<p>2:2 <i>Be as newborn babes</i><i>, longing for the spiritual milk which is without deceit</i><i>- </i>Peter was writing to those he had baptized many years ago, who had become hardened by this world. He urges them to look back to their conversion, and start again. Hebrews criticizes Jewish converts for needing milk rather than meat, so Peter's exhortation here is not without an element of criticism and regret that they had not matured more. The euphoria of those thousands of baptisms at Pentecost must be considered against how Peter now writes to them, years later.</p><p>&lsquo;Be babes&rsquo; he exhorts, &lsquo;and grow as they do&rsquo; (1 Pet. 2:2). The same word occurs in Lk. 18:15 in description of the &ldquo;infants&rdquo; whom Peter rebuked. The Lord&rsquo;s response had been to tell Peter to be like them (Lk. 18:17). And, having been humbled into learning something of a child&rsquo;s teachableness, a babe&rsquo;s desire for the sincere milk, Peter now asks others to learn the lesson.&nbsp;</p><p><i>So that you may grow thereby to salvation- </i>&ldquo;Salvation&rdquo; is being like the Lord, the saved one;&nbsp; we grow into it, as well as being granted it finally. James 1:18 speaks of &quot;the word of truth&quot;, the inspired word of the basic Gospel message. But he goes on to appeal for us to be &quot;doers of the word&quot; (James 1:22,23). &quot;The word&quot; must be that of v. 18- the word of the Gospel. He sensed the tendency to accept the word of God as true, to show this by baptism: and yet not to be &quot;doers&quot; of that word. It is in this sense that the word of the Gospel is what we grow by (1 Pet. 2:2 cp. 1:23,25; 2:8; 3:1); by our daily response to the most basic things which we have understood and claim to believe, we will grow spiritually. When we were baptized, we read the simple Biblical statements about baptism and obeyed them. That translation from Bible reading into practice is something which we thenceforward struggle to maintain for the rest of our lives. There is a power in the inspired word, whereby one mind- God's- can penetrate another with no intermediary but a piece of flattened wood pulp, black print on white paper. It's an amazing phenomenon to be part of. Lev Tolstoy in his spiritual autobiography <i>A Confession</i> tells in gripping manner how he read the words of Jesus &quot;Sell everything you have and give to the poor&quot; and then finally overcame all the restraints of his nature to do just that. He freed his serfs, gave away the copyrights to his writings and began to dispose of his huge estate. Words on paper must likewise lead to action in us. The more familiar we become with the text of Scripture by daily reading, the stronger is the temptation to become blas&eacute;, and not read the word expecting to be taught something new, expecting to be challenged to change.</p>