1 Peter 2:11
Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
Study Note
Study Note
The address 'as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul' applies the Diaspora identity of Peter's addressees (1:1, 17) to the entire Christian moral life: the believer's true citizenship is elsewhere, and therefore accommodation to the host culture's values is a form of treason against that identity. The language 'strangers and pilgrims' (paroikous kai parepidēmous) echoes Abraham's self-description in Genesis 23:4 and is the theological basis of the Letter to Diognetus's famous description of Christians as 'citizens of their own fatherland but as aliens.' The military metaphor 'war against the soul' presents fleshly desires not as neutral preferences but as fifth-column enemies within, conducting guerrilla warfare against the pilgrim's eschatological orientation. Augustine's City of God develops the two-citizenship tension into one of Christianity's most comprehensive political theologies.
Other Translations
Beloved, I beseech you as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;
Beloved, I call upon <FI>you<Fi> , as strangers and sojourners, to keep from the fleshly desires, that war against the soul,
My loved ones, I make this request with all my heart, that, as those for whom this world is a strange country, you will keep yourselves from the desires of the flesh which make war against the soul;
Cross References
I am a stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a buryingplace with you, that I …
And Jacob said unto Pharaoh, The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years: few …
The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with …
For we are strangers before thee, and sojourners, as were all our fathers: our days on the earth are as …
Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I …
I am a stranger in the earth: hide not thy commandments from me.
Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my pilgrimage.
And take heed to yourselves, lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting, and drunkenness, and cares of …
But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, …
That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which …