“The Milk of the Word”

BIBLE READING:1 Corinthians 3

Paul judges the Corinthians as weak based upon their behaviors and attitudes, which reflected no spiritual progress. He "fed" these immature Christians elementary knowledge because things of greater depth would have gone unappreciated, misunderstood, and unused. Our spiritual “diet” is directly tied to growth in understanding, behavior, and attitude.  We would never consider feeding an infant from our plate at the table.  A baby doesn't have the "growth" to handle such food and must gradually grow into the ability to east solid food.

In I Corinthians 3, the embarrassing immaturity that required him to feed the people like babies also produced strife and factions in the congregation, proving that the people were far more carnal than converted. The account in Hebrews is more complex: The people had once been more mature but had regressed. It is a situation vaguely similar to elderly people becoming afflicted with dementia, except that faith, love, character, conduct, and attitude were being lost rather than mental faculties, resulting in those people drifting aimlessly.

An insufficient spiritual diet appears in the next chapter. Paul tells them that their problems are directly related to being lazy. Dull in the phrase "dull of hearing" in Hebrews 5:11 is more closely related to "sluggish" or "slothful." It is translated as such in Hebrews 6:12, ". . . that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises."

Paul charges them with being lazy listeners; they are not putting forth the effort to meditate and apply what was taught. They are, at best, merely accepting. Not using what they heard was proof enough for Paul to understand they were not thinking through the seriousness or the practical applications of the teachings. They are not putting the new message they were hearing alongside of their previous knowledge, and the result was a lack of faith and a consequent faithlessness. His rebuke is far more serious than the one in I Corinthians 3 because these people are older in the faith. They have wasted a large amount of time that would have been far better spent on spiritual growth.

Paul attempts to shame and shock them into realizing how far they had slipped by calling these grown people—some of them undoubtedly elderly—infants. He goes so far as to tell them they are unacquainted with and unskilled in the teaching on righteousness. He attributes them to a particular trait of infants: they did not understand the difference between right and wrong, a characteristic that defines immaturity. A parent must instruct and chasten a child until it understands.

The Bible provides ample evidence that a poor spiritual diet results in a spiritually weak and diseased person, just as a poor physical diet works to erode and eventually destroy a person's physical vitality. Similarly, we can see that a person can be in good spiritual health but lose it through laziness or another form of neglect. Just as a mature adult needs good, solid nourishment to maintain vitality and remain free of disease, the spiritual parallel follows. To grow to spiritual maturity and vitality, a mature Christian needs solid, spiritual nourishment, assimilated and actively applied, to continue growing and prevent regressing, as opposed to the Hebrews sluggish spiritual deterioration.