1 Peter 2:12-17
This letter had a lot of ground to cover, it covered a pretty large area - about 130,000 miles, and that’s important because it meant that the gospel was spreading and being heard farther away. The Church was growing, and the Kingdom of God was expanding! However, these new Christians were grossly misunderstood.
Peter wanted Christians to be KNOWN FOR their HONORABLE LIVES.
Do we have a reputation that is attractively good?
Stats
• 36% of Americans say they have a great deal of confidence in the church or organized religion— this is an all-time low.
• 66% of young adults who say they regularly attended church as a teenager, but stopped attending for at least a year between the ages of 18 to 22, one of the top reasons for dropping out of church was a political disagreement.
• 25% of people who have left the church say one of the reasons they stepped away is because they disagreed with the church’s stance on a political or social issue.
We all know someone who has been hurt by the church, or has had a fundamental disagreement or a falling out within the church or has objected to the church’s stance on one issue or another. There are divisions upon divisions within the family of God, and those divisions are creating a devastating culture within the church of an intellectual kind of isolation and hyper-individualism. This isolation is the antithesis of the kind of community God wants us to be.
1 Peter 3:3-18
You are not just a person. You are a ‘people’. When you surrendered your life to Christ, you became part of that great big family known as “the people of God.’
He’s talking about how to pursue and maintain unity. He’s talking about the opposite of isolation - and he’s not merely suggesting that this is what we do. He is imploring us, Church!
This is how things SHOULD be: The greek word is Homophron - which means unity of mind. Of one intent. One purpose. This is the ‘what’ - what we are aiming to become.
Peter tells us how to be in unity:
• Sympathize with each other.
• Love one another like family.
• Be compassionate to one another.
• Be humble.
And remember, no family, no church is perfect, but we must fight for one another. And at the end of the day, we must always return to LOVE.
In a church as large as ours is… we are BOUND to disagree on some things. And we do! But that does not have to drive us apart! There is a gracious grit, and a determined devotion to one another that can override our differences, and help us to always return to love. We MUST pursue unity, and love each other like family, because if we don’t this family will fall apart.
Respect everyone, and love the family of believers.
Peter is not making a suggestion. He is telling us literally, to strive for peace, to chase after it until we’ve grabbed hold of it, and once we have it - we work to maintain it.
Just like it was with the early Christians, if we do not stand together our message won’t be heard. And we have the message of hope! We have the message of life! The message of Christ!
Our unity in Christ Jesus is the bright light this world desperately needs. If we each possess the light of Christ, when we come together we shine so brightly.
Our pursuit of unity will heal isolation, and bring about the kind of reputation God had in mind all along for His Church!
Our message spreads farther, and faster when we stand together as ONE.
Church, let’s be KNOWN for this! For standing TOGETHER for what Christ stood for. For healing TOGETHER what he healed. For loving TOGETHER who he loved. And for being ONE as Christ and the Father are ONE.
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