So, you don't think that, while we are here, we ought to reflect God in our necessary dealings with the outside world? What did Jesus mean when He told us that we are to be the salt of the earth? What did He mean when He called us to be the light of the world?
Please explain to me...
1 Peter lays that out in detail.
But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood,
a holy nation, a people for His possession...
Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.
This is the "team speech" that anyone who has been on a sports team or in the military has heard. Peter starts out speaking to "
to the temporary residents dispersed in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia," and goes through a chapter explaining how the Body of Christ forms a unique house that rests on a fundamentally different foundation from any other nation in the world.
The word "nation" here is the Greek
ethnos, from which we get "ethnic group." The Body of Christ is an ethnic group, a nation in itself. The word "people" here is the Greek
laos, which means "a people, people group, tribe, nation, all those who are of the same stock and language."
The Body of Christ is an embassy to the nations of the world. We operate as "aliens," "strangers and temporary residents."
Dear friends, I urge you as strangers and temporary residents to abstain from fleshly desires that war against you. Conduct yourselves honorably among the other nations, so that in a case where they speak against you as those who do what is evil, they will, by observing your good works, glorify God on the day of visitation.
Peter tells us that the morals of our ethnic group are different from the morals of the natives around us:
They are surprised that you don’t plunge with them into the same flood of wild living—and they slander you.
The major point Peter hammers and hammers is that the Body of Christ is a wholly separate nation in every way, only temporarily
deployed (which
diaspora in verse 1:1 also means) to various nations to carry out a mission of temporary duration...then we're going home.
What is that mission? The mission of the Body of Christ has never changed:
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.
The word "nations" here is the same
ethnos as in 1 Peter. We see, then, that the Body of Christ is an ethnic group--it's own nation--with a mission among the nations of the world to make disciples
from those nations
into our own nation.
There is one mission, but each one of us is assigned a fragment of that mission. Every single one of us has a task toward the mission to accomplish every day. Just like in the military, one person's task toward the mission differs from another person's task.
For instance, a US Navy aircraft carrier may have a crew of 5,000 sailors. Although the mission of the aircraft carrier is to use airpower to carry war to the enemy, of those 5,000 sailors only about 75 actually fly. The other 4,925 sailors never get into an airplane. Some of those sailors do nothing but laundry. That's all they do, ever day, is wash underwear, sheets, and dungarees. Yet, the captain will tell you those men who do nothing but laundry are
vital to making sure the 75 who fly can fly.
In the same way, the Body of Christ has some who are evangelists, some who are teachers, some who are encourages, some who are administrators...yet every one is vital to the Body performing its mission.
The problem is that too many Christians--especially in America--have gotten the idea that they're just supposed to be going through life, la-de-da, being "good Christians," going to church on Sundays and not doing any "sins."
Far from it. We each have something we should be doing every day to forward the mission, and when we go to bed each night we ought to know what we did for the mission that day.