Hebrews 5:11-6:12 - Moving to Maturity

Back in 1979, when I first immigrated to Australia, Stephanie and I attended Tahlee Bible College in New South Wales for three years. The college closed down a few years ago, but it was about an hour's drive north of Newcastle.

In order to get there from Bunbury we had to drive, and on the trip across we would always stop in Norseman to fill up with petrol before we tackled the Nullarbor, and after filling up with petrol we would be on our way. But surprisingly, we never once stayed in Norseman. We never once decided, "hey, this is a nice spot, let's go no further".

And the reason that we never did that is because Norseman, as nice a little town as it may be, but Norseman was not the goal. Norseman was not where we were headed, it was only ever a stopping point along the way. It was a town that we had to go through in order to get to where we wanted to be.

The goal, the end point that we wanted to reach, the entire reason we were making the trip, was to reach Tahlee Bible College, which is north of Newcastle in New South Wales, and to remain in any other city or town along the way, as lovely as they may have been, would have seen us fall short of our goal.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14:20:

Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.

Paul reminds us here that the goal of life, the goal he is longing for us, is that we reach maturity. That we stop being infants in our thinking, our understanding, but instead that we grow up into adulthood, maturity in our Christian faith.

In Ephesians 4:12-13 Paul says that the function of those in leadership in the church is:

to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

Paul also writes in Colossians 1:28:

It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

We have seen this that particular word, which in these passages is translated as "adult", or "mature",[1] we have seen this word before in Hebrews 2:10 where we read that:

[Jesus was made] perfect through sufferings.

And although we noticed in Hebrews 2:10 that the author of Hebrews was using the word with the sense of ordained to ministry, as it is also used in Leviticus, we also noticed that another of the meanings of this word is that of "reaching a goal". And it is with that meaning that Paul used this word in the passages we read earlier, and it is with that meaning that Hebrews 5:14 says:

Solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

Paul, the writer of Hebrews, and the Lord Jesus himself make it clear that the forgiveness of sins, saving us from hell, and giving us a home in heaven, as important and wonderful as these things are, but forgiveness, saving us from hell, and giving us a home in heaven is not the goal of discipleship. It is not the destination of the Christian life. Jesus said in Matthew 5:48:

Be perfect

using again that same Greek word:

Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Perfection, maturity is the goal. Maturity is where we should be heading, and we should never be content with anything that falls short of spiritual maturity. We should never stop in Norseman when our destination is Newcastle. This is why the Apostle Peter commanded us in 2 Peter 3:18a to:

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

He didn't say "stand still". And he most certainly didn't say "go backwards". He told us that, at all times, we should grow, we should be moving towards maturity. He also said in 1 Peter 2:2:

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.

Just as parents want to see their children grow up and mature, so also Peter says that we need to "grow up and mature" in our salvation. We need to grow up in our Christian lives and experiences.

The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:10-14:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

"That", he says, "is my goal. That is where I am headed, and that is the place I have my heart set upon." Knowing Christ, and becoming like Christ, is the goal, but he goes on to say in verse twelve:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal.

using that same word for “maturity”.[2] That is, "I'm not there yet. I am not yet fully mature. I am not yet all that Christ wants me to be. I am not yet perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”

However, in spite of his failures and his shortcomings. In spite of the fact that, for the moment, he was falling short of the goal, he also says in verse twelve:

but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

That is, even though I am not yet everything I should be, I don’t stop where I am. I don’t decide that my life for Christ is now “good enough”. No! Instead I “press on”, I keep heading for that goal.

We have been saved for a purpose. The purpose of holiness. Christlikeness. Godliness. A life that is totally transformed by the power of the Gospel. That is the purpose, the goal, that Jesus had in mind when he died and rose again. The goal to become everything that Jesus wants us to be.

Paul then continues in verses 13-14:

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

The goal of the Christian life is maturity, so Paul tells us that that is where he is heading. He is not content with what he has done in the past, and he is not allowing past failures to stop him either. Instead, like a runner running a race he has his eyes on the goal, and he keeps on running.

