Covenant Presbyterian Church

Beloved Strangers and Pilgrims (v. 11)

The love of God to us poor sinners is the ever-flowing stream of joy and steadfastness in serving him. However he may call us to labor, struggle, and suffer for his name, if we know that we are his “dearly beloved,” as Peter here calls us by the authority of the Holy Spirit, every load is lightened; every tear becomes a smile, for under his love, “weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). His love strengthens us unto purity of heart and an upright life, which aptly summarize our Christian responsibility in the world (Ps. 24:4). Since this world is not our home, we must abstain from partaking of its deadly trifles and be far more concerned than we are with seeking God’s substantial, eternal kingdom. Then, we must expect some degree of hostility from the world, for it hates God’s good news and prefers to remain in its darkness and death rather than possess light and immortality. Knowing this to be the case, that we must share somewhat in the reproach of our Savior’s cross, the more the world speaks evil of us, the more we must endeavor to be godly, in order that they may see by our lives that we are sincere disciples of Jesus Christ. When God delivers us from evil and visits the wicked for their sins, which he does throughout history, the purity of our lives and words will be a testimony to the world of God’s grace and power, as well as the very means by which God will save the world and bring glory to his own name (John 12:47).

By calling us “stranger and pilgrims,” Peter is reminding us that we are only guests in the world and that heaven is our true and eternal home. On this earth, we are wanderers, travelers seeking our Father’s house (Ps. 119:19). But as we learn from these very verses, this thought does not lead to “otherworldliness,” if by this is meant that we are indifferent and sluggish with regard to our calling to live for God’s glory in the world, “whatever we eat or drink, or whatever we do” (1 Cor. 10:31). Purposeful, joyful living is the fruit of keeping our eternal dwelling regularly before our minds. It is the hope of heaven that encourages us to make God’s honor and kingdom our great interest in the world. However this comes to expression in our individual callings, gifts, and responsibilities, we are “not of the world” even as our Savior was not (John 8:23; 15:19). We have been born from on high by the power of God’s Spirit, not to float above the world in blissful separatism of whatever form, but inspired by the hope of heaven, to fight against “principalities and powers” with the armor God has provided for us and seek his glory in all we do (John 17:15). Thus, it must always be firmly held that the kingdom of God, his rule over all things, is “in us,” not in bricks and mortars or any other of the illusive utopias we sometimes invent in our fickle brains (Luke 17:21). His kingdom is “righteousness, peace, and joy” (Rom. 14:17), not earthly pomp, power, and prosperity. That we are called to be diligent in our earthly affairs is inseparable from the hope of the resurrection, that “our labors are not in vain in the Lord” because they shall follow us into heaven, where we shall give account unto God, be rewarded by his own hand, and enjoy him forever (1 Cor. 15:58; 2 Cor. 5:1; Rev. 14:13). Heavenly mindedness, therefore, is not only the remedy for carnality and worldliness, but it is also the single greatest impulse behind earthly diligence and God-centeredness in our lives, callings, and families.

Our Life in the World (vv. 11-12)

Since we are pilgrims with no permanent resting place on earth, save the Lord and the “habitation of his house” (Ps. 26:8), if we are to reach our Father’s city, we must hold ourselves off from the world, which is what Peter means by “abstain.” Think of it in this way. If you are a guest or a stranger in another man’s house, you do not take the liberty to begin rummaging through his trash, closets, or dirty laundry. This is the way we should view the world’s “fleshly lusts,” the inordinate desires of the flesh and mind. They have been made alien to us by union with Jesus Christ. We have been crucified to the world, and the world to us (Gal. 2:20; 6:14). Though we find in ourselves much fleshliness, much agitation of our fallen sinful nature that inclines toward these desires, we must restrain ourselves from digging through its rubbish, learning its secrets, and indulging its cravings. The garbage dump of sin is the world’s home; it is not ours. This is the reason Peter joins “pilgrims and strangers” to “abstaining from fleshly lusts.” Like travelers through an alien country who must preserve strength and resources so they may arrive home safely, so we must practice a heavenly-minded self-discipline throughout our earthly course. Nothing so exhausts us, wounds our conscience, takes us into blind paths and dead ends as indulging the lusts of the flesh. It is not enough, then, for us to feel slightly uncomfortable with the world’s worse practices, while indulging the lesser desires that appear relatively harmless. The flesh in all its expressions must be mortified (Col. 3:5), thus becoming foreign not only to our practice but also to our thought processes and the most hidden desires and motives of the heart. To come to God we must become strangers to the world.

