Hebrews 5:11–6:3 Hebrews has identified Jesus as the great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, shared genuinely in human weakness, endured testing without sin, and been appointed by God according to the order of Melchizedek. Psalm 110 supplied the declaration on which that final claim rests: “You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.”
The argument has reached the point where the significance of that priestly order needs to be explained. Instead of immediately explaining it, Hebrews confronts the condition of the people who are supposed to understand it.
Hebrews 5:11–14 (WEB) About him we have many words to say, and hard to interpret, seeing you have become dull of hearing. For although by this time you ought to be teachers, you again need to have someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the revelations of God.
You have come to need milk, and not solid food. For everyone who lives on milk is not experienced in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby. But solid food is for those who are full grown, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.
The difficulty Hebrews identifies does not lie primarily in Melchizedek. The subject is demanding, but the author places responsibility upon his hearers because they “have become dull of hearing.” Their inability to follow the argument is the result of arrested development. Enough time has passed that they should possess greater understanding than they presently demonstrate. This diagnosis matters because Hebrews has repeatedly emphasized hearing. The wilderness generation heard God’s voice but responded with unbelief. Psalm 95 warned, “Today if you will hear his voice, don’t harden your hearts.” The good news preached to Israel did not profit them because the word they heard was not joined with faith. God’s word remains living and active, penetrating and discerning the heart.
Hearing in Hebrews therefore involves more than the physical reception of information. God speaks, and His people are responsible for receiving His word with faith and allowing it to shape their lives. The readers have not simply failed to encounter enough teaching; they have become poor hearers of teaching they have already received.
You Have Become Dull of Hearing The expression translated “dull” carries the idea of sluggishness or laziness. Hebrews uses the related adjective again in 6:12 when warning its readers not to become sluggish but to imitate those who inherit the promises through faith and patience. The problem is therefore not an intellectual limitation over which the hearers have no control. They have become spiritually unresponsive in a way that has impaired their ability to engage with more substantial instruction.
The wording “have become” is significant. Hebrews does not describe them as people who have always been incapable of understanding. Some deterioration has occurred, and their present condition represents movement in the wrong direction. This makes the passage particularly important for understanding biblical maturity. Time alone does not produce it. A person can spend years around Scripture without becoming increasingly competent in Scripture. Exposure creates opportunity for growth, but repeated exposure without attentive hearing can coexist with remarkable immaturity.
That possibility should not be surprising after the wilderness argument. Israel possessed extraordinary privileges. The people heard God, witnessed His works, received His provision, and lived within the covenant community, yet those privileges did not automatically produce faithfulness. Hebrews now applies a similar principle to Christian instruction. Being around the word does not guarantee that someone is becoming skilled in the word. The author measures the readers against what their time and opportunity should reasonably have produced.
“For although by this time you ought to be teachers…” The statement does not necessarily mean every Christian should eventually occupy a formal teaching office. The New Testament recognizes particular teachers within the church and warns that teaching carries special responsibility. Hebrews is addressing a more basic expectation: mature Christians should eventually become capable of communicating the faith they have learned rather than remaining permanently dependent upon someone else to explain its foundations to them. Receiving instruction should gradually produce sufficient understanding to communicate that instruction to others, while the hearers addressed by Hebrews have instead reached the point where they require renewed instruction in material they have already been taught.
The First Principles Hebrews describes their condition sharply:
“…you again need to have someone teach you the rudiments of the first principles of the revelations of God.” The expression refers to elementary matters, the foundational components from which further understanding should develop. The problem is not that elementary teaching is bad or unnecessary. Foundations are essential precisely because everything else depends upon them. A person who despises foundational doctrine in pursuit of supposedly deeper knowledge has misunderstood maturity just as badly as the person who refuses to progress beyond the foundation.
The problem is contained in the word again. These people have already received instruction in the fundamentals. Their need to return to them results from failure to develop from what they had learned. The foundation that should have supported further construction has become material requiring another lesson. Christian teaching necessarily involves repetition. Scripture itself repeats essential truths, and faithful teachers regularly revisit foundational doctrines. Hebrews is not criticizing repetition as though mature believers should become bored whenever they hear the gospel or encounter familiar teaching. The criticism concerns dependency. The readers require elementary instruction because they have not become competent enough to proceed from it. Hebrews expresses the difference through one of Scripture’s most familiar metaphors for spiritual development: they need milk rather than solid food.