In Romans 8:29 Paul said that the goal is:

to be conformed to the image of [God’s] Son.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says that the goal of the Christian life is:

being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

And we are either advancing on the road to maturity, or we are standing still, or we are going backwards, and as we read Hebrews, in particular our this morning’s reading, we begin to understand that this is what was going on in this church in the first century. They had begun the journey, but for some reason they got stuck in one place, while some of them were even beginning to go backwards. They were beginning to go back to law, temple, and sacrifices, and our author was writing to encourage them to leave this place where they were stuck, to leave this village on the road that they had grown content with, and to press on towards spiritual maturity in Christ Jesus.

As we listen to the things he said we realise that these people weren't going forward in their Christian lives. In Hebrews 5:11 he tells them that:

you have become dull in understanding.

Or, as the NIV puts it:

you no longer try to understand.

While in verse twelve he says that they:

ought to be teachers.

That is, they ought to have matured to the point where they had gained the ability, experience, knowledge, and understanding of the Gospel of Christ, so that they could share with others the truth of Christ. But instead of advancing along the road of maturity so that they could teach others, verse twelve also says:

you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.

Not the "deep truths" of Christ. Not the "complicated doctrines" of Christ, but the "elementary truths".

These were people who had been Christians for some time. They had faithfully served Christ in the past. They had stood strong in the face of persecution. But their understanding of the Gospel was stuck in one place, and they had not moved forward, and because they had not moved forward, they required "the basics" all over again.

As I said earlier, the forgiveness of sins, escaping from hell, and a home in heaven when we die are not the goal of the Christian life. These are the basics. These are the foundations of our understanding of the Gospel, but they are not the goal. The goal of the Christian life is to be transformed into the image of Christ. To become like Christ. To become perfect, mature, complete.

It is so easy for us to get stuck in one place, and to not progress down the road toward the goal that God has set for us.

I knew a pastor over East who, in every message he preached, somehow he tied it back to the Second Coming! It didn't matter what book of the Bible he was preaching from. It didn't matter what the topic was, but somehow, he always swung it around to discuss the return of Christ.

Now the return of Christ is important. Every time we celebrate communion we are reminded that we do this "until he comes". The Lord Jesus, as well as the Apostles Paul, Peter, and John all teach us about the return of Christ. Several of Jesus' parables centre on his return and the coming judgment.

But there is so much more that God has done. There is so much more that God is doing. There is so much more that God wants to do that if we only focus on the one thing, or we get obsessive on the one thing, then we are getting stuck in the one place, and we are not moving on to maturity.

After saying in Hebrews 5:12 that they need the basics all over again, he says that they "needed milk, not solid food!", while verse thirteen says that they are "still infants". Basically he says to them, "you're acting like a bunch of young, immature, children."

He then says to them in Hebrews 6:12, "I do not want you to become lazy", and here he uses the same word that he used in Hebrews 5:11:

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

And we could quite easily translate this as, "you have become too lazy to listen".

This is the situation that this group of believers found themselves in. They had become disciples, followers, of Jesus. They had lived for him and suffered for him, but they had stopped along the path. They had become stuck in one place and were no longer going forward towards maturity. They had stopped listening to the teachers and preachers who had come to them to encourage them to faith in Christ and faithfulness to Christ, and so in Hebrews 6:1 he warns them, he challenges them, and he encourages them to:

Go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God.

He encourages them to leave behind the basics. To go beyond forgiveness, and heaven, and escaping from hell, and to instead move on to the goal that Jesus set for us. The goal of maturity.

This doesn't mean that we ignore the basics of the message of Christ, for how could we ignore the forgiveness of sins? how could we ignore:

repentance from dead works and faith toward God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment?[3]

How could we ignore any of that? But what it does mean is that we begin to realise that there is so much more to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done than just the forgiveness of sins or saving us from hell or any of the basics.

If we get stuck in being saved from hell or forgiveness (as important as these are), then we are stuck in milk, we are stuck in our spiritual childhood, and we are ignoring the solid food that makes up the wonders of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is why Peter told us to "grow in grace and in faith".
That is why Paul says that he "presses on to the goal".
That is why Paul encourages us to:

comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God.[4]

Because God's plan, wisdom, grace, power, purposes, love, and everything else, is just so much bigger, and grander, and overwhelming than simply giving us an escape from hell, and because the “everything" of God is so much bigger, we are to move on to maturity. Moving on, continuing on the path. Not leaving it for another path, nor being content with the progress that we have made but making continual progress on the path that we are on.

