Certainly τελειότης can be translated as “perfection,” but often, the reader may be left asking, “Perfection in what?”
Near the end of the previous chapter, the author wrote,
Heb. 5:12–14 |
12 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. 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 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. New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982. |
The author describes some of his Christian readers as being νήπιος or babes (i.e., infants) who need milk. In this context, milk is a metaphor for instruction in the principles of the oracles of God (τὰ στοιχεῖα τῆς ἀρχῆς τῶν λογίων τοῦ θεοῦ).
Once the Christian readers are “of full age” (τελείων), they can eat solid food, i.e., have greater knowledge of the mysteries of God, and more complex function as a member of the body of Christ (i.e., greater responsibilities).
The word τελείων in 5:14 is key to understanding τελειότητα in 6:1. τελειότητα, the abstract noun related to the adjective τέλειος, here signifies maturity—the stage in the development of a Christian who was once a babe (νήπιος) drinking milk but is now mature (τέλειος) eating solid food.
As LSJ notes on the adjective τέλειος,1
Contextually, the more suitable translation of τελειότητα is “maturity” as the author was discussing a “babe” (νήπιος) and “those of full age” (τελείων) in the verses immediately preceding.
1 LSJ, p. 1769
Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; et al. A Greek-English Lexicon. 9th ed. with revised supplement. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.