Milk is nature's most complete single food. It contains all that a newborn needs in the first phase of its life outside the womb. It is the best source of the most abundant mineral in the body: calcium. A steady supply of calcium is crucial so that the body can draw from it at any time because bones—which comprise over 90% of the body's calcium—are living tissues that are constantly being reabsorbed and reformed.1
Milk also offers up rich quantities of phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and Vitamin D. Creatures as diverse as whales, horses, bats and human beings are capable of living on a diet of only milk for a long period of time. An infant doesn't have to hunt, harvest or even chew to obtain nourishment. The newborn just reaches out, snuggles up, or else whines loud enough to alert its mother.
The pattern of postnatal survival is intricately, divinely and awesomely designed— biologically, psychologically, socially and spiritually. A nursing mother is the earliest channel of life itself for a cognitive being.2 A child learns its most fundamental behaviours and builds up its earliest rationale for survival as it bonds with its mother.
Breastfeeding infant, by Ken Hammond, from Wikimedia commons
Much about milk links it to life. Milk is sustenance and the conduit of life itself at the beginning. It is the chemical medium which passes the essentials on to the next generation. Without it we would die. But if it remains our only form of nourishment, we will also die.
An image of our spiritual learning and growth
The pattern of mother and babe can be extended to that of teacher and pupil, master and apprentice, apostle and disciple. Whoever was responsible for the disciples of Christ addressed in the letter of Hebrews complained that they had become “dull of hearing.” This is Bible-speak for dim-witted. (When was the last time your pastor spoke so directly?) “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again… You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled (Heb 5:11-14).”
The whole discussion was preceded by a discourse concerning the priestly service of Christ, the mystery of his submission to God and the priestly order of Melchizedek—things on which the writer would have loved to elaborate, except for the immaturity of those he appealed to. They were simply unable to digest regular food. No normal parent would try to force a porterhouse steak on its unweaned child, but any parent would surely be worried and frustrated if at age 10 or 12 that same child were unable to join the adults at the dinner table.
Significantly, the things the writer of Hebrews lumps into the ‘milk’ category pertain to individual salvation: “repentance from dead works, faith toward God… ablutions3, laying on of hands, resurrection of the dead and eternal judgment.” What they were not able to handle were things pertaining to God's purposes. That’s right, God's agenda, not the sinner’s. Not man’s agenda and not even the Bible-believing Christian’s. It’s as if forsaking an ungodly lifestyle, getting saved, baptised and filled with God's Spirit are preliminaries—a mere prelude to what God is ultimately aiming at.
Attaining maturity
It seems as if the truly exalted things are those having nothing to do with salvation, justification by faith or moral living, things a babe is focused on. But the mature can handle “solid food.” The mature have their “faculties (senses) trained by practice.” The mature have tempered their minds by repeated exposure to the tough issues. They have a developed sense of discernment which is able on its own to tell what to accept and what to throw out. Knowing what to reject, knowing what to keep—the desire of Paul's heart for the followers of Christ: “…until we all attain to mature manhood, to the stature of the fullness of Christ…so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine (Eph 4:14).”
It’s as if forsaking an ungodly lifestyle, getting saved, baptised and filled with God's Spirit are preliminaries—a mere prelude to what God is ultimately aiming at.
Babes in faith are often unnerved when rigorous thinking is demanded of them. Suggest to them God is not satisfied with just saving them from sin—propose to them that God's purposes extend beyond getting ‘born again’, more important than individual redemption and you will have one distraught saint on your hands. Test a baby by shaking its Sunday School traditions and it will become fitful and soon cry out: ENOUGH!!! I WANT MILK!!!
It's different with the mature. The mature are not upset, distracted or led astray by all the religious voices they hear. Maturity has been around the block and heard it all before, and it has learned through experience the voice of the shepherd. These people are no longer kids, but sons in the Hebrew understanding of the word, which meant ‘heir and successor’. But they didn't get there by sucking down milk year after year, provided by someone older.
The solution to stunted growth is not greater quantities of milk but a different diet. A change is required to solid food. The children of Israel were graduated to manna, “which they did not know, nor did their fathers know (Deut 8:3).”
It's no different for anyone else God calls. The sermons, studies, prayer, worship, fellowship and lifestyle have to change. It all must move on from milk to meat. Paul expressed his concern that those he strove for learn “what are the riches of Christ's glorious inheritance…” (Eph 1:18) What was he so concerned about? Weren't they already born again? Didn't they already have a knowledge of Christ? Weren't they already aware of the hope he had called them to? Perhaps not. Otherwise, it's difficult to explain why he was so prepossessed by these things, so earnest that he may “present them fully grown.”
About our Father’s business
Paul wasn't satisfied with a place in heaven for those he so laboured with and fretted over. Why? Because God wanted them fully grown. Not just saved, not just happy. But able to grasp and take care of their Father's business. Competent enough to “inherit the Earth.” Paul's words indicate that he'd glimpsed something greater, and there would be a price to pay for shallow victory.
Of course, a babe can never understand that. The unweaned child is pleased as punch with milk—sometimes with a little something added, maybe with some gentle rocking (preaching) or music (worship team) accompanying it, but milk all the same. Easily obtainable, easily digested, familiar, fluid and fattening milk!
Why all the fuss about Christ's submission to God? The priesthood of Melchizedek? Love that “doesn't seek its own advantage”? But ah, solid food! The ‘heavy stuff’ is what God wants us to understand. He offers up a feast where grown-up food is served! The baby brought along to a barbecue is perfectly indifferent to the thick, juicy strips of meat on the grill; it can't begin to imagine anything better than Mum's breast. It is alive and cared for—that's all it knows.
All the while its father looks on envisioning a craftsman, physician, artist or teacher—the child itself having become a parent one day. He rejoices over the babe, but knows full well that only in adulthood will it ever deliver the goods. The father looks ahead to the child having become a son in the Hebrew sense—able and about its father's business.
The father looks ahead to the child having become a son in the Hebrew sense—able and about its father's business.
Genesis records that “Noah was a righteous man… and he walked faithfully with God.” (Gen 6:9) Regarding Abraham however, it is written that he walked before God. (Gen 48:15). Rabbinical sources noticed the subtle difference between Noah and Abraham exposed by the two prepositions, i.e. Noah walking with God and Abraham walking before God and concluded that Abraham was more mature than Noah.
They reasoned by analogy that a father with a very young son will hold the child's hand as they walk. When the son is somewhat older, the father lets him walk on ahead, observing where he goes and granting him more leeway in the decisions he makes.
Have we moved on from an exclusive diet of milk – comforting, reassuring (and essential) words of love and salvation, to learn to eat meat – to understand and be about our Father’s business. Let us feed upon our Lord and his word, so that we can know his purposes and can walk before him.
Notes
1 Other foods contain calcium, but you'd have to eat 3 servings of spinach, 20 servings of lettuce, 9 boiled eggs or 5 large servings of broccoli to get the calcium found in a half pint of semi-skimmed milk!
2 The book of Genesis calls Eve the mother of the living.
3 Ceremonial washings, i.e. baptisms of various kinds.
