Longing for Pure Milk: Grounding Faith in God's Word

How do we as believers avoid sin? Think of the volume of Christian books, sermons, and seminars devoted to answering that question. While making this our primary concern can distort the God-centered nature of the faith, it is only right for Christians to desire to shed the burden of sin that keeps us from experiencing the fullness of the joy of our salvation.

1 Peter has a lot to say on that subject, framing it in the context of what it means for believers to be holy, set apart as a people for God, even (or especially) in the midst of persecution.

Through verses 13-21 of his epistle, Peter builds on his depiction of the wonder of God in salvation (vv. 3-12) to exhort his readers to “be holy as [God is] holy.” He challenges them to “prepare [their] minds for action, keep sober in spirit, and fix [their] hope completely on [God’s grace]” (1 Pet. 1:13). He wanted them to be prepared mentally, emotionally, and spiritually to live out the grace of salvation in the righteousness of God. That same call applies to believers for all time. Verses 3-12 provide the “why” behind this call to holiness, verses 13-21 describe “what” is commanded of us, and 1:22-2:3 offers a glimpse of the “how” that enables our obedience.

Verses 22-23 continue Peter’s exhortation and open a discourse on God’s Word that mirrors his earlier portrait of salvation. “Since you have in obedience to the truth purified your souls for a sincere love of the brethren, fervently love one another from the heart, for you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.”

The NIV’s wording of verse 22 sheds a better light on Peter’s meaning here: “Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have a sincere love for your brothers, love one another deeply from the heart.” In other words, if we are obeying the commands of the previous section (i.e., living in holiness), then we should also be growing into a love for our fellow blood-washed sinners. He then reiterates that statement as a command, giving further weight to the importance of unity within the Body of Christ. While Peter does not spend a lot of space on this concept, other New Testament writers do (see 1 John 3-4, 1 Cor. 13, etc.). The message is clear that this is imperative, and that our obedience to it is an indicator of our faith.

Peter says that this love, like all our obedience, flows from our spiritual rebirth. He reminds his readers again that the life and gift of salvation is of an eternal, imperishable nature (vv. 5, 18) in contrast to the perishable things of this world. Our spiritual life springs from the eternal, unshakable seed of God’s Word, not from something temporal and tenuous like the “tradition of men” (cf. Col. 2:8).

Peter then quotes from Isaiah 40:6-8, backing up his point with the very Word which he tells us our spiritual life is founded upon, “For ‘All flesh is like grass, and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls off, but the word of the Lord endures forever.’ And this is the word which was preached to you” (vv. 24-25).

Whenever we seek to grasp God’s Word, it is instructive to note how Christ and the Apostles view and handle the Scriptures. As we have noted in previous articles in this series, Peter is quick to quote from the Old Testament throughout this book, and he consistently grounds his appeal on Scripture and scriptural principles. Here, he shows the Word to be the very basis of our salvation and regeneration; the living, enduring, imperishable truth that God has revealed through Himself. It seems that he understood the relationship between God and His Word that John later described in his gospel, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.…And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:1, 14).

In verse 23, Peter uses the Greek word logos (word), which often has a much broader meaning than simply collections of nouns and verbs. It can refer to thought or reason (it is the source of the English word, “logic”), and it is often used by John in his writings as a synonym for Christ. He is the physical, revealed “Word” of God, but He is also the very intelligence of God personified. Peter may indeed have wanted to convey to His readers that their faith was grounded firmly on the Old Testament (cf. vv. 10-11) and revealed through Christ.

In verse 25, Peter uses a different term, rhēma (usually referring to a specific word or concept), “this is the word which was preached to you.” That is, the message (or “word”) of the Apostles was the message of God’s eternal and incarnate Word and His power for salvation. In sum, this “imperishable seed” is both a compelling reason to be obedient to God’s call to be holy (“you’ve been given something enduring and alive, don’t trade it for the ‘futile way of life inherited from your forefathers’” (v. 18), and the power that enables our obedience.

At the beginning of chapter 2, we come to another “therefore”, but this is more of a restatement of the previous 13 verses than a new train of thought. Peter writes, “Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the Word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord” (vv. 1-3). 

Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander cover a wide range of sins of the heart. Peter lists them here in contrast to his command to love the brethren—each of these sins is acted out to harm and destroy others. Following God in holiness leaves no place for acting in these ways toward our fellow men (especially within the Church), so we as believers are to be done with such sins, putting them aside for the hindrance they are.

(Wayne Barber's last column on these verses is instructive here) 

The next phrase is arguably the crux of this whole passage, as Peter exhorts his readers to desire the Word as the means of growth in righteousness. The image is a powerful one. As anyone who has ever had a child knows, they clamor for milk with an incredible urgency, and rightly so—it is their sole source of nourishment, and to be separated from it is deadly. Peter uses this metaphor to show us how crucial the Word is to our spiritual lives (this is not analogous to the contrast of “milk” and “meat” in terms of depth of understanding as in 1 Cor. 3:2 and Heb. 5:12-14). Without it, we are utterly incapable of growth and will wither and die.

If we have “tasted the kindness of the Lord” through His Word and the joy of our salvation, it is only natural that we should desire more and more knowledge of and fellowship with Him. It is all the more unconscionable for us to continue living for ourselves and pursuing sin after we have experienced the fullness of God’s grace.

Peter’s message in this passage is abundantly clear. The Word of God is at the core of every aspect of our faith. It is absolutely vital to our health and growth as Christians, admonishing us to flee from sin and enabling us to pursue the holiness God desires. The Word is more than a tool for “successful” Christian life, it is more even than a “guide”—the Word is the life and power of Christ. Peter did not casually recommend reading and studying Scripture to his first readers as a means to live in righteousness in the midst of persecution; he passionately implored them to crave and devour it because their very survival depended upon it.

The answer to our initial question is the same. Though Christ has ultimately conquered sin, there is no way in our own power that we can live rightly by trying to “beat” sin in our lives. Sin is defeated, not so much when we focus our energy on its removal, but when we marinate our souls in the truth of what God has already accomplished and pour our lives into obediently fulfilling His purposes. Read the Word; memorize it; bind it to your every thought and action; let it expose the sin in your heart and lead you to repentance. Only in the strength and power of God’s Word are we truly able to obey.

Justin Lonas is the editor of Disciple Magazine.