1 Peter Aliens
ALIENS AND STRANGERS
I guess it was a moment few of us will easily forget. The South African helicopter was winching a woman from the roof of her home in Mozambique. The flood waters had claimed almost everything she needed for her life. But there were a few things she managed to salvage from the disaster, and they were wrapped up in a sheet or a bag. As she was winched up into the terrific down draft of the helicopter she lost her grip on the bag and it fell into the murky waters below. It was a wretched moment of loss. One evening she went to bed with her life intact, the next morning it was all washed away, and she was taken from home to a place where she would be a refugee from disaster.
I suppose human life’s always been the same, but I can’t help but feel that the years since the second world war have been years of refugees. Because we live in an age of total war, of terrible weapons, then people flee from the danger of warfare in their thousands. I remember little Polish families knocking on the door of our house in Manchester asking if we could take them in because they were homeless. I was just a little boy. I felt sorry for them, but we lived in a two up two down terraced house, and my mother had to turn them away. It must be a wretched thing to be a refugee. I can understand them wanting to settle in a safe place. And we’re facing some of the significant problems this brings to a host nation. The big question to be faced by a refugee is this - Where DO I belong?
The powerful teaching of the NT is this - every single Christian in this room now IS a refugee. That’s what Peter says in his letter written to a group of churches that were predominantly made up of non-Jewish Christians. See 1 Peter 1:1, 17; 2:11. It’s particularly important for him to give these Christian people perspective because one of the great issues of their day was citizenship. They lived in the Roman Empire. To become persona non grata in the state was extremely serious. To be accorded the status of “citizen of Rome” was a huge privilege. The state had the power of life and death. A furious wave of persecution was just being unleashed by this massive world power on the Christian church. Thousands of ordinary Christian men and women were about to die at the hands of the state. And Peter’s writing to give them the perspective of God. And you are living in a society which has become infested from top to bottom with secular humanism and which treats evangelical Christianity with casual contempt.
So, it’s important that Christians have a firm grip on the answer to the question - where do I belong ... what’s my status?
1. you’re a refugee in this world
The moment you become a Christian is the moment you become a refugee. Peter uses three words:- scattered, strangers, and foreigners. You’ll see scattered and strangers in 1:1, strangers in 1:17, and strangers and foreigners in 2:11. Scattered is from the Greek word diaspora; strangers is from a word which means a resident foreigner; and foreigner is from a word that means someone who’s moved in alongside you, a resident alien. That’s what Christians are by nature in this world, resident aliens dispersed in a foreign country. That’s one of the concepts that defines you.
In the travelling I’ve done, I always relish the moment when I arrive back at Heathrow and join the queue of those who have a British passport and walk freely and without restriction into the land of my fathers. When we arrived in Nepal in January we realised what we were - foreigners and aliens. We had to fill in detailed forms; we had to lose 25% of our available cash to buy a temporary residents visa; we had to produce two passport photographs to be attached to these forms; we had to give evidence that we were leaving when we said we were leaving. The message was this - you can come in, but you don’t belong here, you belong somewhere else. So, when you open that British passport at the desk in terminal three, and walk into the fatherland with a relieved grin on your face, it’s coming home. Here I have status. There I had hardly any.
Now, for Peter to make these statements about Christians in this world, and therefore, about himself was nothing short of amazing. He came from the Jewish people. The founder of their faith, Abraham, had lived for 120 years in tents as an alien and stranger. Their history was marked by a 400 year period in which they were aliens and strangers in the land of Egypt to which Jacob had gone as a refugee. While in Egypt they came to be treated as foreigners to be hated, crushed and abused. They left Egypt by the outstretched hand of a mighty God. They were scattered as strangers in the desert for 40 years. Then at last they entered a promised land, and were given a place of their own. They had an inheritance of a land flowing with milk and honey. It was theirs. It was home.
But because of their covenant breaking God allowed them to be invaded by foreign armies. Thousands of them were taken off to Babylon, they were scattered as resident aliens throughout the Babylonian and Persian empires. They hung their harps on the willow trees by the waters of babylon complaining that they couldn’t sing the Lord’s song in a strange land. They were the Diaspora, the scattered ones. But many of them came back and re-settled themselves in the land of their fathers. They were back home. And that was Peter’s identity. He belonged to THAT people. Israel was his home. Jerusalem was his city. To his Jewish mind being an alien and a stranger was NOT what life should be about. Egypt was a place to be left behind, Babylon a place to be left behind. Israel was the inheritance of the Jews and the place which was their spiritual home.
But here’s the extraordinary thing - he’s become an alien and a stranger, a scattered one, again. Israel is no longer his state, and Jerusalem is no longer his city. Because Peter’s now a Christian, and he’s a refugee in this present world.
You’ll see in 1:3-4 - that the promised land for Peter is no longer Israel, it’s that inheritance reserved in heaven for the people of God, an inheritance they won’t properly occupy until the last day when Jesus comes. You’ll see in 2:6 that the Jerusalem or ZION to which Peter belongs is no longer the earthly Jerusalem but the heavenly one, and the temple which God is building now has Jesus as the cornerstone, born again Christians as the bricks, and Christian worship and service as the sacrifices.
That’s my home now, says Peter. And here in this present world I’m a scattered alien resident. And that’s exactly what you’ve become if you’re a Christian. You live here but you don’t belong here.
a. its customs are alien to you
4:1-3. It’s the description of a society which is being led along by appetite and desire. The words refer to unrestrained behaviour, heavy drinking, partying. It’s a society that says “if it itches scratch it, if you want it have it, if you’ve got an urge satisfy it. Don’t worry about consequences, don’t fret about self-control, let it all hand out”. I know of respectable middle class business people who reserve Saturday evenings for getting drunk. That’s the night they’ve set aside for over-indulgence. We’ve created a society where we print money, borrow money, use money so that we can have what we want as soon as we want it. Gambling is a huge nationally institutionalised industry. We’ll bet on anything that moves. We’ve created a vast medical machinery for getting rid of babies that aren’t wanted. We must have our sexual appetite satisfied and if a human being is conceived as a result and the coming of that human being is inconvenient then there’s a big machine that will pull it out and throw it away.
