Scripture teaches that life is a spiritual battle (Galatians 5:16–17; Revelation 12:17), where Satan would love to destroy a Christian’s bond with God. The term “soul” is not to be understood as the inner self in distinction from the physical, outer self (body), but denotes the whole self resulting from the new God-connected identity described in 1 Peter 1:3 – 2:10. A “born again” person acting as if he is still in the womb (and so not craving for God’s kind of milk, 1 Peter 2:2) will never thrive, and will eventually die. A “living” stone that declines to be a living component of God’s spiritual house will equally never thrive but eventually die. If you insist on being like your compatriots (i.e., not a stranger, exile, alien in the community), you cannot be a “chosen race” or a “royal priesthood” or a “holy nation” or a “people for [God’s] own possession” able to proclaim his excellencies (1 Peter 2:9). Being what God has made you to be involves a battle against the enduring “passions of the flesh.”
11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.