"11 About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. 14 But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil."
Hebrews 5:11-14
The New Translation puts 11 thus: "About Melchizidek we have much to say, much that is difficult to explain now that you have grown so dull of hearing". There is a great challenge for us here. Hebrews is an epistle we do not read very much because it is so difficult to understand. But when we say this we are in fact passing judgment on ourselves according to the Apostle. He says that his teaching is difficult only to those whose ears are dull of hearing and not truly open to the gracious word of the Lord. This is only too true of the teaching of the gospel in general - does not Paul take the same line in 1 Corinthians 2, 3? - and we may learn from this that the real problem in our lack of grasp and understanding of spiritual truths is not that we are inadequately endowed with intellectual gifts, but that we have refused to grow up spiritually. The Apostle's point here is not that they are babes in Christ - for to be a newborn babe in grace is a natural stage, albeit the initial one, of Christian experience - but that they have remained babes when they should have been growing steadily and developing senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Arrested development is just as tragic and heartbreaking in the spiritual life as it is in the natural. It is a living death, and a travesty of what life ought to be.