If there is
one thing that distinguishes Christians from any other belief system or
religious framework in the world, it is found in their belief, or faith, in the
gospel of Jesus Christ. Christians know that they deserve condemnation for sin
and eternal damnation in Hell but have instead received forgiveness of their
sin—salvation— and have instead inherited eternal life in Heaven. This
transaction as it were was only possible through the substitutionary death and
resurrection of the perfect and holy Son of God, Jesus Christ, who absorbed in
Himself the eternal penalty that was due unto us. The fear of death and the
influence of sin no longer has power over us, rather we are now indwelt by the
Holy Spirit who gives us new inclinations and new desires that honor and
glorify the Father.
Well what
about after that moment of salvation? As it pertains to the individual, what is
it that they should be seeking to do while living their life on this side of
eternity?
The answer
is given to us by the apostles.
They want us
to grow up.
The moment
of salvation that we experience as Christians is indeed a moment. Meaning, salvation is not an ongoing process—you are either
saved or you are not saved. Sanctification on the other hand is an ongoing
process and is not a moment in time only. What this then means is that there is
work to do in our lives as a part of our sanctification process—though powered
by God Himself (Phil 2:13).
Put another
way, it is not enough for Christians to memorize and teach John 3:16.
It is not
enough for pastors just to preach John 3:16 either. The Apostle Paul had a
clear conscience because he “did not shrink from declaring . . . the whole counsel of God” (Acts 20:27)
(emphasis mine). Belief in the gospel of Christ is the end of the life of
slavery to sin, but it is the very beginning of the life of freedom found in the
Christian life.
What the men
and women of God need is a constant saturation of the full counsel of the Word
of God in order to become more and more sanctified unto Him, being stable in
the faith, holding deep convictions, and living holy and blameless lives.
Listen, the
natural output of a life that is indwelled
and powered by the Holy Spirit of God is a life that, indeed, puts out or generates the fruit of the
Holy Spirit of God and this can only happen by nourishing our spirits with the
Holy Spirit’s own written Word.
A.W. Tozer
once said, “The Holy Spirit never enters a man and then lets him live like the
world. You can be sure of that.”
This is
because the works of the Spirit are against the works of the flesh as the
Apostle Paul details in Romans 8.
Our
salvation is our greatest need. After that, however, our next greatest need is
our sanctification and there are several reasons for this.
If the only
spiritual truth we know—as Christians—pertains to the basics of repentance from
sin, faith towards God, baptism, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal
judgment, then the Bible tells us we are immature and “unskilled in the word of
righteousness” and tantamount to children surviving on milk (Heb 5:13).
This is okay
if you were saved yesterday by the way.
For those
who have been Christians for years and years . . . we need to stop and
consider: do we know the Word of God
well? I mean, do we really know it? Do we grasp its truths and can we navigate
it quickly in order to enrich our own soul or help disciple another? Are we
able to think on our feet and give an answer to those who ask questions or ask
for the reason we have hope in our life?
I remember
sitting in a men’s group once and one of the men was asking for prayer as he
was barely keeping a job, his marriage was falling apart and was headed for a
divorce, he had no hope for anything and didn’t know what to do. When asked, he
admitted he was struggling with sin and confessed he wasn’t in the Word. This
was evidenced by his complete inability to know which direction to turn to find
the book of Romans when he was asked to do so.
Friends, how
acquainted are we with God’s Word?
In the book
of Hebrews, the author gives us some startling insights into the various levels
of Christian maturity—and the implications thereof—being especially pointed
with those who have been saved for a long time and yet had little more
knowledge of God’s truths than when they first believed.
The author
was about to get into a helpful and fascinating discourse on the priesthood of
Melchizedek and how it tied into Jesus’ priestly ministry, but then had to
pause . . .
“About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain,
since you have become dull of hearing. 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, for everyone who lives on milk
is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food
is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by
constant practice to distinguish good from evil” (Heb 5:11–14)
The word
“dull” in verse 11 is a translation of the transliterated Greek word nothros, which means lazy or sluggish. What this tells us then is that this is a self-inflicted problem.
Becoming
disinterested in divine truth is a problem of infinite proportions and is in
fact a self-perpetuating one. The desire for the Word of God comes from reading
it. The only way we have ever desired to read it in the first place is by the initial
prompting of the Holy Spirit, so when we suppress that, we are actively engaging in an effort that is at odds with
God’s will and thus causes us to become dull and desensitized along the way. It’s
a self-licking ice cream cone kind of problem.
These people
had been Christians long enough to where they should have amassed a much
greater amount of knowledge and attained a higher level of understanding, thus
being equipped to teach others themselves.
The most
immediate context in this Hebrews passage however highlights their inability to
comprehend grander and more glorious truths, like the priesthood of Melchizedek
and Jesus Christ. Their ignorance hamstrung their further development. It was
so bad that they needed to be reminded of some of the basic truths or “principles
of the oracles of God” (vs. 12) all over again.
