1 Peter 2:1–10

Original Meaning

Fifth Exhortation: Desire the Word (2:1–3)

“THEREFORE,” PETER SAYS—THAT is, because his readers have been born again through the word of the living God (1:23)—they must “crave pure spiritual milk” (2:2).2 This does not refer to having home Bible studies or personal Bible study, or to going to church and Sunday school classes, or to attending Christian colleges or seminaries. Rather, it describes the spiritual nature of their craving3 as opposed to the former fleshly cravings (cf. 1:18; 2:11). As the “word” through which they received a new birth (1:3) was from the living and abiding God (1:23), so now the word they are to desire is spiritual.4 “Pure spiritual milk” refers to the very things that nourish the Christian community in its growth:5 knowledge of God, prayer, instruction in the gospel, faithful obedience, and hearing God’s preached word.6 The desire for spiritual nourishment is the desire of any church that wants to know the Lord and live in light of his will.

This desire is accompanied by learning to “rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind” (2:1)—problems that arise in Christian assemblies when spiritual things are not desired. In early Christian literature it was common to speak of Christians “stripping themselves” of vices and “clothing themselves” with virtues (cf. Rom. 13:12–14; Gal. 3:27; Eph. 4:22–24; Col. 3:8–12; Heb. 13:1; James 1:21).7 This image draws a picture of bad habits that need to be eliminated and good habits that need to be developed. Peter contains only the “rid yourselves” part.

Good habits come from craving pure spiritual milk, “like newborn babies” (2:2). While some have seen here a subtle hint that the readers of 1 Peter are young, immature Christians who need to be reminded to desire good things, it is more likely that Peter is referring to the manner of their desire. Their craving for spiritual nourishment should be like the cravings of nursing children for milk. When a church yearns for spiritual nourishment, that church will not be involved in bitter disputes with hypocritical showings or deceitful communications.8

If you, Peter says to his readers, learn to yearn for spiritual nourishment, you will “grow up in your salvation” (2:2). Peter is not concerned here about “church growth” in a numerical sense, but about the church, regardless of its numerical strength, becoming desirous of spiritual nourishment and spiritual growth. As John Stott said at the Lausanne Conference, “We confess that we have sometimes pursued church growth at the expense of church depth, and divorced evangelism from Christian nurture.”9 This leads, not to church growth, but to stunting the growth of the church.

This spiritual growth is in the direction of “salvation,” and for Peter that salvation is future (1:5, 9–10). Thus, what Peter has in mind here is essentially their “hope” and perhaps their final vindication.10 That is, if they yearn for spiritual nourishment, they will grow into that final salvation that is being protected for them by God as they continue in their faith (1:4–5).

All of this is founded on the fact “that you have tasted that the Lord is good” (2:3). The psalmist exhorted his readers to “taste and see that the LORD is good” (Ps. 34:8). Peter uses this text in his argument, contending that the foundation for spiritual craving is the fact that believers have already found spiritual nourishment to be good and tasty.11 Because the Lord himself is spiritually satisfying (again, an allusion to conversion as the foundation for ethics; cf. Matt. 11:25–30), they are to focus their lives on spiritual nourishment and growth, for it is through this kind of development that they will attain their hope of salvation.

Bridging Contexts

BEFORE WE CAN even begin to apply Peter’s exhortations and digressions to our world and churches, we need to perform surgery on our minds and hearts to see why Peter can have such a profoundly positive and exalted view of the church. It is not that Peter’s churches were so much more pure, more godly, more evangelistic, more worshipful, more interrelated in fellowship, and more theological than contemporary churches. A close look at his churches, I am sure, would turn up the same kind of factors present in Pauline and modern churches: envy and jealousy, sexual immorality and perversions, insubordination and rebellion.25 In order to appreciate Peter’s perspective on the church of Christ, it is important to grasp what constituted that church: a group of sinful people who had come to Christ for salvation and who were committed to walking in obedience. And that is no different from our churches today.

