Strangers to Sin: How Heaven Makes Us Holy

Then it got here burning sizzling into my thoughts, no matter he mentioned, and nevertheless he flattered, when he bought me dwelling to his home, he would promote me for a slave. (The Pilgrim’s Progress)

These phrases from Trustworthy nonetheless expose the candy speak of the outdated self. We want the Holy Spirit to deliver it sizzling to thoughts: no matter our lusts promise, nevertheless they praise, after they get us dwelling, they imply to throw us in a pit and promote us for a slave.

The apostle Peter rings the alarm: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage conflict in opposition to your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). For anyone to assault your physique is treacherous sufficient, however right here we discover an assault on the soul — and that by our personal mutinous passions. Peter pleads, Don’t embrace your soul’s assassin; don’t welcome your soul’s foe by way of the entrance gates. These are compelling entreaties for anybody who is aware of what a soul is. One assumes that discovering our flesh with soul-daggers up its sleeves can be sufficient to encourage any affordable particular person to mandate pat downs on the gates. However then once more, we aren’t all the time affordable.

Weaponized Hope

The liquor of sin makes us drunk and silly. Sin crouches on the door, and its want is for us. How adamant its calls for, how loud its knockings, how expensive and dear and bloody the required resistance — “In case your proper hand causes you to sin, reduce it off and throw it away. For it’s higher that you just lose one among your members than that your entire physique go into hell” (Matthew 5:30).

With such a seductive tyrant, Peter sends one other mighty purpose to defend the gate, one straightforward to miss: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage conflict in opposition to your soul.” He doesn’t enchantment to us as farmers or carpenters and even as troopers; he implores the church to kill sin primarily based on our id as pilgrims and outcasts. Refuse the world’s lusts as a folks of the Spirit, a folks not of this world, a folks not but dwelling. Heaven’s joys will slay earth’s sins.

Has your heavenly hope ever reached its blade all the way down to earth and stabbed your strongest temptations? Peter needs you to wield your heavenly citizenship; he needs your heavenly dwelling and future to fill the skies with swords that in every single place attain down and behead the lusts of the flesh. “Christian,” Peter urges, “this world shouldn’t be protected for you — its passions deceive, its pleasures enslave, its glories will perish. Our toes should not but in Zion. The world and all its needs are passing away, sinking like a cannon-torn ship into the abyss. Should you enable them, the appetites of the outdated you’ll fasten you to the deck.”

“As we cross by way of the world, we search to bless the world with a data of how they, too, could be saved from the wrath to come back.”

However Peter additionally reminds us {that a} paradise awaits the trustworthy: a spot you half-expect is just too good to be actual, with a Particular person you solely half-believe will sit you at his desk and serve you in spite of everything you’ve carried out (Luke 12:37). However the grace of our Lord shouldn’t be like man’s, and he has ready a spot, solely from his good pleasure, for us who obtain the dominion. And he sends his apostle with a message: “Beloved, as sojourners and exiles, prepared any minute to be referred to as away to feast at my desk, make conflict in opposition to that which makes conflict in opposition to your future with me.”

Moses, an Illustration

Isn’t Moses a vibrant instance for us? The writer of Hebrews thought so. He affords him as a residing testimony of a person whose understanding of himself as an exile, a son of Israel in a international palace, armed him in opposition to the very best the world might provide his flesh. His self-understanding birthed his self-denial.

By religion Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be referred to as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, selecting slightly to be mistreated with the folks of God than to benefit from the fleeting pleasures of sin. He thought-about the reproach of Christ larger wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was trying to the reward. (Hebrews 11:24–26)

Moses didn’t merely choose to be referred to as an Israelite, a race of slaves; he refused to be named amongst Egypt’s family. He can be an exilic son of the true God and not a son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He was a sojourner in Egypt and thus thought-about the sufferings of his Messiah larger wealth than the dainties of the damned. Manful Moses mentioned in his coronary heart, “Away with this stick you name a ‘scepter,’ away with this identify you name ‘noble,’ away with these pleasures you label ‘protected,’ these sins you name ‘pleasure,’ these idols you name ‘gods,’ and draw close to you beatings, you banishment, you scorn and also you disgrace, for I look past these griefs to the reward in Immanuel’s land.”

He knew, as Jeremiah Burroughs writes,

There’s a nice distinction between the prosperity of the depraved, and that which the godly have. God carries his folks when he exalts them, because the Eagle her younger upon her wings, he exalts them to security (Job 5:11). . . . However when God exalts the depraved, he lifts them up because the eagle lifts up her prey in her talons, he lifts them as much as destroy them. (Moses, His Alternative, 101)

By religion, he foresaw his folks headed towards the promised land and Pharaoh’s crown sunk on the backside of the ocean, immobile. His selecting a house not with the ladies, the cash, the facility, the gods of Egypt was eminently sensible. In leaving, he left to “a greater nation, that’s, a heavenly one. Subsequently God shouldn’t be ashamed to be referred to as [his] God, for he has ready for [him] a metropolis” (Hebrews 11:16). So, as a sojourner and exile, he abstained from the passions of the flesh and even valued the reproach of the Messiah as higher wealth as a result of “he was trying to the reward.”

Exiled to Glory

Christian, you don’t belong on this world — how usually do you contemplate that? Do you brazenly acknowledge it, and make plain by way of speech, that you just search a homeland (Hebrews 11:13–14)? And does the hope of dwelling, the glory of dwelling, the God who’s your property, equip you to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage conflict in opposition to your soul?

Peter writes his letter “to those that are elect exiles . . .” (1 Peter 1:1). However this tells us greater than that we aren’t residents of this world anymore — he doesn’t depart our identify tags clean. We’re elect exiles, chosen exiles, estranged from the world and forgotten, however at dwelling and remembered by our God, who selected us out of the world by his grace. And as elect exiles, God has chosen us out of the world to function a religious blessing whereas on this world:

You’re a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a folks for his personal possession, that you could be proclaim the excellencies of him who referred to as you out of darkness into his marvelous gentle. As soon as you weren’t a folks, however now you’re God’s folks; when you had not obtained mercy, however now you’ve got obtained mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10)

As we cross by way of the world, we search to bless others with a data of how they too could be saved from the wrath to come back. We journey alongside, resisting the world’s temptations and the flesh’s enticements to them, residing out our exile within the data it quickly will finish. Peter summarizes:

Subsequently, getting ready your minds for motion, and being sober-minded, set your hope totally on the grace that might be dropped at you on the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient kids, don’t be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, however as he who referred to as you is holy, you even be holy in all of your conduct, since it’s written, “You shall be holy, for I’m holy.” And when you name on him as Father who judges impartially in accordance with every one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with worry all through the time of your exile, realizing that you just had been ransomed from the futile methods inherited out of your forefathers, not with perishable issues corresponding to silver or gold, however with the valuable blood of Christ, like that of a lamb with out blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:13–19)

Isn’t that stunning? Don’t you need to dwell like this? Shunning shameful and former passions, thriving as obedient kids to our holy heavenly Father, fulfilling our earthly exile with that energy bought by the blood of Christ? Such a life requires a thoughts set totally on the grace to be dropped at us on the revelation of Jesus Christ. Or, like Moses, a thoughts trying to the reward.

So, by religion, and as sojourners and exiles, we refuse “to be referred to as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, selecting slightly to be mistreated with the folks of God than to benefit from the fleeting pleasures of sin,” for we glance to a future with Christ. We’re exiles, however exiles quickly to be welcomed to that homeland of everlasting life and glory and fellowship with God himself within the new Jerusalem.