1 Peter 2:11

1 Peter 2:11. Beloved, I beseech you as strangers and sojourners. The injunction is given in terms of tender urgency. The opening designation occurs no less than eight times in the Epistles of Peter, and in every case except the present the A. V. translates it simply ‘beloved,' not ‘dearly beloved.' Paul has a peculiar fondness for it (cf. Romans 12:1); 1 Corinthians 10:14; 1 Corinthians 15:58; 2Co 7:1; 2 Corinthians 12:19; Philippians 2:12; Philippians 4:1). Here, as also at 1 Peter 4:12, the direct and appealing address marks a turning-point in the Epistle. The verb, too, embraces at least the two ideas of beseeching and exhorting and is variously rendered in different connections by the A. V. call for (Acts 28:20, etc.), entreat (Luke 15:28, etc.), beseech (Matthew 8:5, etc.), desire (Matt 28:32, etc.), pray (Matthew 18:32, etc.), exhort (1 Peter 5:1-2), comfort (Matthew 2:18, etc.). They are appealed to in the character of strangers and sojourners; of which terms the latter is the one used in the first designation of the readers (see note on 1 Peter 1:1, and compare specially Psalms 39:12), and conveys a somewhat different idea from the ‘pilgrims' of the A. V., while the former denotes properly residents without the rights of natives. They have manifestly the metaphorical sense here, applicable to all believers as citizens of heaven. It is doubtful whether any distinction between them is intended here, although Bengel discovers a certain climax in them, Christians being described by the first as distant from their own house, and by the second as distant even from their own country. Former exhortations were grounded on their being ‘children of obedience' (1 Peter 1:14); these which follow are grounded on their being children whose home is not where temptation works.

to abstain from fleshly (or, the fleshly) lusts. The ‘lusts' are, as in 1 Peter 1:14, not merely the fetid sensualities which had attained such monstrous strength in the heathenism of the time (though these may well have been particularly in view), but all inordinate passions and desires, all that would come within Paul's enumeration of the works of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-21), or John's description (1 John 2:16) of ‘the world's accursed trinity' (Leighton). They are called fleshly (cf. Paul's' worldly lusts,' Titus 2:12, and ‘lusts of the flesh and of the mind,' Ephesians 2:3), as being rooted in, and affected by the quality of, the ‘flesh' or nature of man, both physical and psychical, as now depraved. When Paul (Romans 7:14) speaks of himself as ‘carnal,' he uses a still stronger form of the adjective, one denoting the personality as more than of the quality of the flesh, as having the ‘flesh' for the substantial element of its being.

which war against the soul. The ‘which' might be rendered ‘as they.' Peter, as the particular pronoun indicates, does not signalize certain lusts, namely, those which war against the soul, but takes fleshly lusts as a whole, and describes them as being all of a quality hostile to the soul, and this quality in them he makes a reason for abstaining from them. They may work ‘in our members' (Romans 7:5), consume our strength, and injure us in our interests, but the ‘soul,' the very centre of the personal life, is the object of their assault. The verb is nowhere used again by Peter in this figurative sense of carrying on a warfare (not merely = besieging), but has a similar sense in 2 Corinthians 10:3; 1 Timothy 1:18; James 4:1.