Brotherly Love

[1 Pet. 2:1] Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,
[2] As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:
[3] If so be ye have tasted that the L-rd is gracious.
Wherefore resumes the exhortation begun in 1:22. Seeing that you are born again of an incorruptible seed, is not again entangled in evil, which "has no substantial being, but is acting in contrariety to the being formed in us.
Laying aside once for all: so the Greek aorist expresses as a garment put off. The exhortation applies to Christians alone, for in none else is the new nature existing which, as "the inward man" (Eph 3:16) can cast off the old as an outward thing, so that the Christian, through the continual renewal of his inward man, can also exhibit himself externally as a new man. But to unbelievers the demand is addressed, that inwardly, in regard to the mind, they must become changed, re-pent.
Malice is utterly inconsistent with the ‘love of the brethren,’ unto which ye have ‘purified your souls’. The vices here are those which offend against the Brotherly Love inculcated above. Each succeeding one springs out of that which immediately proceeds, so as to form a genealogy of the sins against love. Out of malice springs guile; out of guile, hypocrises (pretending to be what we are not, and not showing what we really are; the opposite of ‘love unfeigned’, and ‘without dissimulation’); out of hypocrisies, envies of those to whom we think ourselves obliged to play the hypocrite; out of envies, evil-speaking, malicious, envious detraction of others. Guile is the permanent disposition; hypocrisies the acts flowing from it. The guileless knows no envy 2:2, ‘sincere’, Greek, ‘guileless’. ‘Malice delights in another's hurt; envy pines at another's good; guile imparts duplicity to the heart; hypocrisy (flattery) imparts duplicity to the tongue; evil-speaking wound the character of another’.
Evil speaking, this ancient Greek word has more the idea of spicy, hurtful gossip than the idea of profane speech.
Newborn babes altogether without "guile" (2:1), as long as we are here, we are "babes," in a especially tender relation to G-d (Isa 40:11). The childlike spirit is indispensable if we would enter heaven. Milk is here not elementary truths in contradistinction to more advanced Christian truths, as in 1 Cor. 3:2; Heb 5:12, 13; but in contrast to ‘guile, hypocrisies’. The simplicity of Christian doctrine in general is to the childlike spirit. The same ‘word of grace’ which is the instrument in regeneration, is the instrument also of building up. The mother of the child is also its natural nurse. The babe, instead of chemically analyzing, instinctively desires and feeds on the milk; so our part is not self-sufficient rationalizing and questioning, but simply receiving the truth in the love of it (Matt. 11:25).
Desire, Greek, ‘have a yearning desire for,’ or ‘longing after,’ a natural impulse to the regenerate, for as no one needs to teach new-born babes what food to take, knowing instinctively that a table is provided for them in their mother's breast, so the believer of himself thirsts after the Word of G-d (Ps 119:1-176). A healthy new baby has an instinctive yearning for its mother's milk before they can handle stronger nourishment. As newborn babes, we desire the pure milk of the Word.
Sincere, Greek, guileless, ‘laying aside guile." Don’t mix chalk with the milk, with the well-known pure milk, there is no other pure, unadulterated doctrine; it alone can make us guileless.
Of the word in light of what G-d's Word is to us, we should receive the Word, and receive it with a particular heart.
Grow the oldest manuscripts and versions read grow unto salvation. The end to which growth leads is perfected salvation. Growth is the measure of the fullness of that, not only rescue from destruction, but positive blessedness, which is implied in salvation. We are not meant to remain ‘babies’ forever.
Religion reproduces the traits of character of children in those whom it influences and they ought to regard themselves as newborn babes, and seek that kind of spiritual nutriment which is adapted to their condition as such.
However, to grow by the word, we must receive it with a certain attitude of heart: laying aside all malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking. This is a humble, honest, heart, willing to do what the Word of G-d says.
Thereby, Greek, in it; fed on it; in its strength (Act 11:14). The word is to be desired with appetite as the cause of life, to be swallowed in the hearing, to be chewed as cud is by rumination with the understanding, and to be digested by faith and grow to adulthood.
If we have received from G-d, if we have tasted (personally experienced) that the L-rd is gracious, then we have all the more reason and responsibility to receive the word in the enthusiastic way that babies receive their milk.
Peter alludes to Ps 34:8. The first "tastes" of G-d's goodness are afterwards followed by fuller and happier experiences. A taste whets the appetite.
Gracious as G-d is revealed to us in Messiah, ‘the L-rd’ (2:4), we who are born again ought so to be good and kind to the brethren (1:22). ‘Whosoever has not tasted the Word to him it is not sweet it has not reached the heart; but to them who have experienced it, who with the heart believe, 'Messiah has been sent for me and is become my own: my miseries are His and His life mine,' it tastes sweet.