Living Godly Lives in a Pagan Society


11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 1 Peter 2:11

It’s interesting that Peter considered himself and his friends foreigners and exiles. They – we – don’t belong here. This world isn’t our home, even though we’ve never actually been to our real home. We’re only passing through. Peter was begging his friends to keep their thoughts, desires, and actions in check. People are watching and making judgments based on what they see and hear from us. You can’t run from that. However, we are told elsewhere to make the teaching of Christ attractive. I don’t believe at all that it means to have coffee and donuts for visitors when they come in to make them feel comfortable, though there’s nothing wrong with that in itself.

I’ve known plenty of people who have joked with me that if they walked through the doors of a church it would cave in. The implication was that they were very unholy while everything about the church was holy. I don’t get that sense anymore. The church I’m afraid has lost that cutting edge. The differences between unholy activities and godly activities has been blurred. While this is tangential to today’s verse, it brings up a valid question: is there a difference between what we do Monday through Saturday and those who do not call themselves Believers? If that difference is blurry or minimal, we need to step back and re-examine our lives.

Why are we here? How did we stray? More importantly, how can we get back on track?


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