12  The Tragedy of  Rejecting Full  Revelation—part 1  (5:11-14)

Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (5:11-14)

We have come to a section of Hebrews of which there are numerous and often conflicting interpretations, even among evangelicals. The overall passage is 5:11—6:12, and deals with spiritual maturity. The first two parts (5:11-14 and 6:1-8) are, I believe, addressed to unbelievers, whereas the third (6:9-12) is to believers.

     THE CONTRAST BETWEEN CHRISTIANITY AND JUDAISM

Throughout the book of Hebrews, the many comparisons and contrasts are basically between Christianity and Judaism. This truth is essential to proper interpretation of the epistle.

Most books of the Bible have a major theme, or a group of closely related themes. One of the first rules of sound biblical hermeneutics (interpretation) is to discover this central theme and to render all other interpretations in light of it. The gospel of John, for example, contains many profound and wonderful truths about God and His plan for man. But the central, overriding message of that gospel is the deity of Jesus Christ. A person who misses this truth cannot fully and properly understand the other truths that John presents in the book.

The central theme and message of the book of Hebrews is the superiority of the New Covenant to the Old, that is, of Christianity to Judaism. Within this theme are the subthemes of the superiority of the new priesthood to the old, the new sacrifice to the old ones, the new Mediator to the old ones, and so on. This is the key that unlocks every section of Hebrews, and to use any other key is, I believe, to make forced entry.

In the book of Hebrews the Holy Spirit is not contrasting two kinds of Christianity. He is not contrasting immature Christians and mature ones. He is contrasting Judaism and Christianity, the unsaved Jew in Judaism and the redeemed Jew in Christianity. He is contrasting the substance and the shadow, the pattern and the reality, the visible and the invisible, the facsimile and the real thing, the type and the anti-type, the picture and the actual.

The Old Testament essentially is God’s revelation of pictures and types, which are fulfilled in Christ in the New Testament. The book of Hebrews, therefore, compares and contrasts the two parts of God’s revelation that our division of the Bible reflects.

A THIRD WARNING

Concerning him we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. (5:11)

Him, of course, refers to Melchizedek, who has just been mentioned (vv. 6, 10). Before he explains the order of Melchizedek (in chap. 7), however, the writer gives his third parenthetical warning. As we have already noted, interspersed throughout Hebrews are several warnings to the intellectually convinced Jews who were on the edge of decision but had not yet come to faith in Christ. These warnings could also function in the context of encouragement and counsel to those Jews who had trusted Christ but were being tempted to turn back into Judaism because of doubts, criticism, and, for some, even persecution. But the main thrust was to unbelievers. The first warning (2:1-4) was about their neglecting the gospel, and the second (3:7-19) was about hardening their hearts to it. The third warning concerns spiritual maturity—the danger of staying with the elemental truths and promises of the Old Covenant, now that it has been superseded by the New. This warning is also, I believe, to the same group as are the other two—to unbelieving Jews who knew a great deal about the gospel but who had not gone all the way to accepting it for themselves. Some may have made a shallow profession of faith but not actually believed. They are told of the danger of not claiming the blessing of the New Covenant, apart from which they cannot have eternal life. They are close, yet so far away.

UNBELIEVING BABES

There are, of course, many exhortations in the New Testament for immature Christians to grow up. Throughout the history of the church there has been need for such counsel, but I do not think that is what is given here. He is saying to hesitant Jews still hanging on to Judaism, “Come on to completeness, to maturity, in the New Covenant.” This interpretation is not the most traditional, but I think it is consistent with the context of the whole book and is defensible. The warning and the appeal, as before, are evangelistic. The maturity being called for is not that of a Christian’s growing in the faith, but of an unbeliever’s coming into the faith—into the full-grown, mature truths and blessings of the New Covenant. It is the same maturity or perfection (from teleio) as in 10:1 and 14, which can only refer to salvation, not Christian growth.

The Old Covenant was the spiritual alphabet. The Old Covenant was the baby talk, the letters and the sounds of a child’s first vocabulary. You do not use an encyclopedia to start teaching a child to read. You use pictures and other visual objects. You point to the picture or the object and say, “This is a ball. That is a horse. This is a fish.” Later on you begin explaining these things. You tell him that balls are round, horses eat hay, and that fish “breathe” water. God’s revelation to man progressed in a similar way. The Old Testament was His elementary, foundational teaching. It began with “pictures.” God was saying, in effect, “This is a feast you are to celebrate. This is a sacrifice you must make. These are the clothes a high priest should wear, and this is a ceremonial washing that is required for certain occasions.” Each had purposes and benefits for the times for which it was given. But primarily they were pictures of things to come, which the people were not then ready to understand. They were symbols and shadows of realities in Christ and the New Covenant (Col. 2:17).

