Heb 5:11–6:3 — Solid Food Is for the Mature

We have been following the argument of this epistle to Jewish believers in Christ. That argument has focused upon the supremacy of Christ, that he is the Son of God, the eternal, divine Son of God, and that he is ascended into heaven as our great high priest. The paragraph just before, the one that we began with today, ends on that note of focusing upon Christ, the one who was made perfect when he was raised from the dead. He was made perfect and became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

And as soon as he mentions that word Melchizedek, Our thoughts are immediately spiraling. We are wondering, oh, what is that all about? Who is Melchizedek? And we know that it is going to be dealt with more in the letter as we go. He is going to bring up Melchizedek again in chapter 7. But before he does that, he stops for a moment.

And he says, yeah, I am sure that you are wondering what that is all about. And we have a lot to say, we have a lot to say about this, that Christ is a high priest after a different order, not the order of Aaron, but this different order, the order of Melchizedek. We have a lot to say about it, but the problem is that it is hard to explain to you because you have become dull of hearing.

There is a spiritual issue here that makes it hard for me. I am going to get into it, do not worry. Just wait a couple, in the next chapter or so, I am going to get into it. There is a spiritual matter I need to address first. And this is an interesting thing about this letter to the Hebrews is that this is not the first time that the author has done this. We have seen this before. The author in chapter one, for example, talks about the supremacy of Christ vis-a-vis the angels. He is much greater than the angels. To which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son?

But then after doing that, he pauses for a moment in chapter two, verse one, and he says, Therefore, we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it. Because there is a heart issue here, there is a spiritual issue here that we need to address before we continue to march on into the deep theology that I am going to give you. There are five warning passages throughout this letter. The letter is so focused on this high theology of the priesthood of Christ and how he is the fulfillment of all the old covenant types and shadows and the entire sacrificial system of the Old Testament. But then he pauses five times.

The first one was the one I just mentioned in chapter two. The second one is in chapter three and four, the passage about calling them to enter into God’s rest. The third one is now beginning here in our text. In chapter 5 verse 1 and continuing down to chapter 6 verse 12.

This, of course, this third warning passage contains that famous passage that we are not going to deal with today, but next week we will, where he says it is impossible for those who have tasted the gospel to, if they turn away, if they apostatize, if they reject the gospel, to be restored to repentance. We will explain what that means, and we will talk about how that passage should be interpreted next week. But before he gets into that particular discussion of the third warning, he has this introductory part here that we are going to look at today, where he says, we have a lot to say about this, and we are going to talk about it, about Christ’s high priesthood, and how he is a different kind of priest than the Old Testament priests, because he belongs to a different order, the order of Melchizedek.

Milk and Solid Food

But it is hard to explain because you become dull of hearing. And he kind of berates them, does he not? He sort of shakes his finger at them and says, you should know better. He says, by this time, you ought to be teachers. You have been Christians for a while now, but you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.

So he is addressing this issue here, which is that there are degrees of understanding in the Christian life. We have to be careful because we do not believe that Christianity is a cult where you have various levels. Where you can advance to the elite level like in Scientology, right, where you go through these levels and before it you are in the high ranking where you have paid millions of dollars to get there. Christianity is not like that. Christianity is not a cult where you have different elite levels of knowledge and understanding.

The Elementary Doctrine

But at the same time, we do need to grow in a deeper understanding of the truths of the gospel, we do need to grow in maturity. And so the author of Hebrews here makes this distinction between milk and solid food. The milk refers to the elementary basic principles, the basics of the Christian faith, in contrast with the doctrine of Christ as the exalted son who is the priest after the order of Melchizedek. You might say, well, is that not the basic principle too, that Christ is the son of God and that he is exalted?

Yes, but he is saying that there is a level of understanding, there is a growth and maturity that we need to have to understand the implications of the gospel. And in particular, because of the specific context that he is addressing here, he is addressing Jewish believers in Jesus who are contemplating either going back to their Jewish roots and rejecting Christ altogether, or perhaps because they are feeling the pressure of their Jewish countrymen who are pressuring them to be a part of the Jewish community and to live as a Jew, they are considering toning down the distinct sharp edge of the Christian faith.

And I did a little bit of research on this, this week, to kind of sharpen my understanding of the exact context of what the audience is going through. And I think that one thing that might help to explain this is to think about this movement that you may have heard about. It is a contemporary thing, not back in the first century. But there is a movement among Muslims.

