Hebrews
Lesson
56
NKJ Proverbs
3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all
your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways
acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
Hebrews
5:12
We
are in Hebrews 5. I want you to go back to verse 12. We have
been skirting around the basic message and application of this section from
verse 10 down through verse 14 for the last two months. This is lesson 56
and I started this in lesson 45. This is about 11 weeks of this. We
spent a lot of time dealing with what I would call applicational issues in
relationship to discernment which is a major part of this particular
passage. We got started because we were looking at the mechanics of
becoming dull believers, those who are lazy, those who regress in their
spiritual lives back in our study of verses 10 and 11. I only did a
peripheral look at 12-14, but it is important to understand what is going on in
12-14 in order to understand what happens in chapter 6:1-8. Chapter 6:1-8
(specifically verses 4-8) are some of the most controversial verses in the
Bible. They are difficult to understand and related to eternal
security. Some people think that these verses refer to believers who lose
their salvation which isn’t true. We have to look at this because it is
foundational. The warning is serious. That’s the core of the
warning of this particular exhortation section that begins in
So
we will look at verse 12.
NKJ Hebrews
5:12 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.
We
could translate this “even”. It is a concessive clause.
He
is addressing his listeners, his audience. Remember they are Jews
probably priests who had trusted Christ as the Messiah and had grown to a
certain level of maturity and then they had come under pressure, adversity,
persecution, hostility and opposition and began to doubt their faith. They
began to regress spiritually so that now they are characterized as being dull
and lazy. He uses even more condemning language in these verses.
When
he uses the word “teachers” he is not talking about a spiritual gift. He
is just talking about the fact that any believer at a certain point ought to be
teachers. Let me get through the whole verse then we will come back and
deal with the details.
We
start off with the verb, “you ought to be teachers.” This is a powerful
concept in the Christian life. You ought to. As a believer in the
Lord Jesus Christ there is an expectation that something ought to be present in
your life. It is not a matter of I am saved and I can live however I want
to and if I sin and am out of fellowship I can just confess my sin. There
is an obligation that is placed upon each one of us as believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ because of what Christ did for us and because we are now members
of the royal family of God. God has provided all of this for us and inherent
with the grace gift of salvation is responsibility.
The
verb here is the Greek verb opheilo which
means an obligation to perform a duty. It is not legalism. We are not
obligated in the sense that we are trying to gain the approval of God. We are
not obligated in the sense that we are trying to merit salvation. It is
not a works type of system. It is just the inherent responsibility or
obligation of having something and of ownership of this new Christian
life. If you have a house whether you bought it or whether you were given
it or whether you rent it from somebody, there is an inherent obligation or
responsibility to take care of the property. If you own a car you have an
obligation to take care of it. If you don’t, it will fall apart and it won’t
be of any value to you. That is what is true about the Christian
life. If you don’t live up to the obligations or inherent
responsibilities in the Christian life to utilize the assets that God has given
us, then we become a rusty old hulk and it doesn’t do us any good.
By
this time we ought to be teachers. The idea here is anyone who can
instruct someone else regarding the Word of God. Anybody ought to be able
to do that a certain level of maturity - sitting around the kitchen table,
talking to a co-worker at lunch, discussing it with your children. At a
certain level of maturity you ought to be able to teach other people what you
have learned in the Christian life.
I
have a lady in my class this semester at the college and she said everyday
after she leaves the class she goes and has lunch with a friend of hers and
tells her everything she learned in class that day. So anybody ought to
be able to grow to a certain level and communicate what they are learning to
other people. But if you are still a spiritual infant you can’t do
that because you don’t know enough to say anything. That is the problem.
They have regressed from the high water mark of their spiritual growth to a
point where they even though chronologically they are 10 or 12 or 15 years old
in their spiritual life; in terms of they way the act, they are acting like
babies. We will see that concept brought out in a minute.
This
is the Greek noun stoicheion. This was
an important word in Greek vocabulary. It had a rich heritage in philosophy.
