A Great Exchange

We are going to start today with a game. This is an opposites game. I am going to give you a word and you are going to give me its opposite. For example, if I say up, you would say down. Got it? Strong (weak), Dirty (clean), hot (cold), Large (small), Big (little), Heavy (light), Loud (quiet) Light (dark), Bad (good), Wisdom (foolishness), Knowledge (ignorance), Wicked (righteous).

One of the truths we must face when we come to Christ is that none of us is inherently good. We can be moral, but that does not make us good. Paul says in Romans 3:10-12,

Romans 3:10–12 NASB95

as it is written, “There is none righteous, not even one; There is none who understands, There is none who seeks for God; All have turned aside, together they have become useless; There is none who does good, There is not even one.”

The point Paul is making is that none of us seek God without God first revealing himself to us. We are born into a sin nature and we act on it at the first opportunity. It owns us, but this is not who God wants us to be. As followers of Christ, we are destined for transformation into something completely opposite of what we were. It began the day you trusted Christ for salvation and as Paul writes in Philippians 1:6,

Philippians 1:6 NASB95

For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.

In the last couple weeks we have talked about applications that flow from an understanding of the greatness of our salvation. This is a salvation that is rooted in the living hope of Christ, who conquered sin and death when he rose from the dead. This salvation is imperishable and infinitely valuable. It secures for us an inheritance that nothing and no one can touch or take away.

Knowing that our glorious future is secure, we are called to pursue holiness. We are to become more like Christ each and every day. One of the byproducts of becoming more like Christ is a fervent love for one another, which is what we talked about last week. When we love God, love for others, and especially our fellow brothers and sisters, follows.

As we jump into chapter two, we will see the continuation of the transformation of our character. Peter writes in 1 Peter 2:1-3

1 Peter 2:1–3 NASB95

Therefore, putting aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander, like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.

In the first verse we see a list of negative qualities we are to cast off. This is in line with a pursuit of holiness. We cannot become more like Christ while holding on to things like malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. These characteristics are not of God. He who began a good work in us is doing the work of replacing these negative characteristics with positive ones. Where there was malice, there is goodwill. Where there was deceit, there is honesty. Where there was hypocrisy, there is integrity.

God cares about our character. That is why he sent Christ. He did not come to die for our sins to leave us in our sins. He died to pay the price for sin and rose from the dead to purchase our freedom from the power sin had over our lives. Sin is self destructive. Like a cancer, it eats away at us. It has already killed us in the spiritual sense. Christ came to revive us so we could once again pursue righteousness and goodness. We can have a relationship with God that transforms the very nature of our being. We are given a new nature and the old one dies so we don’t have to stay the person we were without him.

Let me ask you a question. Where do you think you would be if Christ had never come into your life? What kind of person do you think you would have become? It is easy to think that we would be a good and moral people, but we are inherently selfish creatures. We will be moral as long as it benefits us. At our core, our sinful nature will act in its own self interest and step on anybody in the process. By contrast, when Christians live by the principles found in the Word of God, we become the most loving, generous, and hospitable people.

When we apply biblical principles to our lives, we see malice, deceit, and hypocrisy as an offense to the God who made us and we begin to be a people of honesty and integrity. This means that we ought to be known as truth-tellers. Nobody ever ought to accuse us of being liars or untrustworthy. Nobody ever ought to see us in pubic and think their safety is at risk. We ought to be a people who tell the truth regardless of personal cost. We have a high code of ethics, but we must dare to trust God for everything we need.

For those of us who work, this means we must be honest in our business dealings. We don’t take shortcuts, we don’t lie or cheat people. The good of the client comes before profit. When I sold at&t services, I sold what the client needed rather than what would make me the most money. If we are going to make a deal, business or otherwise, we ought to commit to what we said we would do. Integrity matters. People before profit. No matter what we do, we must have goodwill, honesty, and integrity toward others.

Let integrity drive your actions.

The last two characteristics can be especially dangerous and destructive. Envy is looking over at your neighbor, seeing what they have, and being jealous of them. They have the house you wish you could have. They have the car you wish you had. When they buy a 60 inch TV, you want to buy a 70 inch TV. Do you get the picture? Envy means you can’t stand it when someone else is doing “better” than you (as you perceive it). So you develop a bad attitude toward someone else and that is toxic.

Many of you have heard this before, but if you haven’t, write this down:

Comparison is the thief of joy.

When you compare yourself to others, it will steal your joy. When you look at what someone else has and you develop a desire for that, be careful. You will begin to craft ways to get it and think that thing will bring you happiness. It is not wrong to want something as long as you maintain balance in your life and remember God is the true owner of your stuff. But if you are looking at the stuff someone else has and you have to have it because you are comparing your life to theirs, you will always be chasing something that runs faster than you do. Comparison is the thief of joy.

