The Joshua Victor Theory

Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen. 1 Peter 2 beautifully pictures our growth and sanctification in the Christian faith, and teaches what the Christian church is. We aren’t lone individuals, but members of the spiritual house of Christ.  Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation--if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.  Peter calls us back to the basics.  Infants crave pure milk because it is their life, their growth, and even the sharing of their mother’s immunity. The pure milk we crave is God’s Word. As a new Christian learns the words of faith, they start to explore what it means to trust in Jesus and follow Him. But even mature Christians still depend completely on God for salvation. Jesus used infancy as a picture of our complete dependency on God.  Jesus’ disciples frequently became competitive in an unhealthy way, glory-seeking, exalting ...

Sermon Outline: 1.       Couple of place in NT talk about giving milk and not solid food: 1 Cor. 3, Paul addresses them as infants in Christ, “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.” Again in Hebrews 5 he chides them that they ought to have become mature in their faith and understanding by now, but instead needed to relearn the basics, and needed milk, and not solid food, for the one who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness—but solid food is for the mature. Today: solid food, a challenging passage, but words that are spirit and they are life. Truly as Peter said, Jesus has the words of eternal life. 2.       Already now you recognize that the food I’m talking about eating is spiritual, not physical. Teaching, truth, God’s Word. And the “eating” you will be doing is spiritual also—the understanding of your faith as it grasps Christ and consumes the Bread of Life, the digestion of caref...