1 Peter 2:1-3
Once again, Peter begins this section with the word “therefore.” This is now back-to-back “therefores”. Peter is continuing to build on what he said in the introduction. The flow of thought here is that we have a living hope because Christ is risen. As a result of this living hope, we are set free to be holy.
God has declared us to be holy. Being holy means we have been set apart for religious or sacred use. Now, it is time to become the person Jesus has created you to be. That is the focus of these next few verses.
In verse 1, Peter gives us a list of things we are expected to rid ourselves of. The idea behind “rid yourselves” is putting something off. This word implies that once you have put something off, you leave it off. Think about doing something that makes you dirty or sweaty. After taking off those clothes and showering, don’t put those dirty, sweaty clothes back on. Likewise, once you rid yourself of these things, you do not go right back to doing them.
Let’s look at each word. There are 5 words used here, but they are meant to be viewed as three groups. Each group begins with the word “all.” It should go without saying that all means all. Peter does not expect that we hold a little back when we think the situation warrants some malice, deceit, slander, and so on.
- Malice – This word represents a big category. The Hebrew equivalent is the word for evil. There are a lot of actions we can fit into the category of evil. The problem with leaving it at that is that each person can have a different view on what is evil. What one calls evil, another might call necessary.
- Remember, this is a category and not just a single action. It is a way of living that focuses on moral deficiencies that seek to destroy fellowship. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher, defined it as “taking all things in the evil part.” It is when you look at the actions of others and always think the worst. The Geneva Bible defined it like this: It is “that peculiar form of evil which manifests itself in a malignant interpretation of the actions of others, an attributing of them all to the worst motive”[1]
- What we take from this is that malice is not just how we act but also how we think. It is hard to build relationships and have fellowship when you always think the worst of others.
- Deceit/Hypocrisy/Envy – While there are three different words used, they all have something in common. Deceit is trickery or falseness. This is tricky to get others to do something.
- Hypocrisy, as you would expect, is about giving an impression of having certain purposes or motivations while in reality having different ones. What is interesting about this word is that when it is used as a noun, it is the word for an actor. Acting was not considered a noble profession in these times.
- Envy is defined as a state of ill will toward someone because of some real or presumed advantage experienced by such a person. Jealousy is another word that could be used to translate this word.
- Taken all together, this group focuses on our attitudes. The first category addressed our thoughts, and now we look at how those thoughts affect our attitude towards others.
- Slander – Much like our definition of slander today, the Biblical definition means to speak against someone with evil intent. A very literal translation would be something along the lines of evil speech. Just because the word Peter uses talks about speech does not mean this is all he is concerned with. Remember, these are categories.
- This category focuses on our actions towards others. Following the entire train of thought we see that how our attitude towards others impacts our thoughts about others which impacts our actions towards others. It is not enough to just avoid doing evil but we must not even have evil thoughts.
Moving on to verse 2 we see a familiar illustration of milk, but Peter is going to use it in a positive way. Normally when we speak of Christians surviving on milk it is in reference to baby Christians that we need to move from milk to meat. Peter is going to use milk here in the sense of the way babies desire and crave their mother’s milk. A newborn baby only desires their mother’s milk. They have no concept of anything different so they are not envious or jealous of what some other baby has. They desire what their mother provides.
Like newborn babies, we need to desire the pure milk, or some translations say spiritual milk, of the word. Doing this is how we may grow up into our salvation. If you go back to chapter 1 verse 9 we saw that salvation was likened to an inheritance. Often times a child has to grow up to be given their inheritance. It is not given when they are a child. That is the image here. We have to grow up to understand and achieve our salvation. We do that by becoming the person Christ declares us to be. We do that by ridding ourselves of the things we have talked about.
It is not that we are earning salvation but rather that we are demonstrating that we do belong to Christ. We are known by the fruit we produce.
I want to come back to “desire the pure milk of the word” for a moment. What is the pure milk of the word? It could be the Scriptures but when we look at verse 3 we see that Peter says, “if you have tasted that the Lord is good.” What Peter is talking about here is not just experiencing God through the Scripture but to crave engagement with God Himself.
The way we do this through Scripture reading but also prayer, in walking and talking with Him, and by living out our faith in real ways. God is not just a book that we read but a real, living person that we can have a relationship with.
We have tasted that the Lord is good. We don’t taste a book. Taste is unique experience because in order to taste you have to take something inside of you. The newborn baby craves their mother’s milk because they have tasted it and found it to be pleasing, to be good, to be beneficial. If it weren’t they wouldn’t desire it but because they find it to be all these things they want more and more of it.
[1] Merrill Frederick Unger et al., The New Unger’s Bible Dictionary (Chicago: Moody Press, 1988).