It's Us, Not I

Text: 1 Peter 2:1-10

Everyone for him/herself. Have it your way. Forge your own path. March to the beat of a different drum. Be your own person, the captain of your ship, master of your fate. You've got to please yourself. If it feels good, do it. If you think it's true, go for it. The list of phrases could go on and on. And all too often Christians are little different. We are surrounded by people who believe that personal satisfaction is the highest, if not the only good in life. Our Supreme Court has declared that the right to define one's own existence is the most fundamental of all rights. Apparently, this includes the prerogative of defining truth, not least moral truth. Few even question this any longer; it has become part of the air we breathe.

One of the most difficult ideas for us to grasp as American Christians is that the focus of holiness is more corporate than individual in Peter's writing. It is partially a language issue--we do not have separate English words for "you" (singular and plural) as do most languages, including New Testament Greek. What is addressed to the whole group as a unit is too easily read as addressed primarily to each person, which fits so comfortably with our individualistic culture. When God tells His people to be holy, it is as a corporate entity. Thinking in those terms requires a shift we will have to work at.

This becomes most obvious as the passage for today moves forward: individually we are stones in a building, priests in a priesthood, citizens in a nation. The change begins with how we see one another. Malicious behavior, deception, hypocrisy, jealousy, backstabbing, etc., are the inevitable results of individualism as each person is in competition with every other for the right to define how life will be when we have to deal with one another. It should not be surprising that these are the first things which will have to go in order for us to be holy--different, characterized by the kind of self-giving love that is God Himself. For this to happen we will need to receive truth rather than define it; it is our basic nourishment (v.2).

As this takes place--i.e., as God's truth fills our minds and we shed the patterns of thought and interactions inherited from the world around us--we are transformed into a purposive, different, holy body in which God dwells and through which He appeals to all people to be made anew, to come out of the darkness that is the loneliness of individual living. Yes, we have a long way to go. Yes, it's well worth the journey.