I read an article recently entitled “The Poor Advertising of Christians For Christianity.”  In it, the author quotes a George Orwell essay from 1937 in which Orwell bemoans those who supported socialism in his day.  In Orwell’s view, “middle-class British socialists glorified the working class in the abstract while loathing actual working-class people. They pontificated on the necessity of smashing the bourgeoisie while clinging, almost comically, to bourgeois values over and against the uncouth, smelly masses they were theoretically trying to liberate. Worse still, British socialism seemed to attract all kinds of weirdos and cranks.”  Orwell went on to suppose that there was no logical reason why an economic system should be accepted or dismissed based on the behaviour of its adherents.  The author went on, “Socialism is the kind of thing that can be valid even if most of its adherents are not particularly appealing people. The same can easily be said of capitalism, for that matter.”

Not so for the Christian faith, of course.  While economic systems don’t promise moral transformation on the part of their adherents.  The Bible declares that we are born again, after all, that we are new creations.  The difference between who we are called and enabled by God to be and who we are has been around for a long time.  “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” Paul asks, seemingly baffled, of his Roman listeners. (Rom 6:2)

How, then, should we live?  What does love call for here?  What does grace call for here?  What does mercy call for here?  These are the questions we’ve said need to be ever before us, and they’re the questions that Peter addresses in the section of the letter into which we have moved.  This section reflects what was called “household codes” of the day.  It was thought in Roman times that the household provided the foundational building block of society.  This is not a bad thought, really.  If we’re not getting the “How then should we live?” question correct in our own households or in our own churches, we’re hardly going to be getting it right as we make our respective ways through our respective days.  Household codes spoke of how we should conduct ourselves (as we see in v. 13).

Of course, any thought or talk of how we should conduct ourselves is founded on who God is, what God has done, is doing and will do, and what God does in and through us.  Our part is our willing participation in that work.  The first section began and ended with mercy, so let’s come back to those two verses I want us to have memorized by the time this 1 Peter stuff is all said and done.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!  By his great mercy, he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”(1:3)

“Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (2:10)

We live and move and have our being in the light of God’s mercy.  How, then, shall we live?  We have been set apart by God to live among the nations and to be a blessing among the nations.  How, then, shall we live?  Let’s come to God in prayer as we hear what God has to say to us through God’s word this morning.

Right at the beginning of this section, Peter reminds his listeners about who they are.  “Beloved” is how he starts.  “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today…” is how we once typically began wedding services.  Beloved.  We may say, “How can Peter be saying this when he’s never even met these people?”  He’s reminding them of what their status is in Christ.  Beloved of God.  Living in the love and mercy of God.  Beloved of God.  This truth that underpins everything.  Peter is making things very personal here.  “I urge you…” He says.  This is the first time he’s written in the first person.  I entreat/exhort/beg you.  As aliens and exiles.  This takes us back to the tension that Peter introduced right at the start of the letter.  Followers of Christ, you are chosen and beloved. Followers of Christ, you live as resident aliens, refugees, exiles, strangers in a strange land.

The thing about living as strangers in a strange land – people tend to be watching you closely when you’re a stranger.  Nine years ago, we went on our third trip to Bolivia through Canadian Baptist Ministries.  This time it was with friends from Weston Park Baptist Church.  We spent a week in a town called Mizque in the Cochabamba Region.  We were working on houses to help prevent the spread of Chagas disease.  Mizque is a small town, and I remember walking through the streets of Mizque early in the week.  We attracted a lot of attention!  Who were these 14 strangers? 

As aliens and exiles, people are paying attention to you.  “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.”  Rid yourselves.  Put aside in the same way that one would put aside clothing that no longer fits.  Abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.  Now certain things may spring to mind when we say “desires of the flesh.”  There is no body/soul duality being put forth by Peter.  Nor is the idea that bodily desires are in and of themselves bad things.  We said not long ago that desires become harmful when they are misdirected.  They come from our fallenness.  They are not of God.  They may originate in our minds and thoughts, or they may be physical.  We heard about some of them last week – malice, guile, insincerity, envy, slander.  Peter will list some more in chapter 4 – “licentiousness, passions, drunkenness, revels, carousing, and lawless idolatry.” (4:3) 

This is serious business.  These things wage war against the soul.  War is a serious business.  War is hell, as has been said.  We’re in a struggle.  Peter’s original readers and listeners would have been familiar with Roman war tactics and the devastation that they brought.  The most advanced army in the known world of the time.  The Romans would advance toward an enemy in line silently.  When they came close enough, they would throw javelins, shout, and rush -throwing their enemy into disarray.  They perfected siege techniques like catapults and siege ramps – ramps that would be constructed of earth and stones and whatever else was at the end.  Those in the besieged city could only watch and wait for the ramp to get high enough and their end to come.  This is serious business.  Later in the letter, Peter will speak of the devil going about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. This is serious business.

