Hebrews 5:14 - Exposition

But solid food is for them that are of full age ( τελείων , equivalent to "perfect;" but in the sense of maturity of age or growth, in contrast with νήπιοι ; as in 1 Corinthians 14:20 ; of. 1 Corinthians 2:6 ; Ephesians 4:13 ; Philippians 3:15 ), those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil. Here the comparison is carried out with peculiar aptness. τὰ αἰσθητήρια in the illustration are the organs of sense. In the infant the digestive organs, in the first place, exercised in the beginning on milk, acquire through that exercise the power of assimilating more solid and more complex food, while at the same time its sensitive organs generally, also through exercise, become consciously discriminative of "good and evil" (cf. Isaiah 7:15 , Isaiah 7:16 , where "to know to refuse the evil and choose the good" denotes, as if proverbially, the age after early childhood). So, in the spiritual sphere, the mental faculties, exercised at first on simple truths, should acquire by practice the power of apprehending and distinguishing' between higher and more recondite ones. It was because the Hebrew Christians had failed thus to bring out their faculties that they were open to the charge of being still in a state of infancy.