What does it mean that sinful desires wage war against your soul (1 Peter 2:11)?

"Abstain from fleshly lusts," says the apostle. Peter is talking of the inner life of the soul, of those thousand and one little things that come in to spoil communion with God, and to hinder growth, and the knowledge of Christ.

According to the mind of Christ the high privileges of faith were but to strengthen the believer's delight in God and vigilance as "strangers and sojourners" in holding aloof from the fleshly lusts such as war against the soul. It is not now the unamiable and bitter feelings of fallen man, as in ver. 1, but the self-indulgent and licentious. How often through lack of prayer and watchfulness fleshly lusts spring from sincere esteem and pure affection unawares gliding into carnality; as the Galatians' fall from grace was from going on to perfect in flesh what they had begun in Spirit! How readily little fond familiarities follow by degrees, in the intimacy of Christian love ripening into unhallowed freedom, if not the worst evil. So might lust take other direction and form, as covetousness or any other indulgence alien from Christ. These fleshly desires, many of which men praise as doing well to self, war against the soul and are an abomination in God's sight. How contrary to the new and eternal life we have in Christ, and inconsistent with God's wonderful light in which we walk! How mischievous and debasing to the Christian! They grieve the Holy Spirit, dishonour Christ, and fight against the soul.

Hence the call is to have their behaviour comely (καλὴν) among the Gentiles. For there were these Christian Jews interspersed. Though the spring of conduct is the faith that looks to and calls on the Father, it is also an obligation to win the unbelieving and unfriendly by practical consistency with Christ, without affording occasion to those that seek it. For men of the world suspect the motives and the ways of the faithful, yet have a strong if not intelligent sense of their responsibilities, and are ever on the watch for their halting and failure. Therefore is the apostle earnest in urging "that in what they speak against you as evil-doers, they, as observing, may from your comely works glorify God in the day of visitation."

(V. 11). In the first verse of the Epistle the believing Jews are addressed as strangers, as they are outcast from the land of Israel, and scattered among the Gentiles. Here, in common with all believers, they are viewed as strangers and pilgrims because they belong to heaven. In one case, they are strangers as the result of the judgment of God that had driven them out of their earthly inheritance; in the other, they are strangers as the result of the grace of God that had called them from earth to heaven. The man of the world is a stranger to heaven because he knows not the Father and the Son. The believer is a stranger in heart to the world because he knows the Father and the Son. He is a stranger, out of touch with this world, and a pilgrim going on to another world. Nevertheless, the flesh in the believer wars against the spiritual progress of the soul. We are therefore exhorted to “abstain from fleshly lusts”. We are not called to “war” against these lusts, but rather to abstain from them. It is hardly our business to wage war against drink or impurity or other evils in the world, but rather to show forth the excellencies of Him who has called us out of darkness into light.

GROWTH. The third link in this precious chain of divine truth is growth. For Scripture speaks of the inner man being strengthened, of our growing up into Christ, sanctified, or practically separated unto God by the truth, growing in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Thus the soul makes progress. But two things here are taught us as being necessary in order to grow. One is, that the activities of evil, which we all have in the old man, the flesh, must be unsparingly denied. To walk and act carnally is to produce the opposite to growth; hence in this same chapter we are exhorted to "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." And what Christian is there that has not found this out by bitter experience? Who of God's children does not know that when he has given way to the desires of the flesh and of the mind, that it has chilled his fervour, damped his energies, and checked his comfort? But, you may say, Is it possible that I, who am born of God, redeemed by the blood of Christ, and indwelt by the Holy Ghost, that I can be the subject of such foul activities as here recorded? Indeed, dear fellow-Christian, it is so. What! Can malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, and evil-speakings be perpetrated by a child of God? Yes; and it is children of God, those who are born of God, that he addresses, and insists on their laying aside all these fleshly activities, all malice, all guile, all evil-speaking." Those who see that God has judged both the nature and the fruits of the old man on the cross, and given them a new life, a new nature in Christ risen and ascended, will understand this, and find power from it. But if our souls would make progress in divine things, there must be this absolute, unsparing setting aside of all these fleshly buddings. Yes, "all;" for they are like worthless weeds, which grow up and check the growth of what is really good.

