Devotional 26 August 2025

August 26, 2025 • Steve Torres

1 Peter 2:1-3.jpg

“So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2:1–3, ESV)

Peter continues his letter with a striking contrast. He calls believers to put away deceit (dólos) and immediately urges them to crave the pure (a-dólos) spiritual milk of God’s Word. It is a deliberate pun: if we are to grow, we must renounce dólos (trickery) and instead long for what is a-dólos (without trickery). The deceitful heart cannot thrive on the undeceitful Word.

This “milk” is described as logikón, meaning rational or word-related (cf. logikē worship in Rom. 12:1). Peter is not speaking of vague spirituality but of nourishment rooted in God’s Word. He has just reminded us that we are “born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23, echoing Isa. 40:6–8). Now he insists that the new life begun by the Word must also be sustained by the Word.

The imagery is vivid. A newborn instinctively cries for milk; without it, growth is impossible. But Peter is not content that we remain infants. While the Christian life is childlike in trust, it must not be childish in immaturity. Just as parents rejoice at birth but long to see their child grow, so God calls His people beyond spiritual infancy. Paul makes the same point: “When I was a child, I spoke like a child… but when I became a man, I gave up childish ways” (1 Cor. 13:11). Likewise, the writer to the Hebrews warns against being “unskilled in the word of righteousness” when we should be ready for solid food (Heb. 5:12–14).

Growth, then, requires both renunciation and desire. We put away the toys of envy, hypocrisy, and slander (1 Pet. 2:1; cf. Eph. 4:31–32) and embrace the inheritance of maturity. Paul reminds us that the Law was a guardian until Christ, but now in the new covenant we are heirs and should live as such (Gal. 3:24–26).

Peter anchors this call in experience: “if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Pet. 2:3; Ps. 34:8). Once we have truly savored Christ, we cannot be satisfied with stunted growth. Real taste creates real hunger.

The Christian life does not end at new birth. It begins there. Having been born again through the Word, we now grow up by the Word: into salvation, maturity, and the full inheritance of God’s children.