“I feel like I have to get saved every morning. I wake up and the devil is sitting on my face.” —John Piper
Can you relate to Piper’s comment? I know I sure can. So what do we do when the struggle against our sin feels overwhelming? Where can we turn?
Well the good news is that 1 Peter 2:11-12 is rich in resources to help us in the fight. Here’s what it says:
11 Beloved, I urge you, as sojourners and exiles, to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
In this passage, there are three truths Peter provides to help us fight our sin. And here’s the first one:
Truth #1: You are an out-of-place weirdo who is loved by God.
In verse 11, Peter identifies his readers in three ways: (1) beloved, (2) sojourners, & (3) exiles. Each of these are designed to help believers develop a Biblically-driven self-understanding.
First, he describes believers as “beloved.” And that word means just what you think it means: someone who is loved. But loved by who? Loved by the God who, according to His great mercy, caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1 Peter 1:3).
This is a difficult truth for us to accept because our sinfulness testifies to our unworthiness to be objects of God’s love. But accepting this truth is crucial if we want to have any chance at fighting our sin. Over at his substack,
recently shared this quote from David Benner which has served my soul well. I pray it will yours too:Neither knowing God nor knowing self can progress very far unless it begins with a knowledge of how deeply we are loved by God. Until we dare to believe that nothing can separate us from God's love — nothing that we could do or fail to do, nor anything that could be done (has been done) by anyone else to us (Romans 8:31-39)—we remain in the elementary grades of the school of Christian spiritual transformation.
Genuine transformation requires vulnerability. It is not the fact of being loved unconditionally that is life-changing. It is the risky experience of allowing myself to be loved unconditionally.
The Gospel begins with God setting His affection on us even while we were yet sinners (Rom. 5:8-9). Why? Certainly not because of our moral goodness. But because He is love. Or, as Peter says in 1:3, because He is rich in mercy. If we were worthy recipients of God’s love then God wouldn’t have to exercise His mercy to love us. It would be our due. So implied in the term mercy is the realization that salvation is something we don’t deserve and yet have been given. God loved you before you got your act together. And He loves you now even when you struggle with sin. If we don’t get that straight in our minds and hearts, then our fight against it will feel utterly crushing because we’ll default to legalism. What’s legalism? That is, we’ll default to trying to earn God’s love by our performance. And that’s a recipe for burnout and despair.
So we begin our fight by remembering that we are loved by God. And because of that love, Peter goes on to say, we are now out-of-place weirdos. More specifically, we are sojourners and exiles.
The word for “sojourner” is πάροικος (paroikos), which in its adjectival form means “strange.” Here Peter uses it as a noun, which carries the idea of, “someone who lives in a place that is not one’s home.”1 So, Christians are those who are living away from their homeland.
And because of that, we also ought to think of ourselves as “exiles.” The word underlying this English term is παρεπίδημος (parepidemos) and was used in the first century to describe civil servants who were known for their exemplary behavior while working in an international context.2
Here’s the point for both: We are “virtual visitors in the world because of [our] special relation to God through Jesus Christ.”3 His salvific love sets us apart from the world. And we do well to remember that. It also means that our way of life will sometimes appear strange to others (1 Pet. 4:4) and that’s okay. We shouldn’t expect to fit in anymore. Because God has loved us with an undying love, we gladly embrace our identity as out-of-place weirdos.
That’s the first truth we must remember in our fight against sin. Here’s another:
Truth #2: Your fleshly desires are not morally neutral.
In the last half of verse 11 Peter lets us in on a little secret about our fleshly desires: They are waging war against our souls. στρατεύονται (stra’teu’on’tai) (“waging war”) was a military term used to describe engagement in battle.4 And I think Peter uses such an expressive verb to catch our attention and show us the seriousness of sin in our lives.
If left unchecked, we are playing a dangerous game. Growing lax in our spiritual lives is akin to a city seeing a violent army approaching and choosing to chill out by the pool instead of meeting the threat head on. When we take that approach, sin will devour us and leave a devasting path of destruction in its wake.
On a related note… When we see the tragic effects of sin in another person’s life, we should be careful lest we look down on them with prideful indignation. Rather, we ought to allow sin’s reality to sober us to the threat it presents in our own lives — And then pray for the Lord to keep our eyes open to it and guard us against it.
When tempted with sin, remember what’s really happening: Your fleshly desires are seeking to outflank you and destroy you. I know this isn’t a pleasant truth to ponder. In fact, it tastes a bit like that clear liquidy medicine you used to take as a child when you were sick. It burns when it goes down. But remember that its intent is to bring healing and protection.
Remembering our identity and the danger our fleshly desires pose goes a long way toward helping us in our fight against sin. But there’s one last truth we need to plant deeply in our hearts. Otherwise, we run the risk of being much too focused on ourselves.
Truth #3: You are a part of something bigger than yourself.
“Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.”
We must place our struggle with sin into the larger context of what God is doing in the world. His aim in saving a people for Himself is so that we might represent Him to the lost people around us. Or, to use the language of 1 Peter 2:9, God called us out of darkness into His marvelous light so that we might declare His praises. This obviously contains a major verbal component. But when we remember that verses 11-12 are in the immediate context, our declaration of God’s saving work should be built upon the foundation of a life that is above reproach. Why?
So that those who would malign us would instead glorify God one day because of the undeniable working of His grace that they see in our lives. Scholar Greg Forbes thus concludes, “This verse lends expression to the concept of mission as presence undergirding verbal proclamation in 1 Peter. Outsiders are won to God by distinctive participation of Christians in the world in conjunction with a verbal response.”5
There’s much more at stake in our sanctification than just your own individual life. We pursue holiness and fight against our sin out of love for the non-believers who live next door, send their kids to the same school, work at the same job, or share our same last names. We pursue holiness so that they have a clear view of the transforming power of God’s grace in our lives.
While fleshly desires wage war against our souls, we fight against it with everything we’ve got for theirs.
That’s all the time I have for now. Thank you so much for yours.
Warmly,
Drew
Music for Your Monday: “Dusty Bibles” by Josiah Queen
BDAG, 779.
BDAG, 775.
Ibid.
BDAG, 947.
Greg Forbes, 1 Peter Exegetical Guide to the Greek New Testament (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2014), 76. It should be noted that commentators differ on what it means for non-believers to glorify God on the day of visitation. While there is agreement that the “day of visitation” refers to eschatological judgment, Schreiner argues that non-believers glorifying God refers to their admittance of God’s good character before they are consigned to eternal judgment; see Thomas Schreiner, 1 & 2 Peter and Jude Christian Standard Commentary (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2020), 132-134. Karen Jobes, on the other hand, does understand Peter to mean that nonbelievers glorfying God in the eschaton is a reference to their conversion; see Karen Jobes 1 Peter Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2022), 172.