It is used in a more general sense, not in a technical philosophical sense, in
the New Testament. It has to do with the basic parts of something, the
rudiments, the elements or the basic components of something. We might
say that it refers to the ABC’s of oracles of God. The basic doctrines of
Scripture as it were. So he is reprimanding them.
“We
have to go to basic doctrine all over again because you have obviously
forgotten what those basics are and their implications for your spiritual life.”
The
word stoicheion is used in a couple of other
interesting passages in the New Testament.
NKJ 2
Peter 3:10-12 But the day of
the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens will pass away
with a great noise, and the elements will melt with fervent heat; both the
earth and the works that are in it will be burned up. 11 Therefore,
since all these things will be dissolved, what manner of persons ought
you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and
hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be
dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?
Elements
is stoicheion, the core basic elements, the
basic chemical structure of the present universe will melt away with a great
noise.
This
is an example of how stoicheion refers to the
basic chemical elements that make up the universe, that table of elements that
you were supposed to have memorized when you took chemistry in high school.
Galatians
4:3 uses it in a different sense. There Paul says…
NKJ Galatians
4:3 Even so we, when we were
children, were in bondage under the elements of the world.
This
is the basic thinking in the world system, whatever that pagan system was, the
culture out of which we come. Paul is saying that it put us in
bondage. In this situation he is talking about as Jews they were in
bondage under the law. The law communicated basic elements.
In
Colossians 2:8 he deals with the basic principles of the Greek cosmic system.
NKJ Colossians
2:8 Beware lest anyone cheat you
through philosophy and empty deceit, according to the tradition of men,
according to the basic principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
That
would refer to the basic norms and standards are of cosmic thinking, the basic
metaphysical approach, their ethical epistemology of the world which would be
rationalism or empiricism or mysticism. Don’t be taken captive through
those basic principles that are in opposition to Christ. That is the
structure there.
So
we see that there is 180 degree opposition between the basic principles of how
the culture based on human viewpoint wants us to think, to live, to make
decisions and values judgments and that related to Christ.
In
Christianity there are also basics. That is the problem with these Jewish
believers. They have to go back and relearn the basic doctrines of
Christianity. Understanding that term will help us understand a few other
things that come along as we go through this passage.
NKJ Hebrews
5:12 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.
This
idea of coming to need milk instead of solid food is a perfect active
indicative of the verb ginomai which means to become something that you
were not before. It indicates that they had grown to a state where they
didn’t need milk. They were pushing into the deep things of God in the
Scripture. They understood the more advanced doctrines in
Scripture. But as a result of carnality in their lives and because they
began to question and reject the teaching of grace in the New Testament, they
began to reverse course in their spiritual lives. They became something
that they weren’t. First of all they started as new believers and they
became something they weren’t then. They were worldly, carnal. They
were just barely saved and they became something they were not. That is
advanced mature believers. Then when they became advance mature believers
understanding doctrine and living on divine viewpoint then they went negative
to doctrine. Then again they became something they weren’t at that point
which is carnal believers operating on human viewpoint instead of divine
viewpoint. They became something that they were not and they began to
need milk instead of solid food.
Now
this concept of milk is one that we find in a number of important passages of
Scripture. It is an analogy where the Scripture, the Word of God, is
compared to food because the Word of God is what nourishes and strengthens our
souls just as physical food and drink provide the nutrients we need to keep our
bodies healthy and strong producing growth. The analogy is developed in I
Peter 2:2 that just as newborn babes we are...
NKJ 1
Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire
the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby,
That
word desire is a command. In English it doesn’t come across as an
imperative. In the Greek it is an imperative. It is a
command.
I
think if I were to translate this I would switch the word order and say,
“Desire the pure milk of the Word like a newborn baby.”
If
you have ever heard a newborn baby scream for milk, then you have some idea of
what that is saying. It is saying that you as a newborn believer should
be demanding to be fed. You should be throwing a little temper tantrum as a new
baby demanding that somebody feed you.
