Hebrews 5:13 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Hebrews 5:13

Comments

The verse hangs on the word ‘unskilful’. What is wrong? Everyone who needs milk – the basics all over again – is unskilful in the word of righteousness. The word translated ‘unskilful’ literally means untested, untried. You have not had pains and trials, and passed through them with the help of God and so proved his power and his blessing. The marginal translation in the King James version is ‘hath no experience’. That is the sense: you are inexperienced in proving the Lord in a practical experimental way in every heartache and difficult situation; you have not had the experience of the Christian life, even though you may be saved. You actually cannot take in the deep things of God. Everyone who uses milk, that is, who uses only milk, who partakes of milk, who has not yet been weaned; everyone who uses milk is unskilful in the word of righteousness. The analogy is put there to teach us by our Creator. Physical development and growth are analogous to spiritual development and growth. There is a period in early life when the digestive system has not yet developed enough to cope with foods that need additional breaking down in order to derive nutrition from them, and so giving these more advanced foods would do more harm than good. The child might choke and their stomach could not handle solid food. There is a parallel stage in the Christian life when God’s word needs to be presented to us in a simpler form. There are basic doctrines, and then there are doctrines which we can only understand when we have made more progress. The spiritual digestion of God’s truth requires us to have a basic level of understanding before we can advance to deeper things, for it is the understanding that we have already attained that allows us to approach truth which we have not yet handled before. The Spirit of God teaches us, but he uses our own understanding in the process, and it is not his way to inject brand new understanding, ready-made, full-formed knowledge into the hearts of those who have done no work themselves. We are involved in our own spiritual advance and education, and it is the growth and development that we have already achieved that allows us to grow further.

Application

Every pastor preaching to a congregation needs to be mindful of these different stages of development and take account of the level of development of those he ministers to, just as the writer to the Hebrews does here. He needs to know the difference between milk and strong meat or else he will cause the people of God to choke on what is in fact perfectly good food. He needs to monitor the development of the people of God and take a keen interest in what they have attained, but he will judge this not by their theoretical knowledge of doctrine, but by their whole lives as they live out the truth. He will consider their commitment and sacrifice for the Lord, he will listen to how they pray, he will consider their depth of friendship and love for one another, he will look at their evangelistic zeal, and of course, he will want to set them an example in all things.

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Hebrews 5:13 Commentary and Bible Study