LIVING GODLY LIVES IN A PAGAN SOCIETY
Modern day Christians like in what Dan Kimball calls “the Christian bubble.” It is a protective environment where they have pretty much managed to eliminate non-Christians and non-Christian influences from their lives. The problem with the bubble is that Christians rarely have a clue how the real world must live and they have little or no influence on the culture around them. And people out in the culture have no benefit from the Christian witness because the only ones they are familiar with are the “media crazies.”
For more on Kimball’s idea check out his book They Like Jesus But Not the Church.
The 1st century church had no such luxury or burden. They had to live in the midst of a prevailing culture that was pagan–an a culture that neither acknowledged Christ nor honored hm=im.
Perhaps with Jesus’ words recorded in Matthew 5, “You are the salt of the earth” still ringing in his memory, Peter wrote these words:
11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. 1 Peter 2.11-12
1. Again, note the identity of the believers in the prevailing culture. Why do you think there is such an insistence on “foreigners and exiles?”
2. What, in particular, are his two specific instructions to the believers?
3. Why is the first instruction so vital and why does it come first?
4. How do you observe that Christians today are at war for their souls? (Note, I did not say “at war with the culture.”)
5. What is the modus operandi for believers as they engage the culture and its people?
6. How do believers today deal with a pagan culture that can be at odds with this instruction?
7. What ways have you seen the “good deeds” strategy at work in our church or in your life? What has been the outcome?
As Followers of Jesus, Peter prods us to “abstain from sinful desires” and “live such good lives” that the “Pre-Followers” of Jesus will watch us & hear us and have the desire to be like us.
BUT we have to get off the pew, get out of the church and GO! Go to where the Pre-Christians are and become their friends, don’t condemn them but show them love.
I used to go on an annual fishing trip to Lake Erie with 8 – 12 guys. They would get drunk while I would drink my “Tab” (yeah, I am that old!) They would tell me in the morning “How can you have so much fun, just like we do when we are drinking and then in the morning you feel so much better than we do?” The answer was rather apparent, they knew without asking that it was my faith.
Tim Clutter - November 8, 2011 at 12:37 pm |
Great story and perfect example
sdunnpastor - November 19, 2011 at 5:00 pm |