Wherein it is a Grace or Disgrace to be Like Children
W. Gouge. Hebrews 5:12-14 For when for the time you ought to be teachers… I. THE FORMER RESPECTS ARE THESE — 1. Simplicity, honesty, plainness, truth. These graces are implied to be in children (Isaiah 11:8). We have a proverb that children will tell truth. 2. Humility and meekness. Herein doth Christ set forth children as a pattern (Matthew 18:4). So doth the Psalmist (Psalm 131:2). 3. Freedom from rancour, malice, envy, and such like violent and evil passions (1 Corinthians 14:20). 4. Desire of milk whereby they are nourished (1 Peter 2:2). 5. Growing and increasing (1 Peter 2:2). Childhood is a growing age. When men come to man-age they use to stand at a stay. 6. Taking notice of their parents, and depending on them. Lambs, calves, and other young ones know their own dams, and will quickly find them out in a great flock or herd. The prophet showeth that the ox and ass, the most brutish of brutes, know where they are fed (Isaiah 1:3). "Your Heavenly Father knoweth that you have need of these things" (Matthew 6:31). Will you not then depend on Him? 7. Subjection to their parents' will, which is a law to children (1 Peter 1:14), and seeking their parents' honour (Malachi 1:6). Christ hath made Himself a pattern herein (Luke 2:51). 8. Care to imitate their parents, and seeking to be like them (John 8:39; Romans 4:12; 1 Peter 1:16, 17; Ephesians 5:1; Matthew 5:48). 9. Retaining a childlike affection to their parents, and reverencing them, though they correct them (Hebrews 12:9). 10. Returning to them after they have offended them (Luke 15:18). That affection which a child conceiveth to be in his parents towards him, will be in him towards his parents. II. THE RESPECTS WHEREIN IT IS DISCOMMENDABLE AND DISGRACEFUL TO BE AS CHILDREN, are such as these — 1. Ignorance and want of capacity (1 Corinthians 14:20). 2. Vanity and delighting in toys, as painted pears, rattles, and such like. "When I became a man I put away childish, things" (1 Corinthians 13:11). 3. Levity, inconstancy (Ephesians 4:14). We say of a child that it is won with a nut, and lost with the shell. 4. Disability to manage weighty affairs (Ecclesiastes 10:16; Isaiah 3:4; Jeremiah 1:6). 5. Non-proficiency, and a small measure of knowledge, faith, and other graces. In this respect children are here opposed to men well grown; and babes are counted carnal, and opposed to such as are spiritual. This last respect is here especially meant. (W. Gouge.) 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.