Dear Student of the Word,
Greetings from Kenya. I had some down time today, so I thought it was time to prepare the next installment of our study of Peter's epistles. We are only in the second chapter of the first letter, but already we have learned a lot. Those believers reading Peter's letter were under pressure from persecution and temptation. Peter was writing to encourage them to remain holy and to be models of godly behavior. I wrote the following in part one of this seven-part study, which you can download below:
Study Two, Part One
2:1 Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind. 2 Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation, 3 now that you have tasted that the Lord is good.
2:1 – I knew a Bible teacher who said, “When you see a therefore, find out what it’s there for.” This therefore probably refers back to 1:23: “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.” Notice that you are to rid yourself of the negative things that are contrary to the imperishable seed with which you were born. That is your responsibility in response to this great gift of God’s salvation.
The list of things to put aside here are subtle issues of the heart, like deceit, hypocrisy and envy. Some of them manifest in things spoken, such as slander. When you are hypocritical, often there are only two who know you are: you and God. So the issues that Peter addressed here are those secret things of the heart that will eventually manifest to others but usually exist in you long before others notice.
I once taught a college class and we studied the seven deadly sins, one of which is envy. I never gave much thought to the difference between jealousy (which is for relationships and what I have) and envy (which is for things and what others have). Actually God is jealous for you—He doesn’t want to share us with any other gods or interests. It seems that I can be jealous for my reputation, for my position with the Lord, and for my ministry. When I am this kind of jealous, I do not sin. Yet envy is always sinful, for it resents what others have and either covets it and plots to either get it or undermine it. That is perhaps why slander follows envy on Peter’s list. When you envy what another has, you can begin to discredit their worthiness of what they have – so you run them down with your mouth.
At one time, I was envious of anyone who had writing success, especially if they had a best-selling book. Do you harbor any envy for anything that someone else has or does?
2:2&3 – Your spiritual life is a life of growth and development. It starts out with being born again and requires spiritual things that will sustain and nurture growth into maturity. And if I understand this correctly, you are never to stop growing and developing. I am in my 60s as I write and I thought when I turned 50 that my growth would continue or be minimal at best. But I think I have grown more in the last ten years than during any other ten-year period since I met the Lord 40 years ago.
Are you growing? Or are you coasting, satisfied with limited spiritual growth? One of the other deadly sins we are studying is sloth. Sloth isn’t related to laziness at your place of employment, but laziness where spiritual things are concerned. When I think of spiritual growth and laziness, I think of two passages:
Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first (Revelation 2:4-5).
And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God (Colossians 1:10-11).
Have you abandoned the things you did when you were young in the Lord? Is it time to resume some of those early disciplines like fasting and radical giving? Are you still growing in the knowledge of God?
As always, I welcome your comments to this week's study. For additional Bible studies, check out my website archive, which contains a complete collection of all my verse-by-verse New Testament studies, along with the unpublished volume of The Faith Files.
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