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1 Peter 2:11
“Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”
How do Christians grow in personal holiness? One common answer from professing believers over the centuries has focused on an almost absolute abstention from earthly pleasures. In the ancient world, some believers went out into the wilderness and lived lives of solitude, sometimes in caves or on top of pillars, consuming only the bare minimum of food needed to survive. Later, some monastic orders required a vow of poverty, a complete shunning of worldly goods. More recently, some Christians have said that we must entirely reject such things as dancing, drinking alcohol, watching movies, and playing card games.
Certainly, believers should not partake of drunkenness, lewdness, avarice, or other wicked things, but Scripture never says that personal holiness consists in a wholesale rejection of earthly pleasures. Instead, as we see in today’s verse, believers must “abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against [our] soul” (1 Peter 2:11).
The Apostle Peter once again describes how we must live in light of what God has done for us in saving us and making us His people (see vv. 4–10). He describes us as “sojourners and exiles,” a reference to our true citizenship. Christians do live in this world and are even called to seek the welfare of the earthly nations where we reside (Jer. 29:7). While we may rightly love our earthly countries and their traditions, however, these things are not ultimate. This is because our true citizenship is in heaven (Phil. 3:20). Thus, as we wait for Jesus to return and renew all things, we are sojourners and exiles, never fully at home with the broken creation around us. John Calvin aptly comments, “The children of God, wherever they may be, are only guests in this world.”
Because our ultimate allegiance is to the kingdom of God and its way of life, we will find ourselves at odds with the world. Specifically, we will have to abstain from the sinful passions of the flesh that this world not only tolerates but encourages (1 Peter 2:11). True holiness begins within our souls as we recognize that wicked desires and inclinations wage war against us, seeking to drag us down into sin. Every time we successfully resist a temptation, we have won a battle in this war that continues despite Jesus’ having decisively broken the power of sin over us. The war against our souls will not be over until we see Christ in glory, so we must strive to abstain from every sinful passion as we await His coming.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
John Calvin notes that Peter “proves our carelessness in this respect, that while we anxiously shun enemies from whom we apprehend danger to the body, we willingly allow enemies hurtful to the soul to destroy us; nay, we as it were stretch forth our neck to them.” We readily resist threats to our physical lives but are not as keen to reject the sinful passions that harm our souls. May we resist, in the power of the Holy Spirit, our wicked desires and inclinations.
For further study
- Proverbs 11:23
- Romans 6:1–14
The bible in a year
- 2 Samuel 9–11
- Luke 20:27–47
- 2 Samuel 12–16
- Luke 21