CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
Hebrews 5:11. Hard to be uttered.—R.V. “hard of interpretation.” But the difficulty was mainly due to the spiritual incapacity of those to whom the epistle was written. Dull of hearing.—Not of listening, but of apprehending.
Hebrews 5:12. First principles.—Rudiments; lit. “rudiments of the beginning.” Oracles of God.—Not the Old Testament Scriptures, but the truths and doctrines which God has revealed under the gospel. Need of milk.—Farrar says young students or neophytes in the Rabbinic schools were called thînokoth, “sucklings.”
Hebrews 5:13. Unskilful.—Or, “one who has not that skill or experience in regard to anything which is requisite to a due apprehension and consideration of it.” Word of righteousness—which cultures, builds up, the life of righteousness. Babe.—For Pauline use of this figure see Galatians 4:3; 1 Corinthians 2:6; Ephesians 4:13-14; and also 1 Corinthians 14:20.
Hebrews 5:14. Full age.—R.V. “full-grown men.” τέλειον, “grown up”; “matured.” Senses.—Here, spiritual faculties; the internal senses of Christians, αἰσθητήρια. The word is not found anywhere else in the New Testament. Good and evil.—Not mere right and wrong, but the value or worthlessness of the forms and aspects in which the Christian truth might be presented to them by different teachers.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Hebrews 5:11-14
A Hindrance to Advanced Teachers.—Those under Christian instruction ought to grow stage by stage, so as to be able to receive higher and fuller teachings. They are expected to “grow in grace,” in everything that relates to Christian character; but also to grow “in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ,” in the mental apprehension of Divine and eternal things. It is necessary to point out that growth in Christian knowledge is in every way as important, as essential indeed, as growth in Christian grace. So often credit is claimed for keeping to first principles and Christian simplicities; it is a ground of reproach, not of credit. It is like grown men and women reading nothing but the picture-books of their childhood. The Christian teaching properly advances from the simplicities suited to the child-stage of religious life, to the philosophy and theology, and even what may be called “mysticism,” suited to the full-grown stage of religious life. The milk of Christian truth is good, but it is good for babes. He is a poor Christian who keeps always to his milk. He does no honour to the grace that he has received. The hindrance this writer complains of is failure to grow under Christian instructions. But it may be unfolded so as to present its various applications. The hindrance may appear as—
1. Dulness of hearing, as if the ear were stopped up with other, selfish, or worldly interests.
2. Lack of receptivity for truth. There is often great readiness for religious emotions and sensations; and these almost always go with a lack of interest in truth, other than the stock ideas of some sect.
3. Inability to deal with truth. “Senses not exercised to discern between good and evil.” Either stubborn resistance of all truth that sounds new, or fatal readiness to take up with everything new.
4. Clinging to child-simplicities; forgetful that truth cannot be its full, best self for children, because it must be qualified and adapted to them. We think gospel simplicities are the truth; they are but the truth for children. We may be grown, yet only a child in Christ. We may be grown, and a man in Christ.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
Hebrews 5:12. The Scriptures as Oracles of God.—The term “oracles” may give us some right views of the Holy Scriptures, but there is grave danger of its giving us wrong ideas. It certainly will if we fail to see the radical distinctions between the oracles of heathenism and paganism, and the oracles of either the Old or the New Testament religion. Our Scriptures are not like pagan oracles, and the idea of Divine inspiration which is toned by those oracular associations is altogether false and unworthy. λογίων Θεοῦ means, “doctrines,” “communications” of God; and the association of the word “oracle” belongs entirely to our English translation. No precise idea answering to it is found in the Greek word. Farrar thinks that the term is not intended to apply to the Old Testament at all, but belongs only to the Christian principles and doctrines which the writer so evidently has in mind. It seems, however, from allusions in Philo and other writers, that the term “oracles of God” was in those days commonly employed for the Scriptures of the Old Testament. The pagan idea of “oracles” may be wisely contrasted with the idea of Christian teachers who used the term “oracles” of the Scriptures. A pagan oracle was an answer to a question submitted to some god; the answer was a precise sentence, often of an enigmatical character, which could be adapted to the event that might happen, whatever that event might be. The medium used in communicating the answer had no part (or was assumed to have no part) in shaping the answer. Often the oracle only came to a person who was in a state which permitted her taking no intelligent part in the communication she made. So uncertain was the meaning of the messages given that the word “oracle” has come to mean, “a grand sounding utterance which nobody can be ever quite sure that he understands.” It is evident that none of these ideas can be associated with our Scriptures, which are Divine revelations through legend, biography, history, incident, rite, song, proverb, and prophecy, always assuming that the thought God puts into men, but the shaping of the thought is given by the men. Men spake and wrote as they were moved by the Holy Ghost who was in them.
Hebrews 5:13. Signs of Unskilfulness in Christian Teachers.—“Unskilful in the word of righteousness.” R.V. “without experience of the word of righteousness.” Two distinct ideas are suggested by these two renderings, and yet the two are so closely associated that they are really but one. The A.V. suggests inefficiency, the R.V. inexperience; but it is at once evident that the inefficiency is the natural and necessary result of the inexperience. Skill comes by practice; and this is as true of Christian teaching as of other things.
