Changes of the Soul

1 Peter 2:11 ESV

Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.

New family identity

A New Nation

A New Temple

A New People

A New Role

The opening section of the letter depicted the new community of believers as a new family identity, a new household, a new people, a new temple and a new role.

2 Cor 13:5 Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test!

OOPS:

Behavior modification, rather a passion for Christ.

a challenge for spiritual self-examination. I think this is good for all of us to do.

I most certainly want my friends to challenge me to see whether I’m in the faith.I try to discern, as much as one can, to see whether those I counsel are in the faith.I spend part of every day of my life thinking about whether my children are in the faith.My wife and I talk regularly about the realities of our faith–is it real?

THE BALLOON

I do not want to provide a guilt-motivated teaching. If not explained correctly, the listener of such messages would be tempted to think about a to-do list, sin list, gift list, or their personal, specified spiritual criteria to see if God did save them.

There is a temptation to go with the flow, but Peter, in defining the body of Christ as ‘aliens and strangers’ he is also inferring “visiting foreigner,” and “resident alien,”

Paul was not positioning his solution to their “perceived faith dysfunction” in their behaviors, but in Christ alone. Rather than telling them to change their actions, he wanted them to examine their relationship with Christ.

asking was whether they had a genuine relationship with Jesus.

External Direction: Do you focus their attention on their behaviors?Internal Direction: Do you focus their attention on their affection for Jesus?

Test #1 – Where is Your Confidence?

Test #2 – What is Your Calling?

conventional moral wisdom

restrain oneself from doing or enjoying something.

choose not to do or have something

refrain deliberately and often with an effort of self-denial from an action or practice.

Even when Christians face morally confusing situations, they should never think that they have no options other than sinful ones.

1 Cor 10:13

No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

Greek koinōnoi, participants, get away from it

Sleeping on the aquarium for the snake

The most difficult elements in this section of the letter for Christians today are the repeated exhortations to be obedient to superiors. Bitter experience has taught Christians that such advice often permits dictatorships to abuse the weak and the rich to oppress the poor, and makes the churches complicitous in social injustice.

Conversion requires a challenge to the local religious ethos. At the same time, Christians remain part of their local culture.

emphasizes the divine basis for the authority exercised by those in power much more directly than 1 Peter does. In fact, 1 Peter 2:13 read literally does not speak of “every human institution” (NRSV) but “every human creature / creation” (Gr. ktisis)

freedom is qualified by reminding readers that they are to make use of freedom as “slaves of God.”

The dynamics of this passage do not leave the Christian with a life of unjust suffering.

Christ did not heal the flock in order to sacrifice the sheep.