Now that the New Covenant had come in Jesus Christ, the writer of Hebrews is saying to his fellow Jews, “Leave the pictures, the milk and baby food, of the Old Testament. Come to the fulfilled realities and the solid food of the New Testament. Leave Judaism and come to Christ.”

DULLNESS PREVENTS UNDERSTANDING

So before they could possibly understand the significance of Jesus’ priesthood being like Melchizedek’s, the readers needed to get beyond their limited, immature understanding of God. A key mark of that immaturity was simply dullness of hearing, spiritual lethargy. The relation of Melchizedek and his priesthood to Christ is rich and meaningful, and important to the flow of the book, but it cannot be understood by unbelievers, even ones who intellectually accept the gospel. “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God ... because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14). These borderline believers were being told that there was no use going into the deeper things of the New Covenant at that time, because they had become dull of hearing.

Dull comes from the Greek nthros, which is made up of the words for “no” and “push.” Literally, therefore, it means “no push”—slow, sluggish. When used of a person it generally meant intellectually numb or thick. In the context of this passage, however, it primarily indicates spiritual dullness.

When a person is spiritually dull, he is difficult to teach. These Jews had been lulled into sleep because of neglect and hardness of heart, and they would have to awaken and become alert if they were to appreciate the truth, significance, and necessity of the New Covenant. They could not truly understand the gospel, of course, until they put their trust in the Bearer of the gospel. To be able to see its importance, they had to spiritually “wake up and pay attention.”

These lethargic unbelievers have many counterparts today. People hear the gospel and are stirred and excited. Spiritual understanding appears to begin, but the more they hear it without accepting it, the more spiritually sluggish they become. They neglect to act on the truth they know and become more and more hardened to it, often while claiming to admire and respect it. They become more and more insulated from spiritual truth and understanding, and from spiritual life itself.

Though, as we have noted, this passage is not addressed to believers, the same principle applies. When we do not trust and act on any part of God’s truth that we know, we become hardened to it and less and less likely to benefit from it. Or when we avoid delving into the deeper parts of God’s Word, being satisfied with the “basics,” we insulate ourselves from the Holy Spirit to that extent. From a somewhat different perspective, a teacher or preacher can suffer spiritually when he does not bother to teach and preach the deeper, and sometimes harder, truths of Scripture—or is afraid to do so. The more he resists or neglects to teach them, the less they will mean to him. Paul was able to say that he did not fail to declare the whole counsel, or purpose, of God (Acts 20:27). He would not skip over or neglect any part of God’s Word. No faithful servant of God will accommodate his teaching to the dull, lazy Christian.

DULLNESS IS GRADUAL

The implication of 5:11 is that those who were dull of hearing had once been alert and interested, perhaps even eager, to learn more of the gospel. They did not start out dull; they became that way gradually. These were doubtlessly among the ones who had “once been enlightened” and had “tasted of the heavenly gift” (6:4). At one time they had been stirred and moved and open. They were once on the brink of salvation. By now, however, they had sunk into a rather settled state of spiritual stupor.

DULLNESS IS UNPRODUCTIVE

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. (5:12)

Because of the length of time they had been under instruction of New Testament truth, they should have known enough to be teaching it themselves. But because they had never truly accepted it, they had not grown in it—and could not grow in it. They had been exposed to a great deal of God’s truth, on most of which they could probably have passed an examination. They had the truth in a certain factual and superficial way, but the truth did not have them.

Paul charged in Romans, “But if you bear the name ‘Jew,’ and rely upon the Law, and boast in God, and know His will, and approve the things that are essential, 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, a corrector of the foolish, a teacher of the immature, having in the Law the embodiment of knowledge and of the truth, you, therefore, who teach another, do you not teach yourself?” (2:17-21). In other words, they prided themselves in the idea that they were great religious teachers. But in Hebrews the Holy Spirit says explicitly what is implicit in the passage from Romans: these Jews not only were unqualified to teach, but needed to go back to kindergarten. They did not understand the ABCs of their own faith. That was evident by their unwillingness to recognize its clear fulfillment.

I have known many professing Christians like that, some of them well-known theologians. They know Scripture and the biblical languages well. They know what the Bible says. But they do not know, or accept, what it means. For the time and study they have put in, they ought to be teachers of the Word of God. But they do not even comprehend its fundamentals. They have been “advanced” students of Scripture for decades, and yet they do not even know Jesus Christ. They may teach, but it is not the pure Word of Christ that they teach.

Some years ago at a Christian youth conference I spoke on choosing the right life partner. After one session a young girl came up to me and asked to talk. As we sat on the chapel steps, she began telling me that her boyfriend said that whatever a person does, in sex or in anything else, is all right as long as no one else is hurt. After a little questioning I discovered that her boyfriend was 21 and she was only 14. When I briefly reminded her of what God says about sex outside of marriage, she hung her head and said, “I know that. You know what I need? I need to be saved.” She explained that she not only had been raised in a church but that her father was a pastor. I replied, “Then you know how to be saved.” “No,” she said, “I don’t. I have heard my father preach on it but I don’t understand it.”

