1 Peter 1:22-23  Christians Need To Grow Up

  22 Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which lives and abides for ever.

  Born Again by the Word and the Spirit

  In this beautiful pastoral letter, to a people suffering extreme persecution, Peter here is taking them back to the beginning of there personal relationship with the Lord. They had purified their souls in obeying the truth. The truth is another word for gospel. He reminds them that when they accepted Christ as their Saviour there had been two factors involved. The first is the Word of God, the Truth of God, the Gospel or Good News of God. There is no genuine experience of the Grace of God bringing forgiveness to the human heart without the Bible. But there is another agent of God at work, opening blind eyes to the truth of God’s Word, and that is the Holy Spirit. It was when the Holy Spirit applied the truth of the God’s Word to their hearts that there lives were transformed and their sins were forgiven and their hearts were cleansed. The Holy Spirit entered their lives and gave them a supernatural love for their brothers and sisters in Christ. Peter describes this love as unfeigned and fervent. That is the result of being born again by the Word of God.

  In this passage the Word of God is described as being:

 Pure, Incorruptible

 Powerful, Life changing

 Permanent, It lives and abides forever..

 All that man prides himself on, his wealth, rank, talents, beauty, learning, splendour of equipage or apparel, has no more permanence than the grass that soon withers and the flowers that soon fade and fall..

But the word of the Lord, or as Isaiah (Isa 40:8) has it, “the word of our God”, endures forever It continues unmoved, fixed, permanent. Amidst all the revolutions on earth, the fading glories of natural objects, and the wasting strength of man, God’s truth remains unaffected. Its beauty never fades; its power never weakens. The gospel system is as beautiful and as powerful now as it was when it was first revealed to man. It has as much power to save now as it had when it was first applied to a human heart. We see the grass wither at the coming on of autumn; we see the flower of the field decay; we see man, though confident in his strength, and rejoicing in the rigor of his frame, cut down in an instant; we see cities decline, and kingdoms lose their power: but the word of God is the same now as it was at first, and, regardless of all the changes which may ever occur on the earth, that will remain the same.

There is not an object of natural beauty on which we pride ourselves that will not decay; and soon all our pride and pomp will be laid low in the grave. In the midst all the changes which the human body undergoes it is cheering to think that there is something which does not change and which never loses its beauty. “The word of the Lord” remains constant. God’s promises, and His assurances that there is a brighter and better future for those who know Him, remain sure in spite of all these changes This Word stands in contrast to human frailty.

And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.

Desiring the Word

  Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word that ye may grow thereby:

  The word translated laying aside, is a word which means putting off clothes. The meaning is that we are to cast off these things as we would filthy clothes. We are no longer to practice them. In the light of all that the gospel has done in us and God’s Word means to us, we should renounce all evil. The word malice we apply now to a particular kind of evil, denoting extreme spitefulness, a desire to hurt others for no reason, other than personal gratification, or out of a spirit of revenge. The Greek word, however, includes evil of all kinds.

  We are also to cast off deceit. . This word means, feigning to be what we are not; assuming a false appearance of religion; cloaking a wicked purpose under the appearance of Godliness                                  

  Hypocrisies of all kinds is concerned with those who think Christianity is about performing or play acting. Be born again by the Word and the Holy Spirit and become the genuine article

  Envies are hatred of others on account of something which they have, or something which they possess which we do not.

  Evil speaking is speaking against others. This word is rendered “backbiting” and in other translations as “slanders”. It would include all unkind or slanderous speaking against others. This remains a common fault in the world, and it is one of the problems that the Word of God enables us to guard against.

The Holy Spirit, who indwells every born again believer, teaches us to lay aside whatever guile, insincerity, and false appearances we may have acquired, and to put on the simple honesty and openness of children. A man that is characteristically deceitful, cunning, and crafty, is not a Christian. We should be as open as a small child. Jesus said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” Matt 18:3.

  The phrase, “as newborn babies,” used here denotes Christians who were newly born again; that is Christians who had just begun the spiritual life. It is not uncommon, in the Scriptures, to compare Christians with little children. As new born babies desire milk new Christians should desire the pure milk of the Word. The Greek word here translated sincere means that which is without guile or falsehood; unadulterated, pure, genuine. The Greek adjective translated “of the word,” means rational, pertaining to reason, or mind; and, in the connection here with milk, means that which is adapted to sustain the soul. This is an allusion to the gospel in its purest and most simple form, nutrition for the new-born soul. But there are two ideas here; one, relates the Word to the truths of the gospel, and the other is that they were to desire the milk of the word with the same earnestness that new born babies desire milk

Babies grow on the proper nourishment. Christians also need to grow spiritually, and they are enabled to grow by being fed the proper food.  The Christian, or a child, will grow in proportion as it has the proper kind of nourishment.

 If we have a love for the simple and pure truths of the gospel it is evidence that we have spiritual life, just as the desire for appropriate nourishment is evidence that an infant has natural life. The new-born soul loves the truth. It is nourished by it. It perishes without it. The gospel is just what it wants; and without that it could not live.