Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind…I warn you as “temporary residents and foreigners” to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against your very souls…Act as free people, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. (1 Peter 2)

We live in a world that has taken malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander, and has turned them into, or at least called them entertainment and art. We live in a world that drinks poison and calls it medicine, that chooses slavery then calls it freedom, that chooses destruction and calls it creativity. It is a world in which I often feel lost.

And I am reminded that the way of God is not to somehow affirm or condone this twisted perversion where wrong is called right, and right is called wrong, but to actually be different - what God calls holy. The mission God has given us is to live as the people of His Kingdom while our current address is still in this shadow world. 

That is also very different than a religious world that declares their own kingdom, their rules, their system, their community to be the same as God’s, while they choose to build altars and temples to themselves, and practice lifestyles of exclusion and self-righteousness. I have seen so much hurt and wrong done by those claiming the name of Jesus, but not following the way of Jesus. And I have seen even more wrong done by those who refuse or reject any affinity to Jesus and his people because they say it is all hypocrisy and if this is who God is, they don’t want any part of it. 

At different times in my journey I’ve found myself drifting into each camp - enamored with my own self-righteousness, and rejecting true righteousness. Sometimes we talk about a pendulum and how we can swing from one to the other. But I don’t think that’s the right picture. It misses the power and call of God for radically transformed lives and life-giving communities. A better picture is we need to stay in focus. When we look through the edges of a strong magnifying glass, or even just a pair of glasses, things get distorted and it is easy to think you see one thing when it’s really another. But when you stay in the center you can see not only clearer, but it is the place where the light of God is magnified into this dark world, and everything that is worthless gets consumed. It’s what Hebrews means when it says “Our God is a consuming fire!” 

So today how do we choose the way of our Creator, to be different than the shadow world, and live in the Life and Light of God? Peter gives us 2 answers. The first is to live out of the truth of the scriptures. ”Long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation, if you have tasted the kindness of the Lord.” (1 Peter 2:2-3) If we will choose to steep our hearts and minds in the scriptures, not to justify ourselves or find some magic formula, but simply to discover and hear the heart of our Creator, it will transform us. The second answer is in the idea of the bond-slave. In the old testament slavery was just a part of life. People ended up belonging to and being abused by other people because of war, debt, and crime. Yet there was one category that defied the sense of the time. You could choose to give yourself as a slave to someone voluntarily, out of love, affection, or gratitude. When that was your desire the person you were giving yourself to would place your ear agains their door post and drive a small nail through your ear. Your blood would run down the door post and you became marked by your suffering and one of the family - what was called a bond-slave. Following Jesus is an invitation into the family of God himself. We are slaves to so many destructive things. Jesus pays the price for our redemption to set us free, and then invites us into His family as bond slaves, because the only way to be truly free is to choose to serve God. So what will mark your life today?

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY. (1Peter 2: 9-10)