Milk Or Meat Series

Hebrews 5:11-6:1 [11]About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. [12]For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, [13]for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. [14]But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. [6:1]Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, (ESV)

• Infants/babes in Christ are dull to growing in the faith, they can't properly explain their faith, and they can't properly explain the word. They have failed to practice discernment and fall for evil.

When Paul first preached to the Corinthians he taught the more easily digestible elementary truths of doctrine, the milk mentioned in verse 2. But now some five years later, they still needed to be fed milk. They could not yet spiritually digest solid food. Like many Christians today, the Corinthians seemed quite content to stay on milk.

• Some congregations do not want the pastor to get “too deep.” Their fleshly habits are not much threatened if, for instance, the preacher sticks primarily to evangelistic messages. Evangelism is the cutting edge of the church’s mission, but it is for unbelievers, not believers. Or the congregation wants Scripture to be preached so superficially that their sin is not exposed, much less rebuked and corrected.

There is no difference at all between the truths of a spiritual milk diet and a spiritual solid food diet, except in detail and depth. All doctrine may have both milk and meat elements. It is not that we are to be continually learning new doctrines in order to grow, but that we are to be learning more about the doctrines we have known for years. A new Christian might explain the atonement, for example, as, “Christ died for my sins.” A long–time student of the Word, on the other hand, would go into such things as regeneration, justification, substitution, and propitiation. One explanation would not be truer than the other; but the first would be milk and the second, solid food. Paul always preached “all the counsel of God,” Acts 20:27. Paul does not distinguish between two sets of doctrines but between two modes of presenting all doctrines (Lenski, R. C. H. (1963). The interpretation of St. Paul’s First and Second epistle to the Corinthians (p. 122). Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Publishing House.).

For a Christian preacher or teacher to give only milk week after week, year after year, is a crime against the Word of God and the Holy Spirit! It cannot be done without neglecting much of the Word and without neglecting the leading and empowering of the Holy Spirit, the supreme Teacher and Illuminator. It is also a terrible disservice to those who hear, whether or not they are satisfied with having only milk. The appetite must be created.