Rejected and Selected

The two sides of the Christian life

Photo by Florian Schmetz on Unsplash

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who are elect exiles of the Dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood: May grace and peace be multiplied to you.”

—1 Peter 1:1-2

Rejected and Selected

I love how in First Peter, we hear Peter open his letter with two words that shouldn’t be used next to each other. Elect exiles.

Think about that for a moment. They are chosen, and cast out. They are selected, and rejected.

An exile is someone who doesn’t belong. It’s someone pushed to the margins, displaced, and someone without a home. On the other hand, “elect” is the opposite of that. Elect means you were picked. It means you are wanted. You were chosen on purpose, by name, and even before the foundation of the world.

I don’t think Peter is confused here. No, he’s describing what it actually feels like to be a Christian in this world. As a Christian you and I are widely rejected by the world we are standing in.

The people Peter’s writing to were scattered across Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia. Some of them were probably exiles in a literal sense. They were probably pushed out of Rome or out of their homeland. But even the ones who never left their home were exiles in another way. They probably realized they didn’t fit in anymore. Their faith had made them strangers in their own cities, their own families, and their own synagogues.

That has been the reality for Christians across all of history. It hasn’t changed. If you follow Christ with any seriousness, the world will eventually let you know that you don’t belong to it. That may happen when you lose friends, when you lose relatives, and even when somebody stops inviting you to things. Or maybe you can just feel the distance. Have you ever stood in a room but you felt out of place? I have. Or have you ever smiled at a joke of a friend or a coworker, yet you couldn’t laugh. You hold your tongue at the meeting where everyone else is agreeing with what has been said. Yet, you don’t agree at all. Or you go to the party and leave early because something in you doesn’t want to be there anymore.

Yeah, that’s the tension of the Christian life.

That’s exile.

That’s what it is to be a new creation and to be,

Selected by the God who made you.

But Peter doesn’t stop at exile. No, we watch him stack three more phrases right on top of it! He talks about the foreknowledge of the Father, sanctification of the Spirit, and obedience and sprinkling with the blood of Jesus. Which means you and I are never accidents here. The Father knew us before we even knew we needed knowing (that’s a mouth full). The Spirit set us apart. The Son’s blood was spilled for us.

That’s not some vague, cosmic “everyone is loved” kind of chosen. That’s a kind of chosen that means somebody wanted you, not just people in general.

More than that, the very same power that elected us is the same power guarding us, right now. Verse five says we’re being guarded through faith by God’s power for a salvation ready to be revealed. Notice it doesn’t say guarded by our grip on God, which fails constantly, but by his grip on us, which will never fail. Indeed, the power holding you is the same power that spoke the world into existence! That’s extraordinary security!

Living in both at once

I know what it is to feel cut off. I know rejection very well—especially because of my faith.

I’ve been laughed at, threatened, ignored, and belittled. At times it feels like I could fall through the floor at any moment. It makes me want to crawl under a rock. But in all of that, I also know what it is to reflect on this passage at midnight while everyone is sleeping and feel the ground under me become sturdy like stone. Because I am certain that I was known before I existed and sealed by blood I didn’t shed.

This is the whole Christian life. It’s not exile then election, like one gets fixed and the other goes away. No, it’s both, always, at the same time. You will feel rejected by the world today. You are also, in that exact same moment, held by a Father who has never once looked away from you.

Peter also says angels long to look into this. The beings who’ve never sinned, never doubted, never felt an ounce of exile, are leaning in to watch what it looks like when grace and mercy pours out on people who don’t belong anywhere else. I think that’s the strangest part of the whole passage. The thing that makes you feel most foreign to this world is the very thing making you the most interesting sight in heaven.

So today, I hope we can begin to embrace this life of rejection and selection. I pray we learn to live with joy in both, because both are true, and neither one is going away until He comes back for what’s His.

Cling to Christ!

---

Be sure to grab a copy of Mr. Beatitude !