1 Peter 2 is a chapter encouraging believers to live a godly life. He encourages believers to set aside malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and slander. Far from a simple “do not” list, verse 2 and 3 immediately makes it clear that the purpose for these commands is to help them enjoy the good life, in Christ, that maturity offers.
Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation— if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.
1 Peter 2:2-3
And a glorious, purposeful life is exactly the type of life described here for those who love and serve Christ!
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
1 Peter 2:9
Treated Like a Holy Priesthood?
If you’re anything like me, you’ve grown up in a church culture that treats believers worse once they believe than when they lived for sin! When you scoffed at God, you were told how much he loves you. Once you believed, you are told how you’re no better than anyone else. Rather than a royal priesthood, called into the marvelous light of God, we are told again and again how we’re fundamentally the same as we were, but now have been forgiven.
Perhaps the goal is humility, but it seems to be at the expense of truth, which really means it’s not humility at all. It’s a far cry from the Romans 8:1 “no condemnation for those in Christ” type of teaching we might expect leaders of the church to encourage believers with. Instead, the message is often that, not only must we remove the log from our eye before removing the speck from our brothers. Now, we have to hunt out every speck in our eye before acknowledging the forest growing in our culture.
This is something the apostles would constantly refute. There’s a lot of “such were some of you, but no more” encouragements to recognize that the new life in Christ is nothing like the old life you used to live. Sure, you may struggle with sin, but before you didn’t struggle at all. You were a willing slave. Now you are free to truly do good work, pleasing to God, and you want to!
What Kind of Witness?
Evangelicalism often sees this type of deprecation as a necessary part of the evangelism effort. Afraid to be seen as pompous (a common complaint among the more militantly anti-Christians) we play down the life God has given as fundamentally the same as the one they’re living, but with enough grace to land us in heaven.
The goal is to debase ourselves as much as possible to be more relevant to people who would otherwise write us off as self-righteous do-gooders for living a dramatically different life than we did before Christ. Peter sees us leading people to glorify God in a completely different way.
Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 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.
1 Peter 2:11-12
Rather than appealing to people on the basis of our shared fleshliness, believers ought to live a spiritual life so different that, when unbelievers accuse us (and it is mentioned here as a certainty they will) it turns back and they are forced to acknowledge the goodness of God (ultimately leading to the unbeliever glorifying God).
Fellow Miserable Wretch
Rather than inviting people to become a partner in recognizing how bad we are and how much we need Jesus just to slip out of the gates of Hell, we should be living the type of life that appeals to all of those who have had their heart of stone shattered by a God who gives hearts of flesh. God provides the longing, but what his people are longing for is a life in a community of the holy nation of believers rather than just life as normal but with fire-insurance!