I
don’t know if any of you have had the opportunity to go on a real fast for any
length of time. I don’t mean some of the silly fasts that you have today where
they are going to go on a vegetable fast or they are going to go on a cookie
fast or something where they take one thing and they aren’t going to do that
for two or three days. A real fast is where all you have is water for
several days. When I was young (I was about 27 years old) I had one
course left to take at Dallas Seminary. It was one I had dreaded
taking. We were required to take a Christian Education elective.
Those of us who were more doctrinally oriented and theologically astute (more
oriented to the languages) just despised the Christian Education Department.
These were the guys who walked around with a pocket full of colored pencils and
they were doing all of this color coding in their Bibles. They couldn’t
think their way out of a wet theological bag if they had to. But they
learned all of these gimmicks for teaching and everything. So I found out
that I could take the course somewhere else and have it transferred in.
I
thought, “This is great. I get to get a two hour credit for doing what I
love to do – camping and backpacking and canoeing white water.”
So
we did that. What I didn’t know was the last three days of this trip they
put everyone out on the shore of Lake Superior in a solo and you were isolated
about 200 yards from the nearest person. You had your shelter
half. You could drink all the water you wanted out of
I
would think, “Maybe I’ll sneak something.”
The
problem is that the bears can smell it a half a mile away and if you have
anything in your pack that smells like food or has touched food then the bears
will come in and tear up your pack. They have had it happen. Even
that week when the leadership team had put all of their packs together
where the food was three or four bears got in and tore the heck out of those
packs during the three day solo that we had. So that was my one and only
experiencing of fasting and trying to go 2 or 3 days without food. I had
read this before but it was purely academic knowledge. Now it became
epignosis knowledge.
After
about 36 hours your appetite truly does go away. At first you are very
hungry. That first day I thought I was going to eat the bark off the trees.
By the afternoon of the second day the appetite diminished. I had been
told that as you go through a true fast for 30 or 40 days (The Lord wasn’t
using His omnipotence to be able to go without food for 30-40 days and 40
nights. Any human being can do that.) at about 40 days your
appetite comes back with a vengeance because if you go much longer you will
create serious health problems for yourself if not die. I had been
told that you can go all of that time and not have an appetite. All I can
attest to from my own experience is that from about the middle of the second
afternoon until the morning of the fourth day when I got to see food again, I
didn’t have an appetite. It just went away.
I
often thought when I teach on this passage that what happens when baby
believers don’t demand to be fed is they don’t get fed. What happens when
you don’t get fed is that your appetite goes away. So you don’t have an
appetite for doctrine anymore and are happy with praise and worship
music. You feel real good about feel good sermons. You feel real
good about motivational church. It has been so long since you have had
any real biblical food that you are living on nothing and your appetite has
gone away. That happens.
Afterwards
when you start eating again that appetite comes back with a vengeance. I
think the day after I got off of that fast, (Incidentally, the fast ended with
a 12 mile run (that was a lot of fun) on no fuel.) I think I had 6 meals
in the next 8 hours. I got up the next morning at
I
think that what happens is that young believers (new believers) who do not get
fed so they lose their appetite for the Word. But if they get taught the
Word somebody comes along and teaches them the Word then that appetite will
come back and they will get hungry if there ever was a real interest in the
Word.
I
Peter 2:2 is a command that newborn babies should desire the pure milk of the
Word so that they can grow. It is the milk of the Word that provides the
nourishment to grow. It is not the singing. It is not
prayer. It isn’t fellowship. It is learning the Word of God
that provides the mechanics, the tools, and the content that the Holy Spirit
uses to produce growth.
Now
another thing I want you to note here is that this is addressed to babes.
Babes need milk. The word here for a babe is brephos.
There are several words we are going to look at in a minute that describe the
different stages of growth in the Christian life. A brephos refers to a newborn child or a
slightly older infant. It describes a chronologically new believer.