And it is a movement among Muslims. Where many Muslims are interested in the Christian faith, maybe even privately believe in Jesus, but they live in a society and a culture that is so dominated by the Muslim religion that they have to be very cautious. They do not want to just come right out and say and declare, I am a Christian and I believe in Christ because they could be persecuted for that. And in some Muslim countries, they will actually kill you if you apostatize from the Muslim faith. Apostasy is taken very, very seriously in some Muslim countries.

So there is a movement called the Muslim Insider Movement, called the Insider Movement because these are people that privately believe in Jesus, they say, but outwardly they conform to Muslim culture. They may wear Muslim clothing. They may attend the mosque and pray in the mosque. They may have copies of the Bible that are translated into Arabic or some other Muslim language. But the Bible itself has been subtly transformed to kind of For example, one of the main objections that Muslims have with Christianity is that we believe that Jesus is the divine son of God.

They do recognize that he is a great prophet, but not the son of God. And so, there are some Muslim insider translations, which I believe are, they are very, bad translations where they try to soften that and they change all the passages that talk about the deity of Christ or the fact that he is the son of God to something more mild like Jesus is God’s servant or God’s prophet or something along those lines. Who are professing to be Christians, at least privately, are trying to get along in their Muslim society and Muslim culture, and avoid being persecuted. And so to do that, they have to… Kind of mow the grass and like bring everything down to the lowest common denominator so that the distinctives of Christianity that are offensive to the Muslim faith would be not as sticking out as much but just kind of lowering it down to the lowest common denominator. And the problem with that is that then you start to wonder, well, this person is claiming to be a Christian, but are they really a Christian? If they are going along with the Muslim religion in every other way, and they are toning down all the Christian distinctives, what is the nature of their profession of faith in Christ? At some point, it verges upon Rejecting Christ, does it not? Because the claim of Christ is that he is the only true way, that he is the son of God.

Perhaps something similar is happening to the audience here that the author of Hebrews is writing to. Perhaps they were, their context was not the Muslim society, that is 700 years later, or 600 years later. But their context was they were living in a Jewish society. And we do not know exactly where they were. Some scholars think that they were living in a Jewish community in Rome. Others think they were living in a Jewish community in the land of Israel, in Judea. I lean towards that second view. Does not matter though, the point is that they were living within a Jewish society that by and large, 99% of the Jews at this time, did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

And yet they are trying to profess faith in Christ within that context, and so they are trying to lower their profile so they can fit in among their Jewish countrymen. And so they focus then on all of the things that Christianity has in common with Judaism. And you can see the way that would make sense, even more so than trying to make commonality between Christianity and Islam. There is a lot of commonality between Christianity and Judaism.

We still believe in the same scriptures of the Old Testament. We believe in all the promises that God made to Abraham and so on. That is why I believe, this is debated among the commentators, but I believe that is why the author of Hebrews lists off these elements here in our text in chapter 6 and verses 1 and 2.

He says, repentance from dead works and faith toward God. A Jew could accept both of those things. Dead works meaning sin, because sin is a work that leads to death. Repentance from dead works, repentance from sin, and the necessity of faith toward God. Notice it says faith toward God, not faith toward Christ.

Instruction about washings. You could see some commonality there. Christianity has baptism, but there is also washings in Judaism. In the Old Testament, the various ceremonial washings that they did. The reference there to the laying on of hands, that is a debated one, but that could be another point of commonality. The laying on of hands did occur in the early Christian movement, especially for ordaining pastors to the ministry. But also it is found in the Old Testament. Various key figures in the Old Testament, like Joshua and others, were commissioned to do the work that God called them to do. And then the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.

Those are things that any pious first century Jew would accept, aside from the Sadducees. The Sadducees were one sect of Judaism that did not believe in the resurrection. But most Jews were convinced that there was going to be a resurrection of the dead at the end of history, and that everyone will be called before the judgment seat of God.

So we need to repent to be right with God. So these are all elements that Judaism and Christianity have in common. This is the lowest common denominator of things that both Christians and Jews would affirm. And so perhaps that is what the author of Hebrews is addressing here. He is saying to them, I am not going to go back to those things because the very thing that you are struggling with is not learning the basics of there is a God and there is judgment and we need to repent and be right with God.

