Why Did Peter The Apostle Say, 'Gird Up The Loins Of Your Mind?'

What Does 'Gird Up The Loins' Mean?

Question : We see in the following passage the word 'loins' which means to me as the private parts of our body, it says like this, "13 Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ;" (1 Pet 1:13). What is apostle Peter trying to convey to the readers actually? In other words loins is the region of the sexual organs regarded as the source of erotic or procreative power. When we think a thought of fantasy, our loins will start to respond to it. Have I conveyed it right?

Answer : Back in the days of the ancient Near East, both men and women wore flowing tunics. Around the tunic, they’d wear a belt or girdle. While tunics were comfortable and breezy, the hem of the tunic would often get in the way when a man was fighting or performing hard labor. So when ancient Hebrew men had to battle the Philistines, the men would lift the hem of their tunic up and tuck it into their girdle or tie it in a knot to keep it off the ground. The effect basically created a pair of shorts that provided more freedom of movement. Thus to tell someone to “gird up their loins” was to tell them to get ready for hard work or battle. It was the ancient way of saying 'man up, be ready to work and fight!'

You are right in saying loins is the region of the sexual organs which we usually now cover with our underwear and tighten up so that we will be able to freely work. Also because loins are connected to our thought life very closely so much so that whenever an erotic thought comes and instead of overcoming we accept it willingly in to our mind, it makes us captive to it. The result will be that we might start to ponder over it and immediately our loins will get active to respond to it or we might go to the level of stimulating it to fantasize over it to bring it back to normality. In other words, because we have failed spiritually to take our thought captive to the obedience of Christ, we have not been able to gird up the loins of our mind to fight against the temptation that has come to test us (1 Cor 10:13; 2 Cor 10:5).

Once somebody will touch their sexual organs for stimulation, automatically their mind gets controlled by their flesh and lustful thoughts will fill their mind. God wants our spirit-man to rule over our flesh and our actions. Because of the close connection of our loins with our mind, apostle Peter is trying to convey to his readers to keep their mind in control by battling against temptation through the gospel of grace and receive the grace of God that will help us all to overcome the spiritual battle of our mind (Titus 2:11-15). The more we lose our hope in our own strength to grow in our spiritual life and become hopeless in ourselves and our fleshly confidence, from then on we learn to look on to Jesus in hope and find that His grace is sufficient for us to be victorious in our spiritual battle. When Jesus reveals Himself through His mighty overcoming and cleansing grace, it becomes more than sufficient for us according to our faith. Such battle of hard work of believing in our mind by faith will keep us serious enough to consistently experience the revelation of Jesus Christ our Lord in our personal lives (John 6:29; Heb 4:11; James 2:22; 1 Tim 4:10), without which no man will see the supernatural work of the Lord from heaven work on behalf of us in our Christian lives (Heb 12:14). The more we experience Jesus by faith, the more grace we will receive (2 Peter 3:14-18). Thus Peter the apostle wants every Christian to do a active battle and work hard through the grace of God, and keep co-operating with the Holy Spirit of God to see a victorious life of heaven in our earthly spiritual walk for the Glory of God.

Much Blessings.....

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