This word is talking about somebody who just got saved. They are brand
new babies. They need the milk of the Word. If you grow on milk,
what do you need? Eventually you need to have that transferred to more
solid food. You get off of the milk and you need to get on to eating a
good steak or a good prime rib. You need to have all of your vegetables
and everything else. That is what happens when you come to Bible class
here. You get a bit of everything. Sometimes you get a tough
steak and you have to learn to set that aside because you aren’t ready to go
through that doctrine and understand what is being taught. The more
you hear it the more it will make sense. That is the growth
process.
But
this word brephos here is the positive
word that is used in the Word of God to describe a chronologically new
believer. But there are other words that are used as well. So here I have
a little chart on the growth nouns in the New Testament.
The
first is brephos which we just looked at, a
chronologically new believer.
The
second word is teknion. Teknion is used for a little child. It is used
in the New Testament. It is used positively and affectionately for young
believers. Brephos looks at them in
terms of chronology. So does teknion.
It is a very positive term.
A
third word that is used is paidion. It
can refer to a slightly older child coming out of infancy. It can
refer to a recently born child, baby or an infant. It is also a
positively used word referring to this chronologically new infant.
But
then we have the word that we run into in Hebrews. This is the noun nepios. It can in some contexts refer to a
chronologically new believer. That is rare in the New Testament.
Usually in the New Testament it is used in a negative way, a pejorative way, to
describe believers who have regressed in their spiritual lives and act like
spiritual babies. They should be spiritual adolescents. They should
be spiritual adults but they are acting like whiny babies again because they
have gotten off the Word of God. They have regressed spiritually.
Or it is used to refer to believers who are no longer recent believers
chronologically. They are no longer newborns but because they have
refused to grow. They should be mature but they are still acting like whiny
babies. It is a term that is used in several key passages to describe regressive
carnal believers. They should be mature, but they are not. In some
cases they were mature already. It is used this way in I Corinthians
3:1-3.
There
is a big debate whether you know it or not whether or not there is a carnal
believer. Lordship salvation and certain forms of Calvinism insist that
there is no such thing as a carnal believer. If you are truly saved, you
will persevere. That is the fifth point in the acronym TULIP for
Calvinism. P is for the perseverance of the saints. But when we
look at I Corinthians 3:1, it is a contrast that is presented here between
those who are living according to the flesh and those who are spiritual.
So let’s briefly examine it.
NKJ 1
Corinthians 3:1 And I, brethren,
could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to
babes in Christ.
Paul
addresses the Corinthian believers as brethren. They are believers.
Later on in the same chapter he will tell them that they are temples for the
Holy Spirit. They are believers. There is no question about
it. Are they acting like it? Not at all. They are full of
arrogance. They are dividing themselves into factions.
One
person says, “I was saved and taught by Apollos.”
Another
one says, “I was saved and taught by Peter.”
Then
the holiness crowd says, “I am better than y’all. I was saved by Jesus.”
All
of this division is going on and everybody is aligning themselves with
different groups. They are emphasizing special knowledge about spiritual
things coming out of some of the Gnostic-type teaching that was already present
in Greek culture at that time.
Later
on we find out a few chapters later that they are putting up with a man in the
church that has committed a moral sin. It is not such a culture problem
for us, but this guy had married his stepmother. That is not as
culturally offensive to us, but it was so culturally offensive even to the
unbelievers in
That
is those who are operating according to the sin nature, sarxz.
The carnal here is the sarkikos.
Then
he qualifies that. He doesn’t use brephos.
He doesn’t use teknion. These would be
positive terms of a newborn believer. They aren’t newborns. They
have been saved for at least 3 years.
This
is an insult.
He
is saying, “I have to address you as a whiny baby who knows better, who has
been taught better, and who should be acting as if they are much older.
You have regressed in your spiritual life.”
He
goes on to say…
NKJ 1
Corinthians 3:2 I fed you with milk
and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and
even now you are still not able;
This
is a classification of those who should have grown because they chronologically
had the time to grow but they hadn’t because they were still operating on the
flesh.