However, spiritual maturity doesn’t "just happen". It isn't automatic. What does he say about spiritual maturity in Hebrews 5:14:

Solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

The first thing that he says is that Spiritual maturity comes through practice.[5] That is, we need to apply ourselves to it in order to get better at it.

When I have the chance, I like going to the baseball, but one thing that you notice is that the players don't just show up at 7:20pm on a Friday night to play the game. Spectators show up at seven o'clock. Find a place to sit down, and enjoy what everyone else does. But the players don't do this. No. The players are there long before the game in order to practice. They are there during the week in order to practice. In fact, a number of the players in the Australian Baseball League are Americans who have been sent here by their American teams. They have been sent here during their winter break in order to get another three months of practice before the baseball season starts in America. They, effectively, give up their holiday time with their families in America, in order to come to Australia to practice, in order to get better, in order to play Major League Baseball in America. Major League Baseball is the goal of each and every one of them, and so they devote themselves to practice, and train, and exercise, and work, and whatever else it takes, in order to reach the goal. And what our writer says here in Hebrews 5:14 is that spiritual maturity only comes through practice!

Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

We learn how to pray, through praying.

We learn how to share the Gospel with others, by sharing the Gospel with others.

We come to learn and understand the great truths of the Christian faith through reading the Bible. Studying the Bible. Thinking about the Bible. Discussing the Bible.

Milk is for the infant. For the baby, but solid food is for the mature. It requires going beyond that which is easy, and sometimes going beyond that which is comfortable, and it requires us to grapple with things that are hard, difficult, and, at times, very complex.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not "easy". One God in three persons, each of whom are totally and completely God, yet there is only one God. They do not "add up" to become God, they are each, in their very nature, totally God, they are three, yet they are one, and only one God.

The "easy" would be to deny the teachings of Scripture about the full deity of Christ and the Spirit. The "easy", the "milk", would be to throw it all into the too hard basket and give up, but the "hard", the "meat", is to grapple with what God has revealed in his Word, no matter how little our minds can get around it all, and to seek to understand the truth that God has revealed, for to come to grips with the mystery of God's grace, plan, and revelation takes time, and it takes effort.

Spiritual growth is not "automatic". It takes effort and application on our part.

Our children’s growth into mature adults does not happen all by itself. Instead, it requires feeding, training, guidance, education, and nurturing. It also requires their co-operation, because if they don't put in the effort, it will never happen, and so he goes on to say in verse fourteen that this maturity only comes as people "train themselves", or, as they are being trained.

Now, this is an interesting word. The Greek word here is, gumnazw, which is where we get our English word "gymnasium". And, of course, what we do at a gymnasium is we train. We exercise. We practice. We work hard. We get fit. In 1 Timothy 4:7 Paul uses that same word to tell Timothy to:

Train yourself in godliness.

Paul effectively told Timothy to go to a spiritual gymnasium in order to become spiritually fit, and it is that training, that constant use and practice that helps to bring us to maturity so that we can then "distinguish good from evil".

Of course church worship services, Bible studies, and prayer meetings are all a part of that spiritual gymnasium, but to reach that maturity, that spiritual fitness, we need to pray, and read, and witness, and study God's word on our own as well. We can't just come to church once a week and say, "I am spiritually fit". Further, as we grow in our spiritual maturity, as we are more and more transformed into the image of Christ, we will also grow in our ability to "distinguish good from evil". Is this the right way, or the wrong way? Is this truth, or error? Is this of God, or not?

When Jesus was asked to explain the parable of the sower, he said in Luke 8:12-14:

The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.

The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away.

As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.

Jesus made it plain that in this life there are a lot of things that will keep us from becoming spiritually mature: hardness, shallowness, distractions, and worries. But the challenge for us is to be able to recognise those things, to face those things, and to deal with those things which seek to prevent us from becoming all that God desires us to become.

We read in Hebrews 12:1:

Since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

Let us get rid of all of the things that weigh us down, or trip us up, so that we can run the race. So that we can stay on the path. So that we can reach the goal that the Lord Jesus has set for us. We need, in all things, to persevere in our lives of discipleship. Following Christ faithfully. Trusting Christ always.