This fact is what raises the problem: Why is it that we are so critical of the church?26 Surely we do not need to pretend, like a little girl coming home from class and teaching her own “make-believe” class in the quiet of her bedroom, that we have all the right credentials, skills, and knowledge that are required to go on. Nor do we need to pretend that we are dressed in holiness, righteousness, justice, and mercy. It is entirely proper for the church to turn inward to denounce its sins and shortcomings; it is proper for the theologians of the church to turn against the intellectual depravity of the church; and it is expected that prophets and preachers will point to the problems in our world. But the issue is: How often do we resonate with this theme, and how do we criticize when we do? The issue becomes even more complex when we factor in the inherent beauty of the church as the bride of Christ, as the community of grace, and as the channel through which God has chosen to express his grace in our world. When we understand the nature of the church as Peter does here in such a profound manner, then, and only then, are we licensed to proceed into critique and battle.

But before we can cross that bridge of evaluation of our own churches, we must stand on God’s side and see how that church is constructed and discover its true nature. We are presently living in a (cess)pool of criticism and negativism, in which we find satisfaction in dirtying ourselves even more with criticisms and accusations of weaknesses. Of course there are weaknesses; the church is after all a community of redeemed sinners. Perhaps we could apply the words of C. S. Lewis to the church and world as a whole and not just to individuals within those larger communities.

It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day [in glory] be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare.27

Lewis is saying that humans, when they are finally in the eternal state, have so much potential that, if we could see that potential now, it would either throw us to our knees in awe or make us turn and run in fear. It is no stretch of the imagination to think this way of the church and the world. And if we can turn our thoughts this way, we can only be ashamed of our constant reprehending of the church. Some day this church will be so full of God’s glory and so like the glory of Christ that we ought to pause before we start hammering away at its structures and substructures. In other words, before we get to the business of application, we need to repent from a state of critical evaluation of the church, which Christ has bought and for which God has planned a great future.

Another issue of importance before applying this passage is that we must update the images before they can be meaningful in our cultural contexts. Peter uses some images that do not resonate with most readers of the Bible in the Western world. Such terms as “living stones,” “a holy priesthood,” “spiritual sacrifices,” “a chosen nation,” and “a royal priesthood” are all difficult for us to understand, let alone to appreciate or even to jump up and down in joy for their beauty. We must sit down with some books and tools to get to the bottom of these images. Only an insensitive preacher holds these images up before modern congregations as “great images to live by.” Concordances help readers find parallel expressions, commentaries (like those cited in the notes) elucidate their meaning, and dictionaries provide further information. We must use these tools if we want this text to have meaning in our world.

While we do not have the space to explain each of these terms in detail, I want to illustrate my point for one of them: “royal priesthood.” Many of my readers have grown up in a country where there is no royalty, and they may well have experienced either an unchurched or low-church background. For this kind of person (I am one of them), neither “royal” nor “priesthood” has any natural reverberations as a significant religious expression.28 To unpack its meaning, we need to know what it meant then and what analogies it might have in our world.

For a Jewish reader, to be a part of royalty was beyond one’s natural abilities because royalty was inherited; and I suspect most Jews would have thought of the line of King David. Unless one was part of David’s genealogy, being a part of royalty was unthinkable. For such people, the new-found privilege of being part of royalty would have been understood as a fantastic opportunity, however metaphorical it may have sounded. Again, the Christian gospel leveled all peoples and gave them status in God’s kingdom that they would not otherwise have had. For a reader in the Roman empire, the natural connection would be with the emperor and his family. Once again, this was beyond the scope of most people’s imagination and probably outside their desires. But the message of the gospel is that by believing in Jesus, these people became adopted members of the family connected with King Jesus, and they too became royalty.

But Peter adds to this notion of royalty the idea of priesthood, and here the Jewish connection is fundamentally important. Peter does not have in mind the priesthood of pagans but the inherited privilege of direct access to God.29 The priests were from special families among the nation of Israel, who served God by mediating between the people and God. To be a priest was a privilege beyond comparison because it involved entry into the special courts and holy places of the temple in order to take human concerns before God and apply God’s forgiveness.

