Transcript

ANNOUNCER: How much do you love and long for God’s Word? Are you growing in the Lord? Are you set apart for Him? Have you tasted His grace lately? This would be a great daily habit for us all in 2026. Stay with us and be encouraged today on Grace in Focus. This is a ministry of the Grace Evangelical Society. And our website is faithalone.org There you can get details about our free online seminary and about our upcoming national annual conference held at Camp Copass in Denton, Texas. A lovely place and you’ll meet a lot of lovely people there too. Plan to come and join us. Our theme is “Believe in Jesus For Life” and we’ll also focus on discipleship. And you can get all the details for this conference at faithalone.org/events. Come join us. 

Now with today’s discussion, here’s Bob Wilkin along with David Renfro. 

BOB: We’re making our way through 1 Peter and we’re in 1 Peter chapter 2 and we’re going to look at verses 1, maybe all the way to verse 12 today. And as I mentioned at the last show, I particularly love 2:1-3 because it’s talking—notice—would you read that, 2:1-3? 

DAVID: Sure. It says in verse 1, “Therefore laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.” 

BOB: Yeah, there’s a lot going on here. We won’t have time to hit every little aspect of it.

DAVID: You could spend five shows on the verses here. 

BOB: Oh, absolutely. Notice I think and a lot of commentators point this out that 2:1-3 is corporate. In other words, we as a local church need to lay aside all malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and evil speaking because if we don’t do that when we come together to hear the word of God taught, we are going to be hindered in our ability to take it in. In order to take it in as newborn babes, you know, newborn babes long from others milk, right? They’re longing for this and he’s using this illustration saying, we should long for God’s word. So it seems to me when we go to church on Sunday morning, we shouldn’t just be going like, wow, I can’t believe I’ve got to do this. I could be fishing. 

DAVID: This is going to be so boring. 

BOB: It’s boring and you know, blah, blah, blah. No, we should be anticipating, in other words, we’re to prepare ourselves to eat this spiritual feast, right? And part of the way we do that is laying aside anything that’s going to hinder us. If I’ve got some issue with a brother or sister, I need to deal with that before Sunday morning. So that it’s not festering and causing me problems. I mean, like a newborn baby, I’m longing for the pure milk of the word. So God’s word should be precious to us. 

And then he says, if you indeed have tasted that the Lord is gracious. And what’s interesting here is there’s a play on words in the Greek because this word is similar in sound to the word Christ. Chrestos is very similar to Christos. How is Chrestos translated? Gracious. 

DAVID: Gracious. Yeah. 

BOB: That the Lord is gracious. Yeah. So you’ve got basically “the Christ is Chrestos.”

DAVID: The Lord is grace personified or something like that. 

BOB: Yeah. So this is a powerful beginning of this section. And it’s all within the section dealing with working out the salvation of our psuche, our souls and light of loving the brethren. So loving the brethren includes coming together corporately and hearing the word of God taught. And of course, in the first century, the people didn’t have scrolls of the Old Testament. Nor did they have all of the New Testament epistles in their homes. The local churches had the scrolls and the local churches had copies of books of the New Testament. That’s where you would go to hear the word of God taught. And even though today we have the Bible in our own language and we can read it and we should read it. The truth is this verse is calling us to corporate worship and to hear the word of God taught. And this is, in my view, where we grow is weekend and week out hearing the word of God taught. 

DAVID: Yeah. What I told my students, you know, there’s no such thing as knowing too much. And that’s true about the word. You can have a surface knowledge of the word, which is great. But then if you have a good understanding of the word on the surface level, it’s time for you to dig into some of the details. That’s a lifelong process. 

BOB: Let’s look at 4 through the end of this section, which is 12, we’re “Coming to” Jesus, “Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men but chosen by God.” There’s an example of where “chosen” is used in Scripture. The Lord Jesus Christ was chosen by God. That’s a reference to God, the Father. “And precious, you also, as living stones are being built up a spiritual house.” Paul talked about this in 1 Corinthians 3:5-15, right, that we’re a spiritual house. The foundation is Christ. We’re part of that. We’re living stones. And we’re to “offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” 

DAVID: Notice, I think it’s important to contrast that, especially in the Jewish time, notice, it’s not physical sacrifices. They are not required like the Old Testament Mosaic law. 

BOB: We don’t do it that now. 

