The Character of the Calling
A sample from ch. 4 of Narrative, Calling and Missional Identity (releasing 30 Nov)
Children of Obedience
With regard to [1 Pet 1:13–21] as a whole, v. 14 is where we see the process of social identity formation begin. Peter categorises his recipients by naming them ‘children (τέκνα) of obedience’ (v. 14). This is, of course, not the first time, nor will it be the last time that he engages in this practice (e.g., ‘elect sojourners’ [1:1]; ‘living stones’ [2:4] etc.), but what is achieved here through the use of τέκνα is a sense of belonging and family.1
Equally notable is that Peter does not contrast the Anatolian believers with local ‘out-groups’ (a common feature in social identity formation), but with their own former way of life.2 This strategy is a subtle act of social creativity wherein the believer’s former life represents a pseudo ‘out-group’ to which they compare their new life in Christ. By engaging in strategic categorisation (obedient children), and social creativity (contrasting the believer’s former life), Peter wants his readers to avoid unnecessarily offending those outside the church whilst retaining the prospect for out-group engagement in a way that is both loving and respectful (e.g., 2:13–17; 3:8–17).3 In this manner, Peter respects the missional resolve of the church as well as creating an essential familial bond between numerous people groups (from Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia), that would not otherwise consider each other family.
Verse 14 marks a transition in social categories for the Anatolian believers. They are addressed as τέκνα ὑπακοῆς (children of obedience),4 which aligns with earlier imagery of being set apart for obedience (1:2), being ‘born again’ (1:3, also 1:23; 2:2), as well as the church calling on God as Father in prayer (1:17).5 In Troy Martin’s view, this metaphor—‘children of obedience’—governs the content of vv. 14–16, making sense of the call to a holy way of life that follows.6 In the Greco-Roman world, it was expected that children would be obedient to their parents,7 and more particularly to their fathers, as the following quote from Epictetus demonstrates:
Next bear in mind that you are a Son. What is the profession of this character? To treat everything that is his own as belonging to his father, to be obedient to him in all things, never to speak ill of him to anyone else, nor to say or do anything that will harm him, to give way to him in everything and yield him precedence, helping him as far as is within his power (Epictetus, Diss. II.10.7).
For the Anatolian believers’ social identity as ‘children of obedience’ to hold true, Peter articulates a two-step process stated in a negative/positive formulation. On the negative side, there must be a thorough repudiation of their former way of life, that is, the ‘passions of their former ignorance’. It is at this point that friction becomes inevitable. Dryden rightly observes that v. 14 ‘strikes the chords of conversion and moral antithesis’.8 That is, conversion to Christian faith equates to a new identity that must be expressed by living in holiness as they have been called (vv. 15–16), which will mean turning from the ways of their forebears. On the positive side, they are to be holy, like the Holy One who called them. We will deal with each one in turn.
μὴ συσχηματιζόμενοι (do not be conformed) should be understood to work as an imperative given the context here.9 Following Williams, we see the positive command to be holy (ἅγιοι ... γενήθητε) acting in continuity with the negative command to non-conformity (μὴ συσχηματιζόμενοι). Similar phrasing is also found in Rom 12:1–2, whereby Paul directs the Roman church, to offer themselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God whilst also resisting conformity with the world.10 The same type of exhortation is true of 1 Pet 1:14. Namely, a believer cannot be a ‘child of obedience’ without first turning from the ‘passions of [their] former ignorance’.11 Only then may they be considered holy, like the Holy One who called them.
In Petrine correspondence, such passions (ἐπιθυμίαι) are always considered negatively (e.g., 1:14; 2:11; 4:2–3).12 In the present passage, the recipients might align ἐπιθυμίαι with the list of vices in 4:3 (sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry), or perhaps the futile practices of voluntary associations, the imperial cult, or worshiping the traditional gods (see further below). However, Goppelt contends that ἐπιθυμίαι goes beyond the character deficiencies outlined in 1 Pet 4:3 towards the innate disposition of humanity to seek life apart from God (1 Pet 4:2);13 i.e., ἐπιθυμίαι may not be desires that are inherently evil, but should they become a ‘functional saviour’, or ‘ultimate thing’, they would be rendered idolatrous and futile.14
[NB: footnotes 1–14 here correspond to footnotes 67–81 in the book (pp. 60–63)].
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BDAG, 808.
Cf. B. Ann Bettencourt et al., ‘Status Differences and Ingroup Bias: A Meta-Analytical Examination of the Effects of Status Stability, Status Legitimacy, and Group Permeability’, Psychol. Bull. 127, no. 4 (2001): 521.
Hunt, ‘1 Peter’, in T&T Clark Social Identity Commentary on the New Testament, ed. J. Brian Tucker and Aaron J. Kuecker (London: Bloomsbury, 2020) 533, refers to the church having ‘porous boundaries’. On account of God’s call, outsiders may be welcomed into the ingroup that is the church.
Cf. Clinton E. Arnold, Ephesians, ZECNT 10 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2010), 132, who writes that the expression, ‘Sons of ...’ was a common form in both the OT and NT as ‘a way of characterizing people by the genitive expression that follows, which should be understood as an attributive genitive’. Among English translations, the ASV and Mounce retain the idiomatic formula.
Achtemeier, 1 Peter, 119. Other examples of the Semitism include, ‘children of transgression’ (Isa 54:7), ‘sons of arrogance’ (2 Macc 2:47), ‘sons of truth’ (4Q416 frag. 1:10–16), the playful nickname, ‘Sons of Thunder,’ given by Jesus to James and John (Mark 3:17), ‘children of the flesh’ (Rom 9:8).
Martin, Metaphor and Composition, 167.
Burke, Family Matters, 90. For a recent treatment of both Jewish and Greco-Roman relational attitudes between parents and children, see pp. 36–96.
Dryden, Theology and Ethics in 1 Peter, 100.
Travis B. Williams, ‘Reconsidering the Imperatival Participle in 1 Peter’, WTJ 73, no. 1 (2011):73 (n. 45), 76 (n. 51).
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1996), 754–55.
Norman Hillyer, 1 and 2 Peter, Jude, NIBC (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 1992), 45–46, citing Lev 18:2–4, sees a further allusion to the Exodus narrative in v. 14 that often goes overlooked by other commentators. He suggests that the Levitical warning to Israel not to look back to Egypt may parallel Peter’s warning the Anatolian believers not to return to their former way of life. The Leviticus quote reads as follows: ‘Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, “I am the Lord your God. You shall not do as they do in the land of Egypt, where you lived, and you shall not do as they do in the land of Canaan, to which I am bringing you. You shall not walk in their statutes. You shall follow my rules and keep my statutes and walk in them. I am the Lord your God”’ (Lev 18:2–4).
Although, as Wayne A. Grudem, 1 Peter: An Introduction and Commentary, repr., 2009, TNTC 17 (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 83, rightly observes, ἐπιθυμίαι may have a positive meaning (e.g., Luke 22:15; Phil 1:23).
Leonhard Goppelt, A Commentary on I Peter, ed. Ferdinand Hahn, trans. John E. Alsup, 1st English ed. (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1993), 110.
Peter H. Davids, The First Epistle of Peter, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1990), 68. See also the pastoral work by Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: When the Empty Promises of Love, Money and Power, Let You Down (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009), who writes of good things becoming ‘ultimate things’ (pp. xiv–xv), or ‘functional saviors’ (pp. 145, 174).