Hebrews 5:9-14
9 And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, 10 called by God as High Priest “according to the order of Melchizedek,” 11 of whom we have much to say, and hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.
Spiritual Immaturity
12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
Jesus was perfect as God and sinless as a man. He proved His perfection by loving a sinless life in the flesh to set an example for us to aim for with His enabling power of the indwelling Spirit whom we now have as reborn children of God. This perfection as our great High Priest made Him worthy to purchase eternal salvation for us, having made the prefect sacrifice of Himself and offering that sacrifice as the eternal high priest like Melchizedek who seemed to have no beginning (Hebrews 7:1, 3) or traceable ancestry. We know from scripture that Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, has always existed and was begotten, not made as people and angels have been. He is eternal in the heavens and therefore alone able to author this unending salvation ministered to us as our heavenly priest. Our road leading in the direction of spiritual maturity we call sanctification means we are being made more holy, more like our Lord, as we follow and He works righteousness into us in our gradual transformation into His image (Romans 12:2, 2 Corinthians 3:18) day by day. We are to learn the principles of holy living from immersing ourselves in his word by reading, hearing, studying, and meditating on all God has written to us that we may eat solid food of spiritual maturity and not remain on the infant’s bottle of basic doctrine alone. If we do not grow in Christ and Christ-likeness, then we are oversized babies who are not prepared or skilled in the word to serve and teach one another. Solid spiritual food is for the mature whose senses are daily exercised by the Lord to maturity that we may understand the difference between good and evil. There is no shortcut to this as Eve and Adam discovered by desiring to learn good and evil on their own way of reasoning or by some miraculous action bringing them to know good and evil as God does. We are told here to learn from their immature mistake of sin not to repeat that again, but to learn from God as we are taught and He works in us (Philippians 1:6, 2:12-13) for our good as we are led to ever increasing perfection into the likeness of His image (Romans 8:29) as we were originally created to be. We do this by putting off sinful things and putting on godly things as we work our our salvation’s sanctification according to His mighty working in us. This is the perfection we aim for and the maturity we yearn for as we approach the goal day by day on the way to meeting Him and worshiping in His presence forever.
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