Peter now exhorts his readers to proper action. Be obedient to God is literally “as children of obedience.” In biblical language, to be a child of something is to be controlled by that something. “Children of obedience” therefore are those who are obedient. The implied goal here is either Jesus Christ (as in 1.2), or God, but in the light of verse 15 it is more probable that God is intended, and the Good News Translation makes this clear (compare Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch “as obedient children of God”). Furthermore, the Good News Bible understands this as exhortation with an imperative sense (so also Moffatt, Phillips); most translations, however, retain it as a dependent clause. The adjectival expression Be obedient to God may be rendered in a more direct form as “obey God,” especially if one may use an aspect of the verb which indicates continual obedience.
Do not allow your lives to be shaped is literally “not being conformed” (compare Rom 12.2), which is once again a participle with an imperative force. The main idea here is that the readers of the letter are exhorted not to fashion their lives according to their way of doing things before they became Christians. Desires is literally “passions,” and may be understood as a neutral term simply describing behavior, but in the New Testament it is often used of the behavior of someone who is separated from God.
The passive expression in lives to be shaped by those desires may require a shift so as to indicate clearly that the desires are the cause of the shaping, for example, “do not let your desires … shape your lives.” The term desires may of course be expressed simply as “what you yourself want.”
When you were still ignorant denotes the time before the recipients became Christians. Some scholars take this as a proof that the letter is written primarily for Gentiles, since they are described as ignorant in many parts of the New Testament (compare Acts 17.30). Furthermore, “ignorance” here refers primarily to a lack of knowledge of God, and it would not be an appropriate description of Jews. However, others maintain that both Gentiles and Jews are included. In a sense Jews are ignorant of the true God who is made known through Jesus Christ. It is interesting to note that this problem of who are addressed affects the way in which “ignorant” is translated. To translate, for example, “ignorant” as “before you knew God” (Biblia Dios Habla Hoy) is to make it clear that Peter was writing to Gentiles, since the Jews could not be accused of not knowing God. On the other hand, a translation like “when you did not know the truth” (Die Bibel im heutigen Deutsch, also Jerusalem Bible) allows for a broader readership. It is probably better for the translator to allow for this possibility, and therefore to translate “ignorant of the Good News about Jesus Christ” or “ignorant of God as made known in Jesus Christ.”
Though the Good News Translation‘s rendering do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant seems to be relatively simple in its structure, it is in reality complex, for it involves a number of so-called embedded nuclear structures. Your lives may, for example, be equivalent to “how you live.” To be shaped indicates the relationship between desires and the lives. The expression desires you had is likewise an embedded nuclear structure equivalent to “what you desired,” and obviously the clause when you were still ignorant involves still an additional underlying expression. It may in some instances be necessary, therefore, to break these several underlying nuclear structures into two different sentences, for example, “while you were still ignorant of the Good News about Jesus Christ, you had certain desires; you must not, however, permit those desires to determine how you live now.”
Quoted with permission from Arichea, Daniel C. and Nida, Eugene A. A Handbook on The First Letter from Peter. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1980. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .