith and had time to mature.
How could this happen? I think the answer lies in the previous 5 chapters. If they thought Christianity was all about doing Judaism in a new way without regard for Jesus, they wouldn’t be making any progress.
The evidence sits in how long the writer has spent trying to convince the readers about the greatness of Jesus. All of our faith and religion sits on who Jesus is and getting to know Him. While people argue about how loud the drums should be or what color the cloth should be on a pulpit, Jesus sits by the side saying “Come to me!”
The 12 disciples, and later the 72 sent ones (dare I say Apostles!?) didn’t have any ‘solid food’ of Bible commentaries or ministry certificates to help them on their way. They had time with Jesus.
Any growth in our religion that we do apart from deepening in the love of Jesus is a liquid diet. We might not know it for all of the sugar and nutritional information on the box, but if Jesus isn’t the core and center of what we do, we’re not going to mature or grow.
–
You can get the Daily Bible Readings to your inbox via email every day by subscribing on our home page. Join the discussion on Facebook or Twitter.