Here’s the problem I think is being addressed in my reading this morning: if we consider the gospel something that relates only to “getting saved” and is not an active dynamic in how we think about “being saved”, then we’ll fail to mature. We’ll remain children in our faith. While we should be growing up to speak in full sentences, if the gospel is only for the un-saved, we’ll find ourselves content to just repeat our ABC’s.

But the gospel is not just the good news of how our sins before Jesus were dealt with. It is, just as importantly, the good news — the current news — of how the gospel continues to deal with our sin as we seek to follow Jesus. And when we see our need for the gospel every day, it’s addicting.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. 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 5:11-14 ESV)

Trained by constant practice . . . That’s the phrase I’m chewing on this morning.

Training by constant usage. Trained by leveraging it, over and over again. Trained until it becomes habitual, until it becomes addicting. That’s the idea I think the author is going for here.

Trained in what? Trained in the word of righteousness. The word in which “the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith”, the gospel (Rom. 1:16-17). Thus, the gospel is to be “constantly used.” It is to be “practiced”, over and over again. It is to become habit forming. Something we lay hold of afresh when we wake up in the morning. Something we cling to throughout the day. Something that helps us know the rest of the redeemed at night.

But good news is only active as we live in the acknowledgment of the bad news. It is only power where there is weakness. If the gospel is just about sins past, then there’s no need to put it into play today. No need to practice it again and again. No need for it to become addicting.

If, however, we have sin and weakness and failure and great need to deal with today, and tomorrow, and the day after that, then we will be casting ourselves continually upon the grace found in the gospel. We won’t be able to get enough. Thus, we’ll find ourselves trained in the word of righteousness by constant practice and growing up in Jesus just as we were saved to do.

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

(1John 1:8-2:2 ESV)

Confession, forgiveness, cleansing. An Advocate and an Atonement. Not just something we needed to kick in when we “prayed the prayer” back in the day. Not just something for our past. But a desperately needed, on-going, ever-present dynamic for our present. And when we admit we need it, and we seek to apply it, then it becomes addicting. And it’s then that we grow up in our faith.

If I know what it is to be forgiven, over and over and over again, than I can testify to others with a fresh testimony of what it means to be forgiven. If I know what it is to ultimately rest in His righteousness which was credited to my account and not have to rely on my own good works — over and over and over again — then I can build on my ABC’s and learn to form sentences which convey “the reason for the hope that is in me” (1Peter 3:15). If I am regularly confessing my sin, then by “constant practice” I am learning “to distinguish good from evil.” For, when I recognize it within myself, I can recognize it around me.

The gospel should be addicting. Shouldn’t it?

And when it is addicting, we mature in the things of Christ and His kingdom.

All by His grace. All for His glory.