Then it came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said, and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave. (The Pilgrim’s Progress)

These words from Faithful still expose the sweet talk of the old self. We need the Holy Spirit to bring it hot to mind: whatever our lusts promise, however they compliment, when they get us home, they mean to throw us in a pit and sell 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 war against your soul” (1 Peter 2:11). For somebody to assault your body is treacherous enough, but here we find an assault on the soul — and that by our own mutinous passions. Peter pleads, Don’t embrace your soul’s murderer; don’t welcome your soul’s foe through the front gates. These are compelling entreaties for anyone who knows what a soul is. One assumes that discovering our flesh with soul-daggers up its sleeves would be enough to motivate any reasonable person to mandate pat downs at the gates. But then again, we are not always reasonable.

Weaponized Hope

The liquor of sin makes us drunk and stupid. Sin crouches at the door, and its desire is for us. How adamant its demands, how loud its knockings, how dear and costly and bloody the necessary resistance — “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body go into hell” (Matthew 5:30).

With such a seductive tyrant, Peter sends another mighty reason to defend the gate, one easy to overlook: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” He does not appeal to us as farmers or carpenters or even as soldiers; he implores the church to kill sin based on our identity as pilgrims and outcasts. Refuse the world’s lusts as a people of the Spirit, a people not of this world, a people not yet home. Heaven’s joys will slay earth’s sins.

Has your heavenly hope ever reached its blade down to earth and stabbed your strongest temptations? Peter wants you to wield your heavenly citizenship; he wants your heavenly home and future to fill the skies with swords that everywhere reach down and behead the lusts of the flesh. “Christian,” Peter urges, “this world is not safe for you — its passions deceive, its pleasures enslave, its glories will perish. Our feet are not yet in Zion. The world and all its desires are passing away, sinking like a cannon-torn ship into the abyss. If you allow them, the appetites of the old you will fasten you to the deck.”

“As we pass through the world, we seek to bless the world with a knowledge of how they, too, can be saved from the wrath to come.”

But Peter also reminds us that a paradise awaits the faithful: a place you half-expect is too good to be real, with a Person you only half-believe will sit you at his table and serve you after all you’ve done (Luke 12:37). But the grace of our Lord is not like man’s, and he has prepared a place, solely from his good pleasure, for us who receive the kingdom. And he sends his apostle with a message: “Beloved, as sojourners and exiles, ready any minute to be called away to feast at my table, make war against that which makes war against your future with me.”

Moses, an Illustration

Isn’t Moses a vibrant example for us? The author of Hebrews thought so. He offers him as a living testimony of a man whose understanding of himself as an exile, a son of Israel in a foreign palace, armed him against the best the world could offer his flesh. His self-understanding birthed his self-denial.

By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. (Hebrews 11:24–26)

Moses did not merely prefer to be known as an Israelite, a race of slaves; he refused to be named among Egypt’s household. He would be an exilic son of the true God and not a son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He was a sojourner in Egypt and thus considered the sufferings of his Messiah greater wealth than the dainties of the damned. Manful Moses said in his heart, “Away with this stick you call a ‘scepter,’ away with this name you call ‘noble,’ away with these pleasures you label ‘safe,’ these sins you call ‘joy,’ these idols you call ‘gods,’ and draw near you beatings, you banishment, you scorn and you shame, for I look beyond these griefs to the reward in Immanuel’s land.”

He knew, as Jeremiah Burroughs writes,

There is a great difference between the prosperity of the wicked, and that which the godly have. God carries his people when he exalts them, as the Eagle her young upon her wings, he exalts them to safety (Job 5:11). . . . But when God exalts the wicked, he lifts them up as the eagle lifts up her prey in her talons, he lifts them up to destroy them. (Moses, His Choice, 101)

By faith, he foresaw his people headed toward the promised land and Pharaoh’s crown sunk at the bottom of the sea, motionless. His choosing a home not with the women, the money, the power, the gods of Egypt was eminently practical. In leaving, he left to “a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called [his] God, for he has prepared for [him] a city” (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 better wealth because “he was looking to the reward.”

Exiled to Glory

Christian, you don’t belong in this world — how often do you consider that? Do you openly acknowledge it, and make plain through speech, that you seek a homeland (Hebrews 11:13–14)? And does the hope of home, the glory of home, the God who is your home, equip you to abstain from the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul?

Peter writes his letter “to those who are elect exiles . . .” (1 Peter 1:1). But this tells us more than that we are not citizens of this world anymore — he does not leave our name tags blank. We are elect exiles, chosen exiles, estranged from the world and forgotten, but at home and remembered by our God, who chose us out of the world by his grace. And as elect exiles, God has chosen us out of the world to serve as a spiritual blessing while in this world:

You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9–10)

As we pass through the world, we seek to bless others with a knowledge of how they too can be saved from the wrath to come. We travel along, resisting the world’s temptations and the flesh’s enticements to them, living out our exile in the knowledge it soon will end. Peter summarizes:

Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 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.” And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one’s deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot. (1 Peter 1:13–19)

Isn’t that beautiful? Don’t you want to live like this? Shunning shameful and former passions, thriving as obedient children to our holy heavenly Father, fulfilling our earthly exile with that power purchased by the blood of Christ? Such a life requires a mind set fully on the grace to be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Or, like Moses, a mind looking to the reward.

So, by faith, and as sojourners and exiles, we refuse “to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin,” for we look to a future with Christ. We are exiles, but exiles soon to be welcomed to that homeland of eternal life and glory and fellowship with God himself in the new Jerusalem.