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About Jesus Steve Sweetman Living In An Anti-Christ Culture Part 7 12
– The War Against Our Souls "Dear
friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world to abstain
from sinful desires, which war against your soul". (1 Peter 2:11)
One might wonder why Peter needed to remind his readers who were
suffering through unjust persecution to abstain from sinful desires.
You'd think their situation would drive them into the presence of
Jesus where such desires would fade away into obscurity.
Obviously this wasn't the case.
You also might wonder what kind of sinful desires Peter had in
mind. Were these desires
immoral desires, greed, dishonesty, or other such sins? Imagine
you are the wife of a prominent and well respected Roman lawyer back in
Peter's day. Your husband is
highly esteemed as he is often seen frequenting Caesar's palace. Knowing
very well that Caesar is wiping Christians off the face of his empire,
you switch your allegiance from Caesar to Jesus.
Now think this through. Your
decision would put your dearly beloved husband in one very awkward and
precarious predicament. He'd
be tainted with what he'd view as your stupidity.
You can bet that when the time came for him to choose between you
and the So,
if you were that wife, would you be tempted to get back at your husband
by committing adultery with the guy next door?
I doubt it. Would you
be tempted to steel a sword and slice your husband's head off while he
was asleep? Well, that might
cross your mind, but I can't see you doing that either.
You'd probably be tempted to drop Jesus and cave into the
anti-Christ culture that's stressing you out.
At least then you could return to a normal Roman existence and
live in relative peace, free from persecution. Christians
in Peter's day were in a real battle, a war against their souls. The
apostle Paul viewed this as spiritual war. (Ephesians 6:12)
That's why he encouraged Timothy to "fight the good fight of
faith". (1Timothy 6:12) There
are all sorts of things warring against our souls these days.
It's all around us. We
can't avoid it. If we don't
experience the conflict, it means we've caved into the cultural advances
attacking our souls. As the
conflict heats up, and as we see some of our brothers and sisters in
Jesus fall by the wayside, the temptation to give up on Jesus will
become progressively more tempting. Jesus
has called us out of the world and now the world wants us back.
That's why Peter says that we're aliens and strangers on this
planet. The world around us
is trying its best to lure us back by tempting us with the
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