Milk and Solid Food Milk is appropriate food for an infant. Its inadequacy appears only when someone who should have matured remains dependent upon it.
“For everyone who lives on milk is not experienced in the word of righteousness, for he is a baby.”
The metaphor should not be turned into a rigid classification system in which certain biblical doctrines count as milk and others count as meat according to how complicated they appear. Hebrews itself prevents such a simplistic division. The elementary matters listed in the following verses include repentance, faith, baptisms, laying on of hands, resurrection, and eternal judgment. Those subjects can sustain substantial theological investigation. Their classification as elementary concerns their foundational place in Christian instruction rather than their inability to be studied deeply.
Likewise, “solid food” is not secret information reserved for an advanced class of Christians. Hebrews is not introducing a hidden level of Christianity available to people who have graduated beyond ordinary believers. The solid food immediately under discussion concerns the deeper significance of Christ’s priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. It is more developed instruction concerning the same Christ already confessed by the church.
A mature reader should be able to follow an argument from Genesis through the Psalms into the work of Christ. The appearance of Melchizedek in Genesis 14, the declaration of Psalm 110, the structure of the Levitical priesthood, and the identity of Jesus are not unrelated pieces of biblical information. Hebrews reads them within the unfolding purposes of God and expects its hearers to become capable of following that reasoning.
Their dependence upon milk means they are “not experienced in the word of righteousness.” The problem is not merely that they cannot answer enough theological questions correctly. They lack practiced competence in handling and responding to God’s word, while those who are mature have developed that competence through continued use.
Trained by Practice “But solid food is for those who are full grown, who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.”
The word translated “exercised” belongs to the language of disciplined training and gives English the word “gymnasium” through its Greek ancestry. Hebrews describes faculties that have been trained through repeated use. Discernment develops through practice rather than appearing automatically after sufficient time has elapsed. The mature person has repeatedly encountered God’s word, understood it, believed it, applied it, tested judgments against it, corrected mistaken conclusions, and learned to distinguish what accords with God’s revelation from what does not. Scripture becomes increasingly familiar not merely because its words have been encountered many times but because the believer has learned how those words function together.
Biblical maturity therefore cannot be measured simply by the quantity of information someone possesses. A person may accumulate enormous amounts of religious information while remaining remarkably poor at discernment. Facts can be memorized without learning how to reason from Scripture, distinguish an implication from an assertion, recognize a passage being removed from context, or examine whether a familiar religious claim actually follows from what God has said.
The senses are trained “to discern good and evil.” The language concerns moral discernment, but within this context moral judgment cannot be separated from skill in God’s word. God’s revelation provides the categories through which His people learn to recognize what is faithful and what is not. Mature judgment develops as those categories are repeatedly exercised.
This kind of discernment is particularly important because error rarely announces itself by admitting that it contradicts Scripture. It frequently arrives carrying biblical vocabulary, familiar phrases, plausible arguments, and enough truth to appear credible. Immaturity leaves people dependent upon someone else to tell them what to think whenever competing claims arise. Maturity develops the ability to examine those claims through trained familiarity with God’s word. Faithful teaching consequently aims to produce people increasingly capable of examining teaching rather than remaining permanently dependent upon the teacher.
Leaving the Elementary Teaching The chapter division can obscure the continuity of the argument. Hebrews 6:1 begins with a conclusion drawn directly from the diagnosis in 5:11–14.
Hebrews 6:1–3 (WEB) Therefore leaving the teaching of the first principles of Christ, let’s press on to perfection—not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works, of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. This will we do, if God permits. “Leaving” the elementary teaching does not mean abandoning it, rejecting it, or eventually becoming too sophisticated for the gospel. The construction metaphor that follows makes the meaning clear. Hebrews speaks of a foundation, and builders leave the foundation in the sense that construction proceeds from it rather than in the sense that they tear it out of the ground. The elementary teaching concerning Christ remains underneath everything that follows. Mature doctrine does not replace the foundation but builds upon it. The problem with the readers is that construction has repeatedly stalled at ground level.
Hebrews therefore calls them to “press on to perfection.” The noun is related to the perfection language already used of
Christ and carries the idea of maturity or completion. In this context, the contrast with infancy makes maturity especially prominent. The readers who still require milk are to move toward the developed understanding appropriate to those who have been trained through use.
