5:11 About him we have many words to say, and hard to interpret, seeing you have become dull of hearing.
Once again the writer diverts from his teaching to issue a stern warning to his readers. This time it is not about falling away from the faith, but about their failure to go on to maturity. He is not rebuking them for any natural lack of intelligence, for which they could hardly be held responsible. Rather, just as the “fool” who “says in his heart, ‘There is no God'” (Psalm 14-1) is not intellectually challenged but rather chooses the foolishness of unbelief, those addressed here have chosen to be “dull of hearing”, listening to and receiving only those parts of the Gospel that they find easy and comfortable. The Greek suggests someone who walks slowly and heavily, not able to keep up – or, perhaps more to the point in this case, not willing to keep up.
v. 12 For although by this time you should be teachers, you again need to have someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the revelations of God. You have come to need milk, and not solid food.
We are saved to serve, and those addressed had now been Christians for long enough that they should have moved on to the place where they would be able to instruct others. Instead, the writer finds it necessary to go back over teachings that they should have fully grasped at the beginning of their Christian walk. The context suggests a turning back: once they had begun to go on to a deeper understanding of the Word, but now they have drawn back, not even fully grasping the basics. Perhaps they had shied away from the implications of a deeper understanding, knowing that “of him to whom much is given, much is expected.” Perhaps they had allowed false teaching to creep in, so that now the writer has to take them back to the foundations of the faith. Or perhaps they had simply become lazy, unwilling to apply their minds to the things of God. Whatever the case, they are now capable of receiving only the most basic of teaching (“milk”), rather than the deeper understanding that the writer wants to impart to them.
v.13 For everyone who lives on milk is not experienced in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby.
Milk provides an infant with all he needs to establish his life: both nourishment for growth and, through the antibodies passed from his mother, protection against the attack of disease. Likewise the “milk” of the Word, the Gospel of salvation, gives us the basic spiritual food we need to start to grow in our Christian lives. It teaches us that we are saved by God’s grace, that we are forgiven and brought into His family; and it gives us a protection against the attack of the enemy.
The baby, however, does not know what to do with the milk, other than to drink what is presented to him. He cannot take that milk and offer it to another. He cannot prepare a meal for himself. He is totally dependent upon the one who feeds him.
No-one would criticize a baby for drinking milk, or for his dependency. Milk-drinking is a vital stage of his development. However, if the child were to reach physical adulthood and still be drinking nothing but milk, still unable to feed himself much less others, we would consider there to be something dreadfully wrong. Likewise, if he grew to a point where he could prepare his own meals, then reverted to the milk bottle, we would be justifiably concerned.
For believers, too, there is a time when it is appropriate to take in the “milk”. It would be a disaster for a new believer to try to grasp the deeper things of the Spirit without having the basic foundations of the faith right first. The time comes, however, when those foundations should be so firmly established in our lives that we no longer need to be constantly re-learning them: we are ready to move on to a more mature understanding, and to being able to provide spiritual food for others.
v. 14 But solid food is for those who are full grown, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.
Here is the crunch. Simply learning, as an intellectual exercise, will not move us from the “milk” to the “meat” stage. Just as we have physical senses, we have spiritual senses, and we are to use them to grow in the Word. We need to “see” the truths that God is revealing; to “hear” Him speaking to us in the Word and eventually in our own spirit; to “taste and see that He is good.”
The Christian faith is not a mere philosophy, and treating it as such may well place us in the position of embracing false teachings, and therefore needing to return to the “milk” to get the basics right. What is needed is discernment and action. Not every “deep” teaching that is presented to us will be rooted in the Word of God. We need to know the Word well enough to be able to determine what is true to it, and what is not. We need to live out the Word, so that it becomes an experiential reality in our lives, not just a theory. “Good” and “evil” are not determined by philosophy, but by use. It is as we pray the Word, as we live by the Word, as we allow the Word to shape us and cause us to grow in grace, that we begin to move from babyhood to maturity.