Seeds for 05/02/2024 - 1 Peter 2:11
Scripture:
Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
Observation:
The old phrase goes like this: “Christians are to be in the world but not of the world.”
This is what Peter is getting at in this exhortation. They are not on home turf. They are not only like people living away from their home country, they are people living away from their home country.
Peter says “as foreigners and exiles,” meaning that they are, rather than “like you are foreigners and exiles.” This is not make believe or an object lesson. It is our reality, regardless where we reside.
What they must do is “abstain from sinful desires.” The desires will come. Until we are fully sanctified—fully mature and completely devoted to Christ—temptation will come our way, whether from our environment or from ourselves. God is in the forgiveness and restoration business, however that does not diminish the vital importance of taking care not to act on those sinful desires.
What is at stake? Before Peter speaks to the importance of their witness, he emphasizes the significance of their soul. This is crucial. The bad thing about sinful desires is not simply that they tempt us into behaviors unbecoming of a Christian, but that they “wage war against your soul.” They threaten the very heart of who we are.
Sin creates distance between ourselves and God, yes. Sin creates distance between ourselves and others too, of course. But it’s so important to recognize that sin creates distance within our own self—distance between who we are and who we’ve been created to be. Sin’s war against the soul pushes us further and further away from who we’ve been created to be orginally and, if we are a Christian, who we have be re-created to become in Christ.
G.K. Chesterton said, “One can hardly think too little of one’s self. One can hardly think too much of one’s soul.”
God is about the health and vitality of our soul. The devil is about sickness, decay, and rot in our soul. So the first thing we must do as the people of God is to turn our back to any sinful desires we experience in order to keep ourselves fully facing the sunlight of God’s holiness and grace.
Application:
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, keep me facing you and turning my back on sinful desires. Fill me with joy in loving and serving you. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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