So what we have here is a distinct calling: the dual role of having an inherited privilege of ruling God’s people and of serving as mediators between God and his people. To call all members of the new family of God, a royal priesthood meant (1) to wipe away any sense of physical lineage and heritage, and (2) to grant to these same people the highest statuses that one could imagine in Judaism: kings and priests. There is simply no analogy to this in our world because we today have no concept of ruling God’s people (we envision Jesus as the King of his people, the church) and because we have been raised to think that we have direct access to God through Christ’s work. Nonetheless, we must imagine the incredible rise in status that would have been granted to those who perceived this image in its true Jewish background. Precisely at this point we can make an application: To become a Christian is to be raised to the ultimate height in status because we suddenly become children of the God of the universe, and we have direct access to him because we are his children.

To aid in this perception, we should find analogies in our world that provide similarity to kings and priests in Peter’s world. Thus, we might think of CEOs or office bosses or presidents of institutions or governments and compare them with office staff, menial workers, and even the unemployed. We need to challenge the imagination of Christians and ask them to visualize their being the president of their country or being related to that president, or to visualize being the most important religious figure in their culture or suddenly becoming a CEO. At this point we can suggest that this is what we have become in Christ—people with unique and enduring privileges, with a massive status change, living before the holy and sovereign God, who by his grace has made us his people forever. We have been elevated to the greatest places in God’s kingdom: those who rule with Jesus and minister God’s grace to others.

Another issue for us in interpreting this passage concerns our inherent individualism. Recent applications of sociological knowledge to the New Testament has clearly demonstrated that the ancient world was much less individualistic than our world.30 While I think some of these scholars have exaggerated both contemporary individualism and ancient relational understandings (dyadism), the basic insight cannot be gainsaid: Ancients thought less individualistically than moderns.

That is to say, ancients did not think first of themselves and then of the group to which they belonged (family, church, synagogue, nation); instead, they thought first through the eyes of others and how a given fact could be processed for the group. Their “self-understanding” (to use a modern category that did not exist then as it does today) was determined by their relatedness to others. Thus, Malina has concluded that “if our sort of individualism leads us to perceive ourselves as unique because we are set apart from other unique and set-apart beings, then the first-century persons would perceive themselves as unique because they were set within other like beings within unique and distinctive groups.” Such is “a person whose total self-awareness emphatically depends upon such group embeddedness.”31 The question they might ask in getting to know another person would not have been, “What do you do that makes you something?” but, “To whom are you related?”

Recently Trinity’s faculty had a retreat in which one of the discussion groups concerned international students and how we, as American Western professors, can understand and teach them. Dr. Paul Hiebert made a comment that was arresting (even if it may have been a slight exaggeration) and illustrates my point. He stated that many of our African students do not like to stand out, do not always strive to get the best grade they can get, and do not like to demonstrate their knowledge by answering the teacher’s questions. He suggested that this was related to their culture where being part of the group was more fundamental than standing apart from the group. If he is correct, and my experience with some African students confirms his observation, then we have here an illustration of how first-century Jewish and Gentile Christians would have behaved.

Simply put, most applications of our text move immediately to its value for individual piety and only rarely to its value for a corporate understanding of the church and our society. Such a context for interpretation prevents us (1) from understanding the ancient text the way it was supposed to be understood, and (2) from experiencing the nature of the church as it ought to be—a community rather than a collection of individuals.

Before we can proceed into our world, therefore, we need to admit that how we describe the purpose of the church has too frequently been cast in isolated, culturally conditioned categories. When the American church sees itself primarily in terms of the Republican or Democratic party, when the English church sees itself in terms of the culture created and formed at Oxbridge, when the European church sees itself in terms of the economy of a united Europe, or when the Korean church sees itself in terms of national recovery, then we are seeing a culturally conditioned definition of the church. The church gains its identity and its purposes from the Lord and Spirit who created it. That identity and those purposes have been spelled out in the pages of the Bible, and modern cultures or subcultures in which local or national churches abide can only be dialectically related to that Bible. Culture cannot define or determine the parameters of the church, nor can it define its mission. When this happens, the church loses its bearings, begins to wobble, and eventually falls into a state of lethargy and ineffectiveness.