Why?
Because they are walking according to the flesh which is what we studied the
last two or three weeks in Romans 8 and Galatians 5.
NKJ 1
Corinthians 3:3 for you are still
carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are
you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
NKJ Galatians
NKJ Galatians
That’s
where you get your hermeneutical key here. They are acting like mere men
without the aid of the Holy Spirit. They are still living on the basis of
the sin nature and trying to live the Christian life apart from being in right
relationship to God the Holy Spirit. So I Corinthians 3 sets up the same
vocabulary that we will run into in our passage in Hebrews 5 - the same
vocabulary dealing with milk and dealing with the nepios
baby.
NKJ Hebrews
That
was the case with the Corinthian believers. They were only partaking of
milk. They weren’t getting beyond the basics. If you look at
this passage, the problem that they have here is that they have to be taught
again the first principles. They have come to need milk. Stoicheion is related to milk.
NKJ Hebrews
5:14 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.
There
is a contrast there.
NKJ Hebrews
6:1 Therefore, leaving the
discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection,
not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith
toward God,
Elementary
is the word stoicheion again.
So
the issue here is that they are still acting like babies and they just want to
hear basic doctrine, if that. They want to have their ears tickled as
Paul would say. They just want to be entertained.
It
is stated here as a universal principle.
He
is old enough chronologically to have matured, but he hasn’t grown. So he
is out of line. This nepios is a carnal
believer who hasn’t grown.
Let’s
look at a couple of key words in verse 13.
What’s
that word? Unskilled is the Greek word apeiros
meaning inexperienced. He doesn’t understand the skills that you have to
have to grow as a believer. We have talked about these many times – the
spiritual skills. We have to understand confession of sin. Whenever
we sin, we confess our sin. As soon as you confess your sin, the flip
side is that you are filled with the Spirit. You are in right
relationship with the Spirit. You are back in fellowship. You don’t
do anything else to be in fellowship. You just confess your sin and you
are back in fellowship. But that isn’t enough. That just restores
you to a place where growth can take place.
Then
the second skill is walking by the Holy Spirit. Galatians
Then
we have the faith rest drill where we learn to trust the promises, the
principles, and the provision of God in the Scripture. We have to learn
what they are. We have to memorize different promises and understand the
difference between promises related to
At
the same time we have to be grace oriented realizing that it is not based on
who we are but on who God is and His provision for us. Those are the
basic skills. Very few people ever learn about that. They learn
about it in a general sense but it never really categorized and systematized
and provided for most believers. They think all you need to do to grow as a
Christian is go to church and be moral. That isn’t good enough because
Paul as we saw last time in Romans 7 was being moral. He was following
the Mosaic Law. He was being as moral as he could.
He
said, “Every time it ended up I would discover that I was lusting. I was
committing sin. I ended up doing what I didn’t want to do and I didn’t do
what I wanted to do. I was a mess.”
He
didn’t understand the relationship of God the Holy Spirit as the key dynamic
powerbase for the spiritual life in the Church Age. So we have to learn
those skills. As these regressive believers who have become dull of
hearing, lazy; they had lost the skill in the Christian life.
So
the writer of Hebrews makes this universal statement.
They
have lost the skills and it is related specifically to something. The
next phrase says “to the word of righteousness.” What exactly is this
word of righteousness? It is an interesting phrase in the Greek. It
is a basic genitive phrase. It should be taken as a genitive of content -
a word or message. Logos is a word that is translated word here
has a wide range of meaning; it can mean word, message, or thought. It
can mean reason. If you look it up in a lexicon it has a column or two of
different meanings and nuances to it. It is where we get our word logic.
It is where we get our root for study like the word biology which is the
study of life or living things. We talk about zoology which is the study
of animals. Psychology is the study of the soul. That “logy” ending
comes from the Greek word logos. So here it should be translated
the message related to or consisting of righteousness.
