Let’s go with chapter two of 1 Peter:

So put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander. Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation — if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up. (1 Peter 2:1–5)

The Church as a Spiritual House

So I circled this because “grow up into salvation” and “be built up as a spiritual house,” I think, are parallel ideas. The one has the imagery of you’ve been born again, you’re like a child, and you want to grow. And here, you’re a bunch of stones lying around and you come to the living stone, and as you get connected with the living stone, Jesus Christ, who had been rejected but now has made the cornerstone, you are being built into a house. So, you grow up into a full mature human being who knows God, and you grow up into a house.

So these are process descriptions of the Christian life. Being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood for spiritual sacrifices. So this metaphor is being really exploited to the full by Peter. So we are living stones and thus, we become walls and ceiling, and we’re a house for God. That’s what the temple was. It was the place where God dwells, and Christians, when they are built together well, become a special dwelling place for God.

God shows up corporately in the life of the church uniquely, not only. You have your private times, but uniquely, there’s a power and a presence of God in the corporate reality of the church that doesn’t get experienced anywhere else. And you are the priesthood which is functioning in the house. So you’re the walls and you’re the priesthood.

And, though it doesn’t say it explicitly, you are the sacrifices. Paul says, “Present your bodies as living sacrifices” (Romans 12:1). So the way the New Testament is exploiting these Old Testament images of temple and priesthood and sacrifices is to say that they’re all fulfilled — first in Christ, who is the sacrifice and the dwelling place of God and the high priest, and then as he forms a people, they themselves are the temple and the priesthood and the sacrifices as they present themselves.

So all that Old Testament is not to be thrown away as useless. It’s to be read as fulfilled in Christ and in his church. And what’s being stressed here is, be built into that, come to him, be built into that. And here, it’s like newborn infants, come, drink, eat, and grow into Christ.

Putting Away Ill-Will and Deceit

I skipped over 1 Peter 2:1, which I think is a working out of what love looks like. Always remember chapter divisions and verse divisions were added later, they are not part of the original writing. So pretend that they don’t exist when you read your Bible. And so he just said we’ve been purified, you’ve been born again for a sincere love of the brethren.

And now, and he gets more specific I think in what that love looks like: “Put away all malice and all deceit.” Malice and deceit, and I put those two together, so ill-will would be malice, deceit would be trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes and being a basically deceitful person. Ill-will and deceit — that’s where all the troubles in the world come from, right? It’s a picture of Satan. Satan is a liar. He’s a liar from the beginning, and he’s a murderer. He hates and he lies, and all destruction comes from that.

And so he says put away all ill-will malice, put away every bit of deceit. Christians should be the most transparent people of integrity in Canada and the USA. It’s a sad thing if we’re ever caught in deceiving people or misleading people or embezzling anything or lying about anything or putting up a front. And so I think these next three pieces come from those two, and put away hypocrisy.

What is hypocrisy? Hypocrisy flows out of being a basically deceitful person with little care for other people, who just wants to look better than you are. So you’re all about yourself when you’re a hypocrite, all about you. And you can’t read this letter and believe you’re all about you.

You’re all about God, you’re all about the hope laid up for you in heaven. You’ve been satisfied by another treasure — not “I need, I need, I need, I need you to like me, I need you to think better of me than I really am, I need to conceal the way I really am because you may not like me.” You don’t need that anymore. Your whole soul is satisfied with what’s been given to you in Jesus Christ.

Envy takes hypocrisy a step further and starts feeling resentful that you’re better than I am. You got something or you can do something and I can’t. “I don’t like that.” Hypocrisy is not quite that aggressive yet. Hypocrisy is just kind of “I want you to see me as better than I am.” Envy is “You’re better than I am and I don’t like it at all. My emotions are starting to kick in with anger and resentment,” and he says put it away.

Put it away. Those are in accord with your old passions, you don’t have those anymore. And then slander is the final step in: “Not only do I want you to see me better than I am, and I get upset when you’re better than I am, but I’m going to tell everybody that you’re bad. I’m going to make up stories about you. I’m going to make you look bad to other people.”

It’s all rooted in deceit and ill-will. And he says put it away, put it away. We’re going to see in a minute, where he says, “Abstain from passions that make war on your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). That’s what’s behind this as well.

Longing for Spiritual Nourishment

So you can see that what’s really going on is always beneath the surface. It’s not just mere behaviors, that he cares about. It’s the inner malice, that ill-will, it’s the inner bent towards being a deceptive person, and then hypocrisy and then envy and then slander, and it grows out and ruins a church and ruins a society.

So, we should be people who are putting that stuff to death, and how? “Like newborn infants.” Long for desire — here’s another command for your emotions — desire the pure spiritual milk. Now don’t have in your mind here the picture of Hebrews 5 or 1 Corinthians 3 where milk is contrasted with meat, and milk is for babies and meat is for mature people. That’s not what’s going on here. I don’t think.

I think what’s going on here is, like newborn babies, once they’ve tasted that breast, they’re back on it just as fast as they can. “This is good. This is satisfying. This takes away my belly ache, I love this. This is so good. I will grow by this.” Sixty-nine years old having been saved for 63 years or a brand new baby, both of us should feel this way. John Piper should get up in the morning with that desire — like a newborn baby, give me some milk to satisfy my soul and to grow me another stage towards Jesus in my old age. Give it to me.

I think that’s what he’s saying. “Long for the sincere milk that you may grow up into salvation.” Isn’t that amazing? We know that we are saved, and Peter knows that we are saved, but there’s a fullness of salvation that comes to a climax in the last day, which is reached by process.

