“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively (living) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,”
I Peter 1:3
When Peter wrote this letter to the Christians living in Asia Minor, he called them “strangers.” He was not saying that because he had never personally met them, nor was he indicating that they had recently relocated. Actually, they were the same people they had always been, but now through their relationship with Jesus Christ, they had become strangers and aliens; living in one country, yet belonging to another.
Quite often, people from another culture stand out. It may be their clothing, their appearance, their skin color, or their language. Actually, it could be a number of things, but usually they look different, not better, nor worse; but different. Aliens stand out.
As Christians we are strangers and aliens. However, we are not set off by a specific style of dress. Christians should dress modestly; but we don’t wear uniforms with a big cross on the front. We don’t have our own language or distinct way of talking.
Hopefully, we have put away gossip and evil speaking, but Christians usually speak their native language. We don’t belong to a specific class, nationality, or race. We often associate people from certain parts of the world with a certain religion, but Christians live all over the world. We don’t all live in or hail from a specific geographical area. Likewise, we don’t have specific dietary laws that distinguish us from others. Actually, we are not defined or distinguished by any of the things that normally mark off one people from another.
So, what is it that makes Christians to be peculiar and strange wherever we go? What makes us different? I suppose there are many traits that should make us different from others, but let’s discuss two.
The First Trait is Love.
We will cover this quickly because it is something we all know. What does the greatest command hinge upon? Love. What will be the defining characteristic of followers of Jesus? Love. What will never pass away, even after faith and hope are gone? Love.
Love is the mark of the disciple. Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13:35) It is not our Bible knowledge that makes us different nor our stance on public issues. Those things are certainly important, but according to our Lord, the defining mark of a Christian is love.
But, before we move on, there is one problem I would like to mention. The word love has been so diluted and overused it no longer has much meaning. Consider how many times you may use the word love in the average day. We “love” ice cream, apple pie, puppies, and our favorite shirt. We may love certain music, spring showers, and Christmas. We are a culture that is in love with being in love. As a result, to say that “love” is one of the indicators of the disciples of Jesus doesn’t mean very much.
Yet, our Lord shows us that what passes for love today, is not what He had in mind. Christian love, the kind of love that would mark His disciples, is a pure love that stands out in its uniqueness. Jesus teaches us that real love is sacrificial, it is demonstrated by action, and it always takes the initiative. Real love is unconditional and doesn’t wait for someone to show themselves to be lovable or worthy of our love. Christian love reaches out and pursues; just like Jesus did for us:
Of course, before you can really love others, you need to recognize that you are unconditionally, irrevocably, and ridiculously loved by God just as you are. Whoever you are, wherever you’ve been, whatever you’ve done in the course of your life, God loves you and will accept you through His Son Jesus Christ.
The Second Trait is Hope.
Hope along with love defines us and distinguishes us as believers. In I Peter 1:3, Peter says God hath “begotten us again unto a lively (living) hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” We have been born again to a living hope. We need to accept the fact that you and I have hope because we were born that way; we were born with it.
I was born a Worthington. That came with certain connotations. It gave me my genetic disposition. Peter’s readers were born into an identity too. Perhaps some were Jews, some were Greeks or Romans. Maybe others were born into specific tribes or people groups. Perhaps others were defined by their race, tongue, or occupation. Whatever may have defined them before, because of God’s love and by the power of God’s Spirit, they now were born again. And what is one of the main identities that comes with this new birth? Hope. Hope is the family resemblance all should be able to see in us. Hope is our family culture and birthright.
In I Peter 1:4, Peter explains this hope as an inheritance so precious and unprecedented that he can describe it best by what what it is not.
It is Incorruptible: It won’t wither and die like everything else. Pure hope cannot be diluted by trash.
It is Undefiled: It can’t be corrupted by our selfishness, our fear of losing it, our pride over it, or our unrealistic and disappointed expectations of it.
It is Unfading: It won’t bring joy that flares up and then burns out, leaving you wondering what’s next.
This inheritance, grounded on the work of Christ and guarded by God’s power, helps to define the life of the Christian. This same hope that grounds our lives as Christians also sets our lives apart from who we once were and from the lives of those whose hopes are different. In Peter’s first chapter, setting up a section on Christian holiness, he describes a before and after that hinges on hope. “Not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts” (I Peter 1:14). That was then. Now, instead, “be sober and hope to the end” (I Peter 1:13).
It’s not that Christians are hopeful now when they weren’t hopeful at all before. It’s that we now live with a different hope than what we lived with before, and it fuels a different passion. In our ignorance, we set our hopes in the near-at-hand and kept our expectations low. We were carried along by our wants and desires, always aiming for all kinds of easy to gain pleasures and short-term possessions. We looked for a meaningful life in the realm of the perishable, the defiled, and the fading.
One mark of the new birth is that now we clearly see the temporary nature of all those hopes on which we were tempted to build our lives. I think that’s why Peter, writing again of the new birth (I Peter 1:23–24), ends his discourse with a partial quote from Isaiah 40. When we look at the entire quote it reads like this:
“All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the LORD bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”
Isaiah 40: 6-8
Peter reminds them that everything they formerly hoped in withers away, but now they are building upon the only hope that will stand the test of time. It’s with the image of withering grass in the background that Peter describes the Christian as a spiritual house built on a new and better cornerstone, “a living stone, disallowed indeed by men, but chosen of God, and precious” (I Peter 2:4). It’s an unmistakable contrast: the grass that withers, the flower that falls, and the cornerstone that rests in its place forever. The storms may destroy everything else, but not that which is secured by the unwithering living stone.
Of course, many ways exist for Christians to show their alien identity. Much of what Peter writes from this point lays out these differences, one by one.
Because of hope we treat each other differently, we view worldly power with a different perspective, and we are empowered to respond differently to suffering. Any suffering, from man’s point of view, is always a negative. But, with Christ as our cornerstone, we understand suffering may come, but we also see that suffering can be productive and fully redeemed, just like it was for Christ.
So, for a bit of self-examination, may I ask, “What defines you”? Yes, you may be known by your occupation, political persuasions, or your personality. But as a Christian, you should be defined by your love and by your hope. Love is most important, but in today’s world we also need a heavy dose of hope. With all the darkness that surrounds us, we must have—and we must display to the world—that we are people of optimism. We can look far into the horizon and see what others cannot see; thus, we have hope.
Dr. Worthington has been in the ministry for over forty five years and serves as President of Pathway Ministries and Christian Bible College.