earthly pilgrimage. In it all he remains a guest,
expecting to leave this tarrying-place for a certain abode. Hence he
says (Ps 39, 12): "I am a stranger with thee, a sojourner, as all my
fathers were." How is that? Has a king of David's glorious rank
occasion to speak thus? Is he a guest who occupies a royal throne, who
is lord of landed estate and of more than twelve hundred thousand
people according to his own calculation? This is David's meaning: In
his kingdom he serves God as a transient here on earth, and set apart
by God for that purpose; but at the same time as a citizen of God's
kingdom in another life, another existence, which he regards more
glorious than earthly glory, and as affording something better than a
temporal crown.

REASONS TO ABSTAIN FROM CARNAL LUST.

21. Such is Peter's teaching. He admonishes Christians to Christlike
lives and works in view of the fact that they are called to great
glory, having become through Christ a royal priesthood, a people of
God and citizens of heaven. He would have them occupy this temporal
world as guests, striving after another and eternal kingdom; that is,
to abstain from all carnal lusts and maintain a blameless walk, a life
of good works. The apostle assigns two reasons for such self-denial:
First, that we may not, through carnal, lustful habits, lose the
spiritual and eternal; second, that God's name and the glory we have
in Christ may not be slandered among our heathen adversaries, but
rather, because of our good works, honored. These are the chief
reasons for doing good works. They ought most forcibly to urge us to
the performance of our duties.

22. Peter admonishes, first, to "abstain from fleshly lusts, which war
against the soul." He implies that if we do not resist carnal
inclinations, but rather follow them, we shall lose our priceless
eternal inheritance. To be a stranger on earth, striving after another
and better life, is inconsistent with living in fleshly lusts as if
one's sole intent was to remain in the world forever. If you would
have the things of one life, Peter says, you must forsake the things
of the other. If you forget your fatherland and lie drunken with this
carnal life, as does the heathen world in living in unbelief and
without hope of eternal life, you will never reach yonder existence;
for so you reject it.

It is necessary to strive if we are to withstand the lusts of the
flesh; for these, Peter says, war against the soul--agai