We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Hebrews 5:11-14

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Here’s a fun fact about me: I’m not good at math. And whenever I think about why I’m not good at math, I think back to the moment when I missed one math class in elementary school. I can’t remember what exactly that class was about, but I know it was an important one because after that day I never understood math. I tell myself all the time, ‘If I had just been in that class, I’d be a math expert’. I spent years being tutored, staying up late trying to solve simple problems and feeling sick in my stomach on the day of a test just terrified.

This continued over the years and finally ended when I finished my last math class in high school. And though I never failed a course or got held a year back, there were many times when I felt like I should’ve been just because it never made sense to me!

It’s crazy to think that missing one lesson could dictate the rest of my relationship with the subject. 

Yes, I grew in age and went from one grade level to the next, but how much did I really understand? 

I started to reflect. What qualifies one as a truly mature student? Is it age? One’s perfect attendance to all their classes? Is that what our teachers are looking at when they mark our assignments? Or are they checking the development of our understanding? Are we marked because of how well we engaged in the class or because of how well we comprehended the material? 

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Over the last few months, I’ve been going back and forth with God on the topic of maturity and the level of maturity that the body of Christ must get to.

According to the book of Hebrews, mature believers are those who constantly practice the word of God.

Mature believers are those who are acquainted with the teaching of righteousness. They’re the people who can hear the word being preached on how to live rightly and are actually able to attain it. They have no issue with recognizing evil and recognizing good. And they don’t just talk the talk but they live it out in every way.

How acquainted are you with these teachings? I’m sure many of us are and we strive to live righteously every day. But there are also some days where we just can’t get it right. And the worst part is … we know better. It can be discouraging when we hear the word of God, believe it, and never see it bear fruit in our lives. 

As much as we could try to blame it on our flesh, or even the devil himself, could it be possible that we fail in walking righteously because we’ve missed a few classes? Could there be some gaps in our understanding preventing us from truly graduating into spiritual maturity?

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Hebrews 5 outlines a hard truth to us. One cannot be acquainted with the teaching of righteousness, or live righteously unless they have completely understood the elementary truths of God’s word. Meaning that we can’t exercise our faith in Christ correctly unless we know what our faith is about. 

When I refer to righteousness, I’m not referring to the idea of our moral standing in front of God. When God sees us, He sees us righteous because we have been made righteous by Jesus’ sacrifice (2 Corinthians 5:21)

I am trying to draw our attention more to the righteousness that we grow in as we come to know Christ. This is the righteousness that we practice (1 John 2:29). And the scriptures themselves are key to ‘teach, rebuke, correct, and train’ us in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16).

Just underlining it again: this is not about the righteousness that we ‘are’ but the righteousness that we ‘do’. This kind of righteousness doesn’t save us but rather brings us into the fullness of our already righteous identity. 

2 Timothy 3:16 also shows us that righteousness is something that we ought to grow in. How do we grow? By understanding.

When we look at the letter to the Hebrews, we see the author flooding the church with deep explanations of Christ’s identity, ideas of faith, the Sabbath, and so on. But the author also struggled. He saw that he was teaching a people who were not up to the standard he had expected them to be.

As he begins to unwrap the identity of Jesus as our High Priest he says, ‘We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand’ (vs 11). Have you ever tried to explain why too much screen time is bad for a child with perfect eyesight? Have you ever tried to explain anything to a child at all?! It’s not that pleasant and can be pretty frustrating and I think that’s exactly what the author was feeling at this moment. How is he going to explain Jesus’ priestly duties to those who didn’t fully understand that they were sinners or didn’t understand the resurrection of the dead?

I’m sure that the people had some understanding of the role of a high priest. Or how these customs went. It’s what they grew up with and saw all their lives. But there must have been some kind of disconnect because the author goes into a whole tangent on their level of understanding.

See the issue wasn’t with the teaching. This church wasn’t battling with false teachers and teachings the way the other churches did. This church was struggling with unbelief – not because of the lack of correct teaching, but because they had no understanding.  They ‘no longer tried to understand’ so they couldn’t understand! 

These believers could have become teachers by now but their deafness prevented them from attaining the true maturity that any position of leadership in the church requires. Instead of teachers, they are still students. 

He then compares them to children. Not only students, but children. Children need baby food.

 He says, ‘You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.’ (vs 12-14). 

There’s nothing wrong with milk. Milk is necessary and so are these teachings that the author has referred to. When it comes to human biology, milk is known to ‘fuel a baby’s rapid growth and development’ and has the ‘perfect mix of everything a baby needs to grow’. 

But what happens if the baby continues to only take on milk? Even after they grow out of infancy? Would they continue to grow the way they are supposed to or would their growth be stunted?

You cannot live on milk alone. But for a certain time, in the very beginning – you must because solid food comes after milk. 

In that same way, the teachings of righteous living come after the ‘elementary’ teachings.

So what are the elementary teachings? This passage in Hebrews chapter 6 tells us:

Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death,[a] and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites,[b] the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so. Hebrews 6:1-3

There are six teachings outlined here that the author considers as elementary teachings:

• Repentance from acts that lead to death
• Faith in God
• Baptism
• Laying on of hands
• Resurrection of the dead
• Eternal judgment

Now it might just be me, but to say that ‘resurrection of the dead’ and ‘eternal judgement’ is elementary teaching is like a saying that advanced functions should be taught in grade 4. If this is elementary, then what’s middle and high school? 

In the church, I feel like sometimes we reserve these teachings for the mature. Or for those who seek out these specific teachings. But I strongly believe that we must have a fuller understanding than just simple definitions of each of these things. See, these teachings make up the base of our faith. When we add on the teachings of righteousness, we can then walk it out because we’ve grasped the fundamentals.

God desires that we all attain the whole measure of the fullness of Christ (Ephesians 4:11-12). So join me over the next few weeks as we unpack each of the teachings and fill in the gaps of knowledge that we may have missed.