Do you feel discouraged when you watch the news? Do you look around at the values and philosophies of our culture and wonder how we got here? Do you long for something better? So do I.
When God allows me to hear the same message from different sources, I want to be especially careful to listen and see what God has for me. I once attended a three-day women’s conference in which the topic was “Resurrection Life in a World of Suffering," based on the book of I Peter. Imagine worshiping and studying this book with 7,200 women from across the United States and around the world. It was incredible!
At the same time, my husband felt led by the Lord to go through the book of I Peter in our Sunday school class. As we studied it in church, I heard the same truths I heard at the conferenceand the book found deeper root in my heart.
Right at the start of the book, Peter names his audience. The Greek word can be translated into exiles (ESV), strangers (KJV), aliens (NASB), or foreigners (NLT). It is the idea of a sojourner, who is temporarily dwelling in a foreign country far from home. This word carries with it the connotation of not fitting in, of being different, and not belonging. And though God’s people were often physical exiles, as in Egypt and Babylon in the Old Testament, in a greater sense, they were spiritual exiles. Peter wanted to remind his readers that the world was not their true home, nor their place of belonging. And this admonition of Peter’s is just as true for us today almost 2,000 years later.
Peter was not the only one who spoke this truth. In Hebrews 11:14-16, the unnamed author tells us that God’s people of the past acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth, and that their hope was not in the world they knew, but in a better country, a heavenly one that they looked toward in faith. For the believers of Hebrews 11, it was not an untested hope; they faced great persecution and still clung to this hope in an unseen future. Suffering is also a key theme of I Peter; this word shows up in various forms fifteen times! Living as exiles in a foreign world where we don’t fit in, especially in times of persecution, brings suffering.
Yet another key theme, and what Peter consistently calls us to throughout the letter is hope, the same hope we saw in the lives of the Hebrews 11 believers. Peter tell us that we have a living hope that because Christ was raised from the dead, we too will be raised, and we have an inheritance ready to be revealed in the last time (1:3-4). As we long for that day, we are to set our hope fully on what is to come when Christ is revealed (1:13, 21). That means we do not place any of our hope in this world, as we are often tempted to do, hoping, for example, partially in God and partially in our government. Hope in our future reality should pervade our lives, even in trials, so that the unbelieving world takes note and asks where our unshakable hope comes from (3:15).
Though the news is depressing, though our culture finds joy and entertainment in what the Bible calls sin, though the political situation in our country looks dismal, we, as sojourners in this world, have hope, because our hope is in none of these things. Our hope rests in something far greater than this temporary time and place. It rests in the promise of an unchanging, eternal God who is preparing for us our true home, where we will no longer be foreigners but know true belonging. Do others see that hope in us?
I want to leave you with a few quotes from the conference I attended, because others are far better with words than I am.
-- “God has known you deeply forever. We do not have to create our identity on our own. We are not lost orphans, but God’s children heading home.” “We are named and we are placed by God Himself. Through Him, our exile is lit up with hope.” (Kathleen Nielson)
-- “As Christians, we must embrace our strangeness in this world.” “We are far from home, but we are not far from Him.” “We’re people on mission to glorify God in a strange land.” (Mary Wilson)
-- “Peter calls us repeatedly to live in a way that does not make sense in this world. It only makes sense when there is an unshakable belief and hope in another world.” (John Piper)
--Amy O'Rear
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