Nourishing Our Souls with Spiritual Milk

“Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.” (1 Peter 2: 1-3, NIV)

When babies are born, no one has to teach them to suck. It’s a natural instinct so deeply embedded in them that they can even do it from inside the womb. Towards the end of a pregnancy, babies are known to drink in amniotic fluid using that sucking mechanism. This way, when they’re born, they can go right to drinking milk from the mother. They don’t starve or have to wait days and days to figure out how to eat. They are born doing it.

I knew all this in a clinical sense before I was a mother, but once my daughter was born, I marveled at God’s design. It is nothing short of a wonder that a child is born and instinctively knows that their mother, who they have only known from the inside and is all of a sudden an external presence to them, has milk to drink. And it’s even more of a wonder that that child’s little tummy is so small that only a few drops is enough to not only satisfy their hunger, but also to slowly grow that baby into a nourished child. Because at first, that’s all the mother makes– a few drops. It takes days before her milk fully comes in and months before it establishes. 

And God has so carefully designed this process not just for the baby, but for the mother’s body, too. Her body is crafted and purposed to do it. And that baby that is born but a few pounds and ounces can gain weight and thrive off of that liquid alone. 

And yes, it says in 1 Corinthians 3:1-2, it is not enough for a child to live off of milk alone for its whole life, but for a very specific and appointed time, that milk is all that child needs. It is a simple process that is so precisely balanced and designed. 

And here, in 1 Peter 2, Peter likens this process to the first, fledgling days of being born again into the family of God. In those initial days of walking by faith in Christ, we are full of passion and zeal to know God, and like a newborn turns to their mother for nourishment, we should turn to God’s Word to satisfy our spiritual cravings for more of the Lord. In the original language of this passage, Peter uses the word “epipotew.” In this translation, we see that word as “crave,” but more appropriately we should read it as “yearn,” or “earnestly desire,” in a similar vein to when the psalmist writes, “As the deer pants for the water, so my soul desires you.”

That newborn baby? She pants for her mother’s milk. It’s not a fleeting craving or a fickle situation. She needs it. Her life depends on it. She will not be satisfied or comforted until she gets it. 

So it should be for us in knowing Jesus. It should be the strongest, most instinctive urge within us to search out the Lord in the Bible. It is the way God designed for it to be. Why? Because the more we drink that spiritual milk, the stronger our faith grows and the more transformed we become. Soon, salvation is not a casual claim but a confident assurance. My daughter is not the same baby she was when she was born last year. Sometimes, it takes my breath away to see how much she’s changed, and not just her physical growth or her constantly new abilities in strength and balance; her literal face has changed leaps and bounds. Sometimes, she’s not even recognizable to her newborn pictures.

Her face is fuller. Her body is less skinny. She’s heavier, more animated, and developing a personality with each day. So it is for us as we discover more about Jesus, drinking deep of the spiritual truths He’s left for us to find of Him in scripture. We should read it and see Christ, and desire to be made new, inside and out. When we reach out to take hold of more Christ, we put aside all the things of our former lives– our anger, malice, jealousy, hypocrisy, and our gossiping nature. We put aside who we were, dead in our sin, in order to know God and be convicted towards the new creation we are, being rooted in salvation and faith.

And yes, as we continue to walk with Jesus and transform into His children, we gradually move on to some more complex spiritual concepts. Just as 1 Corinthians says, milk alone will not forever sustain us. But we should never exhaust ourselves of the simplicity of the Gospel, having tasted and seen the Lord’s goodness in our spiritual newness and youth all the way through to the deeper places of our faith. We should never tire of being reminded of those basic concepts of who God is. It should always thrill us and cause us to be in wonder of His perfect design.

I don’t know about you, but I never want to get to the place in my faith where I am unenthused with the awesome Gospel that first drew me to the Lord. I never want to find myself in a place where I am not stirred up all over again by the same goodness that revealed itself to me when I first gave my heart to Him.

I want that not only for myself. I want it for my kids. I want it for my husband, for my family, friends, and community. Because out of that love that first captured me and has held me all these years, I am reminded over and over of His grace to me. I want it to be found in all that I do and say, so that others can be spiritually nourished and encouraged to keep growing. It’s that same goodness that drew me to Him that will draw others to Him, too, if only I can be used as a vessel for others to see Him in me.