12 By now you should be teachers. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the first things you need to know from God’s Word. You still need milk instead of solid food. 13 Anyone who lives on milk cannot understand the teaching about being right with God. He is a baby. - Hebrews 5: 12-13 NIV
Spiritual milk is necessary for spiritual growth, obviously, and the apostle Peter encourages new believers to desire the pure unadulterated milk of the Word so they may grow (1 Peter 2:2). Milk represents the foundational teachings of our faith, the basics, as it were. We are to grow and go on to solid food and not be like the Hebrew believers who at the time they should have been teachers they still needed milk.
An infant doesn't understand the doctrine or teaching about righteousness; now if you read the preceding verses you will see that Jesus is our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek, the King of Salem. Melchizedek means - King of Righteousness, isn't that interesting? So if you understand that you are considered righteous before God, not because of what you do but rather because of what Jesus (Our High Priest, the King of Righteousness) has done, then you are well on your way to spiritual maturity.
The Holy Spirit in Hebrews desired to tell them a lot more about Jesus as Melchizedek but was limited by their dullness of hearing. What causes dullness of hearing? Jesus often said, "pay attention to what you hear". To do otherwise is to limit what He can do in, for and through us. We are responsible for our own spiritual growth, God doesn't play favorites, we all have equal access to Him and all He's provided through Christ. Let's not treat this wonderful salvation as merely an insurance against going to hell. Let's be all we can be in Him and do all we can in drawing others to be reconciled to God through Christ. We are instructed to occupy till He comes. We are the "Original Occupiers", ha!
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