How do you live as a mature Christian in a culture that celebrates adolescence? How do you maintain the gravity of the Gospel in an era when the most immature person in any given room is likely to be the most celebrated? Won’t you seem odd as a mature Christian in an age of Halo 3 and Facebook? Does sobriety mean joylessness?
We tend to assume, too often, that “maturity” in Scripture is something really spiritual Christians are called to. But the Book of Hebrews, along with the rest of the Bible, takes a very different approach. The much-quoted “milk to meat” verses in Hebrews, after all, are set in the context of a warning passage. Those who are “immature” are those who have not honed a sense of discernment.
It is that maturity that our study of Hebrews examines, in this installment of the series, Blood Brother: The Word of Christ in the Gospel of Hebrews, from Hebrews 5:8-6:3. You can listen to it here, and to the entire series here.
But, warning: the kind of maturity envisioned in Hebrews, a self-sacrificial gravity willing to suffer persecution, and, perhaps even more difficult, to have the discernment to know what’s going on around you, will make you seem increasingly odd in the Hall of Mirrors we know as contemporary North American culture.
