Crave the Pure Word Like a Newborn Craves Milk

Introduction

First Sunday of 2026, at Saint-Lazare church. The preacher opens the first letter of Peter, chapter 2, verses 1 to 3, and asks a very simple question: at the heart of this new year, where does your relationship with the Word of God stand? Rather than lecturing you about New Year's resolutions, he offers you something more glorious and more lasting. Being a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, a child of God through Jesus Christ, means being a man or woman who is resolved, not just for the month of January, but in a growth that keeps becoming more beautiful and more evident. And that kind of steadiness isn't something you get through willpower alone: it comes through essential nourishment.

Message outline

1. Reject without compromise the logic of people who live without God (v. 1)

• Peter writes to Christians scattered throughout the world and tells them: "Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking." The plural in the original text (hypocrisies, envies, evil speakings) shows just how inventive human nature without God can be: many ways to be a hypocrite, many forms of envy, many kinds of slander.
• The Greek word translated "put away" literally means to strip off, like taking off clothing. It's not about folding these garments up for next time, but about permanently taking off an old garment that has clung to your skin, even when it hurts because you'd grown used to it.
• The reason for this rejection is given just before, in chapter 1, verse 24: "For, 'All flesh is like grass, and all of man's glory like the flower in the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls.'" If you build your life on the voices, values, and visions of a world without God, don't be surprised when your life withers.
• The preacher illustrates this with historical examples of adulterated food: botched vaccines that made people sick, and at the end of the nineteenth century in the United States, milk watered down and mixed with chalk to increase profits, which made children severely ill (and sometimes killed them). The logic of people without God is exactly that kind of food: toxic, fraudulent, and, in the end, deadly.
• Putting these things away is also the condition for living out the goal set in verse 22: "having purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection." Wickedness, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking pollute and destroy that brotherly love, which is itself the very expression of a life lived for God.

2. Long for the Word as a newborn longs for pure milk (v. 2)

• "As newborn babies, long for the pure spiritual milk, that with it you may grow" (v. 2). The image here is of a mother's milk. Peter isn't contrasting a baby's food with an adult's solid food here (that's Paul's point elsewhere, and it's entirely valid, but it's a different point). Peter's point is that a mother's milk contains everything a baby needs to live and grow.
• Think of colostrum, that special milk produced in the first three days after birth, packed with natural antibodies and protection made by the mother's own body. A newborn regaining weight doesn't eat pureed vegetables or sausages: the milk alone is entirely sufficient to protect and grow him.
• In the same way, the Word of God is a completely sufficient food to sustain you and make you grow. "All in one," you don't need anything else to build your life as a disciple.
• The nature of this longing is what marks newborns: watch a baby at feeding time, he demands the milk fervently, insistently, and he's only calmed once he's feeding. That's the intensity Peter is describing.

3. This Word is imperishable, and you have tasted that the Lord is good (v. 2b-3)

• Why long for this milk? First, because it is unadulterated, untampered with, pure. And because its very nature is imperishable and eternal: "having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and remains forever" (1:23). It's this Word that brought you to life when you were dead, it's through this Word that God makes you grow, it's through this Word that he holds you.
• Second, because you have already tasted how good the Lord is (v. 3). The "if" in this verse isn't a condition but a statement of fact: since you have tasted, you should naturally long for this Word all the more. This is the direct echo of Psalm 34:8, read earlier in the service: "Oh taste and see that the LORD is good. Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him."
• So the deep motivation isn't guilt ("I haven't done it"), nor outward pressure ("that's what evangelicals do"), nor mere principle. It's love for a Lord who is so good, who gave himself for you, that you learn to love what he loves and hate what he hates.
• And the purpose is growth toward salvation. This isn't just about your little daily routine: it's the great salvation God is leading you toward, the glorious and perfect life with him that his Word is preparing you for even now. The Christian who says, "Jesus died for my sins, I'm saved, I'll just wait quietly," is wrong. The one who says, "because the Lord has given me such a great salvation, I want to keep growing more and more in it," is right.

Key takeaways

• Being a Christian isn't about making a good New Year's resolution: it's about standing firm, resolved for the long haul, nourished by food that sustains you day after day.
• Putting away wickedness, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander means stripping off an old garment stuck to your skin without compromise, not just setting it aside for next time.
• The Word of God is a completely sufficient food, like a mother's milk for her newborn: you need nothing else to hold on and grow in the faith.
• The true motivation for longing after the Word is neither guilt nor duty: it's love for a Lord who is so good, whose goodness you have already tasted.
• This Word is imperishable and eternal: it brought you to life, it makes you grow, it holds you, and it equips you for so great a salvation.

Personal application

1. What kind of word do you expose yourself to most during your day (social media, TV shows, coworkers, the Word of God)? Which voice, honestly, shapes you the most?
2. Is there an "old garment" in your life (a hypocrisy, an envy, a form of slander) that you regularly fold up and put back in the closet instead of taking it off for good? What would be the first step toward rejecting it without compromise?
3. Does your personal devotional time, that intimate moment with the Lord with no pretense, have a fixed place in your week, or do you need to pick it back up at the start of this year?
4. Are you part of a weekly group, or a regular reading time as a couple, family, or one-on-one, where you're learning to feed on the Word with others? If not, who could you reach out to this week?
5. Before Jesus, what makes you say today: "yes, I have tasted that the Lord is good," and how does that goodness concretely feed your longing for his Word?

Scriptures cited

• 1 Peter 2:1-3 (WEB)
• 1 Peter 1:22-25 (WEB)
• 1 Peter 5:10-11 (WEB)
• Psalm 34:5-10 (WEB)

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between the "spiritual milk" in 1 Peter 2 and the "milk" Paul criticizes the Corinthians for needing?

These aren't the same image. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 3:2, contrasts the milk of beginners with the solid food of spiritually mature believers, to tell the Corinthians they should be further along by now. Peter isn't making that contrast. His point is different: a mother's milk contains absolutely everything a newborn needs to live and grow, and in the same way, the Word of God is completely sufficient food for a disciple, at any spiritual age.

How can I concretely feed on the Word day to day?

The preacher mentions four occasions worth cultivating: personal devotional time (that intimate one-on-one moment with the Lord, with no one watching), reading and praying together as a couple or family, a regular one-on-one meeting with a brother or sister, and a weekly group where you learn together to put the Word at the center. Sunday's preaching then crowns it all. All of this calls for regularity, faithfulness, and above all a renewed love for the Lord.

What should I do when my spiritual resolutions fizzle out after a few weeks?

This passage doesn't first call you to an act of willpower, but to a desire. Desire is born from tasting: "if you have tasted that the Lord is good." Reconnect with the goodness of this Lord (in 1 Peter 1, in the gospels, in prayer), and your longing for his Word will be rekindled. And remember the promise that closes the letter: "the God of all grace [...] will himself perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you" (1 Peter 5:10). It isn't your own steadiness that holds you together: it's his.