Hebrews chapter 5

vs 8

The idea this verse nibbles at is that Christ learned obedience to God, and that through suffering. Now, here's the thing - Christ cannot have been disobedient to God, ever, and yet retain his title as "sinless perfect guy". And if he had to learn obedience through suffering, then does that not mean that there was a stage where his obedience was something less than perfect obedience?

Of course, this assumes that the suffering that taught obedience was that of the cross rather than, say, that of coming to earth as a man in the first place. The fact is that human life is fraught with suffering. But then, we get told that God is hurt by the disobedience and hate towards him of his creations - isn't that suffering?

Calvin says that Christ was always obedient, but that he 'learned obedience' in that he experienced the ultimate obedience - that of death for the sake of the Father's will. It's not without its problems, but it's a fair solution.

vs 9

Then we hit another speed bump at the "made perfect" - almost the exact same problem. Some say it is the salvation that is being made perfect, some say that it should be retranslated as "sanctified" - the idea that Christ is being anointed into his role as high priest through the suffering - or that the suffering is being made perfect, that is, complete.

Again, an atemporal view of Christ softens the blow here a bit if you want to read it as "Christ was made perfect". Not sure how orthodox that would be, though.

What you do have to cope with is that it is Christ that becomes the source of salvation. Nothing else.

vs 10

And from here, we expect a lesson on why Melchi is so important. Do we get it though?

Not quite. Instead, we get something telling us that...

vs 11

I really like the TNIV here. The suggestion that it is not just a hearing problem or a learning disability, but a hardness of heart that prevents understanding. That the author has mentioned Melchi at all obviously means that the readers would have some understanding of what he means by this link. So that tells us something about the audience, if nothing else.

But we're about to learn a lot more about them.

vs 12

They've somehow lost their way. It is not that they aren't mature believers in age - that's why they should be teachers. But they are not mature in their understanding. They got a certain way, and stopped, or they got a certain way then retreated back to the old ways of judaism.

Obviously, for a teacher, this is not an ideal outcome.

vs 13

So you see the mature teaching, in the author's opinion, is that about righteousness. So an infant might know about salvation, but the mature Christian is the one who understands the teaching about righteousness. In this case, at least. I would probably accept that as a fairly universal principle.

vs 14

Now we get a bit of a mix in the metaphor here. It would seem that the mature are the ones that are able to learn righteousness, but it also seems that their maturity comes from judging right and wrong - which some might call righteousness. It might be a bit like a brick wall - you build the bricks on top of more bricks, and so you build righteousness on top of righteousness. But you've got to start somewhere, and it can't be by drinking milk. Now there's a mixed metaphor.