The writer
goes on to explain the ramifications of this self-inflicted problem. He says
they need milk—evidenced by the fact
that they were unskilled in the Word and apparently lacked the marks, or fruit,
of spiritual maturity. In other words, this is not just a ‘level of knowledge’
issue alone.
He said they
don’t need solid food as that is only for the spiritually mature. The real wakeup
call comes when he effectively states that their powers of discernment are weak
at best. This means that in practice they make poor, even sinful, choices in
life because of their biblical ignorance.
To be clear,
the apostle Peter tells us to long
for the milk of the word like newborn
infants, but that is precisely the metaphor he intends to use for the reason of
establishing the basics from which Christians ought to grow. This is obvious
when he follows up with: “that by it you may grow up” (1 Pet 2:2).
This picture
of a baby craving milk works in two ways. As far as desire is concerned, we
ought to crave the Word like milk. As far as the actual baby is concerned, we
ought to grow up and mature. The desire never goes away, though—what better way
to illustrate that than with a helpless newborn baby?
There is
another aspect to the milk illustration, which concerns the level of maturity
of the believer. While our desire for the Word ought to be as rigorous and of a
necessity for life as the baby’s is for milk, we ought to look for more and
more weight and meat in our diet as we grow up in order to develop from the
status of a spiritual baby. Even still, our desire for that meat is as the baby’s
for milk. That never changes.
The apostle
Paul writes also to the Corinthian congregation:
“I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but
as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid
food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for
you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you,
are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way” (1 Cor 3:1–3)?
By not
growing up from basic gospel truth, they proved to be “people of the flesh.” He
used that expression three different times in just three verses(!).
In Paul’s
letter to the Ephesians, he spends time explaining the necessity and reason for
having gifted preachers and teachers in every church:
“He gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the
shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building
up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith
and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of
the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children,
tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by
human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. Rather, speaking the truth
in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into
Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with
which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that
it builds itself up in love” (4:11–16) (emphasis mine).
We all know
that children are easy targets for deception. This is why they are so blithely
led to believe in Santa Clause. They are easy to manipulate and con into doing
things they otherwise wouldn’t have thought up themselves. This is why you
could pay them a nickel to do almost anything—they have no sense of real value.
It is
precisely because of the nature of the immaturity that is inherent in young
kids that parents must be their protectors, discerners, and teachers. Who else
is there to do this? Who else can teach them the truth? Parents are their
shepherds.
It is the
same way in the church of God. God has given the church leaders and has given
those leaders gifts. These gifts are for the maturing of the flock, so that the
flock will not run after the shiniest object, the sweetest candy, or the
easiest path. These are the packages that heresy and false teaching come beautifully
wrapped in. Even Satan himself masquerades as something he is not—an angel of
light (2 Cor 11:14).
We need the
Word of God in order to be protected from the enemy of God. Knowing the gospel
message is not enough to protect us from the wiles of the devil. Though we will
not be snatched from God’s hand, we could still suffer from sinful choices that
come as a result of being ill-prepared for his poisonous darts.
Friends, don’t
stop learning. Nothing is unnecessary knowledge if it is in the pages of Holy
Scripture. Everything in the Old Testament and New Testament is there for our
edification and learning in order to grow us up in maturity and into the
fullness of the stature of Christ.
We
desperately need the solid food of God’s Word. We need to learn the full
counsel of God. We need our powers of discernment to be sharpened if we are to
have any hope of honoring and obeying God in this evil world that is actively
trying to desensitize us to it.
The saving
gospel of Christ is the starting point of our spiritual growth and understanding.
This is why Paul writes to the Romans: “Now that you have been set free from
sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification”
(6:22) (emphasis mine).
We need
sanctification because it protects us from sinning against God.
Psalm 119 is
a stunning and epic poem—the longest recorded psalm in the Bible—that was
probably written by the likes of either David, Daniel, or Ezra. In it, the
author wisely declares: “I have stored up your word in my heart that
I might not sin against you” (vs. 11) (emphasis mine). Just prior to
this he writes, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it
according to your word” (vs. 9).
Then he
expresses his longing for God’s word—almost as a baby does for life’s
sustenance—“With my whole heart I seek you; let me not wander from your
commandments” (vs. 10)!
The entirety
of Psalm 119 is weighted with these longings and expressions of the greatness
of the Word of God, its implications, its effect, and its wonder, and how much the
writer longs for it.
All
throughout Scripture, the Word of God is seen as a means to protect us and
preserve us. The longing of it—and consequently the obedience of it—is a mark
of a true Christian, so let the implication of that sink in. If need be, ask God
in prayer for a new desire to read and study for the sake of your spiritual
growth and to become more like Jesus Christ.
“For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any
two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and
of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12).
Let us act
upon the exhortation of Hebrews 6:1 and “leave the elementary doctrine of
Christ and go on to maturity.”
Happy New
Year, friends!
Ben
