Home. It’s something we deeply long for which is why we get homesick when we are not home. Yet our greatest homesickness can not and will not be cured on this side of heaven. For the people of God, as long as we are on this earth we are strangers and aliens here. Peter tells us in 1 Peter 2:11 that we are “sojourners and exiles.” This is not our home.
As resident aliens our lives should be different from that of those around us. Our values, priorities, desires, and behavior should be different from those of the world. We should be a people who “abstain from the passions of the flesh” (v. 11b). Our fleshly lusts are not what drive us. In our passion for Christ, we will fight against these passions of the flesh. And we will be a people whose “conduct is honorable” (v.12). We will live in such a way that God and others are honored as we gather for corporate worship, as we love each other in the body of Christ, as we grow in godly character, as we live our day to day lives, and as we love and serve all whom God has put around us.
When the people of God live in such a way, something beautiful happens….others will see our lives and give glory to God (v. 12b)! Could that be said of you, of your family, of our church family? Do others look on and give glory to God for what they see in us? This is our calling as beloved sojourners and exiles.