Strangers in this World
“For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you:” -1 Peter 4:3-4
The apostle Peter touches on an interesting point: that we as Christians have been taken out of the pollutions of this world, and have been cleansed by God’s Spirit: yet we are still among those in the world who live in sin. We are still around the very same people who were once our partners in sin and vice. And now we are as foreigners in this present world, and others think that we are strange because we do not charge forward into sin as we once did in our former life.
Yet the Bible notes that others not only think that we are strange because of our newly purified lifestyle, but the world speaks evil of us. “[T]hey think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you” (1 Peter 4:4). What a contradiction! That those who exhibit love and patience, and purity and innocent living, would be spoken of as being evil by those who are themselves corrupt!
“Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” -Isaiah 5:20
Yet we ought to pray for those that hate us, and show love to our enemies. For even our kind Master, the Lord of Life, Jesus Christ, was despised and rejected, even to the point of being cruelly beaten and crucified. So we, as His followers, ought to expect nothing less in this darkened world. We have been forewarned, and we ought to bear our persecutions with patience and hope.
“If the world hate you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you. If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember the word that I said unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord. If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you; if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also.” -John 15:18-20
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