Dearly beloved, I beseech you
The apostle, from characters of the saints, and which express
their blessings and privileges, with great beauty, propriety, and
pertinency, passes to exhortations to duties; he addresses the
saints under this affectionate appellation, "dearly beloved", to
express his great love to them, and to show that what he was
about to exhort them to sprung from sincere and hearty affection
for them, and was with a view to their real good; nor does he in
an authoritative way command, as he might have done, as an
apostle, but, as a friend, he entreats and beseeches them:
as strangers and pilgrims;
not in a literal sense, though they were in a foreign country, in
a strange land, and sojourners there, but in a spiritual and
mystical sense; they were "strangers", not to God and Christ, and
to the Spirit, to themselves, to the saints, and to all that is
good, as they had formerly been, but to the world, the men of it,
and the things in it; and therefore it became them to separate
from it, and not conform to it; to abstain from all appearance of
evil, to have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of
darkness, but to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts: and they
were "pilgrims"; whose habit is Christ and his righteousness;
whose food is Christ and his fulness; whose staff is Christ and
the promises; whose guide is the blessed Spirit; the place for
which they are bound is heaven, the better country, where is
their Father's house, their friends, and their inheritance; this
world not being their country, nor their resting place, it became
them to have their conversation in heaven, and to
abstain from fleshly lusts;
which spring from the flesh, and are concerned about fleshly
things, and are exercised in and by the members of the flesh, or
body; hence, in the Syriac version, they are called, "the lusts
of the body": these are to be abstained from; not that the
apostle thought that they could be without them; for while the
saints are in the body, flesh, or corrupt nature will be in them,
and the lusts thereof; but then these are not to be indulged, or
provision to be made for them, to fulfil them; they are not to be
obeyed and served, or lived unto, but to be denied and crucified,
being unsuitable to the character of strangers and pilgrims, and
also because of their hurtful and pernicious nature:
which war against the soul;
see ( Romans
7:23 ) ( James 4:1 ) ( Song of Solomon
6:13 ) , these are enemies to the spiritual peace, comfort,
and welfare of the soul; and being of a man's household, and in
his heart, are the worst enemies he has; and are to be treated as
such, to be shunned and avoided, watched and guarded against; for
though they cannot destroy the souls of true believers, they may
bring much leanness upon them, and greatly distress them, and
spoil them of their inward joy, and spiritual pleasure.