I Peter 2:11 Beloved, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from the desires of the flesh, which war against your soul.
The point here is not that the recipient of Peter’s letter are literally exiles. As such the point of this text is metaphorical communicating that the believers to whom Peter wrote did not fit in with the world system as it was governed by those in opposition to the God of the Bible. Peter is emphasizing the alienation of the recipients of his letter from life in the world as it lies in the thralldom of Satan. The believers that Peter wrote to did not fit in with the values and priorities that characterized their social order.
However, Peter should not be read to teach that believers will in all times, eras, and places have an equal sense of being foreigners and exiles (strangers and aliens). It is true that believers will always have a different destination and will, as such, have a longing for their future eternal home but to make this passage teach that because Christians are strangers and aliens therefore Christians should not seek to extend the present crown rights over every area of life is to make this Scripture say other than what it says.
As the already present Kingdom of God continues to expand across the globe so that the Kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Christ — as the mustard seed continues to grow into a great Kingdom tree that fills all the earth Christians will have less of a sense of alienation, though there will always be a desire to go home and be present with the Lord. We must keep in mind that God intends that planet earth will be an outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven so that all of our social orders treat Christians as aliens and strangers. We know this is true from Daniel 2 where we learn that Jesus Christ pictured as a great stone destroys all the challenging Kingdoms eventuating in that stone (Christ) filling all the earth.
It is true that when, in God’s providence, we live in times of declension, believers feel more the fact that they have no continuing city just as the first century believers were familiar. It is true that when rebellion against Christ is in high fettle Christians will especially have a sense of being strangers and aliens but all because that was the situation of the 1st century believers, and perhaps the situation of believers in different epochs since then, that doesn’t mean that we retire from the loyal work to Christ of soldiers who seek, by the Spirit’s unction, to engage people for Christ. Neither does it mean that we, as Christian just disconnect from being salt and light to those who leverage the great social order Institutions and mechanisms.
It should always be said of Christians by unbelievers in Christ that we Christians have showed up to “throw their cities into turmoil by promoting customs that are unlawful for Christ haters to adopt or practice (Acts 16:20).” We Christians should always be accused by the Christ hater gatekeepers of cultures as those who have turned the world upside down have come to their cities also (Acts 17:6). We as Christians should be threats to social orders which don’t honor Christ just as the social order was threatened by Paul in Ephesus as the Economic gate-keepers were threatened by the Reformation that was bubbling in Ephesus (Acts 19).
We cannot read I Peter 2:11 in such a way as to make it contradict with these examples we find in Holy Writ. Per the way many of the R2K boys interpret I Peter 2:11 Paul was in sin because he did not treat this world as a stranger and alien the way that R2K wants Christians to treat the social orders in which they live.
Scripture does not teach the “quietism” that R2K desires to shoehorn all Christians into. Scripture knows nothing of the kind of pietism that R2k tries to guilt all Christians into owning. R2K takes I Peter 2:11 and twists it to seek to have believers think they are ungodly if they contend for the crown rights of our Liege Lord Christ in the social orders He has providentially placed each of us.
I promise the R2K boys that I will be every bit as much a stranger and alien as we find St. Paul being in the book of Acts.