The
person who only partakes of milk is unskilled in righteousness. This is a
foundational doctrine. That foundational doctrine relates to
understanding how we have righteousness and the significance of that. If
you don’t understand the imputation of righteousness and its implication for
your Christian life, then you are going to constantly going be dealing with
guilt. You are never going to fully understand grace. You are
constantly going to be trying to gain God’s approval. You are constantly
going to be slipping into legalistic activities because you do not understand
the source of righteousness. So we have to go back to the basic doctrine
related to imputation and righteousness. So we have to go back to some
key passages in Corinthians in order to understand this.
Remember
what is happening with the Hebrews. They have to rediscover in terms of
their spiritual life the significance and the impact of imputation of
righteousness not just for salvation, but what that means for their ongoing
spiritual life. We find our first reference to this in I Corinthians
1:30.
NKJ 1
Corinthians
“Him”
refers to God the Father who is the ultimate source of all things including our
salvation.
You
as an individual believer are in Christ. That is your position. At
the instant of faith alone in Christ alone, God the Holy Spirit took you and
identified (Romans 6:3) you with the death, burial and resurrection of
Christ. At that instant that it happened and you are identified with
Christ, you are placed in Him. That is called the baptism by means of the
Holy Spirit – that identification with the Holy Spirit that initiates you into
your Christian life.
The
“who” refers to Christ Jesus.
Now
in the structure of the argument in I Corinthians 1:30, Paul has been
castigating the Corinthians because they have been putting all of this emphasis
on human viewpoint wisdom because of the influence from Greek culture.
They have intellectualized everything. They have brought in all of their
Aristotelian, Stoic and Platonic wisdom and are making an issue out of
that. So Paul is contrasting the divine viewpoint wisdom of God as
revealed in the Scripture versus all categories of human wisdom. He says
that real wisdom starts at the cross. It is Jesus Christ who becomes for
us wisdom from God. Then he expands on that.
So
we can look at each one of these in this way. He became for us wisdom
from God. He became for us righteousness. He became for us
sanctification. He became for us redemption. In this passage we
learn that He became for us righteousness.
Now
the way that this is structured in the language we have this phrase “wisdom
from God.” That is the word sophia plus
the Greek preposition apa and the genitive of
God. The point that I am making is that you do a word substitution here
because these four nouns -wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption
- are interchangeable. Each one of them is from God. The Greek
preposition apa indicates the place of
ultimate origin of these four things. The ultimate origin for the wisdom
is God. The origin of the righteousness is God. The origin of the
sanctification is God. The origin of the redemption is God. He is
the ultimate author. So righteousness comes from God. Here is the
Greek preposition apa plus the genitive
indicating the place of origin. The reason I make an issue of that is because
when we come to this next verse we are going to see a similar concept but a
slightly different Greek preposition. Now sometimes the Greek
prepositions are interchangeable, but often when they are used in the same kind
of context they indicate a slightly different perspective. Apa indicates the place of origin and with the
preposition ek which we will find in
Philippians 3:9 that is that it comes from the source of God. So He is
the place of origin. He is also the source. So it covers all the
bases in terms of where that righteousness derives.
Let’s
look at II Corinthians 5:21. II Corinthians 5:21expresses how this
righteousness gets to us.
NKJ 2
Corinthians
He
is God the Father.
“Him”
is Jesus Christ as impeccable. He knew no sin. He did not ever sin
in His humanity.
Now
he doesn’t make Him sinful. Jesus never became sinful. He never
sinned. What God the Father does is He imputes or credits to Jesus
account our sins. Now I want you to think about that a minute because
somebody asked a question a while back that was a good question.
“God
doesn’t share His glory with anybody. God doesn’t share His other
attributes with anybody. How can God share His righteousness with us?”
The
key here is understanding that imputation is not sharing. We don’t share our
sin with Jesus because He would become a sinner. It is legally credited
to His account. It is legal or an accounting transaction that occurs so
that our sin is credited to Him so that He can pay the penalty for it as our
substitute. That is brought out by the key “for us.” He is a
substitute for us.
