“Dear brothers and sisters, when I was with you I couldn’t talk to you as I would to spiritual people. I had to talk as though you belonged to this world or as though you were infants in Christ. I had to feed you with milk, not with solid food, because you weren’t ready for anything stronger. And you still aren’t ready, for you are still controlled by your sinful nature. You are jealous of one another and quarrel with each other. Doesn’t that prove you are controlled by your sinful nature? Aren’t you living like people of the world?”
1 Corinthians 3:1-3 NLT
In the first verse of 1 Corinthians 3, Paul delivered a mild rebuke to the Corinthian church. We know from the previous chapters in this Epistle that Paul didn’t doubt that the congregation were saved believers in Christ. He wrote, “I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts he has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus” (1 Corinthians 1:4). So their salvation wasn’t the issue. But sadly, the believers there were still living in their old worldly ways. They probably attended the Sunday services, behaving as Christians do, singing the hymns, praying the prayers, full of piety and outwardly spiritual, but behaving as they always did, full of worldliness, for the rest of the week. As a new Christian attending my first church business meeting, I was severely shaken by the behaviour of one or two people who had strong feelings about the pastor’s remuneration. All of a sudden, what had been a calm and Godly meeting descended into worldliness with anger, resentment, and even swearing. People whom I had looked up to in the Sunday services were shown in a different light. Paul’s rebuke to worldly Christians in Corinth wasn’t just for a single church. It has emerged in every generation, in every church ever since. We look around our churches and see the outworking of God’s grace flowing so freely, but how we live in the light of that grace on a Monday morning can be something different altogether.
Paul continued to use the analogies of milk and solid food. Babies start their lives being fed with milk, which is a liquid food containing all the nutrients in a readily digestible form by the delicate stomachs of newborn children. But there is a spiritual equivalent. A church I once attended had a Gospel service each Sunday evening, and visiting evangelists supplemented our own preachers in delivering the message of Christ, and Him crucified, to the congregation present. I can remember a child once asking me after one of these meetings if people had to seek salvation and pray the sinner’s prayer every week, referring to one or two individuals who always responded to the altar call after the Gospel message. Sadly, the people concerned needed a weekly dose of the Gospel to feed their souls, spiritual milk still on their menus. Was it that these people had not truly come to a place where they believed in Jesus? Was it because they had not yet received the Holy Spirit? Possibly not, but instead they continued to live in the flesh, meaning that they were living for self and their bodily appetites instead of living in the power God had given to them in the Holy Spirit. The writer to the Hebrews said, “You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right” (Hebrews 5:12-13).
So what is the “spiritual milk” desired by the believers in Corinth? As the verse in Hebrews records, it is “the basic things about God’s Word”. So the leaders in the Corinthian church had to teach over and over the basics of being saved, how to pray, reading the Bible, and following that with how to apply what they had learnt in their daily lives. Paul writes extensively about this in Ephesians 4. We read, “Since you have heard about Jesus and have learned the truth that comes from him, throw off your old sinful nature and your former way of life, which is corrupted by lust and deception. Instead, let the Spirit renew your thoughts and attitudes. Put on your new nature, created to be like God—truly righteous and holy” (Ephesians 4:21-24). Paul continued in the next verse, “So stop telling lies. Let us tell our neighbours the truth, for we are all parts of the same body”. And then verses 28-30, “If you are a thief, quit stealing. Instead, use your hands for good, hard work, and then give generously to others in need. Don’t use foul or abusive language. Let everything you say be good and helpful, so that your words will be an encouragement to those who hear them. And do not bring sorrow to God’s Holy Spirit by the way you live. Remember, he has identified you as his own, guaranteeing that you will be saved on the day of redemption”. A good start for any new Christians is to read Ephesians 4 over and over again, until the “milk” it contains becomes a part of their inner beings.
We pilgrims know that we have to feed our souls. Every time I recite the Lord’s Prayer, I thank God for “our daily bread”, thanking Him for the food in my stomach as well as the food in my soul. It is easy to focus on the first but neglect the second. Our human bodies have a built-in mechanism to demand that any pangs of hunger be satisfied, but not so often with our souls. So we build into our daily schedules a routine that we call our “Quiet Time”, where we come into God’s presence with prayer and the reading of His Word. It is in His Word that we find the “solid food” our souls desire. But occasionally we know that sometimes a glass of “milk” can help to bring us back on track when our soul is violated by our sins. God’s grace and His willingness to forgive us for our sins are timeless while we still breathe, but one day our souls will ascend into God’s presence. What do we want Him to see? Something malnourished, still dependent on spiritual milk, or souls built up by a diet of “solid food”? The choice is ours.
Dear Heavenly Father. We thank You for Your grace and love. We look forward to that day when we will share in the Heavenly banquet that Jesus is preparing for us. On our knees today, we confess our sins of worldliness and pray that You will lead us to the spiritual pastures where we can find the solid food we need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Being a Pilgrim 