We are not suggesting that the specific culture in which a church dwells does not affect either its identity or purposes, for that would be foolish. But we are suggesting that culture cannot determine the mission of a church; it can only influence its directions and forms if that church wishes to remain faithful to its heritage and to its Lord. The church’s mission is to exalt the Lord, evangelize the world, and edify believers. These are the kinds of missions the Bible provides for the church. But the church today can easily get sidetracked, and an apparatus for getting the church back on its rails is what reformation is all about.

Our text addresses this issue because Peter makes several statements that are sweeping and directly relevant to the entire history of the church. Thus, the church is to grow into salvation (2:3), is to be a spiritual house that offers to God spiritual sacrifices (2:5), and is to declare the virtues of God (2:9). While these are not the only missions given to the church, the church is not the church if it is not performing these particular missions. Culture, however, has within it the capacity to substitute its own goals for the goals of the church, and we must learn to discern what God has called the church and churches to do in the present world.

Contemporary Significance

WE BEGIN BY observing that one of Peter’s major concerns in this letter can be broadly labeled “the relationship of the church to the state,” though he did not think in those terms. This text provides some important grist for the mill if we want to produce healthy ideas for a living church. In particular, it seems that Peter sees the relationship of the church to society in rather “sectarian” terms. That is, he sees the primary business of the church to be concerned with itself, its own identity, and its own formation, not in terms of how it can either counter or enhance the state. The primary mission of the church is to grow as a spiritual community and to declare the virtues of God. Peter does not deny that Christians should be involved in society, nor does he insist (as nearly all sectarian movements do) that they must insulate themselves from the world’s values by separating from the world. Nonetheless, his concern is inward, and in that sense, he reflects what is seen today by sociologists and others as a “sectarian approach” to life.32

It just so happens that Peter’s and our worlds dramatically differ in this regard. That means we must be careful of importing a world (which does not exist for modern Westerners) rather than importing theological direction for the church. The entire sweep of the Bible teaches that Christians in non-Christian environments are not to be worried so much about changing their environments as they are to remain faithful in whatever kind of environment they find themselves. In fact, the New Testament is unified on this point: Christian teaching concerns Christian theology and behavior, not social institutions and how they might be changed. Accordingly, the tasks of the church are transnational and universal, not culturally restricted. Thus, the mission of the church as defined by Peter here helps to form, and together with the rest of the New Testament does form, the foundation of church’s mission everywhere and in all ages.

In other words, Peter’s agenda here of spiritual formation and evangelistic outreach identifies the preeminent purpose of the church in society. Just how that might be done differs from culture to culture. Peter’s churches, for example, would probably not have held massive rallies in the city square, but that is no reason why Western churches cannot do so. In addition, Peter’s comments are also restrictive in that they define the primary tasks of the church. From day one the church of Christ was involved in spiritual formation and evangelistic outreach. In fact, one might contend that these are the two primary human-

oriented missions of the church, alongside the primary task of bringing glory to God through corporate and individual worship.33

What this means is that other tasks are to be seen either as subordinate to these goals or a means of accomplishing them. In applying this passage to our culture, therefore, we should begin with a fruitful analysis of the purpose of the church and of local churches in terms of what Peter brings to the fore is: spiritual formation (2:2, 5) and evangelism (2:7–8, 9).34 He envisions a spiritually formed, evangelistic people. As Richard Foster has said, “Superficiality is the curse of our age. The doctrine of instant satisfaction is a primary spiritual problem. The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people.”35

How are we to accomplish these purposes? I will make suggestions, largely the conventions of Christian wisdom, for both purposes. First, how are we to develop spiritual formation? It begins with our theology, as David Wells has amply demonstrated.36 We must understand that true spirituality is neither just an experience nor a technique but a relationship of obedience and trust to the one and only living God, the Father of Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God, and that he has sent the Holy Spirit to guide and nurture us in our spiritual formation. Until we understand theology (and let this overwhelm our ideas and practices), we will not develop true spiritual formation. All true Christian development is the result of knowing God the Father, participating in the work of the Son, and submitting to the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the greatest obstacle to spiritual development today is that people are too busy. “In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in ‘muchness’ and ‘manyness,’ he will rest satisfied…. Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.”37 In the development of spiritual maturity in our churches, we need to ask for time and for focus so that the noise of modern society can be eliminated to hear the glorious tones of God’s Word. This is best done in the context of a community.