You have no idea why someone chooses to live the way they do. You don’t have to live the way someone else does. You are called to live your life the way God wants you to. The opposite of envy is contentment. When you are content with the life God has given you and you are secure in that, it does not matter what anybody else does. Contentment means anything could happen around you and it won’t matter because you know what you are going to do and it doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks. What matters is what God thinks, what he has instructed me to do, and I’m going to go do that. When I remember to live my life that way, I allow God to supply everything I need, and my desire for things other people have goes way down. That is what contentment does.

Slander involves bad-mouthing others. This is dragging another person’s name through the mud. Slander is malicious and it is not of God. We can be critical of one’s actions without slandering them. If you need to resort to taking to social media to ruin someone’s reputation, or talk bad about someone around town, you have a bigger problem. You have not allowed Christ to come in and transform this part of your character. When you know contentment and you know yourself, you don’t need to bad-mouth anybody. It won’t matter what other people do or say. I believe what God says about me. I believe what God says about the effects of sin. I understand people can be cruel. I used to be one of those people. But as I have cultivated a closeness to Christ, he has defined who I am and I have rested in contentment and knowing who my father says I am. Therefore I do not need to speak evil of anyone.

When we are confident in who God made us to be, we can speak in truth, love, and grace.

Peter uses a figure of speech we know all too well. He is using a simile, comparing one thing to another using the word like. He is not calling his audience to be babies, but as babies long for their mothers’ milk, we are to long for the pure milk of the word. This is about appetite for something, not about commenting on one’s spiritual aptitude.

I was not a very good student in High School. I won’t go as far to say I hated it, but I was not a good student. I just wanted to get through it so I could go home. I made good grades when I applied myself, but I was exceptionally good at two things: math and science. Of all the science classes I took, Biology was my favorite. Within the realm of biology, genetics was most fascinating. So when my daughter was born, that side of my brain kicked into overdrive and learned a ton of stuff.

For example, did you know a mother’s milk is a perfect genetic cocktail tailor-made for her baby? It is fascinating. There is nothing better for a newborn baby nutritionally than mommy’s milk. It was designed specifically for the newborn. But the perfect nutritional cocktail is not the only thing that is valuable about this exchange. Mom gets a wave of oxytosin, which has a calming effect and promotes bonding between mother and child. When you take this same idea, and begin to see the Word of God like spiritual milk, and we like newborns, there ought to be in us a simple instinctual desire for it.

So the natural question to ask, is how is your appetite for the Word of God? Do you long to be connected to your Father? Do you long to feed from His Word? Are you daily taking in biblical content? Are you taking in too much? Are you taking in too little?

How does a newborn grow? Regular, consistent feeding. As a newborn grows, he matures, and so do you. We have a spiritual nature that is starving! The problem is usually when we try to feed our spiritual hunger with the wrong source. Spiritual appetite is only satiated by spiritual food. Remember when Jesus spoke to the woman at the well? When she left to tell everyone about her encounter, his disciples returned to offer Jesus food. What did Jesus say?

John 4:31–34 NASB95

Meanwhile the disciples were urging Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.

Spiritual hunger is only satisfied through spiritual means. In the process, we grow up into salvation. What does that mean? It means when you come to faith in Jesus you are not automatically mature. You have to work at your faith to mature in it. If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord and you want more of that, you have to follow him.

What happens most of the time is people hear the gospel and have a genuine moment where they experience God. He reveals to them their sinfulness and they become painfully aware of their need of rescuing. Then they experience the mercy and grace of God as they choose to trust in Christ, and they awaken to new life. Then for one reason or another, they stop growing. They stop getting fed or they never learn to feed themselves, and they start starving to death. Then the hunger gets fed with something that is not spiritual and the hunger never goes away.

You were made for more. You were made to be satisfied, but you were made to be satisfied in Christ alone. When Christ satisfies you, there is a calm in your soul. A great exchange has taken place. You are not malicious, deceitful, or hypocritical. Rather, you have goodwill, honesty, and integrity. You are no longer envious or slander people because you are not concerned with what others think about you or what they do because you have found your contentment in who your Father says you are. If you lack contentment, we need to get to the bottom of that. If you are too concerned with what others say about you or do, we need to get to the bottom of that.

When we take a step back and do a little self-diagnostics and realize you are exhibiting some of these negative qualities, it is time to:

Return to the simple gospel.

What choice do you need to make today to return to the simple, life-giving milk of the Word of God?