{"id":791,"date":"2006-03-14T06:00:32","date_gmt":"2006-03-14T06:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html"},"modified":"2006-03-14T06:00:32","modified_gmt":"2006-03-14T06:00:32","slug":"emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html","title":{"rendered":"Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I missed yesterday because our flight was delayed, but I want to resume where we left off last Friday, and stick to 1 Peter 2:11-12, which is the heart of Peter&#8217;s letter. The readers to whom he gives this address are <em>powerless<\/em>: Rome&#8217;s might is unstoppable, and the little clutch of Christians in Asia Minor is not potent enough to do anything but act in such a way that its future can be preserved.<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nPeter&#8217;s first piece of advice is this: &#8220;I urge you [resident aliens and temporary residents, like Abraham and Sarah &#8212; Gen 23:4] to abstain from the fleshy lusts that war against the soul.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe powerless are urged here to avoid fleshy lusts. Notice the words: &#8220;lusts&#8221; translates <em>epithumia<\/em> and that word is found also at 1:14 (&#8220;do not be shaped back again into your former, ignorant lusts&#8221;) and at 4:2 (&#8220;so that you no longer live according to human lusts&#8221;). And &#8220;fleshy&#8221; translates <em>sarkikos<\/em> and that word, and its cognate <em>sarx<\/em>, is found here and at 1:24 (&#8220;all humans&#8221;), 3:18 (Christ was &#8220;put to death in the flesh&#8221;), 3:21 (human skin), 4:1 (&#8220;Christ\/humans suffering in the flesh&#8221; and &#8220;life on earth&#8221;), 4:5 (contrast with being made alive by the Spirit). <strong>Conclusion<\/strong>: &#8220;to avoid fleshy lusts&#8221; means <em>to avoid living out God&#8217;s redemptive work in a human-sort of way<\/em>.<br \/>\nNow if we add to this human vs. divine approach what Peter suggests in 2:13&#8211;3:12 we will come to a more accurate meaning of what &#8220;fleshy lusts&#8221; means. The first thing I would add is that is too simplistic and too easy of a view to move to sexual sins or to basal lustings of the flesh. Peter&#8217;s mind is on something else, though he would clearly include such basal lustings. Peter is concerned with <em>how to bring God&#8217;s redemptive work to Asia Minor<\/em> and what will be the worst thing his readers could do. That is: to act in violence or rebellion against the rulers (2:13-17), to rebel against owners (2:18-25), to have women struggle with their husbands (3:1-6), to have men overpower their wives (3:7), and to have a church group that is divided (3:8-12).<br \/>\nIn other words, if we look at how Peter mixes (to use Steve Taylor&#8217;s clever image) his theological tradition with the setting of the Asia Minor believers in Jesus, Peter&#8217;s strategy is for the Christians to <em>do God&#8217;s work in God&#8217;s way<\/em> and not in Rome&#8217;s way: which is power and might.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I missed yesterday because our flight was delayed, but I want to resume where we left off last Friday, and stick to 1 Peter 2:11-12, which is the heart of Peter&#8217;s letter. The readers to whom he gives this address are powerless: Rome&#8217;s might is unstoppable, and the little clutch of Christians in Asia Minor&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-emerging-movement"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I missed yesterday because our flight was delayed, but I want to resume where we left off last Friday, and stick to 1 Peter 2:11-12, which is the heart of Peter&#8217;s letter. The readers to whom he gives this address are powerless: Rome&#8217;s might is unstoppable, and the little clutch of Christians in Asia Minor&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-14T06:00:32+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts - Jesus Creed","og_description":"I missed yesterday because our flight was delayed, but I want to resume where we left off last Friday, and stick to 1 Peter 2:11-12, which is the heart of Peter&#8217;s letter. The readers to whom he gives this address are powerless: Rome&#8217;s might is unstoppable, and the little clutch of Christians in Asia Minor&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2006-03-14T06:00:32+00:00","author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html","name":"Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-03-14T06:00:32+00:00","dateModified":"2006-03-14T06:00:32+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2006\/03\/emerging-peter-avoid-fleshy-lu.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Emerging Peter: Avoid Fleshy Lusts"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/791\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}