Deadly Desires And The Glory Of God - 1 Peter 2:11-12 Series

1 Peter 2:11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the gentiles that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.

Review

A Holy Nation

According to 1 Peter 2:9, the Church is a holy nation and a chosen race. That is a strange thing to say. The word race refers to a group of people with a common ethnic origin or ancestry. That is a very unusual way to refer to the Church, because unlike the people of Israel, the Church is not something you are born into through physical birth. In the Old Testament, being the people of God was a matter of birth, but now it has nothing to do with ethnicity. The people of God now are made up of individuals from every tribe and nation and tongue and people group, and nobody is in the kingdom of God by physical birth. My oldest daughter was literally born on Saturday and in church on Sunday – one day old and she was already in church. Talk about growing up in church! And she was raised in a Christian home, with Christian parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins – but she was not a Christian until she got to be old enough to understand and believe the gospel. I was saved at such a young age I don’t even remember it. And sometimes people like me will say, “Oh, I’ve been a Christian all my life.” But that is not technically true. I have been a Christian every since I can remember, but no one is born a Christian. Every person must be born again in order to be saved.

So in what sense are we a race? We do not have a common ethnic origin, we do not have a country – no borders, no common language, no common physical characteristics – nothing that would designate us as a distinct race or people group. So how can Peter call us a race? We can be called a race because skin color and common ancestry and common language and borders – those are small things. What binds us together are much, much bigger things than that. We do not have a common physical ancestry, but we do have a common spiritual ancestry.

Galatians 3:7 Understand, then, that those who believe are children of Abraham.

Everyone who has faith in the Lord Jesus Christ is a descendent of Abraham. So we all have the same spiritual ancestry, we all have our faith in the same object – the Cornerstone, and we have all been chosen by God. And while we do not share physical characteristics, we do share spiritual ones. You cannot tell we are Christians by our skin color or the shape of our eyes or anything like that. But you can tell that we are Christians by looking. You can tell by the way we love one another (Jn.13:35). We do not have the same physical traits, but we all have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

So we are a very odd kind of nation. No homeland, no borders, no earthly government. In a nation like that, with no homeland, where do all the people live? In other countries. This letter was written to those scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. And today we are scattered throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, and in every country in the world. And we just live side-by-side with the people in these other nations.

11 Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers…

The word alien refers to someone who lives in a place but who has no ethnic or social ties. He is not a citizen there, he is not part of that people, but for now he is living among them. The word stranger refers to someone who is passing through. He is on his way somewhere else, but for now he is here. That is what we are in the United States. This is not our home, it is not our country, we do not fit in here, but for now this is where we are living. God has His people infiltrating the whole world.

For the Purpose of Praise

So we are a nation, but we are a scattered nation – infiltrating every other nation. And we became citizens of this scattered nation not by being born in a certain place, but by being called.

9 …[He] called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.

That is how we became citizens of this nation. Darkness refers to the realm of ignorance about God, moral evil, sin, spiritual blindness, and spiritual deadness. Every human being is born into darkness, and the only way out is if God calls you out. And that is what He did for us. He called us into His wonderful light – the place of enlightenment and moral purity and spiritual life. And then He exalted us to the high, privileged, elevated status of Israel. He chose us, set us apart, made us His holy nation and His treasured possession, and His dwelling place and His family and His royal priesthood. Why did He do all that?