Resident Aliens

Are you a resident or an alien in the place where you currently live? As Christians, all of us are resident aliens in this world, regardless of the passport we hold or how long we've lived in one place. And today on Truth for Life, we'll discover how we reveal our true citizenship. Alistair Begg is teaching from 1 Peter, but he begins with a helpful cross reference. Philippians 3 and verse 20. Paul is writing, and he's distinguishing between those who are the enemies of the cross of Christ and those whose lives have been changed by Jesus. And he says of them, their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.

Their mind is on earthly things. But, he says, our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. And this notion of citizenship being something that is not simply earthly in its configuration but rather is heavenly is at the very foundation of what Peter is writing here in the second half of this first chapter.

As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is reminding us, as he does with his use of the word stranger, which he uses again, incidentally, in the eleventh verse of chapter 2. He says, Dear friends, I urge you as aliens and strangers in the world. Peter wants to make it perfectly clear for us that we are only temporary residents. We won't be staying here forever. It may be that we stay for longer than some others. We may only be here for a short time, even if we live three-score years and ten and a wee bit more.

Still, life is very brief. And Peter says, I want you to realize that your citizenship is in another place, and your gaze should be focused there. Now, it's very, very important to us—and we'll see this as we go through this letter—that we don't use this to opt out of our responsibilities as citizens. And this will actually come when we look at the section which begins at the thirteenth verse of chapter 2. And Peter is really saying that, first of all, the fact to lay hold of is that we are aliens, we are strangers, but we are citizens, and we are to be servants. And these three truths concerning us, which are interwoven throughout his letter, will be worked out in our coming studies. But for this morning, we want to focus on this notion that as we engage in our earthly routine, we do so from the perspective of heavenly reality.

The fact that you and I this morning may be locked in our time-space capsule, may be so consumed with what we have and who we are and where we live and how we've been educated and what we're going to do and what we're going to make and where we'll be employed and what people think of us and the school tie that we wear and the accent that we have and the country to which we belong—the fact that we are consumed by all of that does not negate one eye alter, this fundamental truth. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ this morning, you are a temporary resident, you are actually a resident alien, and your citizenship is somewhere else. Well then, how would you ever identify a resident alien?

How would you ever know what one looked like? How would the believers stand out in the society? Well, the answer to that is provided for us in these verses 17–25.

Resident aliens, first of all, live their lives in reverent fear. That's what he's saying in verse 17. Since, he says, you call on a Father—a Father unlike our earthly fathers, who tend to discriminate even between their children no matter how much they try not to, who can be arbitrary in their decision-making processes. The Father of heaven, he says, isn't like that.

He judges each man's work with impartiality. He says, in light of that, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear. This is the wonder of being in Christ, that the judge of all the earth who will do right, that the one who created the universe, ex nihilo, out of absolutely nothing, is someone whom we are able to approach in Jesus and address as our Father.

Now, the notion of reverent fear is difficult for us in a society where fear is something to be set aside, and reverence is almost nonexistent. The idea of giving to God unmitigating obedience is alien in a society that no longer gives the same kind of obedience to its parents. And in Leviticus chapter 19, way back in the Old Testament, God said that reverence for him and reverence in the home were interwoven. Leviticus 19, the Lord said to Moses, speak to the entire assembly of Israel and say to them, be holy, because I the Lord your God am holy. How will holiness be expressed? Each of you must respect his mother and father, and you must observe my Sabbaths.

I am the Lord your God. And right at the very heart of God's purposes for humanity is an innate, developed, obedient, reverent respect for parents within the home. And one of the reasons that we are so unable to think of giving to God reverential fear is because the notion of any form of reverence within the family unit is all but obliterated.

And the respect for the Father within the home and the respect for the Father in all creation is interwoven in the purposes of God, so that children who are learning to respect their parents will be learning to respect God, and those who know what it is to come before God in reverential fear will not come increasingly before their moms and dads with flippant tongues and surly smiles and disgruntled sighs. Reverential awe is written into Scripture. Indeed, it is reverential awe which, Proverbs says, is the beginning of wisdom. Now, you just take your concordance at the back of your Bible and go through and look up fear and find out how many times it's used.

It is not a fear that drives us from God as Father, but it is a fear in which we are drawn to him as Father. A sense of awe. Like when you get a telephone call from somebody you regard as important, and they tell you, so-and-so is on the line, and you go, Oh! And then you speak, and you try and listen carefully, and you speak clearly.

Why? Because there is a sense of awe in the relationship. And that is the reverential fear of 1 Peter 2 11. Living in the fear of the frown of God upon our lives, longing to live under the sunshine of his smile, a resident alien whose gaze is to the Father on high will live his life or her life in reverent fear. Second characteristic is this, that resident aliens have been redeemed, have been born again. Now, what have they been redeemed from? The answer to that is given in the second half of verse 18. Redeemed, he says, from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers.

And he's saying this. They may have passed on to you convention. They may have passed on to you religion.

