Focal Passage: I Peter 2:1-10
Have you ever noticed the singular focus of a baby’s diet? While we as adults are scarfing down pizza, cheeseburgers, macaroni and cheese and an endless list of other foods that are not good for us, newborn babies simply want milk (or a close substitute).
Give them a few months and they will be willing to expand their pallets a bit. Give them a few years and they will become walking garbage disposals downing anything that brings smiles to their faces. It does not take long for the fallen nature of children to become evident.
More than simply wanting things they do not need, they begin to beg, cry, and even demand them. Physical maturity does not stop these desires; it simply increases the appetite and expands the means to fulfill them.
Rust
Spiritual maturity has almost nothing in common with physical maturity, but there is one similarity we must consider. A healthy life is marked by a continual journey toward maturity. Even when it does not seem that your newborn baby is growing, your photos tell a different story.
From chubby cheeks to hair to teeth to walking and talking, the changes become quite noticeable. Only physical sickness can impede this growth process. As soon as a believer experiences the new birth, there should be signs of gradual growth. If they are absent, spiritual sickness has set in. Unlike physical growth that eventually plateaus and later gives way to deterioration, spiritual growth should continue throughout our lives even as our physical bodies begin to fade.
Peter exhorted his readers to exchange the old menu of malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander (2:1) and have a craving like babies for “the pure milk of the word” in order to mature in their salvation (2:2). To rightly define maturity, we must make a clear distinction between busyness and growth.
While we want new believers to be involved in Christian activities, their participation does not necessarily indicate spiritual growth. That is why we have seen people become very involved in church and then become noticeably absent. Unless they are growing in Christ and learning why the church does what it does, they may drift toward other options they find more attractive.
To use a farming analogy, it is the difference between growth and bloat. They both enlarge, but one is a sign of health and the other is a sign of sickness that may lead to death. Peter adds the qualifier, “if you have tasted that the Lord is good” (2:3). No amount of Christian activity replaces the results of new life in Christ.
Anything worth pursuing requires a culling process. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, and especially the person we marry have to pass muster with assigned inspectors, especially us!
Unfortunately, people often settle for superficial standards and end up eating pretty spinach tainted with e coli or marrying a handsome man who does not love Jesus. Don’t cull as narrow-minded, primitive, or unnecessary the only stone on which a stable life can be built.
Jesus is the cornerstone! B&R — Rust is associational mission strategist for Holston Baptist Association.