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! Hebrews 5:12
The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, expected these believers to have grown in their faith but this wasn’t the case. When we plant a tree we expect it to grow. We expect our children to grow and unfortunately, we also expect weeds to grow in our gardens since all living things grow. What was even more disturbing was that because these people weren’t growing and passing on what they knew, they were losing the knowledge they already had. They needed to relearn the elementary truths of God’s word all over again.
We see this elsewhere in life. If we learn a musical instrument or learn to speak another language but don’t continue to practice we will lose the ability. A couple of verses later we read, “solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil” (verse 14). By using what we’ve learnt we’re training ourselves and becoming mature in the faith. If we remain as baby Christians we won’t even be able to distinguish “good from evil.”
Their lack of growth was caused by their lack of experience (“constant use”). It’s experience that teaches us to distinguish between good and evil. This is why young people and young Christians need to be given opportunities for service so they can be trained by experience. When we’re in the place of having responsibilities we learn to pray and trust God far more than when we’re sitting in a pew.
Let’s grow by putting into practice what we already know.
