Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere humans? 1Cor. 3:1-3
In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, 2 instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Heb. 5:12-14, 6:1-2
As we teach student doctors how to do surgery, we really won't teach them much if they still don't know how to tie knots. When you do a C-section, you cut a hole in the uterus, take the baby and placenta out, and because the body preferentially shunts blood to grow a baby, the uterus bleeds like crazy, or as they say in Tennessee, "right smart". The goal is to sew the hole up as quickly as possible to save on blood loss, so if the student doctor takes a minute to tie a knot securing the anchor stitch, the patient can lose several hundred cc's of blood. Being a beginner at knot tying discourages you as a supervisor and instructor to teach them any advanced skills. It's like, "Why should I teach you a purse-string suture when you can't even tie a knot!" Of course, we as OB/GYN's are nicer than that but I guarantee you general surgeons aren't.
Paul is saying to the church in Corinth along with the writer of Hebrews that when he came, he gave them the basics. This is how you get saved, you repent of your sins and by faith receive the free gift of salvation, eternal life, and the Holy Spirit inside you through the death of Jesus on the cross and His resurrection from the grave. You become a new creation and start living like Jesus and fleeing sinful behavior.
He says that he would love to teach them so much more about this new life, spiritual gifts, Heaven, ethical behavior in a fallen world, church polity, etc. but he can't because they are still acting like they used to. It's as if they need to hear the basics again like flee from sin. You repented of your sins, why do you keep going back to doing them? And the sins they are committing are common sense sins; they are baby sins. He uses jealousy and quarreling as examples. Anyone who has had children knows that every toddler does these. It's not like, "is it a sin to eat fruit from my neighbor's tree if it fell in my yard"? That's complex. No, "is it a sin to be jealous of someone who is getting more attention than me"? Of course, obviously!
And what do we say when we keep messing up? "Well, I'm only human!" Paul says, stop with that excuse already in verse 3. You were only human prior to salvation. Now you are born anew into a regenerate state where the Holy Spirit, God himself, abides in us. We are no longer permitted to say, "I'm only human" because we're more than that!
Is the Bible too complicated for you? Do you find yourself not understanding much? Maybe you need to start acting on what you do understand. Spoken like a General Surgeon.
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