ON BEING HOLY IN
AN UNHOLY LAND
Have you ever felt odd and out-of-place? Maybe you have
been to a large gathering, like a banquet or a conference, and you felt like
you just don’t fit in. You didn’t know who to talk to or about what. It is
especially awkward when it appears that everyone has someone to talk to but
you. Schmoozing is not your thing. All you want to do is get out of there and
go home.
Odd;
peculiar; strange; on the outside looking in. Do these words describe how you
feel at school, at work, or in some social circles? Congratulations, that’s
what a Christian is supposed to feel like.
On the
contrary side of things, if you begin to feel comfortable with our world, our
society, or our culture as it is, then you may have grown too accustomed to
this world.
As we
begin this series on the first letter by the Apostle Peter, we will quickly see
that this powerful little letter says a lot about suffering for being
different. And Peter does not want to change that oddity of being Christian; in
fact, he encourages it.
Peter’s
readers were struggling with how their faith made them different in a land that
accepted the status quo. It went a lot easier for you if you just conformed to
the way things were. Don’t stick out. Don’t go against the flow. If everyone is
doing it, it must be okay. The alternative was alienation from friends and
society.
However,
being in relationship with Christ and under the renovation work of the Holy
Spirit had life-changing implications. Peter’s letter was written to instruct
and motivate Christians in their lifestyles and relationships by reminding them
that it was to this purpose that they had been chosen in God.
Being
chosen by God through Christ will make you a foreigner to the world we live in.
In the first two verses we will study two opposite but related terms: being a
foreigner and being chosen.
1. We are aliens and strangers in this world
“Peter, an apostle
of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, exiles scattered throughout the provinces of
Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia…” (1:1).
Here
Peter addresses his readers with a fitting label. The NASB uses the word
“alien” instead of “God’s elect.” His readers are those “who reside as aliens;”
they are strangers in the world, foreigners to the people they live with
presently.
That
word “alien” has a different connotation for us in our context. We tend to
think of “space invaders” or “Martians” or people from outer space when we
think of “aliens.” Perhaps that is not a bad way to look at it.
It is
best to think of “alien” as being a foreigner though. If you have travelled
abroad you know how it feels to enter an unfamiliar culture. Even traveling to
eastern Canada can be a foreign experience. When we were in Quebec City this
summer I tried to order our meals at McDonalds in French only to discover that
the counter girl didn’t seem to speak English or French. Talk about a foreign
experience.
In the
first century, being a foreigner or alien meant to be someone who did not hold
citizenship in the place he resided. That meant that he did not enjoy the
rights and privileges of the host country. But as a foreigner he was not
expected to hold the values and customs of the host country.
One of
Peter’s favorite words in this letter is the Greek word, anastrophe. He uses it six times and it means “way of life” or
“behavior.” When Peter uses it he instructs his readers that the Christian way
of life, our conduct, our behavior, should stand out like a foreigner stands
out in China. The KJV uses the word “peculiar” in 2:9. We are to be peculiar.
Another
sense of being an alien or a foreigner is that we are temporary residents. We
are not settlers but pilgrims; we are just passing through, looking for our
real home in heaven (see 1:17; 2:11-12, etc.). It follows naturally then that
if we are aliens we should act like aliens.
There is
a richness to the term “alien” as well as the next term “exiles scattered…” The
Jews knew what it meant to be foreigners and exiles in a very real way in the
OT. When God disciplined his people Israel, he took away their king and their
land; Assyria and then Babylon invaded Israel and took captives back to their
capitals. For 70 years the Jews were aliens in a strange land (see Daniel 1).
Peter
draws a spiritual parallel here between the Jewish Diaspora, as it’s called, and
the situation of his readers. He implies that they should understand themselves
as Christians as like that of God’s OT people who were foreigners in the lands
to which they were scattered. This applies to us also: think of God with his
salt shaker spreading us out over the world. We are a scattered people without
a home on earth.
Peter’s
readers are addressed as being in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and
Bithynia. Scholars believe that they were forcibly sent there after the month
of July in 64 A.D. when Rome was burned. Historians now believe that Nero set
the fire to make room for his new re-imagined city of Rome. But when the people
became suspicious, Nero looked for a scapegoat to blame the fire on. These
Christ-followers were a strange lot; they were into cannibalism, eating the
flesh and blood of some poor victim. So it was easy to fix the blame on the
Christians. They literally became exiles from Rome as a result.
Peter
took that experience and used it to remind the believers that this is part of
what it means to be God’s people. We should never expect to be accepted by this
unholy land. The other side of this lesson is that we be aware of the danger of
assimilation to the unholy environment we live in and fall from our faith. It
is a great temptation to accept the overwhelming influence of our society and
say “what’s wrong with it? It wouldn’t hurt anyone.” Assimilation is a great
danger like gangrene that deadens the faith of the church. It is this very
disease that causes us to resemble the world and makes the world ask, “How are
you different?”
