Dear friends, I entreat you as pilgrims and foreigners not to indulge the cravings of your lower natures: for all such cravings wage war upon the soul.
»But take heed to yourselves, lest your souls be weighed down with self-indulgence and drunkenness or the anxieties of this life, and that day come upon you, suddenly, like a falling trap;
Yet let us send them written instructions to abstain from things polluted by connexion with idolatry, from fornication, from meat killed by strangling, and from blood.
You must abstain from things sacrificed to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication. Keep yourselves clear of these things, and it will be well with you. Farewell.«
I plead with you therefore, brethren, by the compassionsof God, to present all your faculties to Him as a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to Him. This with you will be an act of reasonable worship.
but I discover within me a different Law at war with the Law of my understanding, and leading me captive to the Law which is everywhere at work in my body–the Law of sin.
On Christ's behalf therefore we come as ambassadors, God, as it were, making entreaty through our lips: we, on Christ's behalf, beseech men to be reconciled to God.
Having therefore these promises, beloved friends, let us purify ourselves from all defilement of body and of spirit, and secure perfect holiness through the fear of God.
You are therefore no longer mere foreigners or persons excluded from civil rights. On the contrary you share citizenship with God's people and are members of His family.
Keep a strong curb, however, on your youthful cravings; and strive for integrity, good faith, love, peace, in company with all who pray to the Lord with pure hearts.
All these died in the possession of faith. They had not received the promised blessings, but had seen them from a distance and had greeted them, and had acknowledged themselves to be foreigners and strangers here on earth;
But we, even while we speak in this tone, have a happier conviction concerning you, my dearly-loved friends–a conviction of things which point towards salvation.
Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ: To God's own people scattered over the earth, who are living as foreigners in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Roman Asia, and Bithynia,
And if you address as your Father Him who judges impartially in accordance with each man's actions, then spend in fear the time of your stay here on earth,
Dear friends, do not be surprised at finding that that scorching flame of persecution is raging among you to put you to the test–as though some surprising thing were accidentally happening to you.
This letter which I am now writing to you, dear friends, is my second letter. In both my letters I seek to revive in your honest minds the memory of certain things,