Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Peter 1-5.

I pulled out some quotes from today’s passage which struck me.  Now I am going to attempt to use them to create a coherent lesson from the passage.  Peter writes that we should desire pure spiritual milk now that we have tasted that the Lord is good.  In other words, now that we have experienced God’s goodness, the goodness of obeying God’s will, we should seek more of it.  Once we were alone in this world, isolated from others, but now God has made us His people so that we can and do love one another, and are in turn loved by our fellow believers.  Therefore we should abstain from evil desires because they only serve to tear us apart, damaging both ourselves and our relationship with others.  Giving  in  to those sinful desires is what isolated us, and will continue to isolate us from others.  Let us live such lives among those who are not believers that they will praise God, even as they accuse us of wrongdoing.  Peter writes that we should silence the accusations of the fools who do not accept God’s will by doing good.  We should strive to not treat badly those who treat us badly, nor insult those who insult us.  Instead, when people do us wrong, let us strive bless them.  Study Scripture so that we are prepared to answer those who challenge our faith and belief.  However, our answers should be respectful and gentle.  Thus those who claim we are stupid and naive, or evil and selfish will  be ashamed when their accusations are compared to our words and our deeds.

Intermixed with the above theme, Peter tells us to be alert and sober minded.  Then, towards the end, he tells us that we should do so in order to pray.  In a way, as we go back through the passage we realize that each time he writes about being sober minded, about avoiding debauchery and wild living, he is also telling us to pray.  So, let us keep our minds clear and pray.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.