What you need, the thing that you are struggling with, is the distinctiveness of Christ and the finality of the Christian religion. That is the main issue before these Jewish believers in Christ. They are struggling with that distinctive claim that Christ is the one who is the fulfillment of all of the types and shadows of the Old Testament. Everything you could think of in the Old Testament, all the promises that God made to Abraham and his descendants, the priesthood, the Aaronic priesthood that God ordained, The temple, all the temple worship, all the rituals within the temple, including the sacrifices and the ceremonial washings, all of those things are fulfilled in Christ.

Christ is the final revelation of God. The author of Hebrews makes that clear at the very beginning of his letter. Remember that? In Hebrews chapter one, verse one, he says, long ago at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son.

He has given us the final and definitive revelation in Christ the Son. The doctrine of the absoluteness of Christianity, the absoluteness of Christ, meaning that there is nothing beyond. There is no further revelation. There is no additional thing we need from God. We have the final revelation of God in Christ.

And the reason why this is a particular struggle for these Jewish believers is because the more that they emphasize that, the more they start to stick out in the midst of their Jewish context, of their Jewish countrymen. They begin to stick out and once they stick their head up too high with saying Christ is the fulfillment of all this the more they are going to be attacked and persecuted and ostracized by their countrymen.

There is probably also another factor here as well, which is the timing of this letter. The timing of it, we believe, is that it was just before the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The reason we think that is because there are references in the letter to the ceremonial sacrificial system being something that is ongoing in the present tense. That the priests are still offering the sacrifice. That came to an end in A.D. 70 when God sent the Romans to destroy the temple and to bring an end to the sacrificial system.

But before that, what led to that? What led to the Romans doing that? Four years before that in A.D. 66, the Jews revolted. They revolted against the Roman occupation. And they were trying to go back to the glory days of the way it was in the days of the Maccabees, when they had their own nation, they had their ability to worship God as they desired in the land, without the Romans being constantly oppressing them and putting the boot of oppression upon them. And so the Jews are saying to these Jewish Christians, join us in this patriotic movement of reclaiming our nation for God.

So there is pressure being put upon them. This happens all the time whenever there is a war. Whenever there is a war, even today this happens. That if there is anybody who is not completely in support of that war, then everyone turns against them because they are betraying their loyalty to their country. That is what is happening here.

They are under so much pressure to go along with the movement that is happening, this revolt against Rome. And to support their fellow countrymen and not to emphasize that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrificial system, that Christ is the only way to be right with God and to have your sins dealt with.

So the author of Hebrews is saying, we have much to say about all of this wonderful truth about the priesthood of Christ, about how his sacrifice is the final atonement for sin, but it is hard to explain because there is a heart problem. And the heart problem is you become dull of hearing because you do not really want to emphasize this part of the truth. Because you are trying to fit in to your Jewish culture and society around you rather than taking a bold stand for the truth of Christ and the absoluteness of the Christian faith as the fulfillment of the Old Testament. It is a spiritual issue. It is a spiritual problem that they are wrestling with.

Trained Powers of Discernment

So the author of Hebrews says, You need milk, not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Notice how the author of Hebrews says here that there is a very close relationship between these two things.

On the one hand, our intellectual understanding of doctrine and also our spiritual maturity and our ability to distinguish between good and evil. We are not ready for the solid food of Christ’s priesthood according to the Order of Melchizedek until we have learned the elementary truths of sin, judgment, repentance, and faith. In other words, the author of Hebrews is saying to these Christians that they need to go back to the basic understanding that there is a God, there is a judgment, and that you are a sinner in the sight of this holy God, because only when you truly appreciate that, only when you have a genuine sense of conviction of sin, will you be able to appreciate the importance of Christ and what he has done. All of this talk about the priesthood of Christ according to the order of Melchizedek, it is not just interesting theological discussion.

It is something we desperately need. We need this high priest according to the order of Melchizedek, that is the true priest, not the shadow priest of the old covenant. We need this true priest who has done the true work of dealing with sin because of our sin, because we are sinners.

And that is the thing that the author of Hebrews is emphasizing to them. We saw something similar, back in chapter four. Remember that? In chapter four, in verses 11 through 13, he says, let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience, just like the Israelites in the wilderness did. But strive to enter that rest. I argue that the rest there is the gospel rest of knowing who we are in Christ and knowing that Christ has achieved the rest for us.