It is true, of course, that we are tainted by these evil desires, finding within ourselves a principle of sin that causes us to groan (Rom. 7:19-24). Though God has made us his pilgrims, we take indwelling sin with us, and our own sinful desires constantly throw up obstacles in our way as we “look for the city that has foundations” (Heb. 11:10). This is not Peter’s present point. Rather, he is reminding us how hurtful these various lusts are, that the desires that enslave and dominate the world are making a continual war against our soul, not so much from within us as from without. He envisions us as freed from their tyranny, though not their presence, so much so that they are not our true selves, for the “we” that no longer lives is the old man of sin (Gal. 2:20). Jesus Christ has slain him; by his Spirit our risen Lord lives in us and has set up within us his holy reign of righteousness (Rom. 5:19-6:18). Yet, as long as we live in this world, these desires are continually fighting against us so that we must guard our hearts and minds, like soldiers on the watch, and set our affections on things above (Col. 3:1-3). Now, we would like to have a pleasant run of things on earth, free from as much disturbance and inconvenience as possible. But since we are strangers and pilgrims, we must be prepared for a considerable number of vexations and troubles. They are unavoidable. It is exactly because we are not “of the world” that the world hates us, as our Savior said (John 17:14), and does all within its power to allure, deceive, and injure God’s people. This is the way, moreover, we should think of all the works of the flesh that confront us in the world: filled with rage against God, whether unthinking and passive or self-conscious and active, as the world cannot touch him, it will raise the siege against us (Rev. 12:17). Thus, all the immoralities, idolatries, hatred, envy and covetousness, wild partying, and other unspeakable evils pursued by the world, which Paul summarizes in Galatians 5:19-21, are not simply evidences of an unbelieving, rebellious spirit. They are the active attempts of unbelievers, whether or not they think this to be the case, to throw off the yoke of God’s law, to mock and ridicule his people, and to build their own city from which to launch further attacks against Christ’s church.

You must understand, dear believer, that when God called you to himself, he made you part of something far larger than you first thought. Being a Christian is more than having personal peace with God, a renewed moral compass by the indwelling Word and Spirit, and rejoicing in the love of our Lord Jesus. It is engagement in a war. There has been only one war from the beginning, and the world has ever had only one captain: Satan (Gen. 3:15; John 8:41; Eph. 2:2). All your life you travel through the territory of the enemy. Granted, we have Mount Zion as a firm place for our feet and a resting place in God’s presence to which we must continually resort (Ps. 26:12). As the gospel has gone forward in the world, we are blessed with increasing enclaves of fellow-travelers with whom we can enjoy the sweetest imaginable fellowship and share burdens, as well as triumphs. Sometimes the gospel cleans out a nest of unbelievers, razes portions of the city of man to the ground, and there we enjoy relative peace and quiet for a period of time so that we may serve God without fear all the days of our life, as Zechariah rejoiced (Luke 1:74). Even so, all fleshly cravings in the world remind us that the war goes on and will continue until all our Savior’s enemies have been a footstool for his feet. And the earthly expression of this war – whether political, economic, sexual, commercial, or familial – is aimed directly against our soul, that we might stumble and fall, our hope in God scorned and overturned, and our way filled with so many minefields of sin that we are injured, removed from the battlefield, and in some dreadful instances, exposed as false sons of the kingdom and drawn off to Satan’s camp.

Thinking in this fashion gives a very different perspective to our life in the world. For some time now, believers in the West have unwittingly been deceived into thinking that we can partake of the good things of life obtained through participation in this particular system of rebellion against God without being entangled and sidetracked on our way. While we should always receive God’s gifts with thankful, humbled hearts, for God’s common grace and his laying up the wealth of the wicked for the righteous must never be ignored (Prov. 13:22; Matt. 5:45), we have forgotten God’s warnings to his people through Moses: “Beware that thou forget not the LORD thy God, in not keeping his commandments, and his judgments, and his statutes, which I command thee this day: lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast is multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the LORD thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage; who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, where there was no water; who brought thee forth water out of the rock of flint; who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end; and thou say in thine heart, My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth” (Deut. 8:11-17). Outward peace and prosperity, freedom from overt persecution, and some remnants of the former religious convictions that occasionally seep through in public discourse have deceived us into ignoring the din of war clanging everywhere. Do you witness expressions of immorality, covetousness, and legalized theft? The wicked are plotting against the righteous. Are temptations thrown in your way simply on a trip to the grocery store or mall, attitudes and desires that you would never have indulged or pursued except they had been presented to you so attractively? The lusts of the flesh are warring against your soul. Has a relationship or association diminished your zeal for Christ, desire to obey his word, and resistance to worldliness? This is the attempt of the flesh and Satan to injure and destroy your soul. Knowing that we ourselves are sinners, we often focus only upon the inward guilt we feel for caving in to the world. We repent to God and resolve to do better, but we rarely take into consideration that we simply cannot relate to the world as if we are above its evil influences. Notice that Peter does not instruct us to regulate or reform the world, but to remove ourselves from these evil cravings completely, and by implication to flee them, mortify them, and crucify them. We are to “pluck out our eye and cut off our hand” (Matt. 5:29-30). Fleshly lusts hinder and harm us, dull our sensitivities so that we can no longer see the war, and, if unchecked by God’s Spirit, take us off the path leading to God’s eternal city and bring great grief and misery to our soul.

