As we considered this past Lord’s Day from 1 Pet. 2:1-3, Christians should possess a consuming, passionate hunger for God and His Word – like that of a newborn for his/her mother’s milk. Peter uses this rich word-picture to illustrate the intensity of this hunger. While the imagery of hungry babies is not directly referring to the spiritual immaturity of believers, there is a clear contrast between the proportionate greatness of the mother, and the smallness of the baby. And the baby is desperately dependant on what only the mother can supply. Baptist pastor F.B. Meyer (1848-1929) has given these helpful insights:
“The metaphor is a very touching one. This world is but the nursery in which the heirs of God are spending the first lisping years of their existence, preparatory to the opening of life to full maturity yonder in the light of God. The most advanced among us, in knowledge and attainment, are, in comparison with what they shall be, only as babes. The furthest stretch of vision, the most perfect conceptions of the intellect, the fittest expressions of truth, are but as the untutored thoughts and babblings of babyhood, compared with what is to be in the mature life which beckons us yonder.” (Tried by Fire: Expositions of the 1st Epistle of Peter, Nabu Public Domain Reprints, p. 71)
Brothers and sisters, it is good for us to recognize God’s infinite greatness, and our great smallness before Him! And the more we do, the more we’ll humbly “…long for the pure spiritual milk.”
Learning to shrink and grow with you,
Greg