THE PURE MILK OF GOD’S WORD

“As newborn babes, desire the pure MILK OF THE WORD, that you may grow thereby” – 1 Peter 2:2

The believer is born of the Word and can only be fed and nurtured by the PURE MILK OF GOD’S WORD: “As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby” (1Pet.2:2). Nothing is more important to the believer’s life and growth than God’s Word. Scripture uses certain metaphors to illustrate the value and function of God’s Word in our lives, the most basic of which is Milk.

In this passage, Peter highlighted the need for the Word of God to be eminently desired, almost to the exclusion of everything else. This is a call to imitate babies. Just as babies know only one food, desire only one food, are satisfied by only one food, and are fully sustained by only one food – the mothers’ milk, so we are to crave the Word of God, feed on it, and be sustained by it. Nothing else can or should suffice. We are to be sing-minded in our feeding on the Word of God – commencing with the Milk of the Word.

Milk is a powerful analogy and symbol within most cultures. It is the fluid of ternal life, fertility, abundance. As the first human diet, milk flows freely in the Promised Land (Num.14:8). In another sense, milk signifies the Mother, and the deep connection with life. Everything in life is sustained by its source. Believers hail from the Word; that’s why everything we need in life is in the Word. We cannot truly live outside the Word and should not. To live outside the Word of God is death: “For if you live according to the flesh you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live” (Rom.8:13). God wants us to live in the Word: triumphantly, gloriously, and victoriously every day. We are to crave pure spiritual milk and grow into a full experience of salvation.

The Word of God should be ever desirable and delightful to us, constantly fresh and satisfying. A baby that refuses the mother’s milk is evincing some physical problem because it is the normal cause of things for a baby to grow humgry – quickly and frequently – and to demand milk. A believer, who has little or no desire for the Word of God, is most likely, spiritually ill. Like a mother’s milk, the Word of God provides all the essential nutrients to enhance our growth and maturity in the Lord: it is the perfect food. And as the need and desire to nurse are instinctive in a child, so the need and desire to drink of the Word of God are inherent in a believer. Of course, we are expected to mature and go on to eat the “meat” of the Word of God, but not at the expense of childlike virtues. In a sense, we are to remain like children, ever desirous of one source of nourishment – the Milk of the Word of our God – El-Shaddai!

Milk refers to basic or fundamental teachings of Christianity first learned by new believers. Meat and “solid food” refer to more advanced Christian teachings. There is a foundational place for Milk in our spiritual development, but Milk must ultimately give way to Meat: “And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able” (1Cor.3:1-2). Hebrews 5:12 also says, “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.” Meat and solid foods are important, but Milk remains the first crucial diet!