To All of You

3:8  Finally (not to end the letter but to complete this passage) there comes a general exhortation to the whole Christian community, married and unmarried alike. Peter commends a set of attitudes which together depict what relationships within the Christian fellowship should be.

Christian believers must live in harmony with one another, literally, “being of one mind” (a single word in the Greek). The term is intended to convey a unity of aim and purpose, a oneness in attitude. Idealistic? But this was the actuality at the very beginning of the Christian church, rejoicing in the glow of the early days of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost when “believers were together and had everything in common” (Acts 4:32). On a purely practical level, unity among Christians was …