DAVID: No. Things have changed. I think it’s interesting that these verses that we’re going over, verses 1 through 3, the brethren are to listen to Christ, like newborn babes. And now the emphasis is grow in Christ. First, listen to Him, now grow in Him. And that’s what he’s saying, as a living stone rejected by man, you’re being built up, grow, grow up in Christ. And the idea is that we are part of that spiritual tabernacle, if you will. 

BOB: Absolutely. 

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DAVID: I love how he says this. It’s a very, very clever way to say, that’s another responsibility we have to our brothers and sisters. We need to continue to grow in Christ. First of all, listen to him, secondly on the basis of what we hear, let’s grow in our knowledge. 

BOB: That’s very good. And by the way, we’re having our annual conference coming up May 18 through 21. And this year, it’s on the message of life and discipleship. And so we’ll be talking about these important years. 

And by the way, David, did you know this is the 40th anniversary of the founding of Grace Evangelical Society? 1986, in June of 1986, I sent out the first newsletter to 30 people. Let’s see. I think I was 34, but don’t tell anybody. But in any regard, we welcome you to come. In fact, registration is now open at faithalone.org. And we have a discount, a steep discount if you register before the end of January. So come and register if you’re interested.
But notice how he talks about, in verses six through eight, he’s talking about this stone which is laid in Zion, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. He’s the elect stone. He’s the chosen stone. And this is the stone which the builders rejected. But to those of us who continue to believe on Him, He is precious. And we won’t be put to shame as long as we continue to walk in faith toward Him, right? 

DAVID: I think it’s interesting too verse six. Notice the word therefore. What’s the therefore there for kind of thing?

BOb: That’s what you learn when you go to seminary. 

DAVID: There you go. He’s concluding after listening to Christ in verses 1 through 3, growing in Christ in verses 4 and 5, 6 and 8 he’s saying, build your life on Christ. And that’s what he’s saying here. I think it’s interesting that verse six has a quote from Isaiah 28:16, and Paul uses this in Romans 9:33 to emphasize how important this concept is that we’re talking about here in Peter. I love that. 

BOB: That is terrific. And by the way, in verses 9 through 10, he talks about the readers as being among other things, a royal priesthood and a holy nation, God’s own special people. Now this expression, a holy nation has been used by some people to teach replacement theology. The church is now the new Israel. And that’s not what Peter is saying here, right? 

DAVID: Well, I would eloquently respond to that. It’s going—eh!

BOB: The holy nation, I would suggest refers to believing Jews. And these believing Jews are remnant of the nation itself. In other words, as you said before, there could be Gentiles that are reading these epistles. But this dispersion is primarily Jewish belie ers and he’s writing primarily to them. And when he calls them a holy nation, I believe he’s talking to them as this remnant. So how would you summarize verses 9 and 10? 

DAVID: Well, it summarizes what is said earlier in 2, you know, listen to Christ, build on Christ and so on. And now in verses 9 and 10, he’s a kind of doing a summary of who we are as believers. We are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood. We’re supposed to be that. We were called out of darkness, that kind of thing. 

BOB: And even though we’re not Jewish believers, at least not all of us, yet we understand when he calls them a holy nation, that they were a set apart people. And we’re to also be a set apart people. 

DAVID: It could be, and I’m a big believer in this, that term can be both literal and figurative at the same time. If you’re talking Jews, they’re talking of a holy nation of Israel, but you’re talking Gentiles, it’s more figurative, but you belong to a group of people that are way beyond the boundaries of where you were born. So it’s like say verse 10, you’re now the people of God. You’re not a certain ethnic group, or you’re not a certain citizen of a certain nation. Our relationship is, in the church, it’s patterned after what Israel did, but it didn’t replace it. 

BOB: Yes. Now, verses 11 and 12 ends with the day of glorifying God in the day of visitation. What’s that all about? 

DAVID: Well, I think it deals with starting the section on our mission as believers in this unbelieving world. And so he says, we are, notice he calls them sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, in other words, we have a testimony to the outside world. And that’s an important aspect of this. 

BOB: And by the good works, that which they observe, we are glorifying God. And the day of visitation probably refers to Christ’s soon return. 

DAVID: I think so too. Because he could come back in any time. 

BOB: Yeah. Amen. Well, thanks so much. And let’s all keep grace in focus. 

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On our next episode: Living responsibly in regard to government and our work lives. Please join us for that. And until then, let’s keep grace in focus.