And the process here is described as, long like babies for the milk, spiritual milk, which I think is probably the word which had just been referred to, and then he says, “if indeed you have tasted” — so this is still with the longings like a baby — “if you have tasted that the Lord is good” (1 Peter 2:3). So, it’s not merely that I get up in the morning and I hunger for the word. It’s “I hunger for the goodness of God in the word.”

Isn’t that what it’s saying? If indeed you have tasted — yes, yes, that’s why we’re addicted. That’s why we are going to go back again and again and again, because we’ve tasted that when we go to this book, we meet a good God, a holy God, wise God, loving God, merciful God, all providing, all caring God, all satisfying God. We have tasted, we’re going back every day, and grow with this God until we’re with him. I think that’s the idea there.

So, don’t settle. It’s so sad to see Christians who coast. It’s so sad. It’s like, “I’m just where I am, I’m fine, I’m okay, I don’t like those weird people who are always striving for more. They always want to see more. I’m just okay.” That’s deadly. That is really deadly, because we’re all floating in a current that’s going backward. And if you’re not swimming, you’re going the other way.

Earnestly desire hope, earnestly desire the milk, earnestly desire hope, and then be built up into the house and the priesthood.

Destined to Disobey

For it stands in Scripture:

“Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone,
     a cornerstone chosen and precious,
and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” (1 Peter 2:6)

“To you therefore, who believe he’s precious” — I changed the ESV there by the way, you might’ve noticed that, because that is the RSV, and in the new ESV, switched it to “to you belongs the honor,” and I’m not persuaded by that translation, that link there really matters, I think. Chosen and precious. Whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.

“To you therefore who believe he is precious. To those who do not believe, stone that builders rejected has become the cornerstone. You’ve rejected the stone, and in spite of your rejection, God made him the cornerstone. A stone of stumbling and a rock of offense” (1 Peter 2:7–8).

And then the most shocking verse in the whole book. “They stumbled because they disobeyed, as they were destined to do” (1 Peter 2:8). And I refreshed my mind about all the different ways this is handled as people come, but I think this disobedience here is what is referred to here. And that makes or breaks how sovereign you think God is. Whether you think that’s what that means.

Embracing the Weight of God’s Sovereignty

“They stumbled because they disobeyed the word, as they were destined to do.” Is that anything different than saying we were born again by the mercy of God? In other words, everybody in the world is fallen in Adam. Everybody is born a sinner deserving judgment. We are selfish. We’re rebellious. We know by our own conscience. Romans 1 says that we do not live up to even our own standards, let alone a holy God’s standards. Therefore, every person on the planet, unless they drowned it with alcohol, has a guilty conscience. Everybody.

There’s not a person in the world who doesn’t at sometimes have a guilty conscience, because our conscience are bearing witness that we are in fact guilty. God owes nobody anything. If every human being tomorrow died in an earthquake, God would have wronged nobody. Let me say that again. If all seven billion people were swallowed, or let’s just say a comet hit the earth and destroyed it, it just blew up and all seven billion people died tomorrow, God would have wronged no one.

Therefore, that I have been born again to a living hope is sheer mercy. He owes me nothing. He owes you nothing. He owes Nepal nothing. Therefore, if he doesn’t cause me to be born again, he has done me no wrong, and I will disobey as I have been destined to do because that’s the way I’m born. That’s my destiny. I’m living out who I am unless God intervenes and rescues me.

That’s very weighty. We could teach a whole course on the doctrine of God’s sovereignty here in regard to both predestination and reprobation, but it isn’t a course on predestination and reprobation. And I’ll leave that with you for you to ponder as to whether or not, it might be good though.

Clarifying the Paradox

Let me just put up some warnings. Warnings. I’m arguing this is the flip side of the election, or the flip side of the new birth. It does not mean that there are any who want to be saved and can’t be saved.

Nobody is in that category of “I desperately wish he would save me and he won’t.” Nobody will say that at the judgment day. Nobody will say, “I wanted to be saved and you wouldn’t save me.” Nobody will say that. It does not mean that there are any judgments of God that will be unjust. We’ll let the Judge of all the earth do right. Genesis 18:25 — he will do right. None of his judgments are unjust.

It does not mean that there are any people in the world who are not accountable. Somebody might say, “Well, I’m not accountable. If I’ve been destined to be disobedient, then I’m not accountable anymore.” Oh, you are accountable and you know you are accountable. And you know that you’re acting out. Sin is who you are, and you are responsible and accountable for it. And then there is a mystery in how God rules over the human will without removing that accountability. And I’m willing to let it be mysterious.

I want to believe all the parts of the Bible, and if the Bible says human beings are accountable to God for their actions, and it says God is sovereign over those actions. if I can put that together, I will. If I can’t put it together, I will let them both stand. I won’t cancel this out by saying, “Well, this can’t be if this is, and this can’t be if this is.” Just make sure that the two parts of the paradox, as you say them, are really the biblical parts.

Because the way a lot of people say it is, “The paradox is between, ‘I have ultimate self-determination, and God has sovereignty.’” That is not what the Bible says. The Bible, nowhere, teaches that humans have ultimate self-determination. Nowhere. Not a single verse teaches that.

The right thing the Bible teaches is all humans are accountable. And if you say, “Yes, but you can’t be accountable if you don’t have ultimate self-determination,” that’s the philosophical presupposition you are bringing to the Bible. It does not come out of the Bible, which is huge to make that distinction.

So there you go. It’s dumped on you, the whole issue of God’s sovereignty in relation to human will, and you can see where I stand. Because somebody asked me that, and there it is. I am a lover of the God of sovereign grace, and my life depends on it. And that’s one of the reasons it’s not just a belief, but a love.