They may have passed on to you worldly wisdom. But he says when you gather it all together and compress it into an understandable phrase, it is in essence an empty way of life. It is a picture of tinsel towns and cardboard characters that make up life without God. And unless somebody comes to fill that empty life, then men and women who are empty will fill it with all kinds of things, some of which may be good, some of which may be bad, and all of which will never empty the ultimate void, which is, in the words of Svetlana Stalin in her book Twenty-Two Letters to a Friend, or Twenty Letters to a Friend, she says, within my heart there was a God-shaped vacuum, despite the fact that her father Stalin brought her up to believe that science could answer her every question. So our resident alien has been redeemed from the empty way of life. I think it was a Tamela Motown song that used to go, my world is empty without you, babe. And the Christian says, my world is empty without you, Lord.

I had an empty way of life, but I met you. Redeemed from that. Redeemed what with? Well, you'll notice what he tells us in the opening part of verse 18. The redemption was not accomplished as a result of the use of transient, perishable, earthly things.

This could never be brought about simply by the payment of money. The Israelites were redeemed from the bondage of Egypt as a result of the death of the firstborn, and the believers have been redeemed from the corruption and emptiness and decay of sin by the death of Jesus Christ, God's only Son. So we cannot buy redemption, we cannot work for redemption, we may only enter into this redemption as a result of the sacrifice of another. And when you look at this very carefully in terms of the Scriptures, you understand how it is central to it all.

For example, turn with me just for a moment to Mark chapter 10. Mark 10 verse 45. Jesus explaining the nature of what it will mean to rule, and this amazing paradox of servanthood being the key to rulership, he says in verse 45, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And that is exactly what you find when you flip back to 1 Peter chapter 2 and verse 24. Speaking of Jesus, it says, He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness.

By his wounds we have been healed. And this is the message of Christianity. It stands unique in the religions of the world. This isn't pull yourself up by your bootstraps and try and be a good Buddhist. This is not try and enter into Hinduism and gather everything to you. This is not sit cross-legged on the floor and try and think of something that is vaguely transcendental.

This is, hey, face the fact, you couldn't do anything at all, but someone came. The sinless Savior died because I'm sinful. It was one of the old Puritans who said, as this dawned upon him, he said, I know only two things for sure. I know that Jesus is a great Savior, and I know that I am a great sinner.

And that is all you need to know to come to faith in him. And that is where we have been redeemed and brought into this fullness of life. And this is the significance of the phrase, born again. It's simply another description of this redemptive process of God.

And you'll pick it up in verse 23. What does a resident alien look like? A resident alien has been redeemed.

A resident alien has been born again. And once again, not of perishable seat but of imperishable, through the living and enduring Word of God. Do you see, the relevance of this is that this, then, ought to control what we do and where we go and how we think, that we have a radically different worldview, because we actually belong to a very different world. So, the redemption takes place from our empty way of life, as a result not of perishable things but as a result of the shedding of his blood.

Verse 19, Jesus, the Lamb without blemish or defect, and that answers the question and takes it forward, and it lets us know that we weren't redeemed by something, but we were redeemed by someone. And this someone, verse 20, was not dreamt up somewhere along the purposes of history, but was chosen before the creation of the world. Get your mind around that one, if you would.

Think that one out. Before ever there was anything, God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit entered into a Trinitarian decision with one another, if you like, as to who would do what. And the Son agreed to go and be born to come and live in a stable, to live as a carpenter, to walk the streets, and finally, to die a death.

The cross is not something that was supplied in time in order to correct a defect in a system. God, in his omniscient wisdom, understood the horrendous implications of man's freedom and the results of his freedom resting in rebellion. And God, instead of saying, to hell with all of you, pursued us in Christ. You see, that's the wonder of redemption. For I am a sinner and deserve nothing.

I have nothing to plead in my case. If God were to put me down there, it would be just as enough. But he has sent his Son. The hounds of heaven, as it were, have come after us. You see, the hallelujahs that are to emerge from our hearts emerge from the wonder of humility when it dawns upon us that Jesus Christ did not look down upon us and pick us in the way a soccer team is picked. He looked down, and he found insignificant people, individuals who had no interest in him, and he set his hand upon their lives. Otherwise, why would you ever be in church here this morning? A resident alien lives in reverent fear, and the reverent fear is born of his understanding of redemption. Read Ephesians 1, verses 1 to 4. Thirdly, a resident alien believes in God.

The phraseology describes an active approach. It speaks of a commitment, too. It might read, believing into God. Through him, you have believed into God. You're all wrapped up now with God.

You've taken the futile way of thinking that marked you before, and you have come to find the fullness and wonder of it in Jesus. There's been a transfer. There's been a change.

There's been a new passport issue. And God has accepted the sacrifice of Jesus and declared the same by raising him from the dead and said, What he has done as a work of ransom is acceptable to me. And so a resident alien lives in faith and in hope, and their faith and hope are in God—not just a God but the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have not entered the realm of human tradition in idolatrous worship and empty illusion. Fourthly, a resident alien obeys the truth. Verse 22, now that you have purified yourself by obeying the truth, it's obviously a reference to their response to the gospel in the first place. What happens in saving faith? What happens when a man or a woman becomes a Christian, moves from their thought that they're going to live down here forever and takes on temporary residency status?

