As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance:
From sobriety of spirit and endurance of hope, he passes to obedience, holiness, and reverential fear.
As - their present character as "born again'' (1 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:23). As - their present character as "born again'' (1 Peter 1:3; 1 Peter 1:23).
Obedient, [Greek, 'children of obedience'] - of whom obedience is the characteristic, as a child is of the same nature as the father. (Contrast Ephesians 5:6: cf. 1 Peter 1:17.) Having the obedience of faith (1 Peter 1:22) and practice (1 Peter 1:16; 1 Peter 1:18). 'Faith is the highest obedience, because discharged to the highest command' (Luther).
Fashioning, х suscheematizomenoi (G4964)] - fashion х scheema (G4976)] is fleeting, and on the surface. The 'form' х morphee (G3444)] or conformation in the New Testament, is something deeper and more essential.
The former lusts in - characteristic of your state of ignorance of God: true of Jews and Gentiles. The sanctification is first described negatively (1 Peter 1:14, putting off the old man, even in outward fashion, as well as in inward conformation), then positively (1 Peter 1:15, putting on the new man: cf. Ephesians 4:22; Ephesians 4:24). "Lusts" flow from original birth-sin (inherited from Adam, who by self-willed desire brought sin into the world), the lust which, ever since man has been alienated from God, seeks to fill up with earthly things the emptiness of his being. The manifold forms which the mother-lust assumes are lusts. In the new man of the regenerate, which constitutes his truest self, 'sin' no longer exists; but in the flesh, or old man, it does (1 John 3:9). Hence, arises the conflict through life, wherein the new man in the main prevails, and at last completely. But the natural man knows only the combat of his lusts with one another, or with the law, without power to conquer them.