Living Fatfully in a World That is Not Home (1 Peter 2:11-17)
Sermon Manuscript
We are three weeks into our series on 1 Peter and last week Peter spent seven verses telling us who we collectively are as a body of believers. We are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, and God’s own people. Then, we get to verse 11 and Peter says, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles…” Back in the very first verse of this letter, Peter calls us elect exiles. Chosen and exiled. Robert did a great job with this two weeks ago. This is Peter’s basis for his whole letter. We are eternally loved, sovreignly chosen, and purposely exiled.
Loved and chosen feel nice. But, what does it mean to be an exile? This might be a bit of a recap after Robert’s sermon, but I think it’s still necessary. An exile is simply someone who is away from home. Sometimes that means someone has traveled away from their home to a foreign land. But, you don’t need to move to be an exile. I have a buddy who is a pastor in New Mexico and his heritage is Mexican. But his family has lived in the same city for generations. He says, “My people didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.” Generations ago, his city was in Mexico and then the lines got redrawn and all of a sudden they lived in the United States with new laws, new languages, and a new culture.
The way Peter uses the term exile is more like my buddy. When we put our faith in Jesus, we aren’t relocated geographically, we are relocated spiritually. Our home is in the kingdom to come. Paul says our citizenship is in heaven. So the lives we live, we are living outside of our true home. And because this world is not our home, we are now free to seek its good without ever asking it to be our God.
This week we dropped ourmy first kid off at college. And the first thing we did was set up his room. We worked really hard on it and made it nice. It would be weird if we didn’t want to make it nice for our child. But it would have been really odd if we laid down new floors and marble counters and installed new windows, because we don’t own that place. It would be a horrible investment, because it’s not our home! And what if we also knew that that building was going to be torn down after the year and a new, better one built. That would be crazy! Yet, that is how many of us view the world we live in.
We should love our neighbors, we should work hard, we should raise our families, and we should seek the good of this place…But it will never be our true permanent home.
Peter says that the way we live should be visibly different. It should be visible to others that this is our college rental and not our permanent home. So the question then is: What does it look like to live faithfully in a world that is not our home? That is what Peter tells us in this passage.
- Fight the desires that make you look like the world 11,12
11 Beloved, I urge you has sojourners and exiles ito abstain from the passions of the flesh, jwhich wage war against your soul. Before Peter talks about government, culture, or persecution, he says the war is happening inside us. It’s not only out there, it’s in here.
‘Passions of the flesh’ includes sexual sin, but it’s actually a more broad category. I’m drawing from Augustine and Tim Keller here, but sin isn’t simply desiring bad things, it’s often loving good things in the wrong order, to the wrong degree, or in the wrong way. It’s when a good desire becomes an ultimate desire. It’s good to desire financial security, but it’s bad to desire it so much that you cross ethical lines or break the law. It’s good to desire romance, but it’s bad to desire it so much that you sacrifice the basic standards God has given us for a spouse. It’s even good to desire approval, but it’s bad to desire it so much that you live according to the expectations of your peers and not God. The problem isn’t simply that we desire wrong things. It’s that we desire good things wrongly.
And Peter says this is the war waging against our souls. It’s easy to think that the greatest threat to our Christian witness is what the world is doing to us, but it is actually what our own sinful desires are doing inside us. This is why Peter says, Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable…” Because our private war does become a public witness. It isn’t just that God wants to keep us in line. It certainly isn’t that by our conduct we earn a better standing with God. Jesus has already done that. And it isn’t just that living the way God wants us to will make us most satisfied. Even though it will. There is something even bigger going on here. The private war produces a public witness. This is the goal: so that when they speak against you as evildoers, lthey may see your good deeds and glorify God…
Our inward battle is so important for many reasons. Most importantly, winning this battle will give us joy in our Christians lives. It will give us assurance of our salvation. It will help us to make wise decisions. Peter knows all this and he’s now connecting our inward battle with our outward witness. Peter assumes Christians will be misunderstood and maligned. Peter isn’t trying to make sure everyone likes us. He wants us to live such beautiful lives that none of their accusations can stick to us.
One of the things I wanted my kids to understand as they go off to college is that if you live the kind of life Jesus wants you to, a lot of people will look at you as if you had a third eye. But, if you live that life with conviction and joy, it will cause them to ask questions of themselves that they wouldn’t otherwise ask.
So the question that every Christian should ask themselves is when people who disagree with Christianity encounter our lives, does our life make Christianity harder to believe or harder to dismiss?