Well, this is what happens. They obey the truth. The Word of God comes to them as truth. The truth of God is not only heard, but the truth of God is heeded. Hearing it is not sufficient.

Hearing must be marched by heeding. And he says, You have purified yourselves by hearing and heeding the truth. This clears up all the notion about whether who's a Christian and what's a Christian, and what do you say and what do I say. I have conversations all the time, and I say to somebody, Well, is so-and-so a Christian? They say, Well, it depends what you mean by Christian. Well, no, it doesn't depend what I mean by Christian. It depends what a Christian is. A Christian is a resident alien. A Christian has been redeemed from their empty way of life. A Christian lives in reverent fear. A Christian believes into God. And a Christian obeys the truth. Now, does the person do all that?

No. Well, they're not a Christian. They may live in a Christian country. They may do Christian things. They may attend Christian services, but that doesn't make them a Christian. It is active participant commitment unto and obedient sin. So, the response to the truth is not simply detached, but it's active submission. Incidentally, here are the initial characteristics of the benefits of the gospel.

One, forgiveness of sins, then the purification which comes with it, and the gift of the Holy Spirit. And the perfect tense is used here to remind us of a decisive act in the past that has abiding consequences in the present. Can you think of times in your life that you made a decisive decision in the past that has abiding consequences? Sure.

What about your wedding anniversary, men, ladies? August 16, 1975, 103 degrees, in sweaty Philadelphia, there I stood. It was a moment in the past that has abiding consequences today.

Three children, hills, valleys, mountains, streams, rivers. Mark, what has been a part of it? Can I ask you this morning, has there been a decisive moment in your past, an encounter with Jesus Christ, that has abiding consequences in the present? Are you a resident alien?

Let me wrap this up. Resident aliens love one another. The work of God gives us love to share, and it gives us a whole new family to share it with, so that you have sincere love for your brothers. Therefore, he says, love one another deeply from the heart.

The word here is actually anupochristos, from which we get our word unhypocritical love. In other words, don't pretend to love, don't play it love, don't be sentimental, but rather, as we noted last Sunday evening, let your love be marked by a deep-rooted loyalty. A deep-rooted loyalty which recognizes that you're not perfect, and neither is the person you're trying to love.

That situations aren't perfect. A love which is loyal, that weathers the storms, that overcomes the disappointments, that helps to get one another through. And what is the key to loving like this? It is through the living and enduring Word of God. It is through obeying the truth that we learn sincere love for one another. It's not as a result of emotional surges, it's as a result of obedience to the truth. Christian love may be demonstrated by a hug or by a handshake or by a helping hand, but Christian love is not transmitted by any of those things. Christian love is born through the truth of the gospel. What is it heals our hearts?

What is it deals with my anger and my spite and my envy and my slander? And the answer is obedience to the truth of God's Word. And finally, resident aliens are those who trust in the Word of the Lord. Verse 24, all men are like grass, all their glories like the flowers of the field. Every cemetery in Cleveland testifies to that truth. Everybody believes they will be immortal.

People go around saying, what was that guy's name again? Frailest summer's flower we flourish. Blows the wind, and it is gone. That's why the only way to make a mark is to make a mark for God. That is the only way in which to find confidence, to find our confidence, not in the transience of our lives but in the eternity of God's Word. The Word, which he says in verse 25, stands forever. And this is the Word that was proclaimed to you, the good news.

Well, there you have it. Resident aliens, they trust in the Word of the Lord. Resident aliens love one another. Resident aliens obey the truth.

They believe in God. Resident aliens have been redeemed and born again, and resident aliens live in reverent fear. God looks this morning, and he says, all those with passports for the heavenly city, line up here. Take your stand with your citizenship above. And all others, why not get in line? Today you may transfer from all the others to those who hold passports for the heavenly city. Become a resident alien. Live for Jesus Christ. And to those of us who have stood in the line marked Resident Alien, the world has a right to see the difference that our lives display.

Otherwise, they may be forced to assume that our passport is fake and our profession is unreal. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. In today's message, Alistair pointed out how our heavenly citizenship can be revealed through our marriages. So let me remind you, just a few more days left for you to download a free audio book from Alistair titled Lasting Love, How to Avoid Marital Failure.

The audio book is read by Alistair himself. He explores topics including what to look for in a spouse, why marital failure can happen to anyone, how to recognize danger signs, and how to protect your relationship from common threats. Learn how you can enjoy a flourishing marriage within a Biblical framework. Download your free audio book, Lasting Love at truthforlife.org slash lasting love. Thanks for listening today. You know, if you plant a seed and you take care of it, you expect to see steady growth. There are factors that can stunt development and others that will stimulate or sustain growth. Tomorrow, we'll see how the same holds true when it comes to our spiritual growth. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.