The depravity of the human heart generates a “want,” an appetite, a desire for a particular way of living (characteristic of the unborn, 1 Peter 1:3), which these Gentiles “do.” Peter gives a representative list of such conduct in the rest of this verse, a list with which his readers were very familiar from their own previous lifestyle (1 Peter 1:14).
3 For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.