"In their very deaths they [the Christians] were the subjects of sport: for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts, and worried to death by dogs, or nailed to crosses, or set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening lights. Nero offered his own garden players fir the spectacle, and exhibited a Cicensian game, indiscriminately mingling with the common people in the dress of a charioteer, or else standing in his chariot. For this cause a feeling of compassion arose towards the suffers, though guilty and deserving of exemplary capital punishment, because they seemed not to be cut off for the public good, but were victims of the ferocity of one man."It was in the midst of this extreme and undue torture, that the author of Hebrews pens his letter to a wavering group of believers. As Jewish Christians, the group to which the letter of Hebrews was written was considering turning away from following Christ and reverting to their old Jewish practices for which there was no danger of persecution or hardship. After going over some of the basic Truths of the faith and encouraging the church, the writer of Hebrews gets a little more blatant in chapter 5. He tells the believers that "by this time you ought to be teachers, [but] you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who live on milk still being an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil."
Now, you may be thinking like me, "why is he upset with the level of maturity of the church when daily they are facing the threat of death because of a false accusation against them due to their faith? They need encouragement not exhortations. And what does being able to distinguish good from evil have to do with anything?"
As I prayed and sought the Holy Spirit to provide insight on this passage, I was shown that too often my thought process is the thought process of Christ Followers. We see our brothers and sisters in Christ struggling with sin in some area of their life, or struggling with their faith and we don't want to risk hurting their feelings so we lean toward only looking for encouraging passages to help them get over the hump, rather than going to the core of the problem and challenging them.
The longer we profess to follow Christ, the greater should be our spiritual maturity and ability to discernment what is pleasing and unpleasing to God. The Christians in the persecuted church during this time were sinning, they we trapped in a state of fear, which from our point of view is understandable, but their fear, as well as ours, demonstrated a deeper issue. Fear is the outward projection of an inward lack of faith and trust that God is who he says he is, and a lack of trust that his way and will is always the best even if we don't understand what or why things are happening how they are. This is an elementary Truth of the faith. This was a truth the faltering church had lost sight of in the midst of their less than favorable circumstances.
It seems that the issue that the writer of Hebrews is attempting to get through to the church is that they have been spiritually lazy, and the result of their laziness is now being demonstrated in their desire to turn away from the faith when things have stoppped going in their favor. The turning of the tides against Christians was not something this long standing body of believers was prepared to deal with. Their failure to go beyond "spiritual milk" and begin to explore the solid food of the faith left them with out a solid foundation on which to stand when things got rough. Much like on our own lives, when we face hard times, the temptation to revert to our old flesh ways of dealing with problems was exactly what this entire body of believers was facing. The writer exhorts the church, telling them their temptation is due to their failure to train themselves in godliness and to constantly apply their knowledge of the Truth to their lives.
It seems to me that this was a group of people who went to church every Sunday, they listened to the message, talked about how much Jesus loved everybody and went home. No challenges to walk out their faith, no individual deep scripture study or searching, no solid foundation on which they were building their faith.
One of my favorite verses which I have posted right at eye level on my desk in my dorm room is Isaiah 7:9 "If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all." What a statement. In my own experience I have found this verse to be so true. As Christ Followers, our faith is to be the guiding light of our lives, it should be the foundation upon which we base each and every decision we make and each and every word we speak. However, the only way to stand firm in our faith is to know what we believe, and the only way we can know what we believe is to spend time in the Words God has left us, by which we can learn who he is and understand his character. After reading this passage, I have been challenged to no longer passively engage with my faith, but to seek out knowledge and Truth so that when the hard times come, and the Bible promises they will, I will have the weight of solid food in my body to keep me grounded to the foundation on which I stand.
