Question:  Greg,

            I am a youth pastor and I have a question for you.

            In Hebrews 6, when we are told to leave the elementary teachings such as baptism and judgments, do you feel that those things should be what we teach our young people about first?

            Brett

Answer:  Dear Brett,

            This passage, as any other passage, should be seen within the light of its context.  The book of Hebrews was written to help Jewish Christians understand the superiority of Christ over Judaism—even cultural Judaism.  The book was helping prepare people who still looked more to the temple in Jerusalem than they did to the cross and the empty tomb.  The book was probably written in the early 60’s—and the Romans destroyed the temple a few years later, in 69-70.

            Everything the author stresses is a contrast between the old covenant and the new—and everything comes from at best a Jewish-Christian context.  Therefore this list should be seen as fundamental to both Jewish and Christian religions—noted New Testament scholar F.F. Bruce made that distinction.  So when the author noted that the readers should go on to solid food, he was not stressing going on to profound theological issues from the basis of this foundation.  But rather, he was stressing that the solid food of Jesus Christ, the foundation of all Christianity, did not reside in this list.  This list was “baby food”—not a foundation.

            Therefore, these verses are not prescriptive for a Christian foundation.  The verses in chapter five that this passage follows had urged people who should have been mature Christians to be just that.  The context of the book shows that they had not laid a foundation in Jesus Christ, but other, more peripheral areas, most specifically those that came out of their Jewish/old covenant culture.

            In Christ,

            Greg Albrecht