It is wrong and impossible to respond to this danger by seeking complete retreat from our calling in the world, for our Savior forever rejected the spirit of intentional withdrawal (John 17:15). Nor are we to forget that our pilgrimage is through this world. Our Father might have taken us to heaven at our conversion, but he chooses instead to show his power over the world by his manifested grace in the weakness of his people. And since we must work, raise our families, worship God with his people, and show forth his praises in this world, before the watching eyes of the world, even seeking to win the world for Christ, how can we guard ourselves against these very real dangers? The question is the more pressing since we see many within God’s fold adopting strategies and practices that strike us as far too close to the world’s, far too removed from God’s main building plan in history, which is his church (Matt. 18:15), and creating spiritual, intellectual, and moral casualties among those who name Jesus Christ as their leader. First, we must guard against temptation (Matt. 25:41), for thereby our old man of sin is incited to seek occasions for indulgence. Whatever the particular expression of the flesh – sensuality, greed, hatred – we must guard our hearts against them, like travelers with one and only one purpose: to keep ourselves unspotted from the world, for this alone is true and undefiled religion (James 1:27). Then, since only God’s word is the sword of the Spirit, we ought not undertake, think or desire anything unless we are firmly persuaded that he himself bids us. We are safe only if his word is our guide, if Christ himself dwells in us by his Spirit, teaching us from his own mouth the safe paths to take, the godly methods to adopt, the priorities to pursue. And we must ever seek to set our affections on things above (Col. 3:1). The desires of our heart control the direction of our lives. Evil desires, lawful but unhealthy desires, can only be abandoned if they are replaced with a stronger love. For us, as Peter here says, the one desire that must dominate every believer is the hope and expectation of heaven. We shall soon stand before the judgment seat of Christ (Rom. 14:10), there to give an account of our lives, the stewardship he has committed to us. His love and loveliness, the joy of hearing his “well done,” and the glories of life with God forever in heaven must quicken our souls, occupy our minds, and fill all our vision. “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee” must be the very breath of our life (Ps. 73:25). Unless heaven is in our souls and on our minds, we shall wander far off the right track into many hurtful lusts. Finally, the glory of God, as Peter has just encouraged (v. 10), should characterize all our dealings with the world. When we go to work in the morning, it is unto the Lord, that he might be glorified. At home with our family, as we have occasion to interact with neighbors, when called upon to defend the crown rights of Jesus Christ over every nation and institution, God’s glory is our sole goal. It is our delight: to hear his name praised, to confront sin with his majesty, to speak of his wondrous mercy and truth. Thus, since God alone can tell us how to glorify him in whatever we undertake, if his word does not teach us that he can be praised through a given course, we should reject it. If an activity, thought, or relationship does not promote his glory; we must abstain. We are his pilgrims, traveling to his home. His glory is our reward at the journey’s end and the light that shows us the way to reach him safely.

What Unbelievers Should See in Us (v. 12)

The Holy Spirit is often teaching us that our life in the world is not simply a negative response to the evil we see. We do not live in the world as judges, to condemn and criticize its sinfulness without providing a God-glorifying alternative. As travelers through the world, God has put us here as signposts of his glory to unbelievers, of his transforming grace and power. Thus, our conversation or way of life is to be “honest.” This rich word (kalo>v) includes everything that is good, eminent, praise-worthy, commendable, respectable, excellent, and noble. Peter’s point is more than that we are to be repulsed and offended by all the fleshly lusts we see in the world. Living among them, our lives are to be a reflection of the glory of God and to reflect the light of the city to which we are traveling. It is horrid, then, when the lives of professing Christians offend even the common-grace sensitivities of unbelievers, as our immoralities, thefts, war-mongering, and bitter strife within the church most certainly do. If God’s enemies are offended by our conduct, not only will our profession ring hollow but also the glory of his grace will be obscured by our sin-clouded lives. His glorious name will be blasphemed (Rom. 2:24). Our sinfulness has made this particular nation unwilling to hear our words. Are we any different, inspired by any higher goals, leading any holier, more joyful and lovelier lives than the average citizen of the world? We can fight for righteousness in the public arena, give our children a Christian education, and be ever so doctrinally orthodox, but none of these has the same degree of divine imprimatur for confronting unbelieving men with his power and grace, goodness and truth. Godliness does; lives of integrity, purity, and nobility, prompted by love for God and zeal for his honor, are God’s own testimony to the reality of his kingdom in a fallen world (Rom. 14:17). It is men Jesus Christ came to confront and transform; not primarily ethical, philosophical, and political systems. Any change for good in these is the fruit of changed men, Christ-indwelled men. If we have any zeal for his glory in the world, we shall give first thought to partaking more deeply of the grace and power of our Savior, so that as he lives in us and reforms us into his image, our lives may be a constant witness to the wonders of the name by which we were redeemed.

