1 Peter 2:1 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 2:1

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Peter returns to the theme of brotherly love from 1 Peter 1:22. Four things are picked out. Why are these mentioned and not other sins, other traits, other problems? Because these are the number-one enemies of ‘unfeigned love of the brethren’. These are the things that would hurt or destroy or undermine associations and fellowship and mutual affection. He turns to the subject of united spiritual living – living together to glorify Christ as living stones in a spiritual building, a temple, as a kingdom of priests. We are saved as individuals and as individuals we know him and love him and advance in the power of the Spirit, but we are also called to serve and to worship and to honour Christ as a unit together. What is set before us in this chapter is a view of the local church or every individual congregation of Christian people.The translation ‘laying aside’ is too gentle. In other places the same word is translated ‘cast off’. Get rid of it! People all had their smallholdings in those days, which were more than big gardens. They had their plots and they tilled the ground and kept animals there, so they had some pretty dirty places: a cesspit here, a manure heap there, things that you would regard as mucky and smelly and decomposing. If you slipped and went over and fell into the mire, then your garments were soiled and smelling, and it's abhorrent to you. What you do? You go and get them off as fast as you can. That's the strength of the Greek – casting off. Note that the apostle Peter doesn't say, ‘Resist the temptation to malice’; he says something much stronger: ‘Cast it off with abhorrence.’ That’s how to deal with these particular traits and sins. Malice – the original Greek means any thought, any word, any action that discredits another believer without just cause. Here it refers particularly to malice in connection with living together with other people, malice towards one another individual. You can do it, the verse says, by prayer to God and by his help. When you think in a way which is unpleasant and wrong towards another believer, you pray and you take it off. Unpleasantness, coldness or indifference towards other people; if ill will comes into your mind, rip it out. There is no excuse to leave it there. Notice these ‘alls’ that crop up. All malice – every form of ill will, every form of guile, all lies and exaggeration and excuses, untruths one to another, all kinds; they are to be put out of your mind and put off.The list continues, ‘hypocrisies.’ Part playing, superficial warmth sometimes, which isn’t true and it isn’t real: phoney civility, anything of this kind, insincerity. Get rid of it, because now we have got to serve and honour the Lord together’ – this is the preparation. All forms of envy – jealousies and resentments, ‘and all evil speakings.’ Whenever you see these negatives lists in the Scripture, they also prompt us to the opposite virtues. Good will, scrupulous honesty with one another, contentment, not jealousy of advantages others may have, but contentment and thanksgiving to God for his care, and guarding one another’s reputations.

Application

If we have got problems with each other, or we think we see problems in our family of God's people, then what we must do is hasten to find out and to resolve them. It’s no different from keeping house. When you go to tidy a room in the house and you see something which is out of place, or needs to find the waste bin, you don’t throw it all over the place and make the situation a thousand times worse. That is how some people behave with fellowship problems. Instead of trying with earnestness and goodwill to get a proper understanding and resolution of the problem, they cast about all kinds of slander and make it much worse. You wonder sometimes whether they have been watching worldly soap operas. Are they trying to turn the church into a soap environment, with people backstabbing and complaining and full of suspicion? There will be problems among us, because we still have sinful traits, but there can be no malice, nothing said without first trying to find out about and solve the problem.

‘All malice and all guile’ – deceitfulness, dishonesty. It is certainly another factor in gossip. Every now and then Satan plants in a fellowship, an extreme case. Back to the 1970s we had a brother who was very personable, and very hospitable and accommodating, and he particularly liked to have people to his big home and garden, and have a kind of young people's meeting of his own. But what generally we didn't realise is that at that home there was a kind of culture of abuse: abuse of the church officers including the pastor, laughing and sneering at their idiosyncrasies or their every action, or their supposed feebleness and inadequacy. All this went on for some time, and of course many of young people who were in this climate were badly contaminated with foolish, fleshly, and critical attitudes. What are the motives for this behaviour? Well, there must be an awful lot of pride: ‘I want my circle who think my way.’ There were various problems and everything came to a head, and really the behaviour of this man and his family were quite outrageous, and the church put them out of fellowship, and everything was very much better day. It hurt a lot of people. Within two or three years we heard of a home counties pastor who had taken in this family, and they were doing exactly the same thing, and dividing that little fellowship with these same traits and these same ways. Is that person really converted? One would very much doubt it, though you always have to be cautious. People can sometimes be very backslidden, but one very much doubts that a converted person could behave like this. But we can all behave like this to a limited extent, with unworthy suspicions. Sometimes it's pride. The mechanism that is in action is this: I pull down others, because it somehow boosts me up. I think lightly of him, and of her, and of him. I criticise this one and that one. It’s all self-boosting. It’s serving my own ego.

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1 Peter 2:1 Commentary and Bible Study