(A)

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, who are chosen..” (Peter 1:1 NAS)

“Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11 NAS).

The metaphor “aliens’ had such a powerful influence because it sums up central themes from the OT Scriptures and expresses some fundamental perspectives from the whole NT about the problems of Christian identity and difference.

The root of Christian self-understanding as aliens and sojourners lies not so much in the story of Abraham and Sarah and the nation of Israel as it does in the destiny of Jesus Christ, His mission, and His rejection, which ultimately brought Him to the cross.

“He came to what was His own, and His own people did not accept Him” (John 1:11). He was a stranger to the world because the world into which He came was estranged from God. And so it is with His followers.When a person becomes a believer, then he or she, in one sense, moves from the far country to the vicinity of God; there now arises a relation of reciprocal foreignness and estrangement between Christians and the world. Christians are born of the Spirit (John 3:8) and are therefore not ‘from the world’ but, like Jesus Christ, ‘from God’ (John 15:19).

The Implications of being ‘aliens’

There is without doubt a “clear distance in relation to society, a distance from its values and ideals, from its institutions and politics. What does ‘distance’ mean, in what sense, and for what reason?

Peter answers: through the new birth into the living hope. “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By His great mercy He has given us a new birth into the living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1:13).

The new birth distances one from the old way of life, inherited from one’s ancestors (1:18) and transmitted by the culture at large – a way of life characterised by the lack of knowledge of God and by misguided desires (1:14).

Secondly, it is a birth into a living hope. It distances one from the transitoriness of the present world, in which all human efforts ultimately end in death. This new birth into the living hope frees people from the meaninglessness of sin and hopelessness of death (remember the book of Ecclesiastes).

The process of distancing by rebirth takes place through redemption by the blood of the Lamb (1:19) and through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead (1:3). People who are born into the living hope take part in the eschatological process that started with the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, with His ministry of word and deed, and with His death and resurrection. Christian difference from the social environment is therefore an eschatological one. In the midst of the world in which Christians live, they are given a new home that comes from God’s future. The new birth commences a journey to this home. Christian difference is therefore not an insertion of something new into the old from outside, but a bursting out of the new precisely within the proper space of the old.

Ponder over these truths, and consider whether we are living as those born again into a living hope, as aliens and sojourners who are fully aware that this world is not their home but they are passing through as pilgrims toward the home prepared by God for them in Christ Jesus.

(B) Difference and Identity

The new birth is neither a conversion to our authentic inner self nor a migration into a heavenly realm, but a translation of a person into the house of God erected in the midst of the world. The collective designations for the people of God are applied to the Christian church: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people (2:9). The distance from the social environment is not simply eschatological; it is also ecclesiological.

In other words, Christians are to “walk” (1:15, 17-18; 2:12;3:1-2,10) i.e. to have a way of being that is distinct from the way of being in this world. Communities of those who are born anew and follow Christ live an alternative life within the political, ethnic, religious and cultural institutions of the larger society. This difference is what the metaphor ‘aliens’ suggests and what surfaces repeatedly throughout the epistle of 1 Peter.

1 Peter calls the community to resist the devil, who prowls around looking for someone to devour (5:8). Evil is not some impenetrable all-encompassing darkness outside the walls of the church, rather evil is a mobile force, something one always has to deal with but is never quite sure where and how it will be encountered. It can also surface in the church; the devil can dress as ‘an angel of light’.

Peter seems less interested in hurling threats against unbelievers and aggressive non-Christian neighbours than in celebrating Christians’ special status before God. Christian hope, not the damnation of non-Christians, figures constantly in the epistle.
When we encounter negative examples of how Christians should not behave, then our attention is drawn not so much to the lifestyle of non-Christians as to “the desires of the flesh that wage against the soul” (2:11).These are the former desires of Christians themselves. The force of the injunction is not ‘Do not be as your neighbours are’ but ‘Do not be as you were!’ It is to remember the grace and love of God which make it possible for us to be different, and to be moulded into the image of God.

It is Christian identity that creates difference from the social environment, not the other way around. When identity is forged primarily through the negative process of the aggressive rejection of the beliefs and practices of others, violence seems unavoidable, especially in situations of conflict. The violence of pushing and keeping others away can express itself in subdued resentment, or it can break out in aggressive and destructive behaviour.

1 Peter exhorts us not to repay evil for evil or abuse for abuse, but to repay evil with a blessing (3:9). Only those who refuse to be defined by their enemies can bless them.

However, the distance from society that comes from the new birth into a living hope does not isolate from society. For hope in God, the Creator and Saviour of the whole world, knows no boundaries. Instead of leading to isolation; this distance is a presupposition of mission. Without the distance, churches can only give speeches that others have written for them and only go places where others lead them. To make a difference, one must be different.

1 Peter calls for a transparency of a pure heart (1:22). A gentleness that refuses to help itself with a guile is no strategy of the weak. It is the open life-stance of the strong, who feel no need to support their own fragility by aggression toward others. Gentleness is the flipside of respect for the other. It is not an accident that gentleness and respect are mentioned together in 3:16 where Christians are told to give an account of the hope that is in them “with gentleness and reverence”. We see that the difference is forged by the identity that now belongs to those ‘born again’ with a living hope, to those who do not need to be threatened ultimately by the behaviour of others in the world; the good behaviour of Christians can serve as something ‘attractive’ to non-believers who seek to know what makes the difference and how believers can behave in such an unexpected manner.