Again
we run into the same verb here for “become” that I talked about earlier. Ginomai
indicates to become something we were not. We were unrighteous
and now we have become something that we were not. Dikaiosune
theou. God is in the genitive.
That could mean a god-type of righteousness. That would be using the
genitive in an adjectival sense. It can also be a genitive of
possession - the righteousness that God possesses. And it can mean a
genitive of source - that God is the source of the righteousness. Now
when you look at this phraseology it is a little bit ambiguous because it
doesn’t have the more specific preposition there. You can say the righteousness
of God using a simple genitive or to make it more clear you would substitute
source or origin either apa or ek. Now we have apa
in I Corinthians 1:30 then we have ek over
here in Philippians 3:9.
NKJ Philippians
3:9 and be found in Him, not having
my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through
faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith;
It
is never really my righteousness. It is always Christ’s
righteousness. It is imputed to us legally.
His
own righteousness would be derived from the law - nothing more than human
morality which isn’t good enough.
That
righteousness which is through faith, not because of faith. It
never comes because of faith. We have the Greek preposition dia here. This is so important. I think
I learned this in my first year of seminary. It was such a mind blowing
concept that if God had wanted to say because of faith which would make faith
the cause of our salvation which would make faith efficacious or meritorious,
then the Scripture would have used the preposition dia
with the accusative case for pistis. It
would be dia pisten.
It’s not accusative. It is genitive. Dia
plus the genitive indicates means and not cause. It is a very simple
change in one or two letters and it would change the whole concept. It is
not saying that this is a righteousness that is because of faith. It is a
righteousness that is through faith. The merit isn’t in the faith.
The faith that saves isn’t a different kind of faith. The only thing that
makes it different is the object of faith which is Jesus Christ on the
cross. The object of your faith is the work of Christ on the cross.
That is what makes is salvific. It is not the kind of faith. Faith
in and of itself is merely the channel through which you appropriate something
else. It is the object of faith that is important.
The
righteousness which is what? From God by faith. The word
righteousness here is the word dikaiosune, a
word that we have talked about many times. It is that quality of absolute
perfection in God. It is the standard of His character. Our own
righteousness that which relates to this standard is not adequate. It is
only that righteousness which is from God that comes by faith. There we
have the Greek phrase dia plus the
genitive. Here it is epi plus the dative which is on the basis of
faith. It never says because of faith. It is either through faith
or on the basis of faith. It is never because of faith. The
preposition here for “from” is ek. It is
the other preposition for source. Apa
and ek overlapped. When both words
are used in all of these contexts for righteousness, we understand that it is
God’s righteousness itself. The righteousness that is from God, that has
its source from God is that which is imputed or credited to us. It is
never our righteousness. It never becomes our righteousness. It is
always His righteousness. It is that righteousness that saves us.
The
same thing is stated in Titus 3:5.
NKJ Titus
3:5 not by works of righteousness
which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing
of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
Notice
that salvation once again has a means. It is through regeneration and the
renewal of the Holy Spirit. These are synonymous concepts here. It
is the Holy Spirit that produces the regeneration and the rebirth at the time
of faith in Christ.
NKJ Galatians
2:16 "knowing that a man is not
justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have
believed in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not
by the works of the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be
justified.
This
is the foundational message of justification. It is justification related
to salvation. What does that mean for your spiritual life? What it means
for your spiritual life is that after you are saved what you possess is perfect
righteousness. God is never looking at your experiential righteousness as
the cause of His blessing.
Here
we have the righteousness and justice of God. The righteousness is the
standard. Justice is the application of that standard to His creatures.
But in the box we have every one of us. We have minus
R. We don’t meet that standard. We have the cross of Christ.
Christ is perfectly righteous. When He is crucified on the cross, the
Father imputes to Him our unrighteousness and Christ’s perfect righteousness is
imputed to us at salvation so that we are declared righteous. That is
everything that I have said up to this point.
God
the Father in His righteousness looks at the righteousness that we have from
Christ and declares us to be righteous. Now He blesses us with eternal
salvation. Why? Not because of anything we have done but
because we possess Christ’s righteousness. As God the Father gives and
distributes to us the blessings that He has already decided upon, it is not
because of our righteousness. It never is. That would be
legalism. We are good enough now that we are going to get what God is
giving us. God distributes it according to our maturity not because of
what we do. He is not going to give us blessings that we can’t handle
because we aren’t spiritually mature enough to handle it. You won’t give
some things to your 3 and 4 year old children because you know that they can’t
handle it. They would kill themselves if they had those things. As
you grow and mature you understand in grace and as a result of justification
what you have at salvation (that imputation of righteousness) is the basis for
every blessing that you get for the rest of your life. It is not because
you pray regularly. It is not because you go to church regularly.
It is not because you memorize 50 verses every year. That is great and we
should do those things because it is part of developing and maturing our
priesthood. But, that is not the cause of God’s blessing. We are
never ever going to be able to produce the kind of righteousness that we have
from Jesus Christ. That is the basis of our righteousness. If we
skip ahead to Hebrews 6:1 we realize that this is a fundamental issue for them,
the Jews who are tempted to go back under the Law. Galatians 2:16
It
is not by the works of the law that we are justified.
That
is what most Christians are trying to produce, works so that they can merit
blessing from God. We have to change our thinking. That is what the
writer is talking about here. This repentance from dead is works is
trying to do good deeds in order to impress God to get more blessing.
That is what most people are trying to do. They don’t understand that
they have all that they need in Jesus Christ. You just have to grow up a
little bit so that those blessing can be distributed.
Now
we come to our last verse.
NKJ Hebrews
5:14 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.
The
word there for full age is telios, maturity –
those who are of full age, those who are mature or complete. They
have grown up. That is where real life begins – in maturity. That is
where you really start enjoying all the privileges of your priesthood and your
ambassadorship and all of the assets that God gave you. Once you get to
maturity, you understand what they are and how to use them.
The
word hexis means skill, proficiency. That is
the repetition and successful practice of spiritual skills. It is the
opposite of those who are unskilled and haven’t been applying doctrine in their
lives. The mature are those who repeatedly and successfully
practice the spiritual skills and have their senses exercised or
disciplined.
It
is the Greek verb gumnazo, to train
naked. That is to remove all distractions, everything that would hinder
you in your spiritual growth. It is the same word used in I Timothy 4:7.
NKJ 1
Timothy 4:7 But reject profane and
old wives' fables, and exercise yourself toward godliness.
Fables
are things like evolution and all the kinds of motivational speaking that you
get from most pulpits.
That
is discipline yourself, gumnazo.
That
is toward spiritual maturity.
Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
Chastening
is divine discipline.
Afterward
it yields that process of gumnazo.
As
you go through this process you are trained to discern the difference between
that which is good (kalos) - the good
constitutionally good - and that which is evil(kakos)
- that which is worthless, bad and morally evil. So we learn to discern
the difference between good doctrine and false doctrine. You learn to
make good decisions from a position of strength. That position of
strength is because you have a reservoir of doctrine in your soul that produces
wisdom. It is on the basis of wisdom that you make good decisions.
If you regress, what happens? That wisdom gets lost. You lose the
advance of doctrine. You are no longer making good decisions and now
there is an accumulation of bad decisions and life begins to fall apart again.
As a result of this they are in that state. They have become
dull of hearing. They have regressed. But there is still hope. That
is the hope that he challenges them with in verses 1-3 of chapter 6.
This
we will do if God permits. There is a hold out there because God may not
permit it. That is the serious warning of the next few verses. You can
get so regressed is your spiritual life that nothing is going to pull you back
apart from an act from God. God can still do it, but nothing else
will. You can get yourself is such a position of spiritual regression
that there is no recovery and then you are going to die the sin unto
death. That is the warning of chapter 6. We will get there next
time.
Let’s
close in prayer.