John Calvin Commentary 1 Peter 2:3

"if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious:" — 1 Peter 2:3 (ASV)

If it is so that you have tasted; or, If indeed you have tasted. He alludes to Psalm 34:8,

Taste and see that the Lord is good.

But he says that this taste is to be experienced in Christ, as, doubtless, our souls can find no rest anywhere but in Him. He has drawn the basis of his exhortation from the goodness of God, because His kindness, which we perceive in Christ, should allure us.

The subsequent phrase, To whom coming, is not to be referred simply to God, but to Him as He is revealed to us in the person of Christ. Now, it must be that the grace of God powerfully draws us to Himself and inflames us with the love of Him through whom we obtain a real perception of it. If Plato affirmed this of his "Beautiful," of which he beheld only a shadowy idea from afar, how much truer this is with regard to God.

Let it then be noted that Peter connects access to God with the taste of His goodness. For as the human mind necessarily dreads and shuns God as long as it regards Him as rigid and severe, so, as soon as He makes known His paternal love to the faithful, it immediately follows that they disregard all things, even forget themselves, and hasten to Him. In short, only the one who in heart comes to God makes progress in the Gospel.

But he also shows for what end and to what purpose we should come to Christ: namely, that we may have Him as our foundation. For since He is established as a stone, He should be so to us, so that nothing appointed for Him by the Father is in vain or to no purpose.

He also counters a potential stumbling block by acknowledging that Christ is rejected by people. Because a large part of the world rejects Him, and many even abhor Him, He might for this reason be despised by us. Indeed, we see that some who are uninformed are alienated from the Gospel because it is not universally popular, nor does it win favor for those who profess it.

But Peter forbids us to esteem Christ less, no matter how much He is despised by the world, because He nevertheless retains His own worth and honor before God.