Then he says in verses 12 and 13, for the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. The same moral focus here? He is talking about all this great theology, but at the same time he is saying, to really appreciate this great theology and all this typology and how the rest in the land is a picture of the gospel rest that we have in Christ, and how the priesthood is a picture of the priesthood of Christ, to understand that, to really treasure it, to really appreciate what that means, not just at a superficial intellectual level of understanding all these neat typologies, but really understanding the significance of it, we have to be convicted of our sin. We have to understand that we are sinners in the sight of God, that there is a judge. God is the judge. And one day we will stand before him. And no creature will be hidden from his sight. We will not be able to make any excuses or cover up our sins. We are going to be naked and exposed before him. The word exposed in Greek is an interesting word.

It actually comes from the idea of taking a sacrificial animal and exposing its neck so that it can be killed with the stroke of the sword. That is what we are like, apart from Christ, apart from this great high priest, that is what we are like. We are exposed before God and about to be slaughtered because of God’s judgment upon us because of our sin.

I am sure you have experienced this yourself personally in the Christian life. When you first became a believer, It was just so great, it was so wonderful to know that your sins are forgiven. You are probably on fire for the Lord. Could not stop talking about the Lord Jesus with all your friends. Why was that? It was because you had come, God in his grace, by the Holy Spirit had brought you to a place of conviction of sin to understand your desperate need of Christ. That apart from Christ, you have no hope. Apart from Christ, you are slaughtered by the wrath of God’s judgment. And so you loved to hear the gospel. The gospel meant so much to you.

But then what happens in the Christian life? Things start to get a little bit old, a little bit old hat. We get kind of used to the idea that our sins are forgiven and we forget that wonderful truth, how blessed is the man whose sins are forgiven. We stop to marvel at the wonder of God’s grace in Christ that he would lay down his life for me so that I could be saved and forgiven.

So the author of Hebrews is saying the reason why you Jewish believers in Jesus are struggling, the reason why you are toying with this idea of doing your own insider movement within the Jewish community and not really harping on the finality of Christ, the reason is that you have become dull of hearing. And the reason you become dull of hearing is because you have forgotten the basics. You have forgotten about sin and judgment. You have forgotten about the fact that you are a sinner who is in desperate need of Christ and his work.

That is why in the worship service, we always begin with a call to confession where we hear the depths of God’s law calling us to obedience and warning us that judgment awaits us. Then we confess our sin, and then we hear again God’s assurance of pardon, and we rejoice. We say amen to the assurance of pardon, and then we sing a song of joy, praising the Lord, thanking the Lord, pouring out our hearts in gratitude to the Lord. For the work of Christ in atoning for our sins. He loved us so much that he laid down his life. He did not have to do that. He did it for us so that we might be forgiven, so that we might be right with God, that we might have eternal life. What a glorious Savior we have. The interesting thing about our text here is that you would expect that at this point, so having, we have looked at verses 11 through 14. He says, you are in need of milk, not solid food. Solid food is only for the mature. What would you expect right then to be the next thing that he would do? In chapter six, verse one, and remember these chapter divisions are not inspired. These are added much later in the Middle Ages. So you can just ignore them. Follow the logic of what is going on here in the argument.

Going On to Maturity

What does he do? What is the very next thing that he says? Chapter 6, verse 1. You would expect him to say, therefore, let us talk about the elementary doctrine of Christ. And let us go back and talk about sin and judgment and repentance and all of that. That is not what he does. He says something a little bit startling, a little bit unexpected. He says, therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and let us go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of all of these basic truths about God and judgment and repentance.

And the reason why he does this startling shift is because the author here knows that what they need is precisely to go on to the solid food. That is exactly what they need. They need to go on to the solid food. Because that is the issue with them. The issue is that they are starting to suppress all of the distinctives of the Christian faith and to not emphasize that Christ is the fulfillment of the old covenant. And so he is saying that is exactly the issue you need to work on. So we are going to talk about that.

Let us leave those elementary doctrines and let us go on to maturity. Now that word maturity in Greek is an interesting word that is a little bit hard to translate. Some translate it as maturity, some translate it as perfection. And I think perfection may actually be a better translation. Perfection itself is ambiguous.

