Clowney: In fleshly temptation the devil promises life, but his assault is against life; he would devour our very souls...

1 Peter 2:11-12 (NIV)

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 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.

Peter wants Christian pilgrims to remember their heavenly citizenship. Calling his hearers ‘transients’ or ‘pilgrims’, Peter returns to a description he used at the beginning of his letter (1:1). He has now shown why they must regard themselves as pilgrims: they are the people of God, a holy nation, and they dare not conform to the wicked conduct of their neighbours. Instead, they must bear witness by their deeds to the kingdom of light. ...

Because they are God’s children and pilgrims in this world, Christians are also warriors, repulsing the attacks of fleshly lusts that war against the soul. Peter clearly states the opposition between the desires of the flesh (literally) and the welfare of the soul. This does not mean that our souls are innately good and our bodies innately evil. When Peter lists the ‘evil human desires’ in the Gentile world, he includes the non-fleshly sin of ‘detestable idolatry’.

Yet, in our fallen world—Rome in Peter’s day, New York or London in ours—the corruption of bodily desires for food, drink, and sex sweeps over us like a flooding sewer. The apostle calls on Christians to be ‘out of it’, out of the compulsive urgings of hammering sexual music, the seductions of pandering commercials, the sadism of pornographic films and paperbacks. In fleshly temptation the devil promises life, but his assault is against life; he would devour our very souls (5:8).

Clowney, E. P. (1988). The message of 1 Peter: the way of the cross (pp. 101–102). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.

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