It follows, then, that we will seek for Christian fellowship in the church of Jesus Christ and will find a special place for our Christian brothers and sisters. We will find a special bond with them and will nurture those friendships in the context of a local church. We will receive instruction and rebuke, as well as fellowship and guidance, from fellow Christians. We will find the contribution (our giftedness) we can make to that fellowship, and we will be thankful to God for what he permits and enables us to do. We will dedicate ourselves to praying for one another and about important items together.

It also follows that we will find a place for personal devotion, including the regular reading of the Bible and prayer, because through these disciplines we come to know God and his will. We will delight in the knowledge of God and will want to learn what is true about ourselves in light of that knowledge. In short, for spiritual formation to take place, we will desire a deepening of our understanding of God’s will and his work in this world (a theological and cosmic view of reality), will foster spiritual fellowship with other Christians, and will devote ourselves to time-honored disciplines.38

To develop spiritual formation does not involve any special experience (such as speaking in tongues, experiencing a miracle, or acquiring an education), nor does it necessarily involve any special techniques. Techniques often are “post-event” reflections on what we did prior to a special experience. But more often it was not the technique that brought on the event; rather, it was an event produced by God that we were privileged to experience because we were waiting on God, who was ready to give. To think that by repeating certain words we will meet God in a deeper way is a Christian version of magic. God comes to us in powerful ways when he wants. As with Narnia, so with God: It was not in the Pevensie children’s power to make the wardrobe itself turn into a gateway into Narnia. Sometimes, yes; sometimes, no. It was all of Aslan, and when Aslan wanted them there, they got there. So it is with our experience of God: Sometimes certain “techniques” lead us to God; sometimes not. It is all of God and his Spirit.

How can we develop an evangelistic outreach ministry in our churches today? Once again, it begins with theology. We need to understand that bringing people to himself is God’s great design, which makes heaven resound with praise (Luke 15). This design finds its power and effectiveness through the Holy Spirit, whose mission is to convict and convert (John 16:8–11).39 Evangelism always has as its subject the work God has done for humans in Jesus Christ, in his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection. Christian evangelism takes people beyond a belief in God to a trust in the cross of Christ and his resurrection. First Peter demonstrates this admirably: Peter tells his readers that they are to be Christian in their behavior because they have been redeemed by the blood of Christ (1:18–19), and that the cross is the essential model of Christian behavior (2:21–25). Further, he hopes to instill in his readers a hope grounded in the resurrection of Christ (1:3).

Evangelism runs aground when it roots itself in shabby and superficial theology; apart from a grasp of God’s holiness, which unmasks the sinfulness of humans, and apart from the love of God shown to people in the Cross and Resurrection, there is no basis for Christians declaring that they know the truth. And apart from the conviction that conversion takes place through the work of the Holy Spirit, Christians will resort to techniques and manipulations. But once we are standing on the greatness of the Trinity (Father, Son, and Spirit), Christians can fervently declare the truth of the gospel and trust in God to bring conversion about.40

But in saying that theology is the foundation, we dare not forget the important role the church plays in the preaching of the gospel. Emphasis needs to be given to two dimensions here: the gospel creates the church, and then to the church is given the task of preaching the gospel.

