Hebrews 5:11-6:1 “Press On To Maturity”

Translation & Sermon by Nate Wilson for Christ the Redeemer Church of Manhattan, KS, 20 Jan. 2019

Introduction

• “...[T]he author... is ready to discuss... the likeness of Jesus as high priest to Melchizedek... but for the fear that the reader may fail to grasp his meaning, for he will run counter to the usual Jewish ideas. Hence he pauses to stir up the interest of the readers (5:11-6:20) before going on with the argument (7:1-28).” ~A.T. Robertson

• And he frames it in terms of maturity. There is a certain natural tendency to realize that sucking our thumbs and wearing diapers and eating baby food and talking baby talk are shameful at some point, so we want to grow out of those things and be a big person. And there are similar principles at work in our spiritual lives.

• I want to identify five principles of spiritual maturity highlighted at the end of Hebrews 5:

  • Spiritual maturity is diligent about listening to God’s word,

  • Spiritual maturity engages in teaching God’s word:

  • Spiritual Maturity grasps a Biblical gospel understanding of righteousness

  • Spiritual Maturity comes through training in choosing what God says is right, and

  • Spiritual Maturity is accomplished by God.

1) Spiritual maturity is diligent about listening to God’s word
5:11 Concerning which the matter is [too] voluminous and uninterpretable for us to say, since y’all have become lazy about listening.

• What is the topic? Verse 11 opens with the words “Concerning which/whom/him/this¹” – depending on which English translation you read. The underlying Greek relative pronoun is masculine and singular.

  • The nearest single masculine noun is the name Melchizedek at the end of v.10,

  • However, the main subject of every one of the previous six verses to verse 11 is Christ,

  • and the topic has been the legitimacy of Christ Jesus’ priesthood, which is why Melchizedek was mentioned in v.10 as also being a legitimate priest of the one true God, so the topics of Melchizedek and of Jesus and His priestly work are intertwined.

• Nevertheless, this subject², says Hebrews 5:11 is “voluminous/much/[too] many things” to say to this audience, and it is “hard to explain/hard to be uttered/uninterpretable” for this audience.

  • It is “voluminous,” in that there are at least 125 verses in the Bible which talk about priesthood, all of which are fulfilled in Christ Jesus,

  • And the subject is a “hard” one because, well, have you ever considered writing a book about priesthood? Yeah, I rest my case.

    • The root word hermeneuw, as it is used in the Bible, always has to do with translating something from one language to another,

    • and here it has the prefix “dys-,” which is the same prefix we use for “dys-functional” or “dys-lexia,” indicating something broken in the interpretation process.

    • It can’t be that the Aramaic name “Melchizedek” is too hard to translate, because, in chapter 7 v.2, our same author easily translates it into Greek as βασιλεὺς δικαιοσύνης (“King of Righteousness”)³.

• The reason why it is too “much” and too “difficult to interpret” is that the readers have slowly over time “νωθροὶ γεγόνατε ταῖς ἀκοαῖς/become lazy about listening/dull of hearing,” and thus “slow to learn.”

  • Hebrews 6:11-12 is the only other N.T. passage that uses the word νωθροὶ, and there it is contrasted with diligent, patient, confident action.⁴

  • The only other place in the Bible that this word occurs is Prov. 22:29, where it is contrasted with kings or high-ranking officials who have worked hard to attain their position.⁵

  • If I were to hand Calvin’s Institutes to my 7-year-old son, he wouldn’t be able to read it because he hasn’t developed the disciplines it takes to do the hard work of reading those long passages about obscure points of theology and making sense of them and applying them to his life. Once he’s in his 20’s, it might be worth buying him a copy to read, but not now.

  • I think that is the sense of what our author is saying, although, in the case of these Hebrews, he implies that they had once been able to track with that kind of theology, but they had gotten lazy about it and lost the knack –

    • whether from intellectual laziness (having watched too many mindless video clips online – or whatever they did back in the first century) that made their brains too sluggish to follow meaty theology,

    • or perhaps from such a preoccupation with esoteric philosophy that they had lost the ability to practically apply anything (like the philosophers at the Aeropagus in Acts 17, who just wanted to hear Paul for his novel ideas, not because they believed the Gospel).