Then, as we persevere on that road, not being stopped, or waylaid, or distracted from the goal that is ours in Christ Jesus, we will find our maturity in Christ growing as well, and we will find that, little by little, by God's grace, we are achieving the goal, and we will also find that, little by little, we are becoming everything that God desires for us.

Where are you on the road of discipleship? Just starting out? Or, perhaps, well down the road? Either way, the message is the same.

Look to Jesus. Persevere in your discipleship. Move on to maturity. Move on to reach the goal that God has set for you in Christ Jesus.

[1] teleioj

[2] The verbal form τελειόω. The word σκοπός is used in 3:14, and nowhere else in the New Testament.

[3] Hebrews 6:1-2

[4] Ephesians 3:18-19

[5] e`xij

Hebrews 5:11-6:12 - Moving to Maturity

Back in 1979, when I first immigrated to Australia, Stephanie and I attended Tahlee Bible College in New South Wales for three years. The college closed down a few years ago, but it was about an hour's drive north of Newcastle.

And the reason that we never did that is because Norseman, as nice a little town as it may be, but Norseman was not the goal. Norseman was not where we were headed, it was only ever a stopping point along the way. It was a town that we had to go through in order to get to where we wanted to be.

The Apostle Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14:20:

Brothers and sisters, do not be children in your thinking; be infants in evil, but in thinking be adults.

Paul reminds us here that the goal of life, the goal he is longing for us, is that we reach maturity. That we stop being infants in our thinking, our understanding, but instead that we grow up into adulthood, maturity in our Christian faith.

In Ephesians 4:12-13 Paul says that the function of those in leadership in the church is:

to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

Paul also writes in Colossians 1:28:

It is he whom we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone in all wisdom, so that we may present everyone mature in Christ.

We have seen this that particular word, which in these passages is translated as "adult", or "mature",[1] we have seen this word before in Hebrews 2:10 where we read that:

[Jesus was made] perfect through sufferings.

Solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

Be perfect

using again that same Greek word:

Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Perfection, maturity is the goal. Maturity is where we should be heading, and we should never be content with anything that falls short of spiritual maturity. We should never stop in Norseman when our destination is Newcastle. This is why the Apostle Peter commanded us in 2 Peter 3:18a to:

Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

He didn't say "stand still". And he most certainly didn't say "go backwards". He told us that, at all times, we should grow, we should be moving towards maturity. He also said in 1 Peter 2:2:

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation.

Just as parents want to see their children grow up and mature, so also Peter says that we need to "grow up and mature" in our salvation. We need to grow up in our Christian lives and experiences.

The Apostle Paul said in Philippians 3:10-14:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

"That", he says, "is my goal. That is where I am headed, and that is the place I have my heart set upon." Knowing Christ, and becoming like Christ, is the goal, but he goes on to say in verse twelve:

Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal.

using that same word for “maturity”.[2] That is, "I'm not there yet. I am not yet fully mature. I am not yet all that Christ wants me to be. I am not yet perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect.”

However, in spite of his failures and his shortcomings. In spite of the fact that, for the moment, he was falling short of the goal, he also says in verse twelve:

but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

That is, even though I am not yet everything I should be, I don’t stop where I am. I don’t decide that my life for Christ is now “good enough”. No! Instead I “press on”, I keep heading for that goal.

We have been saved for a purpose. The purpose of holiness. Christlikeness. Godliness. A life that is totally transformed by the power of the Gospel. That is the purpose, the goal, that Jesus had in mind when he died and rose again. The goal to become everything that Jesus wants us to be.

Paul then continues in verses 13-14:

Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.

The goal of the Christian life is maturity, so Paul tells us that that is where he is heading. He is not content with what he has done in the past, and he is not allowing past failures to stop him either. Instead, like a runner running a race he has his eyes on the goal, and he keeps on running.

In Romans 8:29 Paul said that the goal is:

to be conformed to the image of [God’s] Son.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says that the goal of the Christian life is:

being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

As we listen to the things he said we realise that these people weren't going forward in their Christian lives. In Hebrews 5:11 he tells them that:

you have become dull in understanding.

Or, as the NIV puts it:

you no longer try to understand.

