What Does 1 Peter 1:14 Mean?
As children of the hearing and response, not pressing yourselves into the shape of the former cravings you held in your unknowing.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:THE KEY
Your former desires are a pattern born of not seeing, while your identity is named as one who hears and responds.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as a child whose defining posture is responsive hearing. The desires that once patterned you belong to an unseeing state; they do not have to define your present shape.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse dissolves the belief that old cravings reveal your fixed nature: they belong to a former unseeing pattern, not the identity named here.
THE ROOT
συσχηματιζόμενοι
syschēmatizomenoi
GROWS FROM
σχῆμα
schēma
form, shape, or pattern
The verb for fashioning grows from σχῆμα, the form something takes. The verse reaches beyond isolated actions to the pattern that gives them shape.
ALSO GROWS
syschēmatizō: to take the same form; conform oneself
συσχηματίζω
This is the verb used for fashioning oneself according to a pattern.
metaschēmatizō: to change or transform outward form
μετασχηματίζω
This related verb makes the shared image of form and reshaping visible.
ἀγνοίᾳ
agnoia
GROWS FROM
νοέω
noeō
perceive or apprehend with the mind
“unknowing” in this verse is agnoia. The word for ignorance carries the sense of failing to perceive or understand. The verse links former desire with an unseeing state, showing how perception and longing can shape one another.
ALSO GROWS
agnoeō: to fail to perceive or understand
ἀγνοέω
This verb expresses the privative sense present in the word for ignorance.
nous: mind, understanding
νοῦς
This related word points to the faculty of perception that ignorance lacks or obscures.
ὑπακοῆς
hypakoēs
GROWS FROM
ἀκούω
akouō
hear
“the hearing and response” in this verse is hypakoēs. The phrase calls these ‘children of obedience,’ using a word from the family of hearing. The Greek carries the sense of hearing that responds, so identity is pictured as responsive listening.
ALSO GROWS
hypakouō: to hear and heed; obey
ὑπακούω
This verb expresses the responsive hearing contained in the word for obedience.
akoē: hearing; report
ἀκοή
This related noun keeps the sound of hearing audible beneath ‘obedient.’
THE PATTERN
Desire can become a shaping pattern when perception is narrowed, while renewed perception opens a different form of life.
And the woman saw that the tree was good for eating, and that it was a craving for the eyes, and a tree to be desired for making one wise. And she took of its fruit and ate, and gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.Do not take the shape of this age, but be reshaped by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test what is the good, well-pleasing, and complete will of God.that you take off your former walk, the old human, which is decaying according to the cravings of deceit.THE THREAD
Do not take the shape of this age, but be reshaped by the renewing of your mind, so that you may test what is the good, well-pleasing, and complete will of God.Peter’s ‘fashioning yourselves’ and Romans’ ‘be not conformed’ use the same Greek verb, συσχηματίζω. Peter names former desires within ignorance as a shaping pattern; Romans names the world’s pattern and pairs its refusal with renewal of the mind.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us