I. Skill for teaching comes by personal experience of the truth.—A man can only teach what he himself has tasted and handled and felt of the word of life; and his power in teaching will depend on the measure of his tasting and handling. This especially applies to advanced truths, which can only be wisely dealt with when there is ripe experience.
II. Skill for teaching comes by practice in teaching.—And that will both compel a man, and enable a man, to advance in the range of his teaching subjects. The practised teacher cannot keep in the simplicities.
III. The unskilful teacher is the man who can only keep in the lower range, who satisfies himself with the milk suitable for babes, and will not see that if he would feed grown men he must have strong meat of truth suited for them.
Hebrews 5:14. Exercising the Moral Discernment.—“Senses exercised to discern good and evil.” We speak of the “moral sense.” The senses of the body are taken to suggest the spiritual faculties (αἰσθητήρια). We have the bodily senses, eye, ear, touch, taste, smell, as faculties and possibilities. The mother anxiously watches her new-born babe, to see if all the sense-possibilities are there. But they have to be developed by exercise, training, and discipline, into actually operative life-forces, which will take the whole body and the whole life into their control. And so with the moral sense, the recognition of distinction between good and evil. We have it as a mere possibility. Let a man have no culture of the moral sense, or let the culture be a mere accident, and you have either a useless or a dangerous man. Every force that bears on the growing child is a force unto the culture of the moral sense. Parenthood is; teacherhood is; friendship is; religion is. And there is, as in all growth, unfolding in detail, differentiation. As in nature there is development in the ear, from a simple box to the complicated human organ, so with the moral sense, through exercise there is unfolding from simple discernment of the distinction between right and wrong to sensitive recognition of the true, the good, the beautiful, as the adapted right.
Soul-food adapted to Age and Capacity.—“But solid food is for full-grown men.” Body-life and soul-life, both depend on nourishment and food. That is the law of all life other than the life of God Himself. Angels live on angels’ food; souls live on appropriate souls’ food; and bodies live by meat and drink and air. Science tells us that bodily life, health, fatness, vigour, directly depend on the character and quantity and appropriateness of the food supplied. Given vitality, and freedom from active disease, and any bodily result that is desired can be obtained by giving flesh-forming or bone-forming or brain-making foods. But our farmers knew this experimentally long ago, though they were ignorant of scientific terms. The results which they can with certainty produce, in relation to beast or bird, can be just as certainly produced in man, so far as he is one of the animals; and medical science in modern times is in part devoted to the discovery of flesh-forming and health-nourishing foods. It is even found that a man’s food must bear a direct relation, in quantity and quality, to the work which he is called to do. This was impressed upon us in a very striking way by the experience of our soldiers during the Crimean war. They were terribly exposed in the muddy trenches during that severe winter, and at first the mortality among them was frightful. But it was observed that the French soldiers, though exposed to the same toils and perils, did not suffer so much; and on inquiry the reason for the difference was found to be this—the French officers increased the quantity and improved the character of the rations when their men had to endure unusual exposure and fatigue, whereas our officers continued the regulation ration under all the circumstances. The mortality was soon checked when food was properly adjusted to work. The health, vigour, and work of our soul’s life just as directly depend upon the food with which it is nourished. Would we get more work out of our souls, we must feed them better. Do we expose our souls to much peril? We must improve and increase their food. The real trouble so often is that we are under soul-fed, injudiciously soul-fed. So often our souls are really half starved; their voice is so weak; it is hardly more than a whisper; the soul-hands are so feeble that they cannot grasp Christian work. Even in the land of spiritual plenty we may fail to grow into strength. Classifications are quite unsatisfactory because they are incomplete, but still they do help to clear apprehensions. We may therefore speak of the soul’s life as being faith and love, and as having for its natural expressions worship and work. Then the soul-food provided must bear, in the most direct and efficient way, on these four things. Here is a sublime but most practical problem for each one of us to solve: What will nourish into the fullest health and strength my soul’s faith and my soul’s love? What will strengthen my soul’s brain and heart for holy worship, for prayer and praise, and my soul’s muscle and nerve for holy work? And as circumstances arise making greater demands on the vigour of our souls, on our faith, our devotion, our love, or our hope, we must see to it that an adequate increase of spiritual food is made. God offered to the wearied Elijah angels’ food a second time, as if one good meal were not enough, using this persuasion, “Arise, and eat; because the journey is too great for thee. And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.” And speaking of the putting-forth of miraculous and unusual spiritual energy, our Lord most impressively said, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.” Here we all so sadly fail. We keep the soil so poor. We keep the plant indoors, and never let the nourishing rains fall on it. And yet we may be quite sure that there is this absolute law for all body-life and for all soul-life—if more is to be got out of body or out of soul, more and better food must be given to them.
Lost Interest in Higher Christian Truth.—Those who are addressed had lost interest in the deeper truths of Christianity, those truths which alone expressed and explained its proper nature. Their temptation was apparently towards mingling a rudimentary Christian doctrine with the teaching of the synagogue. Yielding to this, they would lose all real knowledge of the very elements of Christian truth, and with this all true knowledge of the Old Testament itself. “Solid food belongs to full-grown men.” If they occupied themselves with the rudiments alone, their spiritual senses could not be trained by use (or habit) in distinguishing between good and evil, truth and falsehood, in the various systems of teaching which men offered as the doctrine of Christ.—W. F. Moulton, D.D.