Here was a perfect illustration of spiritual sluggishness. This girl had heard the gospel all her life, but she had rejected Jesus Christ for so long that the gospel now was foggy to her. She could not understand it anymore. She thought her father’s sermons were boring and made no sense. She had become totally indifferent to God’s Word. After I carefully delineated the gospel to her, we prayed together and she confessed Christ as her Lord and Savior.

DULLNESS REQUIRES BEING TAUGHT AGAIN

Because they had become spiritually listless, the informed but unbelieving Jews had need again for someone to teach them. Like the young girl mentioned above, they needed to start all over in the elementary principles of the oracles of God.

THE FIRST PRINCIPLES OF GOD’S ORACLES

What are the elementary principles of the oracles of God? Stoicheia (“elementary principles”) means that which comes first. In reference to language, it meant the letters of the alphabet as the basic parts of words—the ABCs. In science it was used of the basic physical elements, and in math of the basics of proof.

Oracles of God does not refer to the gospel. Those being addressed were Jews, and to them the oracles of God meant the Old Testament. The oracles of God were the laws of God, the mind of God revealed in the Old Testament. Having been entrusted with God’s oracles was a great advantage for the Jews (Rom. 3:1-2). It was the rudiments of the Old Testament revelation, the law, that they needed to be taught again. They had had considerable exposure to the New Covenant, but they did not even comprehend the Old, as evidenced by their lack of ability to handle deeper truth about Melchizedek.

These Jews did not even understand the meaning of their own law. They needed someone to go back and show them the pictures again. They were not ready to read a book; they had to go back to the ABCs—the elementary picture-truths of ordinances, ceremonies, sacrifices, holy days, washings. These foreshadowed Christ, and they could not recognize Him unless they understood the pictures.

THE NEED TO BECOME MATURE

The Old Testament is the alphabet; the New Testament is the complete, mature message. “Before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, being shut up to the faith which was later to be revealed. Therefore the Law has become our tutor to lead us to Christ, that we may be justified by faith” (Gal. 3:23-24). The law was a tutor, a child trainer, that taught the first and basic truths about God. In the New Covenant we are not under the tutor anymore. We have grown up. That is the point being made here. Christ has arrived, the shadows are replaced with substance, the picturebook is replaced with great writings that we can read. The alphabet is replaced with the full composition. The types have given way to the truth.

PROGRESS OR REGRESS

Again they are told, you have come (cf. v. 11, “you have become”). A baby does not come to need milk. He is born with that need. The only person who comes to need milk, to need baby food, is one who has gone back to childhood. Instead of becoming more mature, these Jews were becoming less. They were slipping back into spiritual infancy.

If you do not progress you regress. By neglect and hardness they had come to the place where they could only handle milk again. It is easy for people to hear the gospel, and then hear it and hear it and hear it until it becomes commonplace and meaningless to them. Instead of pursuing the truth of Christ and giving their lives to Him, they become spiritually sluggish and stagnant. They become dull of hearing and slow of understanding, spiritually retarded. They must be fed again like babies.

These Jews who had so long spurned Christ, some of them while professing His name, were not able to take the heavy food of Melchizedek priesthood truth. They would have to start again from the bottom up, gradually increasing their spiritual perception and understanding.

For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. (5:13)

A spiritual infant is not accustomed (apeiros) to deeper truths. He cannot digest them, any more than a physical infant can digest a steak. The idea is that of being inexperienced, unskillful, and therefore unprepared and incapable. The spiritual system, like the physical, has to grow in order to handle that which is more difficult. A child can get something out of looking at a picturebook but nothing out of looking at a textbook. A spiritual child could get some meaning out of the pictures and types of the Old Testament but not out of the word of righteousness of the gospel.

But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. (5:14)

The contrast here is simple. The one who continues to feed only on God’s elementary revelations is not going to grow, not going to have any discernment. A small child will stick almost anything into his mouth, touch anything he can reach, go anywhere he can manage to crawl—with no concept of what is good for him and what is bad, what is helpful and what is dangerous. The mature adult, on the other hand, has developed considerable discernment. He is careful about what he eats, what he does, where he goes.

The same principle operates in the spiritual realm. The mature believer has discernment about what is right and wrong, true and false, helpful and harmful, righteous and unrighteous.

But because the writer does, in chapter 7, go on to explain the significance of the order of Melchizedek, it seems he expects his readers to mature spiritually before they read this part of his message. That is, he seems to believe they will soon be saved, for it is only salvation, the new birth, that could immediately put them on the level of spiritual maturity necessary to understand the word of righteousness. He seems to say, “Leave Judaism and, in the instant of salvation, grow up.” Judaism is the infancy they are to leave in order to go on to the maturity of manhood by faith in the New Covenant Messiah.