    • Or perhaps the problem was merely due to familiarity. Scottish commentator John Brown wrote, “When the gospel was first preached to them, it aroused their attention – it exercised their thought; but now with many of them it had become a common thing. They flattered themselves that they knew all about it. It had become to them like a sound to which the ear has long been accustomed, the person is not conscious of it [and] pays no attention to it… they are not interested in it.”

    • Where is your mind? Does it suffer from any of these forms of sluggishness regarding spiritual things? The cure for laziness or for spiritual “attention deficit disorder” comes at the end of this chapter, and that is to take responsibility for a hard workout of the mind – to engage in Biblical training. But for now, the next verse holds forth a vision of what their condition could have been:

2) Spiritual maturity engages in teaching God’s word:
5:12 For, though y’all ought to be teachers by this time, y’all have need for someone to teach y’all again the building-blocks of the beginning of God’s messages, and y’all have begun to have need of milk rather than solid food!

• I think that the “teaching” role, in which the addressees of this letter “ought to” have been, was not so much the spiritual gift of teaching (which “not all have,” according to 1 Corinthians 12:29), but rather was the general status which Jews had in redemptive history of being responsible to share the knowledge they had of the things of God, since God had given so much special revelation to Jews.

  • It says in Romans 2:17-20, “Indeed you are called a Jew, and rest on the law, and make your boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are excellent, being instructed out of the law, and are confident that you yourself are a guide to the blind, a light to those who are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, having the form of knowledge and truth in the law.” (NKJV)

  • The book of Hebrews was written to these Jews who had access to God’s word.

  • You likewise in this congregation are swimming in Bibles and Bible-knowledge, and that creates a real obligation, an “ought”-ness to share that truth with others. “You ought to be teachers,” because you possess full copies of “God’s messages” in your Bibles!

  • 1 John 2:27 “And the anointing which you yourselves received from Him remains in you, and you have no need for someone to be teaching you. But as His anointing is teaching you concerning everything – and it is true; it is not a lie – just as it taught you, you remain in Him.” (NAW)

  • You may not feel like it, but I think every one of you is capable of leading a Bible study. Is that something you would consider doing in the coming year? Would you at least pray for God to bring someone around you to ask you a question about the Bible? And then when they ask you, would you offer to study the Bible together with them? You don’t have to have all the answers. All you have to do is write their questions down and then do an online search or ask me or study it on your own and then bring back what you find.

• Now, what do teachers need? Teacher’s associations, ideas for lesson plans, encouragement with difficult students, and apples on their desk, right? But teaching resources were not what these Hebrews needed. What they needed instead was the kinds of things students need: alphabet blocks⁶, primer textbooks, rudimentary lessons, and milk – the “building-blocks [στοιχεῖα] of the beginning of God’s messages/oracles [τῆς ἀρχῆς τῶν λογίων τοῦ Θεοῦ]. What are these elementary/first/basic building-blocks?

  • John 1:1 Tells us that the most foundational one is Jesus Himself⁷: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (KJV) So that’s why the author of Hebrews has been harping on who Jesus is! Jesus is the first topic we should talk about with other people! Let us be diligent to talk about Jesus first!

  • Psalm 119:160 “The beginning of thy words [ἀρχὴ τῶν λόγων] is truth; and all the judgments of thy righteousness endure for ever.” (Brenton)

  • There is also a temporal meaning in this word “arche/beginning/basic/first/elementary,” that has to do with the first time you hear and learn about something. In Philippians 4:15, the Apostle Paul used the same Greek word in the phrase, “the beginning of the Gospel,” to indicate the historic occasion of those first few months when he travelled through the Philippians’ province of Macedonia, and for the first time, they heard the Gospel⁸.

  • Think about the first time you heard that God had messages and what they were. Perhaps it was in Sunday school, perhaps in family devotions, perhaps at a student meeting or a conference.

  • One of my earliest memories is of my parents reading Kenneth Taylor’s Bible In Pictures For Little Eyes (– the original edition with the lifelike pictures, not the cartoons). It gave as much space to the pictures as it did to the words, and it only took a minute or two to read each Bible story. That was perfect for the short little attention span of a boy as hyperactive as I was. So, when I grew up, I got a copy of that book to read to my little children. I think it’s great for milk.

