Faith For This Moment Devotional By Rick McKinleySample

Day Five

Far from Home

Scripture: 1 Peter 1:1

One could argue that, in utilizing the theme of exile for understanding the situation of the church and Christ-followers in twenty-first-century America, we are stretching the theme beyond where it is intended to go. Does Scripture give us permission to use the term to understand ourselves in our current situation? 

To answer the question, we only need to turn to the book of First Peter. In his first letter, Peter wrote to believers who were scattered throughout Asia Minor. They had lost their identity, place, and familiar practices of life before Jesus Christ. Peter understood and used the theme of exile to help them get their footing in the new world they inhabited. 

Peter referred to those he wrote in two ways: God’s chosen people and the people of God who were exiles far from home. Peter used the theme of exile with its rich history in the Old Testament to help his readers understand their identity, their place, and the practices of a new life they had been given in Christ. 

In this sense, all of God’s people in all of the ages are exiles. This was the case before American Christians felt marginalized by society, and it will be the case after. Exile is the place where we live out our faith in Jesus. 

It is important to note that exile can work as both a theme and a literal experience. For the Jews in the Old Testament, exile was their actual reality. It described their physical dislocation as they were carried off by a foreign power. In the New Testament, exile was used metaphorically to denote the way in which God’s people were to understand their own displacement in the world. Through the power of Christ, God was making them into new creatures with a spiritual home that was not presently here but was coming with Christ. The same is true for us. 

Exile helps us to understand what it meant to be the people of God throughout history in the hope that we will discover ways in which we can be the people of God in the present. It helps us to understand our new identity, our new place in the world, and the new ways in which we can practice our faith in the moment in which we find ourselves. 

How does God use exile to bring us closer to Himself?