Little babies are cute and adorable. We love to hold and cuddle them, giving them their bottle of milk. Parents sometimes say in a joking way that they wish they would stay little forever, but they don’t really mean that. There would be something seriously wrong if one’s baby never grew and matured. They need to start walking, running, and learning. They need to go beyond drinking only milk, and start eating solid foods. Our author of Hebrews knows this, and is telling us in our Scripture today that the same thing holds true in our Christian life. Let’s look into the passage.
The people to whom the author of Hebrews was writing had been Christians for awhile. However, they were still, years later, immature believers. They were like children, who after years, were still crawling, speaking baby-talk, and drinking milk from a baby bottle. He told these believers that by now they ought to be teaching the Bible to new believers, but instead they were just as unlearned, just as spiritually immature as they were when they were first saved (vs. 12-14). They should have been teaching and passing on the Gospel to others. Instead they were still babies, too infantile and unskilled to understand themselves, let alone teach the truths of God.
As we look around the church today, we can see that this is a problem just as much as it was to those to whom Hebrews was written to. Some believers, after they become saved, learn the very basics of Christian doctrine, but then stop studying the word, and even more sadly, stop applying anything they have learned to their own lives. A Christian, just like a baby, is supposed to grow and mature. To grow from a baby Christian to a mature one, we must learn discernment to distinguish good from evil (vs 14). We must learn to recognize temptation before they trap us. We need to be able to tell the difference between a correct use of Scripture and a wrong one. In order to become more spiritually mature one must not just hear God’s Word. We must put it into practice. That takes studying and following what we learn.
These early Hebrew believers had learned the basic doctrines, such as salvation by faith and not works, baptism, the resurrection, and eternal life, and then stopped there. They weren’t digging any deeper into the Bible. Today we see the same problem. So many believers, after they are saved, get spiritually lazy and stop learning. They may have been saved for several years, but are like a teen-ager who is still in diapers, crawling, and eating baby food. That isn’t normal, and neither is a Christian, saved years ago, but is still a baby in the faith. The author of Hebrews tells his readers, and us, that they need to leave the learning of basic doctrines (vs. 1-2). “Leaving” doesn’t mean to reject these doctrines. They are a place to start our learning at, but not to stop there. Learn these basic doctrines and then go on to deeper, more “meatier” truths.
We are urged to develop spiritual discernment as we grow in our faith (vs 14). Discernment is a trait that will come with saturating our heart and mind with God’s Word. We can only learn to discern between good and evil by daily study of the Bible, and then being sure to put what we learn into practice.
When we don’t exercise our muscles they will start to atrophy. It only takes a couple of weeks in a cast after breaking a bone, and our muscles start to grow weak. We need to exercise to regain strength. Our spiritual muscles will atrophy when we don’t use them. Only constant use will train our spirits to know right from wrong. The spiritual exercises we need to use to grow as mature believers are Bible reading, prayer, fellowship, and obedience to God.
How are we doing in our spiritual growth as a believer? Are we still holding on to the baby bottle of milk? Maybe we are only eating mashed, pureed vegetables. Hopefully we have graduated to eating steak or prime rib. Little babies are wonderful for the first year. Then we want to see our children grow to learn to walk, run, and read. As believers in Jesus, let’s grow in our faith and understanding of the Word, and then encourage and teach other newborn believers.
No comments:
Post a Comment