What is spiritual milk (1 Peter 2:2)?

The apostle goes on, therefore, to insist upon this word of God, to which we owe everything, as still being the essential need for us, that we may "grow up by it," as the expression is here, "unto salvation." It is a strange expression apparently, as we first think of it — a growth unto salvation; but the salvation here is, of course, that final salvation of which he has already spoken, as what is ready to be revealed in its fulness in the last time. There is a salvation which the gospel brings, and with which we begin; but salvation is needed also all along the road; and as long as we are in the body, by that very fact, we need salvation still. "We look for the Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour, who shall change our body of humiliation into the likeness of His own glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue even all things to Himself." But still, a growth unto salvation deserves serious consideration. Growth is that which is proper to life. The accretion of matter in a stone, for instance, is not "growth." Salvation, in the thought which we are getting of it here, is, in fact, more and more known as we grow in the apprehension of the things which are revealed to us, and which separate us more and more, therefore, from everything that is inconsistent with them. Thus, at the outset we are called to lay aside "all malice and all guile, and hypocrisies and envies and all evil-speakings" — things which cannot possibly consist with the enjoyment and pursuit of the truth; and we are always to be, as to the word of God, like babes just born, who crave, as the one thing necessary to them, the milk which God has provided for them. Here we must remember that we are not in the line of that which Paul says to the Corinthians, where he reproaches them as being such that have need of milk only, in opposition to solid food. The Corinthians were babes indeed, but they were babes when they ought to have been far beyond this. They were babes because growth was stunted with them through their carnality. A true babe is not "carnal," and can never be; but here we are to be only in one character like babes, and, indeed, babes "new-born." Even the Corinthians were not babes "new-born." That was the evil of it, that they were babes that were not new-born; but we are to be always, "as new-born babes," just in the simplicity of our craving for that which as milk God has provided for us in His own precious Word, to sustain a growth which is continual in one who is the possessor of eternal life. While we are here, if Christians and in a right condition, we are continually growing. We have to grow up, all of us, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." Which of us has attained it? In this sense we are, after all, all of us but as babes "new-born;" and in this character God has provided for us, in His word, that which has all the elements proper for nourishment in it, as milk has. The Word, the whole of it, the deepest things in it, is thus pure milk, and only milk. There is nothing to be rejected; there is only that which enters into the constitution of the Christian — as we may say, becomes really part of himself. How beautiful in that way this figure of milk, and how earnest the craving which is here implied, and which we are exhorted to, for that which can thus minister to all the necessities of our nature! Let us desire it earnestly, says the apostle, if we have tasted that the Lord is good. Have we tasted this? If so, can we make light of the precious Word, which is indeed the provision which God has made, in His goodness, for our souls?*

Then we hear the positive exhortation: "as new-born babes long for the guileless (or, pure) intelligent milk, that by it ye may grow unto salvation." No one can doubt that it is the milk of the word that nourishes the believer. It was the word of God whereby he was born again; it is the same word whereby he is fed. There is no contrast here as in 1 Cor. 3 and in Heb. 5 between milk for the immature and solid food for the adult, blame being put on those who did not profit by the word, rising from elements to higher truths. Here the Spirit of God dwells on the suitability of the food provided for the babe when born; and all are encouraged to desire earnestly the pure nourishment which God supplies so liberally. It is milk for the saint's intelligence; as a mother's breast yields nourishment to her babe physically, so God's word is food to our spiritual understanding.

Here in Peter the thought is different. The Word itself is milk, the whole of it, and we are to be not simply as babes, but as new-born babes in our desire for it. To a new-born babe what is milk? Its very life, we may say. And such is God's word to us, and such is to be its place in our affections. The Word, the whole of it, is that which God has provided for us, and it would be but dishonoring it and Him who gave it, to extract certain elements from it, and dismiss the rest as not available for food. It is all food, if appropriated as such. The highest and most advanced truths, so-called, do but expand, illustrate, and confirm, the Gospel itself, than which no truth is more wonderful, deeper or "higher." We do not leave the Gospel behind as we go on with Scripture, nor even have to turn back to it to find the refreshment it supplies for our souls; but it is the Gospel itself that travels on with us, more and more learnt, more and more developing itself to us continually.