  • Milk is still food (Prov. 27:27); it is what “babies” need to begin with.

    • The 4^th Century Greek pastor Chrysostom suggested that this could be referring to the Mosaic “Law… and the comparison made from [it] that He [Christ] was a High Priest and offered sacrifice,” which was an early part of the word of God and His righteousness.

    • The 19^th Century Classical Greek expert, Marvin Vincent, agreed, saying, “Philo uses [the same word] of the O.T. prophecies, and his treatise on the Ten Commandments is entitled περὶ τῶν δέκα λογίων... The meaning here is the O.T. sayings, especially those pointing to Christ.” (cf. Westcott)

    • John Brown, however, objected, saying, “This is certainly not a natural description of the typical events and institutions of the Old Economy… the principles of the doctrine of Christ are the foundation... the knowledge and belief of which are absolutely necessary in order to a man’s being a Christian… [namely] the six particulars... enumerated [at the beginning of chapter 6].” (cf. P.E. Hughes)

  • Whatever the case, babyhood has inherent problems, so God doesn’t want us to stay there. 1 Cor. 3:1-4 identifies some of the problems of remaining infantile as selfishness, man-centeredness, quarrels, and preoccupation with denominations: “Now, as for me, brothers, I was not able to utter a word to y'all as spiritual men but rather as fleshly men – as babies in Christ. It was milk I served y'all, not food, for you were not able, yet you are still not able even now! For y'all are still being fleshly, for where there is jealousy and fighting and divisions among you, aren't you being fleshly and walking according to humanism? For whenever someone says, ‘As for me, I am of Paul,’ and another ‘I am of Apollos,’ you are not being men.” ... 13:11 When I used to be a baby, I used to make utterances like a baby, I used to think like a baby, I used to reason like a baby. When I had become a man, I had put out of commission the things of the child.” (NAW)

• We’re supposed to grow up and eat “solid food.” What is that?

  • Trophes-food is defined as “grain” in Acts 27:38.

  • And the other Greek word steareos – translated “solid” - sometimes in the Bible means “strong” or “harsh,” and sometimes it means “solid/all-of-one-piece⁹.”

    • Baby food comes all mashed up because babies don’t have teeth to bite off and process grown-up food.

    • Baby food is also pretty bland without the intense flavors that adults like (By the way, have you tasted the hot sauce I made out of peppers we grew in our garden this summer? So good!).

  • Here’s another thought: It seems to me that when Christian ministry is combined with income-earning, as it usually seems to do when it gets bigger than one local church, it necessarily limits the maturity level of what can be marketed.

    • I don’t expect to find lots of spiritual “solid food” in Christian bookstores, or in Christian movies, podcasts, and conferences.

    • Sure, there are nuggets of solid food to be found, but marketers focus on what the majority wants, and, let’s face it, the majority of people who call themselves Christians are not the most mature.

    • What’s going to sell is mostly highly-processed “baby” food and sensational entertainment, so, in a free market, that is what is going to be produced and stocked.

    • I’m not saying that these things are worthless, I’m just saying that you shouldn’t expect to grow for your whole Christian life off of mass-marketed Christianity, and I’m saying that teachers should be careful to evaluate the effects of mixing income-earning with Christian ministry.

  • It is worthy of note how the Bible uses this word steareos before and after the book of Hebrews:

    • 2 Timothy 2:19 Nevertheless the solid foundation of God stands, having this seal: "The Lord knows those who are His," and, "Let everyone who names the name of Christ depart from iniquity." (NKJ) That’s “solid” food for spiritually mature Christians: understanding of the sovereignty of God and how to live a holy lifestyle – in other words, trusting Jesus and obeying Him.

    • 1 Peter 5:9 uses the same Greek word when it says, “You solid ones in the faith must stand against him [the Devil], knowing the same kind of sufferings to be consummated by y'alls brotherhood in the world.” (NAW) – in other words, knowing what is wrong and standing for what’s right, even if it means persecution. That’s solid food.

  • I want to pick up on that and apply it a little later on, but for now let’s move on to verse...

