Audio Transcript
You are committed to reading the Bible every day, which is wonderful, hopefully with us as we use the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. If you are, you and me and Pastor John, we are all in Hebrews 5–7 at the same time now, trying to make sense of this mysterious figure named Melchizedek. He’s like Tom Bombadil in The Lord of the Rings, a mysterious and timeless character that appears and disappears in the plot. It can be hard to know what Melchizedek is telling us about the glory of Christ. The connections are important but hard to pick up too. So, we sit there with open Bible wondering if we’re just not smart enough to figure out all the connections. But what if Bible learning is not chiefly about IQ? Today on Ask Pastor John: The primary barrier to doctrinal maturity.
We get there from this question: “Pastor John, hello! As a long-time listener and first-time caller, thanks for taking my question. I’m a beginning Greek student in seminary. How do we understand the flow of thought between the end of Hebrews 5 and the beginning of Hebrews 6? In Hebrews 5:12, the author rebukes his readers for spiritual immaturity, saying ‘[they] need someone to teach [them] again the basic principles of the oracles of God’ and that they require milk rather than solid food. But in Hebrews 6:1, he begins with a ‘Therefore’ to sharpen the tension and urges the same people, ‘let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity.’ It seems both passages include the phrase tēs arches, though they modify different nouns: ‘elements’ and ‘message/word.’ This suggests at least some conceptual overlap in reference to foundational instruction. So, if the readers are so immature that they need to be retaught the basics, why does the author immediately exhort them to move beyond those basics?”
I love this question, and I love it partly because of the seminary student who’s asking it. And he reveals a more penetrating attention to the text than some commentaries do, because I checked several commentaries that don’t even ask this question — so frustrating. And it’s essential. The question is essential to understanding the flow of thought between chapters 5 and 6, so hooray for assiduous attentiveness to the text, which is what we try to teach here at Bethlehem College and Seminary.
New Foundation?
Here’s the problem, and I don’t think it’s so technical that it doesn’t have any practical implications. So, if you think, “Oh, this APJ is not for me. I’m going to go to the next one,” no, hang on, because I think you’re going to be surprised where this ends up and how practical this is for your daily life. So, hang on.
Here’s the issue. In Hebrews 5:12, the writer says, “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 to be better taught about the basics. Now, the question is, how does that fit together with Hebrews 6:1, which says, “Leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance”? That’s a good question. One seems to say you need to be taught the basics again (Hebrews 5:12), and the other seems to say you shouldn’t lay the foundation all over again (Hebrews 6:1). Well, does he or doesn’t he want them to lay a foundation of basics again? “You need to be taught the basic principles of Christianity,” but then “Leave the elementary doctrines and go into maturity” and “Don’t lay the foundations again.”
“The pathway to maturity and to solid, biblical food is not first becoming an intelligent person but becoming an obedient person.”
And I think the answer is something like this. Hebrews 5:12 says they need teaching about the basics. Hebrews 6:1 says they should not lay a foundation again. So evidently, there’s a difference between the teaching that they need in 5:12 and the laying again of the foundation. There’s a difference between those two things. They’re not the same. He’s not saying you need it and you don’t need it. The it is different; one they need and the other they don’t. So, what’s the difference? I think the teaching they need about the basics in 5:12 is how to use the basics to become mature Christians in everyday life so that they can eat meat — solid food.
Trained for Discernment
The focus of their failure is not intellectual or doctrinal even. It’s moral. It’s practical. You can see this in Hebrews 5:13–14. These are the two verses that come next. He calls the basic doctrines “milk”; then he says, “Solid food is for the mature.” So, how do you move from milk to solid food? Babes will choke on solid food, so they have to be mature before they can swallow and digest solid food.
The answer seems to be that it’s the way you use the milk. That’s how you become mature so that you can graduate to the solid food. It’s how you handle milk. How you’re taught to use the milk is what grows you to maturity. Otherwise, you can’t eat the meat that only mature people can eat. You can use milk in a way that leaves you a baby, or you can use milk in a way that makes you mature. And what is that right way of using milk?
Verse 14 gives the answer. You graduate to solid food when you “have [your] powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” Wow. That’s not what we expected. It’s not what I expected. We thought this was all about doctrine and having enough brainpower to handle Melchizedek. It’s not. If you’re going to move from milk to solid food, from babe to mature, you have to use the milk a certain way. You have to so love the milk, be so deeply changed by the milk, that you can distinguish good and evil.
Maturity is a deeply moral issue, not just an intellectual one, so I think Hebrews 5:12 means that you need to press on to maturity by going so deep with the basics that they transform your life and fit you for solid food. In that sense, you need to be taught — taught better.
Fit for Solids
What does the writer mean in 6:1, then, when he says, “Let’s get beyond the elementary doctrine and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation” — of what? What are these “elementary doctrines”? And he lists six things: (1) repentance from dead works, (2) faith toward God, (3) instruction about washings, (4) laying on of hands, (5) resurrection of the dead, and (6) eternal judgment. And the striking thing about that list is they’re not distinctively Christian (Hebrews 6:1–2). It’s made up of foundational Old Testament truths and practices these readers who were Hebrews probably built on, the foundation, when they were converted. When these readers were converted — these Jewish people were converted to Christianity — these six things, it seems, had been made foundational as a way of helping them understand the work of Christ, because Christ is the goal and the fulfillment of all those things.
So, when verse 1 says they should leave these elementary teachings about Christ, what I think it means is that they should not occupy themselves so much with the pre-Christian, foundational preparations for Christ that they neglect the glory of the gospel and how to use it to grow into maturity and holiness.
In summary, what Hebrews 5:12 says they do need is help in using the milk of the basics to grow spiritually and morally into maturity so that they can digest solid food, and what they don’t need is to keep on occupying themselves with Old Testament and Jewish truths that were used as the foundation for presenting and understanding Christ. That’s my basic understanding of how they fit together, and maybe the most surprising and relevant thing (this is what I said you’d be surprised by when you get to the end of this APJ) to learn from Hebrews at this point is that the primary obstacle to doctrinal maturity is spiritual and moral, not intellectual.
The startling truth is that if you stumble over Melchizedek, it may be because you watch questionable TV shows (Hebrews 5:6, 10–11; 6:20; 7:1–28). If you stumble over the doctrine of election, it may be because you still use some shady business practices. If you stumble over the God-centered work of Christ on the cross, it may be because you love money and spend too much on yourself and too little for others. The pathway to maturity and to solid, biblical food is not first becoming an intelligent person but becoming an obedient person.
What you do with alcohol and sex and money and leisure and food and the computer has more to do with your capacity for solid food than where you went to school or what books you read.
