Journal: Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society
Volume: JOTGES 38:74 (Spring 2025)
Article: How To Long For The Pure Milk Of The Word 1 Peter 2:1–3
Author: Robert N. Wilkin

JOTGES 38:74 (Spring 2025) p. 81

How To Long For The Pure Milk Of The Word 1 Peter 2:1–3

Robert Wilkin

I. Introduction

My second campus director with Campus Crusade for Christ warned me about the danger of loving the Bible. He said that we are to love God, not the Bible. To love the Bible, he said, was to worship it, not God.

What do you think about his warning? Do you agree or disagree?

Many passages in Scripture address what our attitude toward God’s Word should be.1 One of those passages is 1 Pet 2:1–3.

First Peter was written around AD 64, probably from Rome (see 1 Pet 5:13).

Peter was writing to Jewish believers who were pilgrims or sojourners. The Greek of 1 Pet 2:1 indicates they were chosen sojourners, not “elect according to foreknowledge,” as most English translations read. The Greek eklektois is found in v 1 immediately before parepidēmois, “sojourners.” Verse 1 should be translated as, “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the chosen sojourners/pilgrims of the diaspora/dispersion…” (author’s translation). That is, these Jewish believers had been dispersed from their homelands by God’s choice.

II. Prepare Yourself To Receive God’s Word By Laying Aside Those Things That Would Hinder Reception (1 Peter 2:1)

Before we can do what Peter commands in v 2, we must wear the proper spiritual clothing.

Peter is discussing preparing ourselves to receive God’s Word each week.

JOTGES 38:74 (Spring 2025) p. 82

To be prepared to receive God’s Word, believers must lay aside those things that would hinder them from desiring and receiving God’s Word.

We are to lay aside “all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking.” Peter is not giving a complete list.

These sins affect the local church. Peter knows that turmoil in a local church hinders the people caught up in it from desiring the pure milk of the Word.

These attitudes and actions look both back and forward. They look back to the command to love one another (1:22) and forward to the command to desire the pure milk of the word that we may grow thereby (2:2).

You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
Click here to subscribe