3) Spiritual Maturity grasps a Biblical gospel understanding of righteousness
5:13 (For every one who partakes of milk is inexperienced with the word of righteousness, because he is a baby,

• This is one of the negative things which the New Testament has to say about “babies” (the Greek word nepioi is also translated “children/infants”). Other negatives we find include:

  • They are limited: Galatians 4:3 “...when we were babies, we were bound under the building-blocks [στοιχεῖα] of the world... (NAW)

  • They are easily deceived: Ephesians 4:11-15 “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be babies, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ...” (NAW)

  • Babies are not teachers; they are the ones who need to be taught. (Romans 2:20 “...an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes...” ~NKJ)

  • But they can be taught and brought to faith in God, as the Psalms and Gospels affirm ¹⁰.

• The problem mentioned here in Hebrews 5:13 is that babies are “ἄπειρος/inexperienced/unskilful/not accustomed to/not acquainted with the word of righteousness.”

  • In the traditional Greek translation of Numbers 14:23, some of the same words are used to describe children in the sense of their not having lived long enough to see much in the way of bad things – or good things either. (“Surely they shall not see the land, which I sware to their fathers; but their children which are with me here, as many as know not good or evil, every inexperienced youth, to them will I give the land; but none who have provoked me shall see it.” ~Brenton¹¹)

  • What these baby Christians in Hebrews are especially greenhorns about is “the word of righteousness.”

    • It has been suggested that this just means that babies don’t properly know how to talk¹², but there is a Biblical history to the Greek phrase λόγου δικαιοσύνης (“word of righteousness”), and I believe it refers to God’s plan of salvation¹³:

    • Psalm 119:123 “My eyes fail from seeking Your salvation And Your righteous word.” (NKJV)

    • Isaiah 45:21-25 “...there is not another god besides me, a God of righteousness and the One who causes to save. There is none besides me. Face toward me and be saved, all ends of earth! For I am God and there is not another. By myself I have sworn; righteousness has gone out of my mouth - a word, and it will not turn back... 'Righteousness and strength are only in Yahweh!' ... In Yahweh all the seed of Israel will be righteous and will praise.” (NAW)

    • Do you see how the Biblical “word of righteousness” refers to the good news of God’s salvation? In other words, it’s the “word” that God is “right” and that God can make us right!

    • That can be stated fairly simply, but the theology of salvation and the disciplines of ethics are deeper than the ocean,

    • and apparently the Hebrews were not handling these things very well - perhaps because they were moving in the direction of the Essene Zealots who loved the things of God and wanted to do what’s right, but who thought human masters could define what is right and thought that humans could live up to those standards and make themselves right with God without Jesus.

    • They were “clueless neophytes” when it came to God’s “righteousness,” so they needed to be schooled all over “again” in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

  • The root of ἄπειρος, by the way, occurs again later in Hebrews 11:36 without the alpha privative, showing us what the opposite of this “unskilled/inexperienced/ineptness” is, namely the example of the mature Christians throughout history who, using God’s word, identified sin as evil and turned away from it, then endured persecution as a result of their faith. That’s the kind of maturity God holds up to us. (“Still others had the experience/trial [peiros] of mockings and scourgings, yes, and of chains and imprisonment.” ~NKJ)

  • That’s also what it says in verse...

4) Spiritual Maturity comes through training in what God says is right
5:14 but it is to mature ones that the solid food belongs, the ones who, their senses having been trained through their conditioning, possess an ability to distinguish between both what is good and what is bad.)

• Chysostom commented, “The baby doesn’t know how to distinguish bad and good food. Oftentimes at least it even puts dirt into its mouth... and it does all things without judgment; but not [so] the full grown man. Such are they who lightly listen to everything, and give up their ears indiscriminately… [H]eretics put on the mask in order to deceive the more simple, but if we ‘have the senses’ of the soul ‘exercised to discern both good and evil,’ we are able to ferret them out."

• Training and conditioning is part of maturity.

  • Think about an untrained puppy whose doggy desires are yanking it every which-way. (Sniff, sniff – hey what’s that? Snif, snif, snif – mmm that smells good! What? What was that noise? Ah – squirrel! Uh oh, master is calling – better catch up!) And compare that to a well-trained guide dog that stays on task and doesn’t chase rabbits, but consistently chooses to serve its master’s best interests. That’s maturity.

