Читать книгу 1, 2 Peter and Jude Through the Centuries - Rebecca Skaggs - Страница 48

This is the second of the three metaphors Peter uses to illustrate the transformed life. Together, they provide aspects of the new existence, contrasting this new existence with their old life: the grass focuses on the transience of life (fleeting like grass) versus the eternality of life in Christ; the milk metaphor highlights the intimate relationship with God which the new existence makes possible; and finally, the living stones describe the new community into which they are incorporated by the new life. The metaphors also reintroduce and elaborate the main themes of this section: for example, the characteristics of the life they have left behind. Lists of vices and virtues are a common rhetorical device in the Jewish and Hellenistic worlds as well as in the Christian tradition. This list, in particular (2:1), is relatively short and appears to generalize the categories of evil and wickedness. The author broadens the meaning of the terms for “malice” and “deceit” by using the adverb “all” (pas). These characterize the life they have left behind representing forms of behavior that “oppose the ethos and practice of love” to which they have recently been called (cf. Green, 2007: 52). They are now asked to leave behind this former lifestyle and to move forward into their new, transformed life, described in terms of motivation and growth.

Peter uses the metaphor of newborn babies and milk to emphasize the intimacy of the new life. This is different from Paul’s use of the milk metaphor in 1 Corinthians 3:2: whereas Paul contrasts the milk needed by new babies (new converts) with the solid meat craved by adults (mature believers), Peter’s point is that the intense longing for the milk felt by babies expresses the way all believers should feel about their new relation with the Lord – their intense craving for the Lord replaces their life of evil desires (cravings). Two main themes are included here: the life they have left behind and the transformed one they have chosen (elaborated upon with the metaphor of the “living stones”).