1 So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. 2 Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

1. Do I Want To Grow Up Into Salvation?

In his first letter to a pastor named Timothy, the Apostle Paul told the younger man to train himself for godliness (1 Timothy 4:7). One reason this is a helpful word is that it shows us the acquisition of spiritual growth occurs in much the same way many other skills are acquired. When he told Timothy to train himself for godliness, Paul acknowledged spiritual development is similar to athletic training. Day after day, with a plan, the athlete trains. And part of their training is their nutrition plan.

It is this spiritual nutrition we are going to talk about today. But before seeing what we should consume, I want you to embrace the reason for consuming it. Peter said, "like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation" (2). As I said, in a moment, we will ask about this pure spiritual milk, but first, we must see its result. If we both crave and then consume this milk -- whatever it is -- we will grow up into salvation.

But what does it mean to grow up into salvation? Let me say three things in answer to that question.

• First, it does not mean there are things we can do to attain salvation. Salvation is deposited, given, a gift from God for those who trust the blood of Christ to save them for the perniciousness of sin.
• Second, to grow up into salvation means salvation is coming in the future, and we want to keep growing until it appears. As Peter said earlier, we are to set our hope fully on the grace coming when Jesus returns (1:13). And one way we do this by growing until the very end of our lives.
• Third, it also points to growing into what we are. When you trust Christ to save you from sin and God's judgment, you are born again. You are saved. You are in Christ and considered holy by God. But every believer immediately realizes they are still beset with temptations and weaknesses. We might be righteous in God's sight, but we would also like to be righteous for the people around us. This is part of what it means to grow up into salvation -- we want to experience who God has made us to be.

When I was a young man, I went through rapid growth spurts. I think there was one summer I went from my mom calling me "husky" to getting all stretched out and awkward. And during those times, my feet grew faster than I could wear out my shoes. So the strategy my mother employed was to purchase shoes a couple of sizes larger than my feet were at the time. She knew I would grow into them.

That's the idea of growing up into salvation. We have been saved by Jesus, but now we are meant to grow up into the salvation he's given us.

Peter's Mentality

With this exhortation, Peter lets us in on a secret: spiritual growth does not happen accidentally. There are decisions we must make, desires we must have, and actions we must take to help us grow up into salvation (2).

Before moving forward, we must ask ourselves if we have the desire to grow up into our salvation. Do we want to make spiritual progress? Do we want to grow in Christlikeness? Do we want to be spiritually healthy, strong before the Lord?

These are especially important questions during times where biblical Christianity is pushed to the margins. Peter used words to describe how he thinks of us -- exiles, aliens, sojourners, strangers. And as exiles or aliens or sojourners or strangers, we do not stand a chance when trying to live out a faithful, biblical, historical, and true Christianity if we do not care to grow up into our salvation.

So it is an important question: do I want to grow up into my salvation?

Peter Has A Verse

Peter thinks the answer is yes! He even has a verse for it. He had read it in Psalm 34: "if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good" (3).

Of course, we want to grow! We have tasted the Lord! You know this one -- many of you have experienced God's personal goodness to you. Maybe you ran from him, but he pursued you. Maybe you returned to him, and he accepted you. Maybe you suffered, and he cared for you. Maybe you were alone, and he came alongside you. But you have tasted that the Lord is good.

In Psalm 23, the Lord is presented as our Shepherd. And he walks with us through the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4). As a good shepherd would, he carries us over obstacles and through danger to get us to the green tablelands he's prepared for us. I remember this whenever I feel the darkness clouding over me -- Jesus is walking with me through this valley. He is taking me to his destination, the places he has prepared for my life. Tasting that, tasting him, partaking of his goodness, makes us want more of him.

By the way, like Peter, I think our answer is yes as well. I am blessed by the attitude so many of you hold -- you want to grow in Christ. You want to go on this journey. This is such an important desire to have, especially when the world is changing. Far too many Christians sit back and watch a changing world with disdain. Their attitude is, at least I'm not like those people! But, though we could fall to that temptation, it seems we are a church that knows we are weak, but he is strong. If it weren't for grace, we'd go right along with the world's flow. And because we know this, we realize there's no alternative -- we must grow up into our salvation! It's either grow or die!

2. Some Attitudes To Put Away

Pauline Peter

At this point, Peter has given us four foundational actions which are required for genuine, real, normal, and exilic Christianity. We must set our hopes fully on the grace that is coming with Jesus (1:13). We must pursue a life of holiness (1:14-16). We must live the time of our exile in fear -- reverence for the Lord's awesomeness and respect for sin's danger (1:17-21). And we must love one another with pure hearts (1:22-25) -- hope, holiness, fear, and love.

