Exile was no holiday.

It was more like hell. Exiles were banished from their homeland and stripped of all status and rights. They were held in contempt, shunned, and had to fend for themselves.

It was illegal to shelter or feed an exile who was not a relative. Exile was one of the worst punishments ancient law could impose.

Peter’s readers were not exiles as such. They were natives in their own land. Why then does Peter address them as aliens and exiles?

Simply this: Their faithfulness to Christ so altered their standing in society that they were treated like exiles. They suffered insult, slander, accusation, and abuse, even by former friends and neighbours (1 Peter 2:12, 18; 3:16; 4:4, 14).

Alas. And we Christians seek to carve our niche in society by means of our respectable, culture-Christianity!

So what is Peter’s counsel to disciples of Jesus forced to live as exiles in their homeland?

Three simple imperatives: First, in all your conduct, be holy as God is holy (1 Peter 1:15). Holiness is consecration to God and separation from the polluting influences of our culture.

Second, as aliens for Jesus, we are to abstain from fleshly desires that war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). And third, as exiles for Christ, we are to behave honourably among pre-believers so that they may see our good deeds and glorify God (1 Peter 2:12).

Peter does not counsel isolation from society. That makes it more painful. It would be easier to withdraw into a Christian ghetto and escape all the hostility and hatred of the world. But that is not how Jesus lived, nor his disciple Peter.

We are in the world, not of the world (John 17:14-18). We are called to witness and win souls with our lives as well as our words. We must constantly resist the temptation to conform to the sinful aspects of our culture for the sake of social acceptance or economic advantage or political capital.

In the movie, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Henry and his son Indiana watch in dismay as the Nazis make a bonfire of books. My son, says Henry, we are pilgrims in an unholy land.

So are we. We are called to live holy in an unholy world. For God is holy.

PrayerWatch

• The ultimate test of a moral society is the kind of world that it leaves to its children (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
   
  We are the moral conscience of society. We must stand for what is pure, what is true, what is right, what is best for the common good and the long-term good of Singapore. This is our holy calling. This is our sacred responsibility to future generations.
   
  Give thanks to God for our leaders who speak out with conviction and lead the Church to make a clear stand on issues of public morality.
   
• Stand in the gap for future church leaders. In their zeal to win the lost, pray that they will never compromise God’s standard of personal purity, public morality, marriage and family.
   
  War against the temptation to make Christianity more popular and more palatable to an increasingly liberal generation. Pray for a revival of holiness: a fiery passion for our holy God, a prophetic burden to defend Singapore’s moral future.
   
  If the Church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority (Martin Luther King Jr). 

• Are we living holy? Josh McDowell sounds the alarm: Singapore, we have a porn problem! We might not be looking for porn, but porn is most certainly looking for us. Porn is available, accessible, affordable, anonymous, appealing, aggressive, and addictive. Nobody can grasp how big porn is. There are more than 26 million porn websites now. In a year, over six trillion porn videos are watched worldwide.
   
  Cry to God for grace and mercy! We are the second most internet-addicted people in the world (The Straits Times, October 2014).
   
  A Focus On the Family (Singapore) survey of Christians aged 13 and above found that 69% of 14,000 respondents had viewed porn. Most were introduced to porn in their teens. We need solid discipleship to put our house in order: Fear of God coupled with friendship with God (Barnabas Chong). Pray!
   
• Memorise 1 Peter 1:14-16: As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’

Read the devotional from Day 37, August 6: Living stones here.