hebrews 5:11-6:12: spiritual immaturity

Here is the latest installment of our Hebrews lessons. Look back over the posts and  you will see the rest. Use it to his will and glory.

Hebrews: A New Day Coming
Hebrews 5:11-6:12: Spiritual Immaturity

It is always sad to see mentally challenged people. Somewhere back down the line, they stopped their intellectual growth and are, for all practical purposes, babies or young children. They grow older in body, yet never catch up in mind. They always need someone to watch over them and help them, sometimes with the most basic activities. They are not normal.

In the church there are people like this too. They accepted Jesus, became Christians, yet years later are no more mature than they were at the time they became Christians. They never became able to teach or function as an independent Christian that can live on their own. They still need rules and regulations and have never grown up.

They still need to learn basic principles, the milk of the word, because they have never become able to be mature Christians, believers with strength.

They remain spiritual babies.

Two people take up the guitar. One becomes proficient in a short time and become a professional musician. The other remains a rank amateur barely able to do much beyond the simplest chords.

Why? Because one of them takes it seriously and the other doesn’t. The one who doesn’t views it as a hobby that isn’t important and never learns and practices. The other approaches it as something important and practices becomes professional.

The writer of Hebrews says that we need to leave behind elementary teachings and move on to other things. It is not that the elementary things are not important, it is just that they are exactly what they say: elementary. Just like a child goes up in the grade structure and learns more and more until they are able to go to graduate school, so the Christian learns more.

The problem comes when the Christian begins to learn and then decides that it is not worth it and quits. The writer says that it is impossible for them to come back. After all, what will they come back to? The very thing they left.

This scripture doesn’t mean that one cannot come back to Jesus after they have fallen away, but it does mean that it is very difficult to get people to accept once more what they have rejected.

God wants us to be productive in his kingdom, producing both learning and understanding in our own hearts, but also bringing others into that kingdom.

He says that this will only happen when we grow in him. And we only grow in him when we study his word and allow him to live in our hearts.

QUESTIONS:
1. Why are some people slow to learn?
2. What is milk? How does it differ from solid food?
3. 5:13 How do you train yourself to distinguish good from evil?
4. Is it good to study elementary teachings? How is it that some do not go on to maturity? What is maturity? Is it knowing the Bible?
5. 6:4 What does it mean impossible? Does that mean you cannot come back to God if you fall away?
6. 6:9 What do you think are the better things?
6:12 How do you think we come lazy?