But now Peter tells us there are some attitudes we must put away. To grow up into this salvation, Peter tells us we must put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander (1).

When Peter tells us to put away these attitudes, he isn't telling us to try harder to be something we're not. Quite the opposite. He's telling us to engage with God in the process of becoming what we are. Part of growing up into salvation is to put off all that isn't the redeemed, new, true-in-the-sight-of-God, us. And, to God, we are new creatures, so we don't have to be negative people who swim in the waters of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, or slander.

And to put these things away is a concept Paul wrote about often in the Bible. In one of my favorite passages on the subject, he said:

Romans 6:11 (ESV) — 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

As a believer, even when I feel alive to sin and dead to God, even when I feel sin is readily accessible, that it's something I crave and easy to enter into, I must know I am dead to it. And even when I feel God is distant, hard to access, and a mystery I cannot grasp, I must know I am alive to God. That's Jesus' reality -- he's dead to sin and alive to God -- so it's my reality as well.

So with this reality in mind, Peter tells us to put away these different attitudes. The idea is that of taking off a garment. And I would add, taking it to the Second Chance thrift shop never to see it again. Say goodbye to these attributes.

The List

The list Peter mentions has a special emphasis -- he chose these attributes for a reason. In the previous paragraph, he told us to love one another from a pure heart (1:22). He wants us to press into the church, to be all about the new community Jesus created by his blood. And malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander all ruin the awesome community we're meant to cultivate.

Malice is a simmering and festering and angry dislike of someone else. It is not righteous anger but a slow-boiling feeling of ill-will towards others. We live in a time quick to demonize and label, but we are to put away all malice.

Deceit means catching with bait. Just as the fisherman baits a hook or a hunter sets a trap, the deceitful person operates in illusion. Saying one thing, but meaning another, this person cannot be trusted because their words are often meant as bait to control you.

Hypocrisy means to wear a mask (not that kind) -- as an actor. The hypocrite pretends to be one thing while actually being another.

Envy is the resentful longing for another's possessions, experiences, lifestyle, or position in life.

And slander is driven by a critical spirit that speaks out of turn, trying to tear down the life of another. It says untrue things. But it also says partially true things. Or it says true things in the wrong way or the wrong venue.

All five of these sins destroy the Christian community and must be put away. Christ has delivered us from these poisonous evils, so we must work to put them off from our lives. We must speak and live like we're already in Jesus' forever kingdom. We must crave holiness. We must live in the fear of the Lord. And we must love one another. Love does not engage in these sins.

Social Media Alert

I would be remiss not to point out the obvious about these sins. Malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander are particularly easy to slip into in our social media environment.

I don't want to be the church curmudgeon on this subject; I know many people find social media helpful to real-world connections. And many of you have already heard my thoughts on how to cultivate a healthy relationship with it if you feel you must have it. I agree with author Cal Newport (Digital Minimalism); he advocates for setting a time (and maybe a place) each week that you do all your social media activity and leave it at that. For instance, go get coffee on Saturday morning, spend an hour with your accounts, and then leave them for another week. That's my advice.

But my old-man-fuddy-duddy-social-media-kids-these-days-advice aside, we must be aware of the temptations social media can awaken in us. The problem is in us. And often, we are tempted to hypocritically present ourselves in a specific way in that environment. Or we are tempted to slander another. Or we spread and say untrue things. Or we become envious of what we see others have or do. We must be cautious.

Having finished my little tirade, let's turn our attention to what we must do if we want to grow up into salvation. We've seen what we must put off (or away). What must we put on? What must we do?

3. Desire The Pure Spiritual Milk

Defined

The answer to that question is the thrust of this whole passage. Peter urged us to like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk (2).

First things first: what is the pure spiritual milk? Many of you might quickly answer, "The Word of God!" Some Bible translations even say "the spiritual milk of the word."

But the definition of "pure spiritual milk" is not that simple. Part of the difficulty comes from the word "spiritual." Peter wrote his letter in Greek, and the word he used is logikos. I'm told it is a terribly difficult word to translate. Depending on the situation, it can mean spiritual, metaphorical, or logical. So is this the spiritual milk? Metaphorical milk? Or logical milk?

There are two ways we can get help to understand what Peter means by "the pure spiritual milk." First, we have to look backward in the text. In 1 Peter 1:23, Peter said:

1 Peter 1:23 (ESV) — 23 since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God...

The living and abiding word of God: given this reference, it makes sense that the Bible is the spiritual milk we are after.

