1 Peter 2:1-12: Do I Want to Grow Up?
"WOULD YOU SEND me to school?" [Peter] inquired craftily.
"Yes . . . "
"I don't want to go to school and learn solemn things," he told her passionately.
"I don't want to be a man. O Wendy's mother, if I was to wake up and feel there was a beard!"
"Peter," said Wendy the comforter, "I should love you in a beard." Mrs. Darling stretched out her arms to him.
"Keep back, lady, no one is going to catch me and make me a man." (James M. Barrie, Peter Pan [New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1911], p. 228.)
Warming Up to God
In what ways are you tempted to follow Peter Pan's approach to life?
Read 1 Peter 2:1-12. »
Discovering the Word
- Peter speaks here of two aspects of Christian growth: individual and corporate. How might the five inner sins of verse 1 damage outer relationships with other believers?
- What does the metaphor in verses 2-3 contribute to your understanding of how to nurture spiritual growth?
- How does belief or unbelief influence the way a person understands Jesus, the "living Stone" (vv. 4-8)?
- What reasons do the people here have to praise God (vv. 9-10)?
- Verse 11 repeats a now familiar theme in 1 Peter—that Christians are aliens and strangers in the world. How might living up to the description of verse 9 cause a Christian to be alienated from the world?
Applying the Word
- The New Bible Commentary interprets verse 12, "the day [God] visits us," as "the day God will visit the earth and search out man's hearts in judgment." If this were to occur in your lifetime, what evidence would you want God to find of your own spiritual growth?
- How could today's passage help you overcome a tendency to become a spiritual Peter Pan?
Responding in Prayer
Ask God to rid you of "all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind."
For Further Study
Beginning Well by Gordon T. Smith