How Do We “Grow Up into Salvation”?

Having urged the readers of his first letter to “love one another earnestly from a pure heart,” Peter went on to explain what such brotherly love would entail. Loving fellowship demands action, he taught. Christians must be prepared to establish themselves on the foundation of union with Christ, stand as witnesses to God’s goodness and glory, and—as Alistair Begg explains in his sermon “Living Stone, Holy People”—draw sustenance from the deep well of His Word:

“By this pure spiritual milk, you may grow up into salvation.” It’s an interesting phrase, isn’t it, growing up into something? This makes me think of a school uniform, actually. Your mother, if she was a Scottish mother—I mean, your jacket looked like you had lost your arms when you went at first. But she said, “No, it’s good that you would shave this, because you can grow into it. You can grow into it.” Or when your aunt says, “What is that?” your mother says, “He’ll eventually fill it out.”

And so it is that the journey of the Christian life is fantastic, because salvation is so vast! We think when we come to taste the goodness of the Lord, we’ve got it. Well, we’ve got Him, but there’s so much more of Him to know. There are depths of grace that we have yet to discover. And so he’s saying to them, “Listen: This Word of God that has been proclaimed to the world is such that it needs to be the lamp to your feet, the light to your path, the map for your journey, the food for your souls.” And so we need to be fed up.

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