The exhortation is corporate: “let’s press on.” The author places himself within the movement toward the fuller instruction he intends to provide. Christian maturity is not presented as the achievement of isolated intellectual specialists but as the proper direction of the community hearing God’s word.
Repentance From Dead Works and Faith Toward God Hebrews identifies several elements belonging to the foundation. The first pair is “repentance from dead works” and “faith toward God.” Repentance and faith naturally belong together. Repentance turns away from what is contrary to God, while faith turns toward Him in trust. The language fits the emphasis Hebrews has already placed upon unbelief and obedience. Israel’s failure in the wilderness arose because the people did not trust the God who had spoken, and the Christian response to God’s revelation likewise involves faith rather than mere awareness.
“Dead works” has received several interpretations. Some understand it primarily as sinful actions that produce death, while others connect it more specifically with works incapable of giving life or cleansing the conscience. Hebrews will use the expression again in 9:14, where Christ’s blood cleanses the conscience “from dead works to serve the living God.”
The phrase likely carries more than a simple reference to particularly wicked deeds. Whatever cannot produce the life and cleansing found in God belongs to the realm from which repentance turns.
The contrast with “faith toward God” is especially appropriate in a letter built around the danger of unbelief. The foundation of Christian instruction begins with a reorientation toward the living God rather than confidence in what cannot give life. Repentance and faith belong to that foundation and remain essential as the believer grows from it.
Instructions About Washings The next item is translated in the WEB as “the teaching of baptisms.”
The Greek uses the plural baptismōn, which can refer to washings or ritual cleansings as well as baptism. The plural has therefore produced considerable discussion about exactly which practices Hebrews has in view. The broader argument of Hebrews makes Jewish purification practices particularly relevant. Ritual washings belonged to the world from which Hebrews draws much of its sanctuary and covenantal imagery, and 9:10 will refer to “various washings” using the same noun. Christian baptism may also belong within the instructional background assumed by the author, especially because baptism would naturally have formed part of early Christian initiation.
The wording does not require us to settle every possible referent before recognizing the larger point. Instruction concerning cleansing rites and their significance belonged to the foundational material the hearers had already received. Hebrews expects them to understand these matters well enough to proceed into a fuller explanation of the cleansing and access accomplished through Christ.
This is another place where the letter’s categories matter. Hebrews does not treat outward ritual as meaningless, but neither does it permit ritual participation to substitute for the realities toward which God’s appointed signs point. The entire comparison between the old covenant sanctuary and
Christ’s priesthood depends upon understanding both the reality of the earlier institutions and their limitations.
Laying on of Hands The laying on of hands appears in several contexts throughout Scripture. It can accompany blessing, identification, commissioning, the reception of particular ministries, and other acts of communal recognition. The Old Testament sacrificial system also included laying hands upon sacrificial animals, creating another possible point of familiarity for hearers immersed in Jewish practice.
Hebrews does not explain which particular use belongs to the elementary instruction because its hearers apparently did not need the explanation. The practice belonged to a recognized foundation already taught within the community. That lack of elaboration should make interpreters cautious about constructing elaborate doctrines from the list. Hebrews is reminding its readers of material they know, not supplying later readers with a complete manual explaining every item. Responsible interpretation should distinguish what the text clearly identifies from questions the text leaves unanswered. For the argument of Hebrews, the relevant point is that these practices and beliefs belong to foundational instruction that should already support further growth.
Resurrection of the Dead Resurrection belongs unmistakably to the foundation. Christian hope is bodily and eschatological. Death does not receive the final word over human beings. Hebrews has already presented Jesus as the One who tasted death and broke the power of the one who had the power of death.
His own resurrection stands behind the description of God as the One able to save Him out of death and behind His continuing priestly life in the presence of God.
The resurrection of the dead also places human life within a future accountability that reaches beyond present circumstances. The wilderness generation died outside the promised land, but Hebrews is concerned with realities larger than physical entrance into Canaan. God’s purposes move toward resurrection, judgment, and the fulfillment of promises that cannot be exhausted within ordinary mortal life.
A Christian understanding of salvation that ends with present religious experience would therefore be incomplete at the foundational level. The elementary teaching already looks toward what God will do with the dead.
