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1. Teachers are placed together with those who can take solid food, have senses
exercised and are perfect. No articles could be written for this or any magazine did we
understand the word "perfect" in its ultimate sense. The passage does come to us very
solemnly however and says that the qualification for teaching is something more than
head knowledge and ready speech. In the Sermon on the Mount breaking the
commandments and doing them are associated with teaching men so, and also with losing
or gaining a position in the kingdom of heaven. James utters the warning, "My brethren,
be not many teachers, knowing that we shall receive a greater judgment" (3: 1). Instead
of progress there was retrogression.
"For even when for the time ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you
again certain rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God."
Ta stoicheia tes arches, "The rudiments of the beginning". Stoicheia are the initial
steps in knowledge, and also the "elements" of the natural world. See Gal. 4: 3, 9;
Col. 2: 8, 20; II Pet. 3: 10, 12. The verb stoicheo comes in Acts 21: 24, "Walkest
orderly"; Rom. 4: 12, "Walk in the steps of the faith"; Gal. 5: 25, "Walk by the Spirit";
Gal. 6: 16, Phil. 3: 16, "Walk by rule".
These Hebrew believers had progressed no further than the initial steps of the faith,
and indeed needed teaching in these things all over again. An intellectual grasp of the
teaching of men on any subject may be sufficient. The doctrine and faith of the early
church was rightly called "The Way", for it was walk as well as word, life as well as lip.
"Then shall we know, if we follow on to know the Lord" (Hos. 6: 3).
What these "first principles" were that they needed to be re-taught we shall see better
when we come to Heb. 6:
2. The spiritual infancy of these saints is indicated by the figurative use of foods for
doctrine. "Ye have need of milk and not of solid food".
The apostle had occasion to use this same figure when writing to the Corinthian
Church, and for similar reasons:--
"And I, brethren, could not speak unto you AS unto spiritual, but AS unto carnal, even
AS unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with milk and not with meat: for hitherto ye
were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able" (I Cor. 3: 1, 2).
The milk, the rudiments of the beginning of the oracles of God, to them had been
"Jesus Christ and Him crucified" (2: 2). "Howbeit", said the apostle, "we speak wisdom
among them that are PERFECT" (2: 6). The thought is resumed and developed in
chapter 13: 8-13.
Milk diet is natural and right for infants, but it has a purpose and a limit. "As
new-born babes desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may GROW thereby." The
apostle Peter adds a word to this that links it with Heb. 6: "If so be ye have tasted that
the Lord is gracious" (I Pet. 2: 2, 3). Some believe that there is a definite reference to the