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Commentaries and Other Bible Study Helps - Prayer Tents - Prayer Tents
2:11-4:11 Living as Aliens to Bring Glory to God in a Hostile World. Peter explains how believers should live as exiles amid a world that rejects their message. They bear witness to the gospel when they live in a way that pleases God.
2:11-12 The Christian Life as a Battle and a Witness. These verses introduce 2:11-4:11, emphasizing that those who have trusted in Christ bear witness to the gospel by their conduct.
2:11 Beloved signals a major new section in the letter (cf. 4:12). Believers are sojourners and exiles (cf. 1:1, 17), awaiting their end-time inheritance. The pleasures of the world are tempting and enticing nonetheless, hence there is a great struggle and warfare against such desires. Believers are to abstain from sinful passions, for they wage war against your soul: holding on to sinful desires brings spiritual harm.
2:12 Peter refers to unbelievers as Gentiles, which is in keeping with his understanding of believers being a new Israel (see note on 1:1). Believers are to live godly lives even though they will often be criticized by unbelievers. When believers do good deeds, some unbelievers will repent and believe and thus glorify God. Peter clearly alludes to Matt. 5:16 here ("let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven"). On the day of visitation may refer to the initial conversion of the believer through the regenerating work ("visitation") of the Holy Spirit, or it may refer to the way in which those who become believers will glorify God on the last day, the day of judgment. To "glorify God" should probably be understood in the broad sense that the believer will glorify God in many ways--e.g., by believing (cf. Acts 13:48; Rom. 15:7, 9), through the doing of "good deeds" (cf. Matt. 5:16), and at the end of the age (cf. Rev. 14:7; 19:7).
