“Ransomed Exiles”
Text: 1 Peter 1:17-25
4-23-2023
In the name of Him who ransomed you with His precious blood, dear friends in Christ. In verse 17 of our Epistle lesson, St. Peter describes the people he is writing to as those who are living in “exile.” In order for us to understand the rest of what he says, we first need to tackle the meaning of that word. So what exactly is exile? Well, the Greek word that Peter uses will help answer that. Paroikia (par-oi-kia) is actually a compound of 2 words. “Para,” like in the word parallel, means alongside of. And “oikos” is the word for house. It sure sounds strange when you put it together, “alongside of the house,” but not when you apply it to how a foreigner feels. In other words, they may live beside you, but they are NOT a member of your household. It’s kind of like a person living in the United States with a green card. Even though they’ve taken up residence beside you, they’re not citizens and this is not their homeland. They’re “exiles” or “foreigners.”
St. Peter applies this word and it’s meaning to the Christians he was writing to. In the first verse of this chapter, he says they are part of the “Dispersion.” What he’s referring to are the Followers of Jesus who were forced to flee from their homeland because of severe persecution by the Roman government. However, some of these believers were long time residents who had never left home, and yet they were still in exile. That’s because their faith in Jesus made them outsiders to their pagan neighbors and friends. They lived alongside of unbelievers, but they no longer lived in the same house of religious beliefs. And that was a good kind of exile.
As you continue reading what St. Peter has to say, it sounds as though he’s describing the circumstances of some well-known exiles. Even though most of the recipients of this letter were non-Jewish converts to Christianity, they would have certainly been familiar with the exiles of Israel. The Israelites had been slaves for nearly 400 hundred years. You could say they lived as “exiles” in Egypt during that time. Then they were rescued by God and set free. But they were still exiles as they wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years because it was not their permanent home.
Peter alludes to how their freedom from slavery took place. After 9 plagues, Pharaoh refused to let Israel go. The 10th one did the trick. God warned that He would kill all the firstborn males in Egypt on a given night. The way the Israelites would be spared from this calamity was by the blood of their Passover lambs. It had to be a year-old lamb without any blemishes or defects. They were to paint the doorways of their houses with the blood of this sacrificial animal. It was the blood of the Passover lamb that played a major role in ransoming them from their slavery.
For that to sink in, we now need to look at that word “ransom.” Normally we think of it in terms of the price that the kidnappers demand for the release of their captive. Obviously, it’s not a price that the prisoner can pay or they wouldn’t still be held against their will. Somebody else has to come up with the ransom. The blood of those Passover lambs wasn’t the actual price of Israel’s ransom. That blood however, indicated their faith and trust in God who would rescue them from their slavery. God Himself would pay the ransom price, which they couldn’t afford, for their release.
That event in Israel’s history was a shadow of a far greater spiritual ransom that was paid. St. Peter points to the blood of Jesus as the ransom price of our souls. John the Baptist identified Him as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Peter says that Jesus’ blood, shed on the Cross for us sinners, was more precious than gold or silver. He was the innocent Son of God, our Passover Lamb, who was without the blemish of sin. His blood was the ransom for setting us free from our slavery to sin, death, and the devil. A person who trusts in that redeeming blood of the Savior, is rescued from eternal death. Our spiritual “house” is marked with that blood. And anyone who is marked with that blood by faith is an exile, a “paroikia.” They live alongside their unbelieving neighbors, but they are foreigners to this sinful world. They are exiles as long as they live on this earth because heaven is their homeland. That kind of exile is a good thing.
You know, earlier I mentioned how someone might be an exile in our country by maintaining a green card. They can live and work here, but their true citizenship remains in their homeland, presumably because they plan on returning there someday. However, for many, this is the first step towards becoming a citizen of the United States. Let’s forget about illegal immigration and amnesty for just a minute. My point is that under our legal system a person can renounce their foreign citizenship and become a permanent citizen of the U.S. I think we’d agree that’s a good choice. But it’s not good when it comes to our spiritual citizenship.
St. Peter’s admonition is to continue living as spiritual exiles while here on earth. The price of your heavenly citizenship was costly. The precious blood of Jesus was shed so that you could be ransomed from this sinful world. Don’t do anything that would renounce your citizenship in heaven. Don’t go around trying to fit in with your unbelieving neighbors and be welcomed as a resident of their house-of-sin. And yet, isn’t that precisely what we do? We compromise our Scripture-based morals because the people around us find it offensive. The subject of homosexuality comes up and we don’t want people to think we’re hateful for calling it a sin. We’d rather dance around the subject, talking about legal rights and the need for gay marriage in order to be “fair.” The same thing happens with legalized abortion. Yes, Roe v. Wade has been overturned but that doesn’t mean abortions have ceased. Inside, we believe it’s a horrible thing, but our mouths say that it’s an individual “choice.” Seriously? Murdering a child is a legal “choice?” Ah, but we want to fit in. We don’t want to be excluded from our neighbor’s house or group of friends... so we remain silent.
Those are two dramatic examples, but there are plenty of others where we’ve willingly gone along with what the sinful world has declared as “normal.” And far from being simply silent, we actually join in on the sinning. We’d be here all day if we listed all the examples that come to mind. Just take a moment and consider the temptations you have given into this past week. If you’ve numbed yourself to the point of not even seeing them as sins and can’t even identify them as such, then you’ve got a BIG problem! Let the Holy Spirit search your heart and convict you with God’s Word. And when you recognize your sins, hear those words that St. Peter preached to the crowd in our 1st Reading: “Repent!” Confess your sins to God and receive His forgiveness through faith in Jesus.
While I was studying today’s sermon text I came across something rather interesting. That Greek word Paroikia (par-oi-kia) can actually be found in some of our English words. It’s where we get “parochial” from, which is what we usually call a church-run school. We also get the word “parish” from it. So in reality, this parish of Zion is a gathering of “exiles.” We are a body of Christians who are foreigners to this sinful world. We reside here on earth alongside the rest of the world while remembering that heaven is our real homeland. Each time that we gather here for worship, that’s what we’re reminding ourselves of and telling the world around us. And as exiles, you are a marked group.
Some of you are old enough to remember seeing the pictures of Mrs. Kennedy standing beside Lyndon Johnson as he was sworn in as the new President of the United States. John F. Kennedy had just been assassinated in Dallas and Mrs. Kennedy’s pretty, pink dress was soaked in his blood. She had an opportunity to change her clothes, but she insisted on wearing that dress so that the world could see the price that freedom had cost her husband. Well, we don’t have blood-drenched clothes that we wear but we are still marked with the precious blood of our Savior, Jesus. It was the price of your ransom; the price of your freedom from sin and eternal death. Wear that blood with gratitude and pride, knowing that it marks you as an exile in this world. Boldly display it to everyone around you. We do that, St. Peter says, by living lives of obedience to God and by loving one another as Christ has loved us. Worship Him with the rest of us spiritual exiles now, as we look forward to our true home in heaven. Amen.
Soli Deo Gloria!