If so be you have tasted that the Lord is sweet.
ειπερ εγευσασθε οτι χρηστος ο κυριος
9 Church Fathers comment on this verse
For you have tasted, that is, through practice in the sacred evangelical commandments you have tangibly known how good this teaching is. In the matter of knowledge, experience is stronger than any word, just as what is experienced in deed is more pleasant than any word.
We have often observed that the powers of the soul are named analogously to the outward members. Since our Lord is the true bread, and His Flesh is true food, delight in the joy of the bread must be produced in us through spiritual tasting. The property of honey can be explained to those who have not tasted it not so much by words as by the very sense of taste. So also the goodness of the heavenly Word cannot be clearly conveyed in teaching, unless, after long experience of the teachings of truth, we can grasp the Lord's goodness by our own experience.
Christianity consists in this, that a man can taste the grace of God. For it is written: "Taste and see that the Lord is good" (Ps 33:9). This tasting is, with certainty, the active power of the Spirit performing its ministry in the heart.
Thus, having been cleansed and freed from the malice and impurity of your heart, he says, you will long for the life-giving food of Christ, if you recognize how great the divine goodness is.
"Taste and see that the Lord is good." In the Gospel, Jesus Christ calls Himself the Living Bread which came down from heaven (Jn 6:51), in order to show the abundant love of God for men. Those who taste this bread taste the Lord Himself and His goodness toward men. Continuing the comparison of the word of God with milk that nourishes infants, the apostle also points to its sweetness. In that sweetness one hears the sweetness, that is, the goodness, of the Lord Himself.
"For you have tasted": this is an encouragement, or even a demand, based on the regenerate person's own experience, to be nourished by this pure milk of the word. You have already experienced its beneficial action in yourselves; therefore be nourished by it and love it. The word "taste" is often used in the sense of inwardly experiencing something in oneself in part, or sampling it; compare Ps 33:9 and Heb 6:4-5. Here it is said that the regenerate have already partly experienced in themselves that the Lord is good, Who nourishes the regenerate by His word for their growth unto salvation.
Regeneration (1 Pet 1:23-2:3). Christians must lead a new, pure, and holy life on the foundations of brotherly love, "as those born again, not of corruptible seed," meaning by descent from Adam, "but of incorruptible. Through the word of God, living and abiding forever." The Apostle calls the word of God the means of regeneration because it leads to faith, and faith leads to baptism and repentance. "Having laid aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy," which belong to those who have grown and become hardened in evil, you, the Apostle urges, "as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word," that is, the Gospel teaching. Desire it "so that by it you may grow unto salvation; for you have tasted that the Lord is good." This means that you have experienced in yourselves the action of God's grace in the Christian Mysteries.
The opening words of chapter 2 are closely connected with what precedes. The seeds of new life have been sown by the word of God. Therefore all the tares of life that oppose love, such as malice, deceit, and envy, must be uprooted. Christians are a new generation. Liveliness of feeling, receptivity to everything new and good, and withdrawal from everything old and evil should especially belong to youth. Yet for those beginning a new life and not yet strengthened in it, not everything needed for spiritual nourishment and growth is easy to receive. Infants are not nourished by every kind of food, but only by light food, such as milk.
So also Christians beginning a new, truly Christian life must first assimilate and transform into their own spirit the initial, first, and basic truths and rules of life (see Isa 55:1). Then they may grow and become capable of fully receiving all saving truths and works that lead to eternal salvation (cf. Heb 5:12; 1 Cor 3:1-2). In urging them to make use of the true teaching of the Lord found in the word of God, the Apostle pointed to the excellent quality of the Gospel teaching and of God's goodness in general, which Christians had already experienced. This goodness must assure them that, in the future also, Christians who approach the Lord and the means of salvation given by Him will receive nothing except what is gracious and consoling (cf. Ps 33:9). "Having learned by experience in yourselves the goodness of the Lord, show goodness and mercy to one another," says blessed Theophylact.
"Having laid aside all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slanders, as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that by it you may grow unto salvation. Since you have tasted that the Lord is good." The beginning of this section has a necessary connection with the instruction on brotherly love in verse 22 of the preceding chapter (1 Pet 1:22). Continuing this instruction, the Apostle exhorts Christians to lay aside sins opposed to brotherly love. These are all malice, that is, all forms of ill will and hostility toward one's neighbor; deceit, or evil intent; hypocrisy, the absence of heartfelt sincerity in dealing with neighbors; envy; and slanders.
To establish themselves in brotherly love, the Apostle commands Christians to "desire the pure milk of the word," that is, the word of God. It nourishes souls with the sweet and pure teaching of truth. One cannot fail to notice that, in speaking of the milk of the word, the Apostle has in view the correspondence between New Testament believers and the chosen people of the Old Testament. The promised land given to them as an inheritance "flowed with milk and honey." In like manner, the New Testament Church abounds in spiritual food contained in the word of God, sweet and nourishing for the soul as milk is for the body. The commandment of brotherly love is connected with the commandment to love the word of God because Christians have been regenerated by the word of God. As regenerated ones, they have become sons of God by grace, and consequently brethren. Infants who have received life from their mother are nourished by her milk. Without it they cannot grow well. So also those begotten by the word of God can grow in spiritual life unto salvation only on condition that they are nourished by the same word of God that begot them. It is not only the seed that served as the beginning of their spiritual life. It is also food for sustaining it and for further progress in it. Christians who taste this food and feel its sweetness can already judge from their own experience how good the Lord is (Ps 33:10), Who gives them this food.
Passages read together with this verse.
Greek text, 6 words with lemma, transliteration and Strong’s number. Tap to expand.
THEOSIS