11 Dear friends, I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls. 12 Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world. ~ 1 Peter 2:11-12
Today, we continue our study of 1 Peter 2 where the Apostle Peter is giving us a reminder that our success as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is anchored in the sovereignty and the immutability of God Himself. It is in this context that Peter now challenges our faith in the all-sufficiency of our God. He does this by addressing of daily choices and whether we are being defined by God.
We are trichotomous beings, which means we have three parts: body, soul, and spirit. Our souls are also made of three parts: our mind, our will, and our emotions. There is a big difference between our justification and our sanctification. It is only on the basis of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross and that He paid the penalty for our sin, that we are justified. This is what made us right before God whereas before our sin was atoned for we were the enemies of God.
Our sanctification, on the other hand, is different. Whereas our justification gets us into heaven, it is our sanctification that gets heaven into us now. Sanctification is the acquisition of God's wisdom which is what enables us to live the lives the Lord Jesus died to give us now.
In today’s passage, the Apostle Peter reminds us that we have two options to choose from to invest our souls on any given day: the way of the Lord or the way of this world. And, choosing the Lord's way of thinking will determine if we are wise or not.
In v.11 of today’s passage we read, "Dear friends, I warn you as 'temporary residents and foreigners' to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls."
Here, Peter reminds of who we are and what we are up against before he issues us a command. Peter addresses with us three designations that must inform the way we look at God, ourselves, and this world if we are to experience the life the Lord Jesus died to give us. The first is “Dear friends” which is a word Peter loved. He used it eight times in his two letters. Eight times he used it to remind us that "God loves us." Someone once said, "The shape of true love isn't a diamond. It's a cross." This quote echoes the words of the Lord Jesus when He said, "Greater love has no man than to lay down His life for His friends." It is this kind of love that we can truly invest our beings in.
The second designation Peter used to describe us is "temporary residents" which literally means "alongside the house." The reason Peter uses this designation is because you and I live alongside a people who make this world their home. This world is not our home, it's their home. We are just passing through this world for the time being. We must see ourselves as having been placed alongside unbelievers who make this world their home.
The third designation Peter uses of those who have entered into a personal relationship with God through the Lord Jesus Christ is "foreigners." This word describes someone who is a traveler, a visitor, somebody who stops by temporarily but is on the move. We are loved by God and we are foreigners passing through this foreign land. Peter is merely reminding us that we don't belong here. "We are in this world but not of this world."
In addition to reminding us of our identity, Peter reminds us of the worldly desires or lusts that wage war against our souls. And, the lure of those worldly desires is always short lived, due to the fact that they are of this world and not of God’s eternal kingdom. These lusts survive only in the context of the decaying.
Our biggest struggles are most often discovered inside of us. The Apostle Peter reminds us to "keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls." The word "war" describes not a single battle or a skirmish here or there, but a long-term military campaign being executed against us on a daily basis. This word "war" described how the Romans fought and conquered their foes. They would set up a village, a town, a city, around another city they wished to conquer for weeks, months, and even years. It was a long-term military campaign. All of the allurements afforded to us by this fallen world that produce desires within us, they are like an army of terrorists that want to subdue and enslave us. Therefore, we must be vigilant to not allow these to define us. This is why we must be reminded often that we are "loved of God, temporary residents and foreigners" in this fallen world.
But Peter’s greater concern in our text for today is what happens to our unbelieving neighbors who are watching how we live out our lives. How we live before our unbelieving neighbors makes a world of a difference with regard to whether they believe in the Lord Jesus or not. Of course, at the end of the day, they decide whether to trust in the Lord or not, but we have an influence on that decision.
In v.12 of today’s passage we read, "Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors. Then even if they accuse you of doing wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world."
Peter renders our witness to unbelievers as far more powerful than their ill-treatment of us. The example of the Lord Jesus is quite helpful here. When we render blessing to those who intentionally harm us, a power is unleashed in and through us that changes the world. It is a reverberating power that begins within us and it organically sends seismic messages that our neighbors can not ignore. This is the same power that raised the Lord Jesus from the dead, and it is also the same power that changed our unbelieving hearts.
Peter writes, "...they will see your honorable behavior, and they will give honor to God when he judges the world."
Our wise choices that are in concert with God's definitions of things will always have an influence on our unbelieving neighbors. When we determine to be authentic before the lost who are watching us live out our lives, they will be the more likely to ask us about the hope that lives in us. Then, we will find that it is more likely that the very ones who accused us wrongly will see that in reality we were not in error, and they will more likely trust in the Lord and will glorify Him "when He judges the world."
Daily, the sovereign God is giving us a story with Himself, including the good and the bad moments of life. It is so important for us to trust the Lord in the midst of even the most unwanted and most the difficult moments of our lives. We must not run from the deepening that God desires to impart to us through those most unwanted of moments. It is through these most unwanted of moments that we get to know Him best. It is also through these most unwanted of moments that we learn the most authentically and they always give us the most authentic context to deliver the gospel to a lost and dying world. It is these stories that resound the best with those who know not our Lord and are perhaps looking for that which is most substantive. When we share the gospel couched in these stories with our unsaved neighbors, it makes it more likely that they would believe and subsequently honor God when He judges this world in the end.
