Got Milk? Series

THE KEY PHRASE: “PURE SPIRITUAL MILK”

In this passage, the Apostle Peter tells us that we are to crave something in particular. Peter does not just throw out an intense word like “crave” and give us no direction for our intense longings. He tells us that we are to crave “pure spiritual milk.” What does he mean by that?

The full metaphor, even drawing on Peter’s language from chapter 1 saying that we have been “born again,” is that we need to be like a healthy new baby craving his or her mother’s milk. A newborn baby craves the milk of the mother which they eat and grow. That is the normal way it works with human beings. The Apostle Peter uses that common experience and makes an important spiritual point about the lives of believers.

We do not see it in English, but part of the phrase of the original language is that we are to long for the “milk of the Word.” Peter uses that picture of a newborn baby longing for mother’s milk to share with us that as believers, we should crave knowledge, truth, and teachings found in God’s Word. Everything we need to understand God and to grow in our faith can be found in the Bible. All the spiritual sustenance we need can be found in the Bible. Growth comes from the teaching about Christ and God the Father that is at the core of the Word (or the Bible).

This “pure spiritual milk” enables us to “grow up in our salvation.” I hope we realize that being a Christian in an authentic relationship with God is not something that is just downloaded into us or something that just happens on accident. Growing in faith is not automatic. Becoming a better person in Christ is not a given eventuality for each person.

Growth in our spiritual lives is a life-long process.

Growth in our spiritual lives depends on our appetite for Godly things.

Growth in our spiritual lives is directly related to how much we understand the Bible.

Growing up in our salvation means that as Christians you and I are constantly in a state of learning more about Jesus and more about God. We do not know everything all at once. Some things we will never know. I do not think, and this is me speaking, that faith is an exact science. Every single person is different and every single person’s spiritual journey is different based on their life experiences, personality, and their willingness to follow God in faith.

ILLUSTRATION… A Milk Story (p)

My mom tells a funny story in our family that revolves around milk. I went to college after high school and my nuclear family went from 2 parents and 2 kids in the home to 2 parents and 1 child in the home. My mom tells the story about grocery shopping in the weeks after I went to college. She planned the meals and such and bought the groceries. She shopped as normal and bought things as normal. She also bought milk. The milk in the refrigerator spoiled in the weeks after I left for college because no one drank it. They figured out very quickly that the one drinking all the milk in the house was me! I was the one desiring the milk and drinking it all. I was gone and the drinker of all the milk was also gone. My mom went from buying 2 gallons of milk in grocery shopping to half a gallon.