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USURY
Banks are "supposed" to keep our money safe but both banks and the money they look after are corruptible. Without blemish or defect means to be perfect as Jesus Christ is perfect but you cannot say that about money which is responsible for much of the corruption in the world and usury has a large influence on much of this corruption and it is this greed that has been responsible for the collapse of the banks.
The Israelites were forbidden to charge interest on loans made to other Israelites, but were allowed to charge interest on transactions with non-Israelites. However there are numerous examples where this provision is evaded. (This could be the answer to your question about the conflict between the church and the people?)
Usury has always been inextricably linked to economic abuses, mostly of the masses and the poor but sometimes of the rich including royalty and King Richard (Lionhearted) expelled the Jews from England because they almost bankrupted the country with their excessive interest rates.
The main moral argument is that usury creates excessive profit and gain without "labour" which is deemed "work" in the Biblical context and is the result of avarice, greed, trickery and manipulation. In addition, usury is said to create a divide between people due to obsession with monetary gain. Most importantly, usury is the derivation of profit from biological time, which is linked to life, considered sacred, God-given and divine, leading to excessive worrying about money instead of God, thus subjugating a God-given sanctity of life to man-made artificial notions of material wealth.
Regardless of usury the love of money has always been the source of evil and we cannot be made incorruptible by something that is corruptible but thank the Lord we have been made incorruptible through the precious blood of Christ who is without blemish or defect and we can rest in the safety of His love which is secure eternally.
Verses 3-6 exhort us to praise God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for his great mercy whereby he has given us new birth and a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We have an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade which is kept in heaven for us until the day of His returning and not unnaturally the apostle Peter tells us to "greatly rejoice."
The chapter closes by reinforcing the message that we have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God for "All men are like grass, and all their glory is like the flowers of the field; the grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever.
Praise God.
Some information is from Wikipedia
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