Hebrews 5:12-14 For when for the time you ought to be teachers… Here is the close analogy between the natural life and the spiritual. I. THE PROGRESS OF THE NATURAL LIFE. At birth the babe finds food provided for it, without effort, without thought - food exactly suited to its infantile state, and which it makes use of by a kind of instinct. Nothing is expected from it save that which it is certain to do by a law of its nature. But this season, when nothing is expected from it, is only a season of preparing for the day when much will be expected. Nature will not always provide food in this caw, simple fashion. Milk has to make the way for solid food, and, what is even more important, food to be chosen by us. Whenever we are fit to choose, God leaves us to choose, not between the pleasant and the unpleasant, not between that which appeals most powerfully to the taste, and that which is plainer, simpler fare; but, as the writer here emphatically puts it, between the good and the bad. That is the great matter to decide in the choice of food - Is it good or bad? Will it minister to growth, health, energy of function, fullness of life, length of days? God leaves us to settle this. He gives us, without our choice, a suitable food up to the time when our perceptions are sufficiently trained to choose for ourselves. Then he leaves us to freedom and responsibility. II. THE SIMILAR PROGRESS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. There is the new creature in Christ Jesus, born again, beginning in feebleness, alive to new and heavenly things, and yet hardly knowing for a while what that life is. Needing to be treated with great long-suffering and consideration because of infirmity (1 Corinthians 3:2). But, as in the natural man, there should be growth, development of spiritual perception and grasp, so that the spiritual man may come to discern the difference between the true and the false, the fleshly and the spiritual, the abiding and the temporary, the earthly and the heavenly. Jesus Christ is the Bread of life. Recollect his own words, all important in the present connection: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." How many, spiritually considered, are monstrosities to what they ought to be! The natural man, nourished by proper food, full of life, growing and connecting itself with a thousand things around, while the new creature in Christ Jesus within is but a starved and pining babe. There may, perhaps, be much talk of living a life of faith on the Son of God, but no reality. - Y. 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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