But we also need to look forward in the text. We've already read it today. Peter said we should crave the pure spiritual milk "if indeed we have tasted that the Lord is good" (3). So what have we tasted? The Lord (not just the word).

For these reasons, the pure spiritual milk must include the Bible, but it is more than Bible study. It is the Lord we discover in the Bible. This verse isn't telling us to make sure we just study and study and study the Bible forever without any action or engaging with God himself. No! We are to go to the word to find him and all the resources he has for us to live as we're meant to live.

I would define the pure spiritual milk this way:

The pure spiritual milk is everything God provides, all of which extend from him and can be found in the Bible, to help his people grow up into salvation.

Or, to put it another way, the pure spiritual milk is the word of the Lord, but also the Lord of the word.

We are meant to crave the Bible, but because we crave the Lord of the Bible, the one we've already tasted and learned is good. We want to know what he is like, what he says to us today, and how we can live to please him right now.

We love the Bible here. We like to read it and think about it. To me, the word of the Lord is like a fire at the center of this community. It warms us. It brings us together. It feeds us. It illuminates everything. We need the word.

But we must remember that knowing the word is not the sum total of the mission. We should approach the word to know him. And then to know ourselves. And then to be who he's told us to be.

When I give my children a responsibility, I am not satisfied if they merely study the words I said to them. He said, "You need to wash the car by dinnertime tonight." What do you think he meant by "wash"? How did it make you feel when he said "tonight"? What does "dinnertime" mean in the Greek?

No! I want them to know who I am -- their dad. I want them to know who they are -- my kids. And what these positions require of them -- obedience to go wash the car.

So we are to be a people who crave the Lord of the word and the word of the Lord. We are to center ourselves upon it -- and seek to live it out.

It Is A Hunger That Must Be Cultivated

But Peter said we should long for it like newborn infants want their mother's milk. We can easily understand his meaning. Newborn babies instinctively know they are hungry -- and they know how to communicate that desire. Loudly.

But the interesting thing Peter shows us is that we need to cultivate this hunger. Newborn babies crave the milk. But we are told by Peter that we need to crave the milk. It's an exhortation. This means we must be involved in cultivating our desire for the word of the Lord and the Lord of the word.

And hunger for him and his word can be cultivated. You can acquire the taste and grow in your hunger for him.

I did not drink coffee until I was in my early thirties. With three little ones running around the house, I'm glad I discovered the gracious love of God in the form of the coffee bean right around that time. I remember how it happened. It was Christmastime. Christina's brothers were all visiting. And during those dark, winter nights, with the Christmas lights and music pumping, they drank their hot coffee together with gladness. And I wanted in. So I started to drink coffee and haven't stopped since then. And now I love the taste.

So how can we cultivate our hunger for the pure spiritual milk? How can we acquire the taste? Four ways:

1. Don't spoil your appetite. This is why Peter tells us to put away certain attitudes. Remember, Peter told us to hope in the kingdom, be holy like God, fear the Lord, and love one another. But when we feast on things that communicate hopelessness and despair, we spoil our appetite. When we feast on things that are unholy, we spoil our appetite. When we feast on things that couldn't care less about God's opinion, we spoil our appetite. And when we feast on things that put self above the community, we spoil our appetite. Don't spoil your appetite.

2. Appreciate how it was made. In our day, we have an appreciation for how our produce was grown or how our meat was raised or what our dairy was exposed to. When you appreciate what it took for the Lord to come to us, to make a way for us to know him, and then to get us his word, you will begin to long for the pure spiritual milk. When you appreciate how prophets and priests and scribes and apostles and church fathers and the entire history of the church worked together to get the word of the Lord to you, you will appreciate it more. Appreciate how it was made.

3. Consume it every day. The Lord is there for you if you want a sporadic relationship with him. But he and his word are used best with consistency. As you engage with him every day, you will acquire the taste for the Lord and his word. I'm one of these people who eats the same breakfast and lunch nearly every single day. I have enough decisions to make, so I like the monotony of eating the same things throughout the week. But the funny thing is that my body has come to crave those same things. And this is more true with the Lord and his word: I need him every day.

4. Watch the results. We began this teaching thinking about Paul's statement to train for godliness (1 Timothy 4:7). Part of an athlete's training is their nutrition plan. They eat with a goal in mind. They need to be stronger or quicker or more enduring, so they eat in a way that gets them the results they are looking for. And as you feast on the pure spiritual milk, the word of the Lord and the Lord of the word, you will like what you see. God will shape you in beautiful ways. And you'll find yourself craving more of that pure spiritual milk!