J. Mitchell Lane

“For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.” – Hebrews 5:12-14

I was reading this tonight, and I realized how accurate of a description this is of most of the Church, and it struck me that this was also true of the Church in the first century. Many Churches are so concerned about trying to be “culturally relevant” that they water down the Word of God. They spend all of their time speaking (and I say speaking, not preaching, intentionally) about how to have a “better life” or how you can be a Christian and “still have fun”, or how “Christianity doesn’t limit you from enjoying the things of this world” that they miss the point. They are so concerned about entertaining people and shoving as many warm bodies through their “open doors” as the can that they forget what the Church really exists to accomplish.

What does the Church exist to accomplish? What is the Church? The Church is the body of believers of Christ. The Church is not the building, of course, but the believers inside it. It is the people who truly believe the Word of God and that Christ died for their sins, and the people who recognize that they are slaves for Christ. The Church exists to educate and equip each other to go out and preach the Word of God. “For though by this time you ought to be teachers…” I may be going out on a limb here (it shouldn’t really be a limb), but I’m going to say that the Church exists for the believers, and not to evangelize. The Church should dig down deep and exposit the Word of God. It should preach doctrine and Biblical Theology and equip it’s members to preach and evangelize to non-believers through their lives. It shouldn’t be watering down the gospel to milk and not solid food. Doing so starves and suffocates it’s members and doesn’t benefit non-believers because they won’t understand it anyway.

“…the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.” (2 Corinthians 4:4)

The Church does not exist for the entertainment of non-Christians. The Church exists for the edification of believers and the Glorification of Christ. The duty of ministering to non-Christians belongs to the Christians who have been well-fed with solid food through diligent preaching and exposition of the Word of God, and who’s salvation and credibility is blatantly apparent in the way that they live their lives.

“But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.”

“…by this time you ought to be teachers…”