The gospel is the message of Christ’s salvation; the church is its most important corporate expression. The truth about Christ and his death, therefore, should find tangible expression in the church. Thus the gospel that created the church should also be modeled by the church.41

Methods and techniques are important for evangelism as long as they are subordinate to and in the context of trusting God to do the work and the Spirit to convert people. Whether one is trained to evangelize through the use of tracts or uses a technique like that of a well-known evangelist does not matter as much as the person who is evangelizing. Good methods in the hands of poor evangelists can be damaging, just as poor methods in the hands of good evangelists can get the task done. I am firmly convinced that mature Christians do not need “methods or techniques” any more than experienced carpenters need directions on how to operate a saw or a drill. Experienced evangelists trust in God, discern through the Spirit the person they are evangelizing, and know (like Jesus) how to adapt the message to the person and situation.

Let me express these concerns about the church’s mission to evangelize in a more educational manner. (1) What the local church needs to do in training evangelists is to instruct its members fully in the basics of the gospel, discerning that those who are evangelizing are genuine Christians and adequately educated in the message itself.42 I have been with young Christians who have evangelized and who have offered some of the most (theologically) incredible arguments in their zeal to convert others.

(2) We need to instruct our churches and evangelists so that they have a profound grasp of our world and its culture, from its materialism to its cultural diversity. I am not saying that evangelists have to be psychologists, sociologists, and philosophers, but the learned insights from each of these disciplines will help the evangelist in understanding his or her audience. A sensitive evangelist may perceive that a person is in the clutches of some materialistic philosophy and so will expound on the message of the Bible concerning the temporality of riches and this world. Understanding people, sometimes called sympathy or empathy, forms the heart of solid evangelism. But ultimately what we are talking about is spiritual discernment—discernment of what a particular person needs to hear as we preach the gospel to him or her.

(3) Finally, as we educate our churches in evangelism, we must give the priority of our focus to prayer and spiritual direction. We must emphasize that it since it is God’s work, we must be in tune with God; since it is the Spirit who convicts, we must depend on the Spirit; and since it is the cross of the Son, we must focus on the glorious achievements of Christ.

Original Meaning

Sixth Exhortation: Build a Spiritual House (2:4–5)

CHRISTIANS WHO TOGETHER crave for spiritual nourishment should also be fashioned as part of a spiritual house. In coming to Jesus, the one who tastes good, they will in fact build a spiritual house. In these two verses Peter raises two distinct themes, both of which are developed in what follows: (1) the twofold response to Christ in his earthly and heavenly ministries (acceptance or rejection, discussed in 2:6–8), and (2) the spiritual nature of the church (developed in 2:9–10).

Peter exhorts believers to build a spiritual house: “You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house.” It is preferable to translate “are being built” as “build yourselves.”12 The churches in Asia Minor must see themselves as “living stones,” connected to the “living Stone” (2:4), and they must unify themselves (1:22–2:3) so that they may become a spiritual house. That is, instead of being a simple group of social outcasts, they must find their identity and cohesion in their spiritual relationship to the living Stone. In fact, Peter states that the church is a “spiritual house,” that is, the temple of God. Presumably, he sees this temple as the replacement of the old temple as the dwelling place of God.

The spiritual connection of Peter’s readers to the living Stone is the foundation of the spiritual house they are forming: “As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him,” you will make this connection (2:4). Peter has in mind the effects of craving pure spiritual milk; that is, their yearning for spiritual nourishment is another way of urging them to come to Christ for spiritual satisfaction.

What Peter says here of Jesus Christ is fundamental to his understanding not only of Jesus himself, but also of the Christian life. Jesus was rejected by human beings but chosen by God, just as his readers were being rejected by humans. Later he exhorts his readers to look beyond their present rejection and see God’s final chapter of vindication as the concluding chapter of this story (see 2:18–25; 3:18–22; 4:1–6). This reflection about Christ is developed at 2:6–8.

The impact of their spiritual house is that are to become “a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (2:5). The metaphorical emphasis of their ministry provides both a breadth of vision and a lack of specific clarity when we try to unravel this image. Just what is a spiritual sacrifice? The wide variety of possibilities prevents us from contending that it is only one specific thing. It is probably best to see something like the list of behaviors typical of early Christian churches (e.g., 4:7–11).13