So often, when believers are first saved, they have a real hunger for the word of God. In many cases, however, they later lose their taste for the Bible, and as a result begin to drift in their Christian life. The problem is that we must not only enjoy the Bible, as good as that is; we must also allow it to deal with our person, by exposing to us who we really are. If we fail to do this, we will indeed over time lose our spiritual hunger.

In the Song of Songs, the King praises his Seeker by saying her teeth are like sheep that have been shorn and washed (Song of Songs 4:1). This shows that our ability to partake of spiritual food (signified by the Seeker’s “teeth”) depends our our being dealt with the by the Lord (“shorn” and “washed.”) As it so often does, here the Old Testament gives us a picture of our spiritual experience—in this instance, of how we can feed upon the word in a healthy way. As C.A. Coates says of this passage,

Many wonder why they do not get more at the meetings, or in private reading, but the secret is that they do not come up from the washing. “The washing of the water by the word” [Eph. 5:26] is for cleansing from all that is unsuitable to Christ or uncomely in His sheep. If we do not submit ourselves to this sanctifying and purifying process, our ability to feed will be seriously impaired.

(See the previous Note, “C. A. Coates on ‘Coming Up from the Washing’ to Feed Upon the Word.”)

While the Old Testament gives us the picture, in the New Testament, the Apostle Peter gives us a very clear word in this regard. After telling us we have been regenerated with the “incorruptible seed” of the word of God (1 Peter 1:23), he goes on:

Therefore, putting away all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envyings and all evil speakings, as newborn babes, long for the guileless milk of the word, that by it you may grow unto salvation.
— 1 Peter 2:1-2

The thought here is exactly the same as what we see in the Song of Songs. That is, to truly long for the pure milk of the word, we must allow it to deal with the negative things in our being, so that we put away “all malice and all guile and hypocrisies and envyings and all evil speakings.”

This means that, when the Lord shines in us and exposes us through His word, we must not ignore His speaking. If we do, we cannot help but drift away from Him and from His word.

Rather, we need to open to Him and confess and repent according to what He has shown us; that is how we “put away” such things. Through such a spiritual exercise, we allow the word to work in us as it is meant to (cf. Heb. 4:12-13). Then, naturally, we will long for more of this “spiritual milk,” so that by it we may indeed “grow unto salvation.”

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—  3 August 2024 —