Hebrews 6. About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain because you have become dull of hearing (5:11). The NIV translation says you no longer try to understand. Uh oh, this is not good.

If you are a parent, you have probably had the same feeling about your children (or your spouse) at one time – you are talking and no one is actually listening to you, they have quit trying to understand. You have been tuned out. How does that feel? Frustrating? Exasperating?

The author of Hebrews is frustrated and offers this warning about sluggishness and a failure to progress in the Christian faith: 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 (5:12-14).

Imagine a full-grown adult that only ate baby food – that’s a ridiculous idea; it would be such a waste in many ways, including that they would fail to grow and thrive and become all that they were meant to be. The author warns the group about passivity and an unwillingness to grow in spiritual maturity.

Therefore, let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity (6:1). The encouragement is to grow in faith and practice, to move intentionally – not to drift into passivity and sluggishness. The immature can only be moved beyond elementary teachings to moral and spiritual maturity by feeding them the solid food of biblical teaching and challenging them to live out its implications.

There is another scary warning section (6:4-8) about what happens in apostasy – our big word again – when those who knew Christ harden their hearts and turn away from God. Their continuing rejection of Jesus makes it impossible to bring them back to repentance. They have hardened their hearts and burned their bridges with the Christian community. God cannot provide another way of salvation for them apart from the glorious work of his Son, which they have rejected.

What is interesting to me is that the author presents no middle ground. There is pressing on toward maturity in the faith and growing in Christ, or there is apathy and lethargy and the risk of falling away. The problem is when you think you have arrived and then you just plop yourself down in a church pew and never make any effort to grow in your faith – you are actually losing ground with every passing day.

The call is to persevere, to go on to maturity and not miss out on all that God has for us. We desire each one of you show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end so that you may not be sluggish but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises (6:11-12).

How are you growing in spiritual maturity today? This week? What do you need to do differently to shake off the spiritual sluggishness that so easily entangles us?