"senses exercised to discern both good and evil." What does that mean???

 

Hebrews 5:12-14(NKJV)

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food. 

For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 

But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

I find a couple of things interesting about these verses.  First I like that it distinguishes those who are "babes" in the word verses those who are of "full age" in the word.

In my opinion this is talking about those who like to quote a single verse here or there but they don't really understand the full meaning of Scripture because they haven't really dug in and studied it.  Theirs is more of a cursory reading and understanding of Scripture. 

A great example of that is the whole "thou shall not judge" thing.  We hear it all the time like that one Scripture is the complete and final word on the subject.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  These Scriptures are a perfect example.

We are told that we need to exercise our senses to discern both good and evil.  What does that mean exactly.  It means we have to practice recognizing the difference between good and evil.  That requires repeated judgements does it not? 

One might ask "isn't evil readily recognizable?".  In some cases sure it is.  For example the evil of a mother purposely injecting her child with a deadly disease is easily recognizable to everyone.  Even a "babe" would recognize it.

On the other hand we have many in the Christian community that insist that it is not the fault of the poor that they are poor, that the whole system is against them and there is nothing they can do about it.  Those who do this think they are being compassionate. 

It takes a person of "full age" Scripturally to recognize this as stealing people's hope and understand that stealing peoples hope is one of the most evil things you can do to someone in my opinion. 

The last thing I will call your attention to is this:  "those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil."

Notice it doesn't mention anything about feelings.  We are to use the reason (intellect) that God gave us to recognize good and evil!