Hebrews 5:12-14 For when for the time you ought to be teachers… As in the family, the child, from being taught, gradually grows into a position of authority, from being directed by others, becomes self-determining, and has a voice and an influence in the counsels of men; so, in the great family of God, Christian maturity and its accompaniments are recognised facts — attainments which the gospel treats not merely as privileges, but as obligations. There is a Christian manhood, in short, which is expected and required of the child of God, in which, from being a recipient of gospel influences, he is to become their defender, their illustrator, and their propagator. This is the truth for our consideration. It is embodied in these words of the text, addressed to those who had been for a good while under gospel training: "Ye ought to be teachers." I. YE, AS FOLLOWERS AND DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, OUGHT TO BE TEACHERS. One reason why Christ found it expedient to go away in person from the world, was that the number of teachingcentres might be multiplied. As plainly as words could speak, He laid the burden of diffusing the gospel upon His Church. "Ye," He said to His disciples, "ye are the salt of the earth. Ye are the light of the world." Men are taught by the gospel that their responsibility does not cease with their own salvation; that they cannot live out their Christian lives simply with reference to God and to themselves; that from the fact of their being members of society, they exert power for good or for evil over other lives; that they cannot be Christians and not teach. II. BUT THIS DUTY IS HERE URGED BY ONE CONSIDERATION MERELY, TO WHICH WE MAY CONFINE OURSELVES. The familiar rendering, "for the time ye ought to be teachers," entirely obscures the force of the passage. The meaning is, rather, "by reason of the time"; that is, because you have been for a long time under Christian influence, listening to Christian doctrine, versed in Christian experience: by reason of the time which has passed since you became Christian disciples, you ought to be teachers. We do not expect the apprenticed mechanic to be always an apprentice or an underling. Time is needed to teach him how to handle tools, and to make him acquainted with the capacity of materials: but, with the time, we expect to see him a master-workman; we look for him to develop new resources out of his material, and new methods of treating it, and thus to become a teacher to his craft. The man who through all his years is merely acquiring knowledge, and does not come in process of time to give it out, may be a prodigy of learning, but he is also a prodigy of uselessness, no better than so much lumber. And the same principle runs up into the moral and spiritual realm, and prevails there. We have a right to expect, as the result of years, larger and clearer views of truth, better defined conviction, more self-mastery, more practical efficiency, and more consistency of life. It is a sad thing when a man has been before the world for long years as a professed disciple of Christ, and when all he has to show for it is that he is very old. Length of days, be it remembered, is in the right hand of wisdom. III. And now let us LOOK AT A FEW OF THE POINTS IN WHICH, BY REASON OF TIME, A CHRISTIAN OUGHT TO BE A TEACHER. 1. He ought to be a teacher by reason of a matured faith, and that under three aspects — (1) In respect ,.f his own assurance of Christian truth. The instructive power of the gospel resides very largely in the lives which it shapes and pervades and propels. The life is the light of men. Ye ought to be teachers, but ye will not be if the gospel is still an open question to you. Ye will not be if your attitude towards its foundation-truths is that of suspense. (2) Again, time ought to develop faith in the sense of spiritual discernment — clearer perception of the things o! the unseen world. It is not strange if a young Christian simply believes in the things which are not seen. It is strange if the older Christian does not feel the power of the world to come. It is one thing to assent to the truth that " the things which are not seen are eternal"; it is another thing to apprehend that truth, and to take it into life as a working principle; to realise that the things on which heaven stamps a value — love and faith and purity and truth and good conscience — are the paramount things, and to make everything give way to these. That kind of spiritual seeing has a teaching power. It is of the very essence of all teaching that the man who sees what we do not see, brings us to his feet to learn. When we want to know about the stars we go to the scholar who has the telescope. And the life which one lives by faith in the unseen, teaches. It does what all true leaching must do — it excites attention, it awakens inquiry, it communicates enthusiasm. (3) And time ought to have ripened faith in the sense of restfulness. We count it strange if natural manhood does not bring with it increased composure, tranquillity, balance. Shall we count it any less strange if, with the lapse of time, Christian manhood does not become better poised, more restful and quiet, less easily thrown off its balance? 2. By reason of the time a Christian ought to have been confirmed in the habit of communion with God. Prayer is a subject of discipline. No man learns all its resources at once. I have somewhere seen a little story of a king who had employed some people to weave for him, had supplied them the materials and the patterns, and had told them, that if they were ever in trouble about their work, they were to come to him without fear. Among those at the looms was a child; and one day, when all the rest were distressed at the sight of the tangles in their yarn, they gathered round the child, and asked, "Why are you so happy at your work? These constant tangles are more than we can bear." "Why do you not tell the king? " said the little weaver. "He told us to, and that he would help us." "We do," replied they, "at night and at morning." "Ah!" said the child, "I send directly whenever I have a tangle." We ought to have reached that point by reason or time — that habit of referring everything at once and directly to God; just as, when we are walking with a friend, we naturally refer to him every matter of interest as it comes up. That habit of communion with heaven sets its mark on the life and invests it with a teaching-power. 3. By reason of time a Christian should have become a teacher in the matter of habitual consistency of life, obedience, and docility. It is strange, something is wrong, if we are still committing and repenting of the same old sins which we began to fight long ago. As the lines of that living epistle which we began writing when we entered Christ's service creep farther down the page, they ought to be more fairly and evenly written. In short, though we shall never be perfect men and women, though the nearer we get to Christ, the less we shall be pleased with ourselves — yet we ought to be better men and women by reason of the time, and, by our better living of the gospel, be teachers to those about us. 4. And, by reason of the time, we ought to be broader in our charity. Our own experience ought to have given us an insight into our own weakness and fallibility, and to have made us correspondingly tolerant of the weakness and fallibility of our brother men. (M. R. Vincent, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. |
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