Meat for Men
C. F. Deems, D. D. Hebrews 5:12-14 For when for the time you ought to be teachers… The importance of cultivating a profound knowledge of the highest and deepest truths may be brought home to us by the following considerations — 1. It is a sin to neglect any part of God's oracles. To select portions for study and obedience is to be disobedient, as it is setting up of our individual private judgment against the wisdom and the will of the infinite Heavenly Father. It furthermore argues a want of love for truth. This love for truth it is indispensable to cultivate. It is really more important than a nervous carefulness to be exact in all our Statements, and accurate in the use of our words. 2. Profound spiritual knowledge is necessary, in order to teach others. Every man is a teacher, whether he will be or not; but every man ought to feel the importance and privilege of being able to give his fellowman some help, however small, out of the darkness into the light. 3. It is necessary to keep us in times when false doctrines are influential. It does not require great acquisitions of worldly learning to become profoundly versed in spiritual things. A simple, obedient, trusting heart, going unaffectedly to the Eternal Spirit of truth, will be led to such knowledge of the key-truth as will enable him to unlock all the caskets as he comes to them. 4. The profounder one's knowledge of the greatest Divine truths, the greater one's humility. If all a man knows of the Bible is the original tongues in which it was written, its history, its chronology, its literature, he may be a self-conceited sciolist: but when he comes to know Him for whom were all things and by whom are all things, he falls naturally into his place, and the things that are seen and temporal will yield in his estimation to the things which are unseen and eternal, and he becomes simple in his love for the truth, especially of the commanding truth of the universe. 5. This profound knowledge of Divine truth increases the lovingness of a man's nature. Knowledge and love are twins. It was a pagan idea that love should be a blind god. No eyes quicker than the eyes of love to see all that is good and sweet in the beloved. 6. Sectarianism owes its existence to a want of knowledge of the highest central truths. Deep knowledge of the highest spiritual things is to all Christians a law of gravitation, keeping them in their orbit. 7. The oracles of God are the instruments of our personal sanctification. We are, through the Spirit, to learn the truth; and this truth will show us what is righteousness, the right; and we are to purify our spirits, not by some supposed act of consecration in a moment of enthusiasm, however honest avid good that enthusiasm may be, but by constant obedience to the truth, by the aid of the Spirit of God. 8. Our surest present enjoyment, and our happiest views of the future of the Church, depend on our knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus. The more a Christian knows of the greatness, and goodness, and wisdom, and love of Jesus, of all the grace that is to come to him in this world, and all She glory that is to come to him in the eternal world, through Jesus, the more his happiness deepens. (C. F. Deems, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again which be the first principles of the oracles of God; and are become such as have need of milk, and not of strong meat. WEB: For although by this time you should be teachers, you again need to have someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the oracles of God. You have come to need milk, and not solid food.