In the James Bond film Spectre, 007 uncovers the work of a sinister global criminal organisation. The body, Spectre, stands for Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion. It actually embeds its support for malicious intentions in its name.

Most people, however, would like to think of themselves as good, even when there’s a little malice or another negative motive in how they act. They want to get back at someone who’s slighted them. Or they do something because the other person “deserved it”.

But the apostle Peter urges us to play by a different rulebook and instead crave what he calls “spiritual milk”.

He ended the previous chapter, 1 Peter 1, by quoting Isaiah 40 v6–8:

All people are like grass,
and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;
the grass withers and the flowers fall,
but the word of the Lord endures forever.

So we have a choice of focus: are we attempting to gain glory by a worldly playbook or are we looking to the everlasting?

Peter, then, in this chapter, explains why “spiritual milk” is so important:

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.

As N.T. Wright says in Early Christian Letters for Everyone:

Becoming a Christian is about the new life within us first coming to birth, then being nourished and sustained, then growing to maturity. That last stage is marked, as it should be for a growing child, with the discovery that there are good ways and bad ways of relating to those around you. You have to learn to choose the first and renounce the second…

The good ways, however, are difficult, and that’s why Christians need the “spiritual milk” that Peter talks of.

That “spiritual milk”, referring to God’s word, is used by the Holy Spirit to develop us in holiness. The New Testament scholar Gordon Fee said: “Any careful reading of Paul’s letters makes it abundantly clear that the Spirit is the key element, the sine qua non, of all Christian life and experience.”

But Wright warns that this milk gets watered down by preachers wanting to be kind and not be too demanding of their audience. He says:

Then the spiritual baby fails to grow properly, and, like a malnourished child, may become spiritually listless and helpless. A true, strong, vital relationship with the Lord is the key: taste that he is gracious, and go on thirsting for that taste and refusing, like a sensible baby, to be satisfied with anything less.

So, as Christians, we don’t just have to strive and struggle to become better people on our own: God has provided us with help.