The State of Spiritual Life Before Knowing Jesus

This is the second blog in the series “The Apostle Peter’s Relational Framework: The Structure of the Spiritual Life”.

Peter's First Spiritual State: Life Before Knowing Jesus.

This blog is the second in the series “The Apostle Peter’s Relational Framework: The Structure of the Spiritual Life”. In our last blog we introduced the idea of Peter’s three-tiered spiritual framework and in this blog, we will move past introductory remarks to discuss Peter's First Spiritual State: Life Before Knowing Jesus.

We've already pointed out in our previous blog Peter's emphasis on relational knowledge and how immediately in his opening blessing he uses the phrase "in the knowledge (ἐπίγνωσις) of God and of Jesus our Lord” (1:2). This knowledge that Peter speaks of is not merely abstract information or theological pigeon-holing in nature, but it is intimate, personal, and most importantly, transformative in nature. It is the kind of knowing that binds a person to Jesus in covenant relationship. It is not the kind of knowing that binds a person to a theological perspective.

Peter’s first spiritual state in his relational framework of the spiritual life is the spiritual pre-life: life before knowing Jesus. Let’s go there first.

1. The First Spiritual State: Life Before Knowing Jesus

The description of the first state—life before knowing Jesus—is intentionally stark. Peter characterizes people in this condition not by abstract theological labels such as "unsaved", "unredeemed" or unregenerated", but by the lived relational reality of entanglement and estrangement from Jesus. People in this state by implication “did not know—(ἐπίγνωσις) Jesus” (2:20–21), and this absence of relational knowledge defines their entire existence. Before encountering Jesus,—(pre-ἐπίγνωσις) they lived in “the defilements of the world” (2:20), walked in error (2:18), and were enslaved to corruption (2:19). Peter refers to this condition as τὰ πρῶτα, “the former things,” the initial state of human life apart from Jesus Christ.

This portrayal aligns with Peter’s broader depiction of human life outside of Christ. In 1:4, he notes that believers were once subject to “the corruption that is in the world because of sinful desire,” a corruption that permeates human existence and distorts human longing. Likewise, in 2:18 he describes false teachers as enticing “those who are barely escaping from those who live in error,” implying that the pre‑Christian state is a communal environment of deception, confusion, and moral distortion detached from Jesus.

A crucial nuance emerges when Peter’s language is compared with the broader biblical witness: the first entanglement is not portrayed as a deliberate choice but as a condition of bondage. Peter describes unbelievers as “enslaved to corruption” (2:19), a phrase that emphasizes captivity rather than volition. This aligns with Jesus’ teaching that “everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34) and Paul’s description of unbelievers as "under the compulsion of the power of the spirit of the air" and “following the course of this world” (Eph 2:1–3). The two power words used in these verses (εξουσιας and ενεργουντος) indicate that people disconnected to Jesus are energized and coerced by an authority not of their own volition. They are enslaved to behaviors of the disconnected, the life of those who do not know Jesus.

Taken together, these contextual elements show that Peter views the pre‑Christian condition as a relational state that is primarily characterized by an estrangement from God.

Peter is precise and clear in his description of this state: people who do not yet know Jesus they are rebellious, corrupt, erroneous, and enslaved under compulsion not volition.

In our next blog we will discuss Peter’s second state of the spiritual life in “The Middle Spiritual State: Real Participation in Jesus as the Christ”.