We can make the flesh moral — we can even make it religious — but we cannot make it please God. Thus the seeker after holiness in the flesh may starve or mortify his body and merely please the flesh — puff himself up with pride. "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts" (Gal. 5:24). A crucified thing is not to be bettered or sanctified. We are, on the contrary, to abstain — hold off — from fleshly lusts that war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). To strive against it is but to repeat the hopeless struggle of the seventh of Romans. The only remedy is the walk in the Spirit, with the flesh in its true place — "no confidence in the flesh."

Then again we have many enemies to contend against, who seek to trip us up and destroy our souls. The salvation of the soul is what is in view in the gospel, and Peter warns those to whom he writes to beware of fleshly lusts which war against the soul, and instances some who had escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, but who had been once more entangled and overcome. He says of such, “It had been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto them” (2 Peter 2:20-22). The world, alas, is a great foe, and has swallowed up many. The devil also by violence and subtlety has destroyed numbers, who seemed for a time to stand in the front rank fighting the fight of faith.

This conflict is not of God's proposing, but is the result of the lack of faith in active exercise toward God; in the absence of this we fall an easy prey to this ever-watchful enemy who gains the ascendancy over us with all that is a positive hindrance to the formative work of the Spirit in us. God does not call to this conflict. He did not say, "Seek out Amalek and destroy him," but Amalek — the power of the adversary acting through the flesh — seeks out Israel, and it was Israel's unbelief which exposed them to attack. How appropriate therefore the exhortation of the apostle; he does not say, "War against fleshly lusts," but "Beloved, I exhort you, as strangers and sojourners, to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11). If we would abstain, there would be no warfare, but if not, fleshly lusts, under the powerful stimulus of the enemy, war against us and we are entangled by those things which hinder us in our onward march to the possession of our inheritance.

The first exhortation is addressed to them as strangers and pilgrims. Such all true believers are. Because we belong to a heavenly home we cannot be at home in a world which lieth in the wicked one, which has cast out the Lord of glory, and which continues to reject Him. And it is only as a stranger here that we can do what we are exhorted to do, "to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." If our heart is where He is, if our affections are set upon the things on high, if we lose sight of the "vain things" which charm the natural man, and we realize in faith the heavenly calling and the heavenly home, then we shall not fight the lusts of the flesh, but willingly and joyfully abstain from them, fleeing them, as Paul exhorted Timothy.

We are told, therefore, in Romans 13:14 to make no provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof; and in 1 Peter 2:11 to abstain from 'fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.' On the other hand we are exhorted, 'As new-born babes, to desire the sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby' (1 Peter 2:2). Let us, then, be like vigilant sentries on the watch challenging all that we read, or think, or do, or say, with this test: Will this be food for the renewed nature, or will it minister to the flesh? Let us allow nothing to pass muster that would do the latter. Peter warns us that it is our fleshly lusts which 'war against the soul.' How many difficulties this simple question would settle for us! And let us never forget that, apart altogether from the question of the salvation of the soul, there are practical consequences in this world both to our 'sowing to the flesh' and 'sowing to the Spirit.' 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap' (Gal. 6:7) so that if we 'sow to the flesh' we may surely expect to 'reap corruption.' But let us never allow the government of our Father's hand to diminish our confidence in the love of our Father's heart. May increased tenderness of conscience and distrust of self be ours, dear fellow-believer. May Christ Himself be more and more our daily food-His precious word our constant delight.

It is ever the great effort of the enemy to entrap believers into sin by tempting us to gratify the flesh in some form or other. He knows the particular form of gratification that will appeal to each one, and tempts us accordingly. To meet his temptations we are instructed to arm ourselves against sin by having the same mind as Christ — the mind to suffer rather than yield to sin. If we yield, the flesh does not suffer; on the contrary it is gratified: but we sin, and in due course suffer the governmental consequences of sinning. If we refuse to yield to sin, the flesh suffers, but we cease from sin, and live to the will of God, enjoying the blessedness of so doing.