A scripture often cited in answer to this question is: "As new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby." (1 Peter 2:2.) It is contended by many that this means that "milk" is the suited aliment for the young believer. To say nothing of the character of the word used (albeit it is very difficult of translation), the point in the scripture is simply that just as new-born babes desire milk, the believer should long for the word of God. It is, first, a question of appetite; and secondly, it tells us that as milk is the proper food for the new-born babe, so is the word of God for the saint. This is what the Spirit of God teaches by this scripture, and this is the more evident if we add the words, which are now generally accepted as a part of revelation (see New Translation), — "that we may grow thereby up to salvation." It is thus by feeding upon the word of God that we grow, and continue to grow, up to complete salvation.

It is not enough, however, to lay aside evil, we must go in for that which is good. We must not merely put on good as an outward dress or adornment, but imbibe it as spiritual food. There is "the sincere milk of the Word" suitable for the new-born babe, and we are to earnestly desire it. If we feed upon the Word we grow up. But even then we still need the Word, for it is meat for those of full age as well as milk for babes, as Hebrews 5:12-14, tells us.

The sense in which this expression is used here differs from the use of it in 1 Corinthians 3:1: "And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ." The spiritual growth of the Corinthians had been arrested and dwarfed; they never developed, but remained babes, a spiritual monstrosity. But the meaning here is entirely different. Believers should be at all times like new-born babes hungering for that which the Lord has provided for spiritual growth, the milk in all its purity as found in His Word. The mother by which we are begotten again, that is the living and abiding Word of God, has also the nourishment for the life we have received. In this sense the child of God must always be like a healthy babe, always craving, hungering and thirsting for the pure milk as provided in His Word. All that we need, yea, every need is provided there, and as we go to that fountain which never runs dry, which never fails nor disappoints, we shall grow thereby.

One of the most subtle delusions is found among some Pentecostal sects, who imagine that they are so filled with the Spirit that they can dispense with the reading of and feeding on the Word. In the authorized version two words are missing which belong in the text; they are the words "unto salvation"... "that ye may grow thereby unto salvation." They were omitted in some manuscripts, but belong here. Salvation here has the same meaning as in the first chapter, it looks forward to the end in glory.

Newborn babes do not care to waste their time on negative things: they desire solely the positive nourishment of milk. Our desire should be just as fervent for the pure mental milk of the Word. R is not by any means that we should remain babes; but even when able to take the solid food of the Word, we should have no less fervent desire for the milk of the Word also, the elementary, simple things of Scripture are food by which we grow, and however much deep truth we learn, these are never to be forgotten, but desired. Such desire will be in exercise Just in the measure that we have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

354 Then, in chapter 2:2, we have another thing, and that is, growing by the word. It is the only thing here with is positively of God. Of course, in one sense, the creation is of God; that will, however, be all burnt up, but that which is of God nourishes. There is a sense, too, in which we are all new-born babes; it is the new life in simplicity and purity that desires the sincere milk of the word, so that whenever I come to the word to get nourishment, I come to it as a new-born babe.

But it is not only that by which we are born again, it is also the food of the believer’s soul. As new-born babes we are to desire the sincere milk of the Word, that by it we may grow up to salvation (1 Peter 2:2, N.Tr.); that is, to the complete emancipation of the soul from every evil thing that would hold it in bondage. The prophet could say, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and Thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart” (Jer. 15:16). The Word is the food of our spiritual being as natural bread is the food of our bodies. That which is fed with the bread that perishes will itself perish, but that which is fed with the bread of life, the bread that comes down from heaven, will live for ever (1 Cor. 6:13; John 6:58, 63). We are apt to imagine that all that is required is to have the body well nourished with natural bread, and forget that “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every Word of God” (Luke 4:4).

1 Peter 2. Thus cleansed therefore and born of the word, they were to put off all fraud, hypocrisy, envy, slander; and, as new-born babes, to seek for this milk of the understanding, in order to grow thereby (for the word is the milk of the child, as it was the seed of its life); and we are to receive it as babes in all simplicity, if in truth we have felt that the Lord is good and full of grace. It is not Sinai (where the Lord God declared His law from the midst of the fire, so that they entreated not to hear His voice any more), to which I am come, or from which the Lord is speaking. If I have tasted and understood that the Lord acts in grace, that He is love towards me, and that His word is the expression of that grace, even as it communicates life, I shall desire to feed on this milk of the understanding, which the believer enjoys in proportion to his simplicity; that good word which announces to me nothing but grace, and the God whom I need as all grace, full of grace, acting in grace, as revealing Himself to me in this character — a character which He can never cease to maintain towards me, making me a partaker of His holiness.