I’ve been on an early American kick recently and I love the friendship between Ben Franklin who was not a Christian and George Whitefield who was an incredible evangelist. Franklin dismissed Christian theology rather easily, but he was never able to dismiss Whitfield’s life as a committed Christian. There’s an old story that someone asked Franklin why he kept listening to Whitefield when he didn’t believe what Whitefield preached. Franklin supposedly answered, “I don’t believe him, but he believes what he says.” That’s the kind of life Peter is describing. You may not believe what I believe, but I want to live in such a way that you cannot easily dismiss it. Franklin even went on to financially support some of Whitefield’s work.
But, Peter doesn’t stop at private morality. He then tells us how we should live in exile when it comes to politics and authority.
- Honor earthly authority without making it ultimate 13-16
Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution,2 whether it be to the emperor3 as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him… The key phrase here is ‘for the Lord’s sake.’ Peter isn’t setting up Caesar as an ultimate authority, he’s saying we should submit precisely because Caesar is not the ultimate authority.
Caesar wanted people to fear him, but Peter says to honor him. No Christian needs to fear Caesar because this is not our ultimate home. Caesar has no power over our souls. So our obedience to earthly authority, whether we like them or not, whether they are good or evil, is actually an expression of our allegiance to a higher authority.
Peter says we should be subject to our government because, at some level, they are sent to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good. Paul says almost exactly the same thing in Romans 13:1. And, Peter says in verse 15, it is by our doing good that we put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.
And if I can be so bold, I think that 2020 and 2021 presented one of the greatest opportunities for the church to do this and it turned out to be one of our greatest failures. Whether Trump was President or Biden. Whether you were a mask person or not. Whether you were pro-distancing or not. There are ways to disagree AND honor and obey our authorities. There are ways to sacrifice what we want to show that we already have what we need. If our core motivations are fear and anger, we are communicating through our actions that this is our home and that we don’t have what we need.
Say what you will about either of those Presidents, but they weren’t killing Christians. Caesar was. And Peter is telling the early Christians to be subject to him. So, is Peter saying that we should obey the government when it would cause us to disobey the Bible? No. In Acts 4 the Jewish authorities called the disciples in and charged them to not speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. Peter (writing this letter) and John then responded, Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.
Can you see that there are lines we cannot cross? But can you also hear the humility in their words? They humbly say that there is a line they cannot cross. Sharing our faith is one of those lines. And every disciple, but John was killed for it. So they sacrificed their desires in some of the ways they obeyed the government, but they sacrificed their lives in some of the ways they disobeyed the government. Either way the Christian life is one of sacrifice…because we know this is not our home. And it is through our joyful and confident self-sacrifice that we show a lost world our greater hope.
It was interesting because in that COVID season, I think for the first time in my life, some states did prohibit something the Bible commands: gathering together as a church. It was very short here, but California prohibited indoor gatherings for about eleven months. Sure, it was still less than a year and in very unique times and some opinions now might be different than what they were then. Even so, you had some churches who just stopped meeting altogether because the government said so. You had other churches that stood defiantly in their buildings and denigrated those in authority. I actually don’t think either of those responses were in line with Peter’s teaching.
The question Peter provoking is how much can we sacrifice to obey both God and government? There were some churches in that season quietly gathering in fields…even in the middle of the winter so they could obey God and the government. They prayed for the government as they gathered. They sacrificed greatly to obey God and the government as they quietly used the legal options at their disposal to go back into their buildings. And I think those kinds of churches had the biggest witness in that season.
Peter’s concern isn’t our comfort or control, but our witness. Christians should be known as people who contribute to society, seek their neighbors’ good, respect legitimate authority, and are not reactively combative people. And just to put a very fine point on this, in America we have rights. And those rights are certainly a privilege to be thankful for. But, as Christians we are also called to lay down our rights at certain times. We lay down our rights to love our neighbors. And, at times, we lay down our rights to be subject to our authorities. If we have to choose between the rights our American citizenship gives us and the freedom our heavenly citizenship gives us to sacrifice those rights, we should always prioritize our heavenly citizenship over our American citizenship.
And Peter drives this point home with a great paradox. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. The paradox is that we are completely free and completely owned. Jesus has freed us so the government cannot ever ultimately own us. Now, Jesus owns us, so freedom does not mean that we can do whatever we want. Christian freedom is not freedom from obedience, but freedom for it. And Jesus gave us that freedom at great cost to Himself, so why would we hesitate to sacrifice our comforts and even our rights in our obedience to Him?
Some Christians make an idol out of government. Others make an identity out of opposing it. Peter gives us neither option. We can respect political authority without worshiping it and we can disagree with political authority without despising it.