While in verse twelve he says that they:

ought to be teachers.

you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.

Not the "deep truths" of Christ. Not the "complicated doctrines" of Christ, but the "elementary truths".

It is so easy for us to get stuck in one place, and to not progress down the road toward the goal that God has set for us.

I knew a pastor over East who, in every message he preached, somehow he tied it back to the Second Coming! It didn't matter what book of the Bible he was preaching from. It didn't matter what the topic was, but somehow, he always swung it around to discuss the return of Christ.

Now the return of Christ is important. Every time we celebrate communion we are reminded that we do this "until he comes". The Lord Jesus, as well as the Apostles Paul, Peter, and John all teach us about the return of Christ. Several of Jesus' parables centre on his return and the coming judgment.

But there is so much more that God has done. There is so much more that God is doing. There is so much more that God wants to do that if we only focus on the one thing, or we get obsessive on the one thing, then we are getting stuck in the one place, and we are not moving on to maturity.

After saying in Hebrews 5:12 that they need the basics all over again, he says that they "needed milk, not solid food!", while verse thirteen says that they are "still infants". Basically he says to them, "you're acting like a bunch of young, immature, children."

He then says to them in Hebrews 6:12, "I do not want you to become lazy", and here he uses the same word that he used in Hebrews 5:11:

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

And we could quite easily translate this as, "you have become too lazy to listen".

Go on toward perfection, leaving behind the basic teaching about Christ, and not laying again the foundation: repentance from dead works and faith toward God.

He encourages them to leave behind the basics. To go beyond forgiveness, and heaven, and escaping from hell, and to instead move on to the goal that Jesus set for us. The goal of maturity.

This doesn't mean that we ignore the basics of the message of Christ, for how could we ignore the forgiveness of sins? how could we ignore:

repentance from dead works and faith toward God, instruction about baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment?[3]

How could we ignore any of that? But what it does mean is that we begin to realise that there is so much more to who Jesus is and what Jesus has done than just the forgiveness of sins or saving us from hell or any of the basics.

If we get stuck in being saved from hell or forgiveness (as important as these are), then we are stuck in milk, we are stuck in our spiritual childhood, and we are ignoring the solid food that makes up the wonders of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is why Peter told us to "grow in grace and in faith".

That is why Paul says that he "presses on to the goal".

That is why Paul encourages us to:

comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth of the love of God.[4]

However, spiritual maturity doesn’t "just happen". It isn't automatic. What does he say about spiritual maturity in Hebrews 5:14:

Solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.

The first thing that he says is that Spiritual maturity comes through practice.[5] That is, we need to apply ourselves to it in order to get better at it.

Solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

We learn how to pray, through praying.

We learn how to share the Gospel with others, by sharing the Gospel with others.

We come to learn and understand the great truths of the Christian faith through reading the Bible. Studying the Bible. Thinking about the Bible. Discussing the Bible.

Milk is for the infant. For the baby, but solid food is for the mature. It requires going beyond that which is easy, and sometimes going beyond that which is comfortable, and it requires us to grapple with things that are hard, difficult, and, at times, very complex.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not "easy". One God in three persons, each of whom are totally and completely God, yet there is only one God. They do not "add up" to become God, they are each, in their very nature, totally God, they are three, yet they are one, and only one God.

Spiritual growth is not "automatic". It takes effort and application on our part.

Now, this is an interesting word. The Greek word here is, gumnazw, which is where we get our English word "gymnasium". And, of course, what we do at a gymnasium is we train. We exercise. We practice. We work hard. We get fit. In 1 Timothy 4:7 Paul uses that same word to tell Timothy to:

Train yourself in godliness.

Paul effectively told Timothy to go to a spiritual gymnasium in order to become spiritually fit, and it is that training, that constant use and practice that helps to bring us to maturity so that we can then "distinguish good from evil".

When Jesus was asked to explain the parable of the sower, he said in Luke 8:12-14:

The ones on the path are those who have heard; then the devil comes and takes away the word from their hearts, so that they may not believe and be saved.

The ones on the rock are those who, when they hear the word, receive it with joy. But these have no root; they believe only for a while and in a time of testing fall away.

As for what fell among the thorns, these are the ones who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their fruit does not mature.