Like so many passages, Hebrews 5:11-14 is a treasure trove for personal application. This passage particularly provides a number of principles regarding spiritual growth and maturity. Consider just a few applications.

• We’re not going to understand everything from the start. The Hebrew writer makes a point regarding the things he is discussing (Melchizedek’s relationship to Christ), that they are difficult for his readers to understand. True, the Hebrew Christians were to blame for their inability to understand, but the same could legitimately be said of someone new in the faith. Everything in the Bible is understandable at some point. However, we shouldn’t assume that we will suddenly know the meaning of all those things or get discouraged when we don’t. That’s what growth is all about.
• We can’t learn if we aren’t listening. Many claim to not get anything out of sermons or Bible classes. Often the people who cry most vocally about the lack of deep teaching are the ones in the deepest sleep on the pew or in the chair. The Hebrew writer said that he was having difficulty explaining things to them because they had become “dull of hearing.” The NIV put it differently when it rendered that phrase, “you no longer try to understand.”
• God has a plan for us to progress from students to teachers. The writer said that his audience “ought to be teachers.” He wasn’t just talking to the preacher or the elders. There is an absolute imperative that every Christian strives to reach the point where they can teach others, even if it isn’t in a public setting. In 2 Timothy 2:2, Paul told Timothy that he was to take the things that he had learned and teach them to faithful men who would be able to teach others also. There is a cycle of learning and teaching that has to go on. We don’t wait until we know everything to teach, but we need to start teaching once we know.
• To progress from milk to meat, we have to “accustom” ourselves to the word. Good teaching will consist of a mix of milk and meat. The only way for a Christian to break through the milk and get to the meat is to become familiar with God’s word. This is more than just sitting in the pew two or three times a week and letting God’s word wash over you as it comes out of the preacher’s mouth. This is a matter of getting in God’s word and understanding what it says and trying to come to grips with what it means. This is not a matter of reading your Bible; it’s a matter of studying your Bible to the best of your ability each and every day.
• Maturity comes from use of what has been learned. How do children learn to ride a bicycle? They ride them! A father can explain to his son about the mechanics of pedaling and braking until he’s blue in the face, but that child will never learn how to balance on a bike until he has actually tried to ride it. It’s no different with Christians. For us to truly understand God’s word in a practical way, we have to get out each day and live by God’s word. That means making each decision by asking the question, “What would God want me to do?”

These last two points present the keys to spiritual maturity. Maturity doesn’t come from faithful attendance in Bible classes and at the worship assembly, though those things are important. As mentioned above, it doesn’t come from “daily Bible reading,” though that is a worthwhile endeavor. Maturity comes from regular study of God’s word and regular use of it.

When we seek to understand Scripture, it should of necessity force us to read beyond just the passage at hand. If I want to understand Jesus’ statement, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me,” I need to look back to Psalm 22 and see how David used it in his psalm. If I want to understand Paul’s point in 1 Timothy 2 about the role of women, I need to go back to Genesis 3 to see what happened when Adam and Eve sinned. I need to go to passages like Proverbs 31 to see God’s “worthy woman.” I need to look ahead to chapter 5 where he talks about the treatment of widows and see how that connects with Paul’s statement about “saved through childbearing.”

When we make every decision according to God’s will, we will force ourselves to get in God’s word. After all, how else will we know what His will is? That means that we might just have to crack open our Bibles and see if the decisions we did make were the right ones. We might just need to look at a few pages of Scripture so that we can prepare ourselves for a long-term decision that has to be made.

Whatever the cause of our lack of maturity, one message is clear from this passage: God doesn’t want us to stay immature. Our daily goal should be to become more spiritually mature. If that isn’t our goal, maybe we need to re-evaluate our priorities.