If you think about our society’s attitude to drink, food, money, sex, pleasure, leisure, possessions, drugs. You’ll know, you’ll know not least in reference to student life - that the one thing you shouldn’t have to do is put a restraint on your appetites.
Such a society is essentially idolatrous. It’s made a god of this and that created thing. The true God has been buried out of sight, and we live for what’s false. My needs, my appetites, my desires are king; they’re my only reference point, they’re the touchstone of reality. I shop, therefore I am. I want therefore I shall have.
Well, says Peter, you used to live in that world; but it’s customs have become alien to you. And so you’ve become an alien to it.
b. its culture is antipathetic towards you
4:12-19. This epistle is shot through from beginning to end with the fact that the spiritual culture of this world and the culture of the Christian life don’t mix. There’s antipathy. They think it’s strange, wierd, unnatural that you don’t behave in the same way they do (4:4 they think it strange). How wierd that Christians should think that homosexuality is unnatural and contrary to the mind of God. How ignorant of us to want to prevent its being promoted in schools. How intolerant that you don’t think a woman should have the right to choose to dispose of an unborn child. How peculiar that you should teach that lifelong marriage and a lifelong commitment of husband and wife is the God-ordained way to arrange family life. How mediaeval of you Christians to believe that male leadership in the family and the church is divinely ordained. How pathetic you Christians are to think that there’s such a thing as true truth, and that you have a monopoly on it in Jesus Christ.
Increasingly, that’s the culture of our world. They think it strange that you don’t think and behave like they do.
If you’re a Christian, you’re a refugee from that world. It’s not your home anymore; the kingdom of God is your home, your citizenship is in heaven. This world’s culture and its customs grow out of the soil of human self-indulgence and pride. The culture of the kingdom of God grows from the soil of God’s holy purity, His eternal truth, His heart of compassion and grace. So, if you come to Christ you automatcally and inevitably become an alien and a stranger in this world’s customs and culture.
Can you see the two reasons why this is inevitably the result of becoming a Christian?
i. you are a product of redemption (1:18-19)
You were caught in a vicious cycle. That way of life I’ve been describing; that way of life built on human greed and pride; that way of life whose goal is the satisfaction of human appetites - it’s an empty way of life (verse 18). It promised you great happiness but it brought emptiness. It offered you joy and delivered frustration. It scratched your itches but it couldn’t give you peace of mind or contentment of spirit or hope for the future. It was EMPTY. It was empty for your forefathers and it proved empty to you. You drank you wine, you drugged you soul, you spent your money, you had your sex, and then you had to start doing it all over again the next day because it was empty of spiritual life.
And Jesus Christ the Son of God died on the Cross to redeem you from that way of life. He paid the price of his own death to bring you forgiveness and a new start. He came to bring you out of the vicious circle and into the joy of the kingdom of God. Christ died to rescue you from the customs and culture of a world in rebellion against God.
ii. you are a product of rebirth (1:22-23)
The Gospel is a seed. It’s the seed of the Word of God. When a seed is planted and takes root it produces a living thing. That’s what you are if you’re a Christian - God has planted the living seed of His Word in your heart and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit it’s produced LIFE in you. The life of God blossoming in your heart. That’s why some of you new Christians wonder why everything seems fresh since you trusted Christ. You have a new life inside you, with new eyes, new ears, new hopes, new joys, new dislikes, new likes. And (verse 22) you have a heart that wants to turn away from your natural selfishness to love people, especially Christian people, with a love rooted in purity.
You don’t belong to this world. You can’t. You’ve been redeemed from it by the payment of an astonishing, life-changing redemption price; and you’ve been inwardly transformed by the implantation of the life of the Word of God. You’re living in this world but you’re a citizen of the next world. The chief delight and joy of your heart are the customs and culture of the kingdom of God. One of your greatest joys is to look at someone who can’t be seen - verses 8-9. And it’s such a joy because your perspectives and priorities have radically changed. You have a hearty hatred for things like malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, slander of every kind (2:1) - because the spiritual air you breath is the pure air of the kingdom of Jesus.
You have a brand new appetite (2:2-3). Like a new-born baby fastens its little sucking lips on a mother’s breast and won’t give up until he’s full; you’re like that with the pure milk of the Word of God; because when you suck on that Word you discover afresh how good the Lord Jesus is. You have a new attitude to the way your natural appetites should work. Your longins, your needs, your itches, your desires, are now under the control of a mind that’s being transformed by the Word of God. Your new heart asks this question first - “What does King Jesus want?” and that’s more important than the question - “What do I fancy?”
And on and on we go in this letter. You’re a refugee in this present world because the life that inhabits you, the King who rules you, the book that feeds you, the priorities that draw you, the country to which you belong, the city of which you’re a citizen, are heavenly. And though you still struggle terribly with the old appetites and the old temptations, you have something new that defines you. You’re an alien and a stranger here, because you’re a citizen of there.
You’re different. You’ve not abandoned this world, but you’re shining like a light in it. You’re different. You don’t hate the people of this world, but you won’t compromise your life in Christ. You’re different. And on that day when the King comes and brings in His eternal kingdom, the people of this world who’ve been so critical of you, and have scorned your faith, and laughed at your priorities - will say to the praise of King Jesus - he was different. They will glorify God on the day that He visits us.
Are you an alien and a stranger because redemption and rebirth have made you a citizen of heaven?