2. We are a chosen people through God’s grace
We may be outcasts in the world, but we are chosen by
God. In the Greek, the word “chosen” comes right after “Peter, an apostle of
Jesus Christ.” You can do this in Greek, mix up the words in any order and
still make sense. Peter throws “chosen” in at the beginning to emphasize this
encouragement: You are chosen by God.
“To God’s elect, strangers in the world…who
have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the
sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled
with his blood,” (1:2).
a) We are chosen
according to God’s foreknowledge – What does that mean? To be chosen is a
very special feeling. Have you ever been the last one chosen for a soccer game
on the school playground? You are the least talented player and no one wants
you. Being the last pick you go to the team by default that gets last choice.
Consider
the opposite experience. Go back to the dawn of creation when the worlds were
yet unfashioned. Go back beyond that time when the Universe was just a thought
in God’s mind. If you can imagine such a time when there was no time in
infinite space, go where your imagination is exhausted of its power. Sometime
back then, God chose His people. The Triune God, all alone in His eternity,
spoke this choice. “…in the beginning was the Word,” and in the beginning God’s
people were one with the Word, and in this beginning God chose them into
eternal life.[i]
The
Bible confirms this when Paul wrote, “For
those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his
Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers,” (Rom 8:29).
Does
that mean that we didn’t get to choose God? We have no free will? No, it means
we are dealing with a great mystery, a paradox. God does not sit weakly by
hoping that some will believe in His Son. We believe, not by our own decision,
but by God’s initiative. At the same time, by faith, we choose him. I take great
joy in knowing that he chose me for salvation before I chose him.
b) We are chosen
by the Spirit for holiness – The Holy Spirit is the agent of God’s choosing
us. He convinces us that we are sinners and leads us to the place where we
believe in Jesus as our Savior who forgives us our sins. Then the Holy Spirit
strengthens us and enables us to walk in obedience to Christ.
We again
turn to Paul and read, “But we ought
always to thank God for you, brothers, loved by the Lord, because from the
beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the
Spirit and through belief in the truth,” (2 Thess 2:13).
The Holy
Spirit makes us holy. He sets us apart from the world. He is the one who makes
us peculiar to the unbeliever. He empowers us to live lives that reflect the
character of Jesus and the holiness of God. Through the Spirit, God takes hold
of a person from the inside and transforms him or her so that we are taken out
of the realm of the profane and placed in the sphere of the holy.
c) We are chosen
to be obedient to Jesus – This is the aspect of being chosen that makes us
radically different. That inner holiness becomes holiness in action. When
others are living for the moment and what pleasure can best dull the pain of
the moment, the follower of Jesus is seeking to be loving and gentle and to
seek the other’s good.
By
following Jesus and seeking to be obedient to his teaching we become
otherworldly. Jesus prayed that we would be odd. In John 17:13-16 Jesus prayed
that we would have “the full measure of (his) joy within (us).” He also prayed,
“I have given them your word and the
world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the
world,” (14). Obedience to that word is the Christian’s way of bearing
testimony to the world that he or she is one of God’s chosen ones.
We are
sprinkled with the blood of Christ through faith in his pardoning work. What an
awesome picture this is for us. It reaches back into the Jewish history of the
temple sacrifice when a lamb would be killed and its blood sprinkled on the
altar for sins. If not for the love and mercy of God, our blood would have to
flow. When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming towards him, he declared, “Behold
the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.” We are sprinkled with
this precious blood so that our sins are washed away.
You and
I are chosen for obedience based on this forgiveness. Now doesn’t that
guilt-free life make us peculiar and holy?
We have begun a journey today. Pressed upon my heart was
the desire for holiness, to discover what it means to be holy. Now we are in
this together, this journey, and I hope that we will discover together what it
means to be a holy church.
Last
weekend as some of us walked among the partiers at the Vikings football
tailgate party, I wondered what place a Christian had among these folks. Yes,
to be a witness. But in truth, I was merely an observer – I did not speak a
word. What was said to me and my companions was this: “Hey guys, there’s free
bloody Mary’s over there. Help yourself.”
I shared
this with no one till today, but what I saw was idolatry, drunkenness and
godlessness. Can believers enjoy the party that is the NFL or the NHL or the
world? I certainly do not want to suggest a legalistic view of life. But I
wonder what makes us different? What makes us holy?
As we
study Peter, we will find that he does not call us to withdraw from society but
will instruct us on how the believer engages society in a way that would be
expected of those who are foreigners. And a foreigner will dwell respectfully
in the culture of the host nation participating in that culture only to the
extent that its values coincide with their own. When they interfere with our
values and beliefs we must withdraw.
Just as
he who called you and chose you is holy, so be holy in all you do. Will you
read 1 Peter and pray with me throughout the next several weeks? Pray that we
may discover together what it means to be holy.
“May God
himself, the God of peace, make you holy through and through. May your whole
spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The One who calls you is faithful and He will do it,” (1 Thess 5:23-24).
AMEN
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