  • We derive our English word “gymnasium” from the Greek word γεγυμνασμένα here. It pictures someone who has “stripped down” and really put out the effort to exercise at the gym to achieve a particular result.

  • Training and conditioning – practice and exercise – involve making repeated choices over a good while to reject one thing and bring another thing into your life. The Apostle Paul described that mental training process to his protege Timothy in terms of “rejecting” rumors and amusements in order to “nourish” his mind on “good doctrine” and “words of faith”: 1 Tim. 4:6-7 “...nourished in the words of faith and of the good doctrine which you have carefully followed. But reject profane and old wives' fables, and exercise [train/γυμναζε] yourself toward godliness.” (NKJV)

  • It is God – and God alone – who can distinguish good from bad, and so our training must involve studying God’s word to learn good from bad. Jesus said, “You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures” (Matt. 22:29, NAW). Repeated reference to God’s word to determine good from evil trains our minds in righteousness and matures us to the point of being able to recognize and refute (upon God’s authority) what is wrong.

  • But if those repeated choices get reversed in their use, your natural desires could train you toward unrighteousness and damnation, as the Apostle Peter warned in: 2 Peter 2:14-15 “...carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children...” (NKJV)

  • The author of Hebrews later describes godly training as something God does to us through painful chastisements but also something we do by pursuing holiness – that is, separation from the world to obey Christ: Heb. 12:11-14 “Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet... Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord:” (NKJV)

• That’s what our spiritual “workouts” should be doing, then, is training us to discern, through repeated conditioning from the Bible, what is right from what is wrong – good from bad. “1 Peter 2:2 Like newborn babies ya'll must start cultivating desire for the non-deceptive milk of the word, in order that y'all might be caused to grow in salvation by means of it” (NAW)

• Being able to use God’s word of righteousness to identify righteousness from evil is a mark of maturity. Not being able to do that is a characteristic of childishness (Deut. 1:39) and of heathen darkness (Jonah 4:11).

  • How can we get on that training track? Do you remember the prayer of Solomon that “pleased” God? In 1 Kings 3:9 he prayed, “Therefore give to Your servant an understanding heart to judge Your people, that I may discern between good and evil…" That would be a good way to start!

  • Then put God’s word into your heart. I don’t care how you do it: Read it, write copies of it, memorize it, sing it, listen to audio of it, whatever it takes, get God’s word into your head!

  • Then act on it. Do what God’s word says, and don’t do what it prohibits.

  • But whatever you do, don’t get all haughty about how much better Christian you are than other people because...

5) Spiritual maturity is accomplished by God, not by your effort, so all glory is His
6:1 Therefore, having left the beginning message of the Anointed One, let us be carried on to maturity...

• I have a bone to pick with the standard English versions at the opening of chapter 6: They all translate this passive Greek verb as though it were active: “Let us press on.” But Wycliffe’s translation and the Geneva English Bible (which predate the King James) more accurately rendered the verb as passive “be we borun/let us be led forward,” a point which many New Testament scholars admit (Vincent, A.T. Robertson, Jameison Faucett & Brown, etc.). Of course we should be diligent in training and listening and teaching God’s word, but ultimately, any maturing which comes of it is the work of God, and we can’t take credit for it.

• P.E. Hughes, a 20^th Century Anglican scholar who authored one of the most definitive commentaries on the book of Hebrews wrote, “φερώμεθα should be interpreted as a divine passive, implying the agency of God... Paul speaks to the same effect in Romans 8:14 when he declares that ‘all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God’... The energy, hidden and inward, of the Holy Spirit is the true dynamic of spiritual growth... As Owen somewhat quaintly expresses it, ‘then if the holy gales of the Spirit of God do breathe on us, are we in a blessed tendency towards perfection.’” [“perfection” being an old-fashioned word for “maturity”]

• It is my prayer that we all be carried forward in maturity in these ways:

  • Spiritual maturity is diligent about listening to God’s word,

  • Spiritual maturity engages in teaching God’s word:

  • Spiritual Maturity grasps a Biblical gospel understanding of righteousness

  • Spiritual Maturity comes through training in choosing what God says is right, and

  • Spiritual Maturity is accomplished by God, and gives Him the credit.

APPENDIX: Side-by-side Greek Text and English Versions of Hebrews 5:11-6:1^A