In order to counteract disordered desires which result in lives turned in on themselves, Peter goes on to speak about lives that are turned toward others.  A good friend of mine often talks how acts of service help us get outside ourselves and the problems and challenges which can overwhelm when we are living self-focussed lives.  Peter doesn’t simply say, “resist those desires of the flesh as best you can.”  Peter rather offers an active way in which these desires can be counteracted. 

“Conduct yourselves honourably among the Gentiles.”  This is an all of life thing.  Other translations say things like “Live such good lives,” or “Be careful to live properly,” or “Keep your behaviour excellent” among the Gentiles.   I like to say, “Don’t be jerks,” but Peter is keeping it positive here.  The word is commonly used for good – kalos.  The word also signifies beautiful.  It’s the same word that Jesus used to describe himself as the good shepherd in John 10.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The beautiful shepherd.  “For you were going astray like sheep, but now you have returned to the shepherd and guardian of your souls” is how our passage ends.  Live beautifully with a beauty that goes far beyond just what we look like.  We’ve heard some examples of what a beautiful life looks like, and we’re going to hear more from Peter.  Self-­ discipline (1:13; 4:7; 5:8), reverence for God (1:17; 2:17), compassion (3:8), humility (3:8), love for one another (1:22; 2:17; 3:8; 4:8), godly submission (2:18; 3:1; 5:5), respect for secular authorities (2:13– 14, 17), nonretaliation (3:9– 11), and hospitality (4:9). This kind of life serves two purposes here for Peter.  One, orienting ourselves toward life-giving actions re-orients us away from self-absorption.  Two, such actions serve as a witness to the world of our life-giving God.  They may even end up glorifying God when the day of visitation comes.

Accept the authority of every human institution, knowing that you belong to a higher authority.  This is in response to malicious talk that followers of Christ are those who seek to disrupt the peace of the Empire.  It’s also a subversive reminder to followers of Christ about who is really in control and under whose authority they live. All Christians belong first to God, and the call on our lives is to act for the good of the society in which we live.  All political leaders are human.  They are neither divine nor saviours.  They are due the same honour and respect we are called to give to all.

You’re servants or slaves of God.  Live as free people.  Do not use your freedom as a pretext for evil.  What does it mean to be free?  There’s a prevailing attitude in society that being able to do what you want is freedom.  As followers of Christ, we are at the same freed from subjection to sin and servants of God.  Martin Luther described this tension very well when he said, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”

Speaking of servants or slaves, Peter addresses them starting in v 18.  He doesn’t condemn or condone slavery itself.  It was a part of life in the Roman Empire.  Unfortunately, these verses about enduring beatings have been used to justify slavery in more modern times – and to justify the mistreatment of slaves.  To those who would say things like “The Bible promotes slavery,” I would say this.  There are Biblical truths which run completely counter to the practice.  Truth like “We are all made in God’s image” or “We are all one in Christ Jesus.  No Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.”  So why are we making hierarchical distinctions exactly?  Peter does not condemn or condone slavery.  He’s speaking to a condition in which some of the church to whom he’s writing would have found itself.  To slaves.  It would have been amazing to those slaves that he’s addressing them at all and addressing them first.  “If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that?”  This reminds me of a story about Socrates.  When his wife bemoaned the fact that he was suffering unjustly told her, “Would you rather I was suffering justly??” 

But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval.  For to this, you have been called.  And we realize that Peter is actually talking to all of us who are servants of Christ.  For to this, you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example so that you should follow in his steps.  “He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.  When he was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly”

We may think this kind of thing is beyond us, but we shouldn’t.  This is the thing about the Christian faith and spiritual/moral transformation that sets it apart from an economic system, a political system, a philosophy or code or “-ism.”  Followers of Christ can be poor advertising for Christianity.  I can be poor advertising for Christianity.  The thing is, we’re not just espousing a set of principles or striving to live by a set of principles.  We’re walking with Christ, who is our holiness.  We’re walking with Christ, who is the good shepherd and guardian of our souls.  He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross so that, free from sins, we might – live for ourselves.  No.  That we might live for righteousness.  By his wounds, we have been healed.     

He did not return abuse when he suffered.  In Christ, unjust suffering would save the world.  Who would have thought?  It’s not beyond us to live like this.  The impact of such living could be beyond our imaging.  Rep. John Lewis wrote of his participation in a protest in Selma, AL, on March 7^th, 1965, like this:  “ABC Television cut into its Sunday night movie … with a special bulletin. News anchor Frank Reynolds came on-­ screen to tell viewers of a brutal clash that afternoon between state troopers and black protest marchers in Selma, Alabama. They then showed fifteen minutes of footage of the attack…. The American public had already seen so much of this sort of thing, countless images of beatings and dogs and cursing and hoses. But something about that day in Selma touched a nerve deeper than anything that had come before …. People just couldn’t believe this was happening, not in America. Women and children being attacked by armed men on horseback — it was impossible to believe. But it happened. And the response from across the nation to what would go down in history as Bloody Sunday was immediate.”    

Living beautifully.  We’re going to spend the next few weeks as Peter expands on this topic in the coming weeks. May God enable it in our hearts and lives.

Amen