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The Apostle Peter in 1 Peter addresses the “elect exiles”. This description seems rather contradictory. Exiles are those who are rejected and forced to leave their home and country and into another country. They have no stability or security. The elect ones are those chosen ones and set apart from the common crowd. How can someone, in the same breath, be chosen and rejected? How can someone both “have” and “have not”?
Peter tells us how”: “According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with His blood” (1 Pet 1:2). This someone is one who obeys Jesus. Through Jesus’ blood, people are cleansed from sin. They live new lives that reflect Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. All this takes place within the Father’s sovereignty. With this three-fold blessing of a Triune God, Peter sums up the essence of the “elect exile”: the special, precious person who follows Jesus.
Jesus is the first “elect exile” chosen by God but rejected by people and “precious to Him” (1 Pet 2:4). There is a cost in following Him: “For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it?” (Lk 14:28). As a familiar song goes: “This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through.” When we reject immorality and corrupt practices which are acceptable by society, we will be exiled from the world’s cravings, lusts and boasting of what it has and does (1 Jn 2:16).
Following Jesus also means that we are a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light” (1 Pet 2:9). Remember that we are guaranteed the reality of a future home with God – one that is incorruptible, undefiled, and cannot fade away. “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (2 Cor 4:16-18). Let us always fix our eyes on Jesus – the Pioneer and Perfecter of faith!
