Today’s Journal Entry
Isn’t it amazing that in today’s churches we return to the past instead of moving forward day-by-day? We have the letters from the Apostles. We have the situations the Apostles had to endure. We have the history of all the saints since the beginning of the church movement. We study the written word while not studying the living WORD. We desperately need to realize that our faith is not based on past events but on the living Christ. In today’s churches, people are subjected to psychological sermons where we are taught how to behave as Christians. We do not hear today about living with our living King and savior. Today we are continuously told how the first-century believers lived and not how today’s believers live. Today I feel the church at large has failed to grasp what the writer of Hebrews communicated, that we are no longer to lay again a foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, or the doctrines of baptism, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment. We are to mature in faith and not remain in the past. Why is it then that today we are not being taught to grow up in the Lord, to study the living WORD and not just the book? Who is trying to prevent the church “called out ones” from being alive in Christ and maturing in Christ? Who?
What am I hinting at?
Even though this chapter of Hebrews refers to Jewish followers of Christ who have fallen away there is something to consider. When a church leader does not train the assembly to grow and mature in faith it is like refusing to move beyond human experience. In doing so there is a potential error when people continuously revolve around the elementary principles of faith in Christ Jesus. Hebrews 6:1-3 potentially shows the believer today that the possibility exists to do the same things early Jewish followers of Christ did by returning to the law.
“Here is the text from Hebrews 6 (AMP) “Therefore let us go on and get past the elementary stage in the teachings and doctrine of Christ (the Messiah), advancing steadily toward the completeness and perfection that belong to spiritual maturity. Let us not again be laying the foundation of repentance and abandonment of dead works (dead formalism) and of the faith [by which you turned] to God, with teachings about purifying, the laying on of hands, the resurrection from the dead, and eternal judgment and punishment. [These are all matters of which you should have been fully aware long, long ago.] If indeed God permits, we will [now] proceed [to advanced teaching].”
A commentary on this passage sheds even more light on what I initially journaled:
(1) An exhortation to leave the elements or rudiments of the Christian religion, and to go on to the contemplation of the higher doctrines. The elements were the doctrines of repentance, faith, laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. These entered into the very nature of Christianity. They were its first principles and were indispensable. The higher doctrines related to other matters, which the apostle called them now to contemplate; Hebrews 6:1-3.
(2) he warns them, in the most solemn manner, against apostasy. He assures them that if they should apostatize, it would be impossible to renew them again. They could not fall away from grace and again be renewed; they could not, after having been Christians and then apostatizing, be recovered. Their fall in that case would be final and irrecoverable, for there was no other way by which they could be saved; and by rejecting the Christian scheme, they would reject the only plan by which they could ever be brought to heaven. By this solemn consideration, therefore, he warns them of the danger of going back from their exalted hopes, or of neglecting the opportunities which they had to advance to the knowledge of the higher truths of religion; Hebrews 6:4-6.
(3) this sentiment is illustrated Hebrews 6:7-8 by a striking and beautiful figure drawn from agriculture. The sentiment was, that they who did not improve their advantage, and grow in the knowledge of the gospel, but who should go back and apostatize, would inevitably be destroyed. They could not be renewed and saved. It will be says the apostle, as it is with the earth. That which receives the rain that falls, and that bears its proper increase for the use of man, partakes of the divine blessing. That which does not – which bears only thorns and briers – is rejected, and is nigh to cursing, and will be burned with fire.
(4) yet the apostle says, he hoped better things of them. They had, indeed, receded from what they had been. They had not made the advances which he says they might have done. But still, there was reason to hope that they would not wholly apostatize and be cast off by God. They had shown that they had true religion, and he believed that God would not forget the evidence which they had furnished that they loved him; Hebrews 6:9-10.
(5) he expresses his earnest wish that they all would show the same diligence until they attained the full assurance of hope; Hebrews 6:11-12.
Commentary from the notes on the Bible by Albert Barnes [1834]
For me, teachers who do not lead the assembly to maturity and away from the fundamental teachings of the faith fail to prepare them to attain the full assurance of hope. In not moving beyond historical data, foundational principles, and continuously referring to the past, the people have a greater propensity to fall away and return to their old ways.
I do know pastors who try their hardest to teach application and move on toward deeper principles. Of course, in the west anything deeper than the skin is almost impossible.
Mike
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