Teachers by Now
The writer of Hebrews pauses his teaching on Christ’s priesthood with a hard word: “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” (Hebrews 5:12). He had more to say about Melchizedek, but his readers weren’t ready to hear it.
The rebuke assumes something we easily forget. Growth in Christ is expected to go somewhere. There is a season to be a student, and then a point when we should be able to pass on what we have received. These believers had walked with Christ long enough to be teaching others, yet they still needed milk. Time alone hadn’t moved them forward. So what does?
Not Just Receiving, but Using
The answer comes in verse 14: solid food is for the mature, “who by constant use have trained themselves.” The key word is use. Maturity doesn’t come from how much of the Word we take in, but from how much of it we put to work.
This is a sobering truth for people who love Scripture. We can read faithfully, attend good teaching, and fill notebooks with insights, and still remain spiritual infants. Receiving the Word is necessary, but it is only half of the process. The other half is obeying it: forgiving when the Word says forgive, giving when it says give, speaking when it says speak. James puts it plainly: be doers of the word, and not hearers only (James 1:22).
The Greek behind “trained” is the word from which we get gymnasium. Spiritual maturity is built the way muscle is built, through repetition under load.
Trained to Discern
What does that training produce? The ability “to distinguish good from evil.” Receiving and using the Word together form a kind of spiritual instinct. The mature believer can tell what pleases God in situations no verse directly addresses, because obedience has shaped their senses.
That discernment is what moves a person from milk to meat. The infant isn’t unwelcome at the table; he simply can’t digest what is served there. In the same way, deeper truths about Christ are not withheld because God is stingy. They are withheld because we aren’t ready to carry them.
The implication is uncomfortable but clear. If I am not putting the Word into practice, I will remain an infant, no matter how many years I have been a Christian or how much I know. There may be more for me to learn, but I won’t be ready for it until I have obeyed what I have already learned.
Doing the Word
So the path to maturity is simple, though not easy. I cannot merely know the Word; I need to do the Word if it is to be effective in my life. Each time I read Scripture, the better question is not “What did I learn?” but “What will I obey?”
But obedience doesn’t stop with our own lives. Jesus told us to make disciples (Matthew 28:19–20), and part of being a disciple is learning to make disciples who will do the same. This is where the student truly becomes the teacher. And something surprising happens along the way: teaching others to obey pushes us to learn more, grow more, and put the Word into practice even more ourselves. We can’t lead someone where we aren’t willing to go. Leading others becomes one of God’s most important tools for our own maturing.
Lord, I do not want to remain an infant; I want to be fully mature. Help me to do your Word, not only to hear it, but to do what it says. Help me not only to distinguish good from evil, but to live out the good, and to teach others to do the same. Amen.