1 Peter 1:14

As obedient children; rather, children of obedience (comp. Ephesians 2:2 , Ephesians 2:3 ; Ephesians 5:8 ; also 2 Peter 2:14 ; 2 Thessalonians 2:3 ; Luke 16:8 ). Winer says ('Grammar,' 3. 34.; 'Romans,' 2), "This mode of expression is to be traced to the more lively imagination of the Orientals, by which the most intimate connection (derivation from and dependence on)—even when the reference is to what is not material—is viewed under the image of the relation of son or child to parent. Hence ' children of disobedience' are those who belong to disobedience as a child to his mother—disobedience having become their nature, their predominant disposition." Not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance. The remarkable word συσχηματιζόμενοι seems to be an echo of Born. 12:2, the only other place where it occurs. It implies that men who live in sensual lusts take up the likeness of those lusts into themselves, and are made, not as man was at first, after the likeness of God, but after the likeness of those lusts of the flesh which are not of the Father, but are of the world. The word "ignorance" is to be taken closely with "lusts"—"the former lusts which were in the time of your ignorance." It seems to imply that St. Peter is addressing Gentiles as well as Jews; top, though ignorance is attributed to the Jews ( Acts 3:17 ; Romans 10:3 ; 1 Timothy 1:13 ), it was ignorance, not of the moral law, as here, but of the Person and office of Christ. The Jews had the oracles of God; they knew his will ( Romans 2:17 ; Romans 3:2 ; comp. also Ephesians 4:18 and Acts 17:30 ).