“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. 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, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And God permitting, we will do so.” (Hebrews 5:11-6:3 NIV)
It’s an illustration that my wife absolutely hates. Each year I use it as a part of a discipleship course I teach to our students. When I talk about how to mature as a Christian, I set it up by talking about the lack of spiritual maturity in the Church as a whole and our tendency to see it as normal. For example, we don’t think it odd at all for people to have been in church for years and yet feel uncomfortable or incapable of sharing the Gospel with others. Or we think it extraordinary when certain believers have a mastery of the Scriptures, a deep prayer life, or a passion for the Lord that leads them to sacrifice their comfortable lives to take the Word of God to the far reaches of the world. These are merely signs of spiritual maturity.
So I tell the students this: Imagine if you saw a mother nursing a six-year-old. What would you think? Their eyes widen at the thought. Then I throw in the kicker: Imagine it was a teenager. Their faces crinkle in disgust and their lips purse with “oooohhs.” Exactly. It is a disgusting image. Yet, as I tell them, we are often perfectly comfortable in the church with the idea of believers acting like spiritual babies long after they should be spiritually mature. How often is this complaint heard: “I’m just not being fed” and considered legitimate?
The Hebrew writer is very blunt: It’s time to grow up and to be feeding yourselves. And not just the milk of the basic teachings of how to be saved and the end times, but moving on to adult food that has to be chewed on to consume and to enjoy. Food like the spiritual disciplines—prayer, fasting, silence, submission, etc. Or loving your enemies and praying for those who persecute you. Or a sacrificial generosity toward the work of the Kingdom. This is not extraordinary food meant to be consumed by a small spiritual elite. This is understood in the Scriptures to be the ordinary food consumed by spiritual adults.
To look at the majority in the Church today is to see a total lack of understanding of this. They come Sunday after Sunday with their mouths open asking to be fed. And the leaders, whose responsibility it is to equip them with abilities to grow into spiritual adults (Ephesians 4:11-13), repeatedly give them what they want rather than what they need. So, as the Hebrew writer says so clearly, we have a Church full of babies rather than adults. Is it any wonder the Church is so weak and ineffective? For if it is to be the presence of Christ in this world and its work be transformative, the babies have to start growing up.
Today, consider your maturity level in the Lord. Are you a spiritual baby? If so, and you have only known the Lord a short time, that’s okay. A baby has to be fed and grows over time. But if you have known Jesus for years and still have not learned how to feed yourself and grow in maturity, it’s time to start. And if you lack motivation, just picture that teenager sucking on his mother’s breast. That should do the trick.
© Jim Musser 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment