It is the season for graduation. It is time for high school grads to walk across the stage to receive their diplomas, college grads will receive their degrees, and all of them will be moving on. The graduation ceremony celebrates accomplishment. We speak of what or where we have graduated from, but what about what we graduate to? Some are moving on to the next step, be that furthering their education or into employment. Graduation is meant to be more than what one is doing; it is who one is becoming.
Did you know that Christians are supposed to graduate too? We don’t mark such an occasion with the pomp and circumstance of an academic commencement, our graduation doesn’t even happen all at once. The author of Hebrews describes a graduation, a change away from easier teaching, and into deeper teaching, and ultimately into a life properly lived.
He says: “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.” (Hebrews 5:12-14).
God desires for us to graduate from simple understandings to deeper understanding and ultimately into a Godly life that distinguishes good from evil. You have been called into class by the one who called you into faith, Jesus Christ. Saved by his grace we are now called to learn from him, follow him, and put away childish ways. Paul also teaches the same way: “But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?” (1 Corinthians 3:1-3).
Have you graduated yet? It is easy to see where we have grown in our faith, putting away the ways of the world. One who has graduated from those former ways now walks according to the one who taught them. They work for peace and unity, they love neighbor and even enemy, they do not gossip or slander, and are not quarrelsome. They have moved on from what belongs in the past and walk into a future that is filled with promise. This month let us celebrate our graduates, and let us all become one ourselves.
In Christ,
