¹⁰For, “The one who desires life, to love and see good days, must keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit. ¹¹He must turn away from evil and do good; He must seek peace and pursue it. ¹²For the eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil.”

Difficult times and experiences tax the believer considerably. The temptation is to retaliate, to look after oneself. Self-preservation, it is said, is the most natural tendency of all living creatures. Yet God’s ways are higher than our natural tendencies, and they are counterintuitive. However, what Peter writes in his letter is not revolutionary to God-fearing people, as he quotes from Psalm 34:12–16a. These are enduring principles that transcend all time periods and experiences, even in oppressive situations involving marital, economic, or general interpersonal experiences.

Peter addresses us as those who desire to have good lives. Don’t we all want that—not in a narcissistic sense, but to know we are living life well? Six things, pithily stated in three couplets, capture the staccato teaching here.

We must first control our mouths. We must resist throwing out verbal retorts. Responding in kind, with crass, insulting, hateful words, makes us no better than our opponent. Nor should we take to lying; no matter how we frame our deception, it never leads to a good life. It will always escalate conflict and will never bring about a peaceful life.

Next, we must not respond with evil to those who do evil to us. The harder we struggle like that, the more we get tangled up in the evil itself. We become what we fight against when we fight in the same way (See 2 Cor. 10:1–6 for more on not using worldly warfare methods). Instead, we should combat evil with good. Evil can’t stand the light of good. When we respond with good, we are exhibiting Christlikeness and standing with the Lord—for He is the one who turns against those who do us evil.

Finally, we should seek peace. Yes, we could engage and win a short-term battle with those who oppose us, but the object is not to one-up other people. We are often much better off to simply avoid escalating conflict by our resistance. We turn the other cheek as a sign of our strength under control, to de-escalate the conflict. Peter’s exhortation to seek peace is not to be a casual option for those who are not strong, but an adamant pursuit of our lives. It takes strength to pursue peace, for doing good to our opposer is like launching peace-seeking missiles to win them over with love and good deeds. Disarming to our oppressors is our desire to live peaceably with them.

Lord, help me to keep my strength under control as I seek peace with others.