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Peter 2:11
Beloved,
I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that
wage war against the soul.
There is a turning in this part of Peter's letter. It is entitled in one bible version “Live as
Servants of God”. Two levels of
existence are being discussed here. From
the grander view of the mercy of the Lord, Peter is speaking now of how to
exist as members of God’s Kingdom in the wider world. As the followers of Christ were beginning to
separate from the Synagogue, their place in the world was coming into
question.
Remember that Paul began as a persecutor of the
followers of Christ. It was not
organized as the persecutions would become, but already, Peter gives advice on
how to life for Christ.
But secondly, Peter is laying out how Jesus has
saved us, yet the union with Christ is not complete, our persons are not yet
fully perfected in Christ, sinfulness still exists within us. How must we respond to that?
Beloved,
I urge you as aliens and exiles—they are outsiders,
outsiders to the Gentile populations that surround them and outsiders to the
Jewish faith from which they have emerged.
The focus of the mission has changed.
Jesus did his work within the Jewish community, but it has been moving
beyond that community. Which is why even
the Jewish adherents to Christ are being pushed out.
to
abstain from the desires of the flesh—a dichotomy within
the human being is being discussed.
“Flesh” is a convenient label for the sinfulness of humanity. “Desires” provide a convenient description of
sinful behaviors, ‘infecting’ the flesh.
that
wage war against the soul.—this is the other side of the
dichotomy, the ‘soul’, that which is redeemed within the human. The bible speaks elsewhere of a renewed
fleshly body, we will be created anew.
But in the meantime, how does one speak of the battle that goes on
inside each of us? Trying to live more
as Christ, but still subject to the weaknesses of the flesh?
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