1 PETER 2.2-3
Like newborn infants, long for
the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation—if indeed
you have tasted that the Lord is good.
St. Peter just can’t get off the
regeneration horse. He compares the Christians in Asia Minor to newborn
infants. Just as babies are born and must grow up into adults, so Christians
who have been “born again” mustn’t be content to remain as babies but must
pursue maturity, which St. Peter here identifies as “salvation.” Peter’s main
point is that, as regenerate human beings, Christians are to pursue genuine
human living. This involves the “putting off” of verse 1 and embracing the
exilic lifestyle Peter will lay out in the coming chapters.
“What
does it mean to grow up into salvation?” It certainly doesn’t mean that once we
are regenerate, we need to keep being holier and holier or we’ll lose our
salvation. It doesn’t mean that while
we’re saved by grace we’re “kept in” by works. It doesn’t mean that once we enter the fold of
God, our position there is dependent upon the accelerating rate of our
sanctification. Salvation, remember, is a multi-layered event, a process of
sorts. There’s the past act of salvation: when God declares, in a climactic and
decisive moment, the sinner to be “in the right,” forgiven and redeemed, by
virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection, when the person receives the Holy
Spirit. This is the moment of regeneration. Salvation also involves the present reality of implementing our
salvation in our daily lives; in other words, it involves living-out the gospel
and the fact that we indeed have been
redeemed. And then there’s the future aspect: when our salvation will be
completed at glorification, when those who have died will be raised and those
who are alive will be changed. “Growing up into salvation” is all about
sanctification; it’s all about how we’re to implement and put into practice the
fact that we have been saved, are being saved, and will be
saved.
A question is raised: “What’s the
spiritual milk that St. Peter tells the Christians to long for?” Depending on
your translation, the phrase might look something like this: “long for the pure
spiritual milk of the word.” The
phrase “of the word” doesn’t appear in the actual Greek text (kudos to the
E.S.V. for resisting tradition here). The “milk of the word” addition appears
as early as the 1611 King James Version, and we also see it in the more recent
and scholarly New American Standard Bible (shame on them for the 1611 baggage).
Translators originally added the phrase as an attempt to explain what they
thought the verse was saying, and their take goes something like this: “The
pure spiritual milk is the Word of God, the Scriptures, and through digesting
it we’re to grow up into Christian maturity.” That’s all good and well, and
there’s no denying that studying scripture, praying through scripture,
memorizing scripture, or what have you is profitable to development as a
Christian. The scriptures are “living and active”, and the Spirit works through
them to transform us.
But the addition’s just too limiting:
it does more harm than good. Keep in mind: the scriptures in the days of the
New Testament weren’t the New Testament per se but the whole of the Jewish tradition,
including texts such as the Wisdom of Solomon which are no longer considered
part of the Old Testament canon. To assume that Peter’s talking about “the
bible” is to ignore the fact that the bible, as we have it now, didn’t exist
(and there’s no reason to suppose that Peter ever assumed his letters would end
up in some big book consisting of strange documents thrown together).
The question, then, remains unanswered:
“What is this pure spiritual milk?” Chances are Peter doesn’t have any specific
thing in mind here. He probably isn’t
thinking specifically of “prayer” or “bible reading” or anything like that.
Rather, he’s using the phrase “spiritual milk” because it directly connects
with the metaphor of the passage (newborn infants) and carries on the idea of
growing up into maturity. Just as newborn infants need milk to gain the
nutrients they need to continue developing healthily, so Christians (especially
new Christians) need the nutrients of the Spirit to continue in healthy growth.
As an infant deprived of the necessary nutrients will be accosted by all sorts
of problems, so Christians who deprive themselves of the Spirit will find
themselves in the same boat. Such spiritual milk involves anything whereby we
come into contact with these spiritual nutrients; prayer, bible reading, and
other spiritual disciplines are avenues by which we interact with the Spirit
and find ourselves being fed. Thus St. Peter’s phrase becomes a
“blanket-phrase” of sorts, embracing anything and everything that’s profitable
to growing up into our salvation.
Does this include reading the bible?
Absolutely. Does it include prayer? Of
course it does. It includes all of these
things. Peter’s simply using imagery to make the point that Christians aren’t
just to sit on their butts all day and wait for things to change; no, we’re to
be active in our pursuit of genuine
human living, in our pursuit of our full and final salvation.
As a rhetorical clincher, Peter says
that the Christians are to do this if
indeed they have tasted that the Lord is good. He’s undoubtedly echoing
Psalm 34.8, a pretty important psalm that remained relevant to the Asia Minor Christians
as persecution loomed, a psalm which Peter will come back to later on in his
letter. There’s much to psalm 34 and its relevance to all that Peter says, but
we’ll leave that for later on in the study. The point is that Peter knows none
of the Christians will deny that they have tasted the goodness of the Lord
(here “Lord” being YHWH, the Judeo-Christian God, rather than solely Jesus);
and so they’re without excuse to do what Peter has told them to do: to long for
the pure spiritual milk whereby they will mature as regenerate human beings.
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