Does that mean moral perfection, like sinless perfection? No, it is not talking about that because Christ was made perfect. Remember back in chapter 5, verse 9? He was made perfect. So perfection in the theology of Hebrews, it is a key word that is used throughout this letter. Perfection in the theology of Hebrews is referring to this very point that I was getting at before, which is the finality and absoluteness of the Christian religion. Because Christ is the fulfillment. He is the perfection of all that the Old Testament types and shadows were pointing to. We see this again in chapter 7. Just flip over to chapter 7. This is where he is right in the thick of the Melchizedek argument. But what does he say there in chapter 7 verse 11?

He says, if perfection, that is the same word as maturity in 6.1, if perfection had been attainable through the Levitical priesthood, for under it the people received the law, what further need would there have been for another priest? To arise after the order of Melchizedek, rather than one named after the order of Aaron.

The author of Hebrews here is making a very simple argument, which is, if the order of Aaron and the Aaronic priesthood which the Jews at this time are still following and they are still under that Aaronic priesthood. If that priesthood was good enough, if it was able to bring us to this fulfillment, this perfection, then why is it that even in the Old Testament there is reference to another order of priesthood? Called the Order of Melchizedek. That is mentioned twice in the Old Testament. Once in Genesis 14, when Abraham meets Melchizedek, and then again in Psalm 110, which he has quoted already, when God says to his exalted son, not only are you my exalted son, and I put all the enemies under your feet, but also you are a priest after the order of Melchizedek. Not Aaron, but Melchizedek. So why would the Old Testament itself contain references to this completely different order of priesthood, unless the Old Testament itself was trying to tell you that it was not perfect, that there is something greater to come.

But the point is that this word perfection is being used here in chapter 7 verse 11 and also in other places in Hebrews to refer to this idea of being brought to the fullness of the gospel state. It is another way of getting at this idea of entering God’s rest.

All of the types and the shadows and all the works of the old covenant have been fulfilled and now we have entered into the perfect state of being in Christ because Christ has come. Christ himself was made perfect as the forerunner of this perfection that has been achieved for us through Christ. In other words, going back to chapter six, verse one, when he says, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ about sin and judgment and go on to maturity, he is saying, let us move in redemptive history from the time of the types and shadows to the reality, to the fulfillment, to Christ, the great high priest after the order of Melchizedek.

Let us leave the old covenant behind and let us move on to the new covenant, which is where we already are. The problem is that these Christians are trying to go back a little bit. They are trying to turn the clock back and say, let us go back to an old covenant version of Christianity so that we can fit in to our Jewish countrymen and to their culture. And so he is saying, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and let us go on to the new covenant.

And he says, we are going to do this, verse three, we will do this if God permits. This means the word this, the pronoun this, the antecedent of it is not laying again the foundation. He is not saying we will lay again the foundation of these basics if God permits. No, this goes back to verse one.

We will go on to perfection. We will go on to fully understanding and enjoying who we are in Christ under the new covenant and understanding that Christ is the final absolute revelation of God. We will do this. If God permits.” That is interesting, huh? Adding that phrase, if God permits.

In other words, what he is saying is that even our growth in the Christian life and our progress in sanctification and our growing into a fuller and mature understanding of the new covenant is dependent upon God and His sovereignty. We have to trust Him that He will bring us and help us to grow So many Christians are stuck in an immature kind of old covenant style of relating to God, focusing only on law and repentance or focusing on rituals.

They have a limited understanding of the glory of Christ and the finality of the new covenant. They have no sense that all of these things in the old covenant are just passing types and that Christ is the fulfillment. But to have that appreciation, to really relish and move on to maturity, move on to perfection, and enjoy this gospel state under the new covenant, you need to have that moral and spiritual awareness, that conviction of sin. Without a deep heartfelt understanding of God’s law and judgment, you cannot appreciate the gospel. If these Jewish Christians had really learned the basic lessons of the Old Covenant, of law and sin and judgment, how could they even consider leaving Christ and going back to Judaism? Because Christ is your only answer to that conviction of sin. Christ is your only hope. He is the only solution to your sin problem.

Developing an Appetite for Christ

So that is why the author does not do what we would expect after verse 14 of chapter five. He does not go back and lay again the foundation of the elementary doctrines because he knows that the only way to transition from milk to solid food is to start eating solid food.

That is what we need to do. And so the author of Hebrews is going to do that as we continue on. He is going to explain who Christ is as the fulfillment of the old covenant and to give us a deeper appreciation for his work and for who he is. Let us rejoice in all that Christ has done for us in his grace.