Eternal Judgment The final item listed is “eternal judgment.” Judgment belongs to elementary Christian teaching because the gospel announces not merely present forgiveness but a decisive divine verdict concerning human beings. Hebrews has already described everything as naked and exposed before the eyes of the One to whom an account must be given. God’s grace does not require pretending judgment is unreal. The throne approached through Christ is the throne of the same God before whom every creature stands exposed.
The adjective “eternal” identifies judgment with the final order rather than a temporary disciplinary event within history. The precise nature of final punishment is not developed in this passage, and the phrase should not be forced to answer questions Hebrews is not addressing here.
What belongs to the foundation is the reality that God judges and that His judgment possesses final eschatological significance. Repentance, faith, cleansing, laying on of hands, resurrection, and judgment together provide a glimpse of what early foundational instruction could contain. The list moves from conversion and initiation toward resurrection and final accountability, locating the Christian within the movement from turning toward God to standing before Him at the consummation. These truths remain the foundation upon which mature understanding is constructed, while the continual need to have that foundation reconstructed indicates the arrested development Hebrews has identified.
If God Permits The section closes with a brief qualification:
“This will we do, if God permits.” The author intends to proceed toward maturity with his hearers, but even that progress remains dependent upon God. Human diligence and divine dependence are not competitors in Hebrews. The same letter can command people to pay attention, hold fast, exhort one another, be diligent, draw near, and press on while recognizing that their progress occurs under God’s sovereign permission.
The qualification also carries additional weight because of the warning that surrounds it. Spiritual maturity is not a self-directed educational project in which enough effort guarantees advancement. God is not merely the subject being studied; He is the living God addressing the hearers through His word. Growth therefore occurs within a relationship of dependence and obedience, and the fuller understanding of Christ’s priesthood toward which Hebrews is moving cannot be separated from attentive hearing.
From Milk to Maturity Hebrews 5:11–6:3 gives a demanding picture of Christian growth because it refuses to measure maturity by longevity, familiarity, enthusiasm, or the amount of religious information accumulated. The readers have been Christians long enough that their development should be visible in their ability to understand and communicate the faith. Instead, they have become dull of hearing and require renewed instruction in matters that should already function as their foundation.
Their condition is not corrected by searching for novelty. Hebrews does not respond to their immaturity by offering secret revelation, speculative mysteries, or doctrines unavailable to ordinary Christians. The solid food they need is a fuller understanding of the Christ they already confess.
Their growth will come through learning to follow Scripture’s argument more carefully, recognizing how God’s revelation fits together, and developing discernment through repeated use.
The milk and solid food metaphor therefore does not divide Christianity into boring elementary truths and exciting advanced truths. The difference lies substantially in the hearer’s capacity to understand and use what God has revealed. A mature believer can return to foundational truths without needing the foundation rebuilt. Repentance, faith, resurrection, and judgment never cease being important, but they become the ground upon which increasingly developed understanding is constructed.
That development also has a practical result. Those who are mature have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Their familiarity with God’s word has become practiced judgment. They are increasingly capable of recognizing what follows from Scripture, what contradicts it, what merely borrows its vocabulary, and what requires further examination. They can receive teaching without being permanently dependent upon the teacher because they have learned to examine what they hear.
Hebrews considers that kind of development normal enough to rebuke its absence. “By this time you ought to be teachers” assumes that Christian instruction is supposed to produce Christians capable of handling Christian truth with increasing competence. The church should not consist indefinitely of a small group preparing spiritual food for everyone else while the majority remains incapable of feeding anyone, including themselves.
The solution is not contempt for milk. Babies need milk, foundations must be laid, and every Christian begins by receiving what someone else has taught. The problem arises when infancy becomes a permanent condition. God has given His people more than a collection of elementary propositions to memorize. He has given a revelation that unfolds across covenants, promises, sacrifices, kings, priests, prophets, Psalms, and ultimately His Son. Understanding that revelation requires attention, practice, correction, patience, and the disciplined use through which discernment develops.
The foundation has already been laid for the readers of Hebrews, and the argument now requires them to build upon it. Their movement from dependency toward practiced understanding and from spiritual infancy toward maturity will determine whether they are prepared to follow the fuller account of Christ’s priesthood that the foundation was always meant to support.