1 Peter 2:11 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 2:11

Comments

It’s elaborate language, and it's of great interest. These are words that would mean nothing to us without conversion to Christ. At best they would be a kind of figure of speech. Only a believer, only one who knows Christ, can feel the depth and the seriousness of these words. The ‘beseech’ word there translates the Greek ‘to call near’. You could put it like this: ‘I call you to my side to give you personal, deep counsel, something for you.’What are fleshly lusts? We think of Galatians 5:18. You can consider the term in a literal way: lusts connected literally with the flesh, the body: lusts of eating, drinking, anything to excess to gratify bodily desires, or unclean or sexual matters. One of the fleshly lusts which perhaps we don't think about it enough is love of ease. Some ease is necessary, but more than enough, and it becomes a fleshly lust. Then there are the lusts which concern me, number one, the personal lusts: how I come across, how I appear, what I enjoy, what I possess. The me, me, me lusts. Where is selfishness in the Ten Commandments? Is there a commandment about selfishness? The classic answer which goes right back again to the Reformers is that selfishness is behind all the commandments. It is as if from the instant of our conversion our nationality changed and we received at that time a new passport which entitled us to enter heaven at any time. In the same moment we therefore became strangers where we had previously been natives, and yet we must continue to live in what has now become a state of exile until God decides the moment for our transfer home. The Christian is in the peculiar position of being a citizen of a country which he has never seen with his eyes and yet he now calls this his native country. It is normal for men and women to long to be at home and this is no less true of Christians who now find themselves strangers in this world. A stranger does not belong or is only present temporarily in a foreign country. He may know the date of his return in which case he counts the months or days when he can see his familiar home surroundings. He tolerates his state of exile because he knows that it will not last forever. He thinks often of his real home and speak about its attractions to those who are not familiar with it to excite their admiration for it. If he is intimate with the customs and culture of that country, he wishes to live by those customs even before he returns, and he finds the customs of the country where he is forced to live distasteful.

Application

There is a tremendous battle going on. ‘Abstain’, he says. Do not entertain certain things. Hold yourself from them. Be absolutely decisive in your conduct concerning these matters. Fleshly desires are at war with us. The enemy of souls is directing you into things, which will hold you and clutch you fast and one engagement will lead to another. There is an intelligent war being conducted against you. Hold yourself far from worldly, fleshly desires, because otherwise, they will bring you down. It’s not an inanimate thing. ‘Oh, but if I just do this or look at this, which I shouldn’t be looking at, or give way to this, or have just half an hour of this worldly pleasure, or whatever, I can hold it there.’ You can’t! The enemy has come into your camp and got a foothold and from that position will be working terror throughout your life to bring you down spiritually.

Don’t make roots; don’t spend so much time on your house and your home that it isn’t just satisfactory or nice, it is wonderful and half your heart is there. We can have everything nice and clean and tidy and pleasant but don’t make roots. Don’t weld your heart too closely to this world, because we are on a pilgrimage and a journey and we don’t belong here. Abstain from self-indulgence, covetousness, and pride, including pride of position. If God gives you position and influence and power, you have to guard your soul, don’t lust after it, desire it, relish it, revel in it. You have to be so careful. Beware of laziness, of course, sexual desire and looking at things inordinately. Abstain; hold firmly away from all these things through constant prayer, for a lively, active conscience.

Questions

Somebody may think, ‘What is this exhortation all about? Wasn’t sin and the old sin nature disposed of at conversion?’ The Reformers taught almost entirely that a believer was a person who now possesses two natures. There's the old sin nature that used to dominate and control, and there’s the new nature given at conversion. ‘But’, they protest, ‘Doesn’t Paul say, “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. ⁷ For he that is dead is freed from sin’ (Romans 6:6-7), and ‘Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord’ (Romans 6:11). Yes, but the same chapter should warns us in which he goes on to say, ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof’ (Romans 6:12), so evidently sin is still there. When we are concerned about fighting sin, we’re concerned about temptations that come from around us, from outside us – suggestions to sin – and we’re also concerned about temptations that arise from within, from the old nature, which are sinful. Residual sin is the Puritan term for it. If you don't understand that, new distortions of truth appear. So you'll hear people saying, temptation is not sin, only the committing of the sin. Really? If the temptation comes from within, it comes from the old sinful nature. It has the character of sin. It is something to be horrified at, and suppressed by prayer and effort, by the grace of God. This new way of looking at it makes this kind of mistake, say for instance, in the matter of same-sex attraction. There are people going about saying, I am a Christian and I have same-sex attraction, but the temptation isn't sinful. They've made the thought of same-sex attraction something permissible by saying, the temptation is not in itself sinful; only if I carried it out would I be sinning. That's a most serious heresy and very wrong. But to do away with the two natures in the Christian can get you into that type of fatal reasoning.

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Purpose

Introduction

1 Peter 2:11 Commentary and Bible Study