Spiritual Exiles
We have all, at various points, convinced ourselves that our problem is geography. If we could just get somewhere else, things would be better. If only we had a different job, a different marriage, or a different body then all our problems would be solved. The Apostle Peter had something to say to people who felt this way, and it is not what most of us would expect to hear.
Exiles in More Ways Than One
Peter wrote his first letter to believers scattered across what is now modern Turkey. They were outsiders, living among communities where they didn’t belong. Peter takes the reality of their situation and draws out a deeper truth. Yes, they are geographic and political exiles, but more importantly, they are spiritual exiles, followers of Jesus living among people who don’t share their values. If you have ever felt like an exile in your own culture, your own workplace, or even your own neighborhood, Peter is writing to you.
You Are Not Here by Accident
What Peter says to these alienated believers is not what most exiles want to hear. He doesn’t call them exiles and leave it there. He calls them elect exiles, chosen exiles (1 Peter 1:1). Their situation has come to them by the sovereign foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to the obedience of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:2). In other words, God is not absent from their exile. He is actively working through it to refine their faith and increase their dependence on Him.
When God brought Israel out of Egypt, He didn’t take them by the most direct route to the promised land. He led them through the desert for forty years. God wanted to teach them that man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Father (Deuteronomy 8:3). The wilderness was never about wandering. It was about what God was doing in and through His people while they were in the wilderness. Peter is making the same argument to these first-century believers and to us.
The Exiles Among Us
This is where Peter’s description of these believers stops being ancient history and becomes something much closer to home. Think about modern categories of exiles that are genuinely familiar. There are marriage exiles, people who have arrived at the quiet conclusion that the person they married is simply not the right person, that the solution to the pain in their home is to be either not married or married to someone else. The exile is real. The longing for different geography is real. There are vocational exiles, people who feel persecuted at work, who have an unfair boss or a hostile environment or a job that seems to punish them for their values. They are convinced that a different job would make things better. The exit is always somewhere in the back of their mind. And there are health exiles, people who have gotten a diagnosis that makes their own body feel foreign. They are living with chronic pain or physical limitations that have quietly taken over their lives. What they want, more than almost anything, is a different body.
The instinct across all these exiles is identical: change where you are, and the problem goes away. But Peter’s letter does not offer that solution. What it offers is harder, and if you can receive it, more sustaining.
I Want Out of Bithynia
Peter never promises his readers better geography. He doesn’t tell them to leave Bithynia, because the exile is not the problem. It’s their perspective. The point Peter keeps driving at is this: when we are in exile, we want to change where we are while God wants to change who we are.
God used the wilderness to do something in Israel that the promised land never could. In the same way, God uses the difficult marriage, the painful job, the unwanted diagnosis, to do something in us that easier circumstances simply cannot produce. The exile is not an accident. It is the sovereign hand of a good God redeeming our painful circumstances for our good.
Peter is not claiming that suffering is easy. Even Jesus, the night before the crucifixion, prayed honestly, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Jesus asked His Father to take His suffering away, but ultimately, He surrendered to God’s purpose, and we can do the same in our exile.
Elect, Not Stranded
If you are sitting in a hard season right now, one you have been trying to escape, First Peter reminds you that you are an elect exile. The painful marriage, the dead-end job, the diagnosis you are still trying to absorb—none of it landed in your life by chance. God is not after a change of your circumstances. He is after a change in you, the kind of change that, if you are honest, could probably only happen right here, right now.
Way Points with Pastor Steve DeWitt is based on teaching from The Journey.