Then, in the last verse of this passage, Peter gives us four short commands that summarize the whole Christian posture toward the world.
- Give everyone their proper place 17
17 tHonor everyone. uLove the brotherhood. vFear God. Honor the emperor. Can you see the hierarchy here? Honor everyone. Every human being bears the image of God. Even people you profoundly disagree with deserve dignity. Love the brotherhood. There is a particular love Christians owe one another. The church isn’t merely one affinity group, they are your people. Fear God. God alone receives ultimate allegiance. Honor the emperor. We don’t have to love him. We don’t ever need to fear him. But we do have to honor him.
Peter puts Caesar back in his proper place. The emperor isn’t nothing so we honor him. But the emperor isn’t God so we don’t fear him. That is great Christian political theology in just five words. A real challenge for Western Christians (especially if we are white) is that we have enjoyed a seat at the table of power for a long time. No early Christian experienced that. We have the great civic privilege of voting, but some have turned it into a God given right that the early Christians could not have imagined having.
Do you realize that it was exile that gave us the name Christian? In Acts 11, in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians. And the name was given to them by non-Christians. The early church had names for themselves like The Way or The Disciples, but to everyone else, they were an enigma. Up to this point in time, there were largely two groups of people in the Roman Empire: Jews and Gentiles. Now there was this new group of people composed of both. Nothing in that day brought these two groups of people together. It was a radically counter-culture thing. And these people loved their neighbors, they sacrificially loved each other in radical ways, and they obeyed and honored the government that sought to kill them. So, the pagans in Antioch gave this group a new name: Christians. Christ-ones. They were no longer defined by their class, ethnicity, or gender. They were defined by their association with Jesus.
There was a man named Polycarp who, according to Christian tradition, was one of John’s disciples. When Polycarp was an old man, he was charged and arrested by the Roman authorities for believing in Jesus as King and telling others they should as well. He was brought into a large arena and told to recant his faith and he could live or he would be burned at the stake. Polycarp didn’t berate the authorities. He didn’t start a revolt. He simply and humbly responded, “For eighty-six years I have served him, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme my King who saved me?”
Then as the soldiers prepared to nail him to the stake, he said, “Leave me as I am. For he who gives me strength to endure the fire will also enable me to remain on the pyre unmoved, without the security you desire from nails.” Polycarp was submitting to God and the rule of Rome. Even though it cost him his life. And do you know what happened after that? The Christians who watched were emboldened in their faith and according to early Christian documents in Smyrna, Polycarp was, “remembered by everyone, so that even the pagans speak of him in every place.”
This is what Peter is talking about. This is why Paul said we should desire godly, quiet lives so the gospel can flourish. And I would say that the social status we have enjoyed in the West has in some ways made it harder to grow in our faith. When social status is stripped away, when national identity is stripped away, when money, freedoms, and security are taken from us, our most important identity is both more clear and more sweet. Not because it’s all that we have left, but because it was really all we ever had.
And this isn’t something that kind of popped up in the New Testament. When Israel was exiled to Babylon, this is what God told His people in Jeremiah 29, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: … seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."
Our call is to bless the city in which we are sent in every way. It is good for them and good for us. Peter isn’t calling us to escape the world or conquer the world. He’s calling us to live differently in the world. To fight the desires that wage war against our souls. To live visibly beautiful lives among our neighbors. To respect authority without worshiping it. To honor everyone. To love the church. To fear God. And this is one of the ways God has chosen to use us to bring the gospel to other people.
They may misunderstand us, they may accuse us, they may oppose us. But, Peter’s strategy isn’t to win the argument, it’s to live a life that can’t be easily explained away. And we can trust God’s goodness in exile because no one has ever known exile like Jesus. He who was in the very form of God emptied Himself to take on the likeness of man. He willingly took on exile from the heavenly throne where glory, comfort, and joy knew no limits, to enter into this world of pain, sorrow, and shame. He lived in a corrupt world under corrupt authorities, yet without sin. He honored what could be honored, but feared God the Father alone. Then, He took on the shame even of dying as a criminal on the cross, exiled at that moment from the love and grace of God only to take on the wrath we deserve.
Jesus’ exile means that while we may experience exile in this world, we will never experience exile from the God who loves us. He will be with us always and He will take us to a home one day from which no one will ever be exiled. Just as Jesus resurrected three days later, so too will we resurrect and live in our true home for all eternity. The gospel is both the reason for our light and momentary exile now and the hope of our eternal security in our heavenly home with our savior.
So, because this world is not our home, we are now free to seek its good without ever asking it to be our God.
