Thoughts On Christian Maturity From Hebrews

I’ve had many con­ver­sa­tions that have gone some­thing like this:

Me: So you enjoy study­ing the­ol­ogy?
Joe Nom­i­nal: I don’t need to study the­ol­ogy as long as I have Jesus. That stuff just divides.

I used to get frus­trated to the point of acting in an un-​humble, and un-​Christ like way.  I decided instead to point them to a verse that has stood out to me from Hebrews 6.

There­fore leav­ing the ele­men­tary teach­ing about the Christ, let us press on to matu­rity, not laying again a foun­da­tion of repen­tance from dead works and of faith toward God, of instruc­tion about wash­ings and laying on of hands, and the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead and eter­nal judg­ment. And this we will do, if God per­mits. (Heb 6:1-3)

This is on the heels of the pre­vi­ous chap­ter where the author admon­ishes the Hebrew believ­ers to move from milk to solid food (Heb 5:12).  It always seemed to be a per­fect admon­ish­ment to give to believ­ers who seem­ingly love to stay sat­is­fied with milk and not move onto solid food.

Recently, a deacon at my church named Paul DeHart gave a lesson on this very passage.  It was a per­fect oppor­tu­nity to ensure that my appli­ca­tion was in fact cor­rect and not a misuse of the text.  In an e-mail he shared the fol­low­ing appli­ca­tion that deserves to be heard by others.

“[W]hen talk­ing to some­one, saying some­thing like: ‘I under­stand that you believe that Jesus is enough, but God has given his chil­dren a rela­tion­ship with Christ, and this involves grow­ing in our knowl­edge of Him. A good exam­ple of this call is found in the epis­tle of Hebrews where the author chal­lenges the Jews to whom he is writ­ing that they need to move beyond their imma­ture views of Christ which are being twisted by not under­stand­ing how He ful­filled many of their Old Covenant prac­tices. In the same way, we today need to grow in our knowl­edge of Christ so that we don’t start con­form­ing Christ to the pat­terns and under­stand­ings that we have in this world. To under­stand a proper view of Christ, we need to under­stand Scrip­ture, and see how Christ relates to us, to the world, and under­stand sal­va­tion, sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion, etc. The study of these things is the­ol­ogy and it is impor­tant to our growth in Christ.‘”

What great wisdom and application?I have noth­ing more to add!

Activity

2 total comments, leave your comment.
  1. Tom Christian
    Nov 2nd 2008

    While it is impor­tant to have knowl­edge of “facts”, true Spirit led3knowledge and matu­rity involves much more than the facts.

    I sus­pect that people are often react­ing neg­a­tively to “academic debate and cra­nial expansion” rather than the activ­ity of know­ing and expe­ri­enc­ing God in an ever deep­en­ing and pro­found way–which is a true prod­uct of Christ-​centered the­ol­ogy.

    And then, some­times folks are just plain lazy…

    Good post.

    Tom

  2. Amanda O
    Nov 5th 2008

    Hey Chris,

    Cool post. I liked it. (My Inter­net con­nec­tion works now… so I can blog.)

    I think a pri­mary reason many don’t engage the­ol­ogy very much is that they think it’s all been done. There is noth­ing left to deter­mine. It’s clear. It’s simple. And besides, if you con­cluded any­thing other than what was already con­cluded you’d be hereti­cal. And I think they have a point. I was raised in a social set­ting where any real ques­tion­ing of doc­trines did not occur. Why? Well, refer to my pre­vi­ous sen­tences. But this results in a stilted sit­u­a­tion in which you have people who either acqui­esce or not acqui­esce. Those are the only two options which means there is no true engage­ment of con­cepts; you engage when you think you need to, not when there’s noth­ing left to do. Again, true engage­ment requires that you pos­si­bly not con­clude what’s already been con­cluded. If all research and under­stand­ing has already been accom­plished, there’s noth­ing more to do. I think this is a neg­a­tive result of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment in Chris­tian­ity.

Leave a Reply