Now, worldly men will speak evil against us. As Peter will soon say, let it never be because of our faults and sins. But as the world ridicules God’s professing pilgrims for their many failings, its greatest reproaches are reserved for those who lead true and sincere lives of godliness. Darkness hates the light. It can spot a counterfeit a mile away and ridicules the deception; it truly loathes the light. Nobility of character and carriage, honesty and integrity in business, heavenly purity in dress and speech will bring no praise from the world. It exposes the emptiness, vanity, and filthiness of the unbelieving world system as nothing else does to men who lack heaven-sent faith to believe God’s truth. But, as the world beholds godliness, a response will be forthcoming. If that response is deeper hatred and villainy, as it was against our Lord and the early church, persecution will follow. But Peter envisions another response. God will visit the world for its transgressions. He does not sit idly in heaven, and his patience and longsuffering will eventually result in judgment against ungodly men for spurning his goodness. We are likely living in such times now. God is visiting the city of man, causing it to implode upon its foundations of secularism, with its far-reaching, choking roots. It is at the end of its rope without money to buy additional lengths. If we maintain a holy separation and lead upright lives in this very time, the Lord will use this as a testimony against the world, to be sure, in that he has raised up many bright lights to warn and admonish, but he will also cause the world to glorify his name through his pure and morally eminent church. Thus, godliness is not only our preservative against the hordes of ungodly men and the traps they lay for our soul through fleshly lusts, but godliness is also for the good of the world, for its salvation.
If we should never discount the eternal impact of one godly life upon the world, how much more must we aspire to be the holy nation and treasured possession of God in the world! A congregation and broader church of godly men and women is the most useful, important, and necessary thing in the world. How else will men know that the gospel words we say are more than simply private religious views or fanaticism? How will the world be compelled to listen to us unless they also see patience in adversity, cheerfulness when the chips are down, joy in suffering, and godliness in the midst of so much perversity? This is the reason judgment must begin at God’s house (1 Pet. 4:17); he must visit his church first, reviving and reforming her more into the image of Jesus Christ, making us feel the privilege of grace again and enlivening us to cling to his precious word as our only roadmap upon our pilgrimage, about everything. As the world beholds our honorable way of life – the way we serve one another, forgive one another, give to one another, speak well of one another, practice honesty in the workplace, pursue sexual purity and marital faithfulness, sacrifice for others, have joy and confidence in God’s promises, speak winsomely of another King, one Jesus, not to blast rebels and political opponents but to urge peace and prosperity through submission to the only true King, in other words, as we seek the world’s good and salvation through godliness – they will be humbled when God visits them for their sins. The terrors of his judgment will give way to repentance toward God and faith toward Jesus Christ. They will give up their dangerous, deadly, and vain membership in the city of man and desire to have their names enrolled in Mount Zion, God’s true church.

At the present time, with evil so apparently entrenched and powerful, this is difficult to imagine. God has spoken through his servant. Peter never forgot how much dishonor he had brought upon his Savior’s name by his denials and cursing, his pride and blustering. God changed him. He had also witnessed tens of thousands of his fellow-countrymen saved out of the world and brought into the kingdom of light. Yes, this was the power of the preached word, but many were led to listen to that word by the love, willing suffering for godliness, and selflessness of the Jewish believers in those early days of the new era of Christ’s reign. Men will not listen again until we are godly. Changed lives give great force to personal testimony. The hardest heart and most entrenched wickedness have often been melted by one simple life of purity. We can complain all we wish about how bad things are in the world, how few men seek out the preaching of God’s pure word, how blindly men rush themselves, and us along with them, off the precipice of moral, economic, and political ruin. But what have they seen in us that would give them pause to think there may be a better way? Has any selflessness, cheerfulness in suffering, and diligence led them to query: “What makes these men different? They are not like others.” Only God’s faithful, pure, sin-abhorring pilgrims are the light of the world. And do not deceive yourself. God is visiting. Will the world have anything to look upon and wonder as its props are being knocked away, when its vain hopes of life without God come crashing to the ground under the weight of his judgments? It had better see us living in holiness before the Lord, standing for his word in the world, and adoring our Savior though all the world reproaches him. Then, and only then, will it give glory to the God of grace and mercy, turn from its sins, and choose to be a stranger from the world that it might be the friends and servants of the living God, our Life and Savior.