Living as Strangers
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Read 1 Peter 2:11–25 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.
For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps.
— 1 Peter 2:21
Identity Meets Life
In the opening of chapter two, Peter gave his readers the magnificent identity of the people of God — a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own possession. He now turns to what that identity looks like in daily life. And the passage he writes is one of the most important in the New Testament for understanding how Christians are to live in the ordinary structures of human society. In this single extended passage, Peter addresses how the baptized are to relate to the surrounding culture, to civil government, to their work (including slaves to their masters), and to suffering that comes from faithful living in places where the world does not yet share their faith.
For the Lutheran tradition, this is vocational territory. Luther’s great contribution to Christian ethics was the recovery of vocation — the conviction that God calls ordinary Christians not only to the special callings of monastery or priesthood but to ordinary work, marriage, parenting, civil service, and all the structures of common life. Every faithful life in every faithful calling is a priestly life, offering spiritual sacrifices to God through Christ. The farmer and the blacksmith, the mother and the soldier, the servant and the magistrate, all have callings given by God, and all are to live out those callings as faithful Christians. Peter is the biblical foundation for this Lutheran recovery, and this passage is where it appears most concretely.
But the passage is also one of the hardest in the letter for modern readers. Peter speaks directly to slaves, calling them to submit to their masters even when those masters are unjust. He calls all Christians to submit to human authorities. He appeals to the example of Christ suffering without retaliation. These teachings have been misused across history — to defend chattel slavery, to silence victims of abuse, to tell the oppressed to accept their oppression with cheerful passivity. This is not what Peter is teaching, and the first work of this session is to clear away these misreadings so that the text can do its actual work.
In this session we will walk carefully through the passage. We will see Peter’s general call to live as sojourners and exiles, keeping our conduct honorable among the nations. We will look at his teaching on submission to civil authorities, remembering that he writes to subjects of an imperial government whose policies were often unjust. We will treat carefully his instruction to household slaves. And we will reach the passage’s Christological heart — the suffering of Christ as the example the baptized are called to follow, a passage rich enough to carry us deep into the Gospel itself.
Sojourners and Exiles
Peter opens the section with a direct address. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.
The address is specific. Beloved. Sojourners. Exiles. Peter is not speaking to people in their settled, comfortable condition. He is speaking to strangers in a land not their own, to those whose permanent home is elsewhere. The exile theme from chapter one returns with full force. The Christian in the world is a sojourner, and the sojourner does not conduct himself as a native of the land he is passing through.
The Passions That Wage War
The first exhortation is internal. Abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. The language is military. There is a war being fought inside the Christian, between the passions of the old self and the life of the new. This is familiar Pauline territory — the flesh wars against the Spirit, and the two are set against one another. Peter does not develop the doctrine as fully as Paul, but he assumes the same reality. The Christian faces an internal battle, and the passions that would pull him back into the ways of his former ignorance are the enemy that must be resisted.
Notice the specific targeting. The war is against your soul. These are not neutral passions that merely happen to Christians. They are enemies of the life of the baptized. The sojourner whose citizenship is in heaven cannot treat the passions of the flesh as harmless companions; they are, in their nature, hostile to what God is doing in him. Peter does not counsel their indulgence or negotiation. He counsels abstinence — keeping distance from what would harm the soul.
Honorable Conduct Among the Gentiles
The second exhortation is external. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable. The word here for Gentiles (ethne) is the same word Peter has just used in verse nine for the Church as a holy nation. There is a deliberate wordplay. The Church is now the ethnos, the nation, but there are still ethne — the surrounding peoples who do not yet believe — among whom the Church lives. And the Church’s conduct among those peoples matters.
Peter gives a specific reason. When the surrounding world speaks against Christians as evildoers — and they do, for a variety of reasons, some having to do with real misunderstandings about Christian practice, some having to do with simple hostility to what is strange — the observation of actual Christian lives can either confirm the accusations or refute them. Christians whose conduct is dishonorable hand ammunition to those who would slander them. Christians whose conduct is honorable, by contrast, give the world something to see that contradicts the slander.
The Day of Visitation
The hoped-for outcome is striking. That they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. The day of visitation is a phrase drawn from the prophets, referring to the day when God comes to visit His people — sometimes for judgment, sometimes for salvation. Peter may have in mind either a gracious visitation in which observers are brought to faith, the final day when all conduct is disclosed, or both. In either case, honorable Christian conduct bears witness before unbelievers and will be vindicated by God.
This is a deeply hopeful view of Christian witness. The good conduct of Christians is not only ethics; it is mission. It plants seeds in the consciousness of those who observe. Years later, what they saw in the lives of the believers may be part of what God uses to bring them to hear the Gospel and believe. Christians cannot compel faith in others, but they can bear the kind of witness that commends the Gospel and opens ears to hear it. This is the slow, quiet, essential work of faithful presence in the world.
Submission to Authorities
Peter now turns to civil government. Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.
This teaching is uncomfortable for modern readers, and we should not pretend otherwise. Peter writes to Christians living under the Roman Empire, whose emperor at the time of writing was likely Nero — a ruler whose mental instability, cruelty, and eventual persecution of Christians were well known. And Peter calls his readers to be subject to this emperor. Honor the emperor. Two verses, covering a subject that Christians have wrestled with for two thousand years.
For the Lord’s Sake
The phrase at the beginning of the passage is crucial. Be subject for the Lord’s sake. The submission is not based on the worthiness of the authority being submitted to. It is not based on agreement with the authority’s policies. It is not based on the authority’s competence. It is based on the Lord’s sake — on the Christian’s desire to honor the God who has, in His wisdom, ordered human society through structures of authority.
This is the Lutheran two-kingdoms insight in biblical form. God orders human life through two distinct but related kingdoms — the kingdom of His right hand, where He rules through the Gospel, the Word, and the Sacraments, creating faith and salvation; and the kingdom of His left hand, where He rules through the structures of civil society, government, family, and work, preserving order and restraining evil. Both kingdoms are God’s. Both are under His providence. And the Christian is a citizen of both, living under the Gospel in the kingdom of grace and within the structures of society in the kingdom of temporal order.
Civil authorities, in this Lutheran understanding, hold their office from God. This does not mean every ruler is wise or good. It does not mean every law should be obeyed without question. It means that the office itself — the structure of government by which order is preserved and evil restrained — is part of God’s gift to humanity for our preservation. And the Christian, who knows that this order comes from God, honors the office even when he disagrees with the occupant, because the office is God’s.
The Limits of Submission
Peter’s call to submission is not unconditional, and Christians across history have rightly recognized this. When civil authority commands what God forbids, or forbids what God commands, the Christian’s loyalty to God takes precedence. The apostles themselves, in Acts 5, declared that we must obey God rather than men when the authorities forbade them to preach the Gospel. Martyrs across two thousand years have refused to renounce Christ, even at the cost of their lives. The principle of civil submission does not cancel the higher principle of obedience to God.
But the exception is not the rule, and Peter’s emphasis falls on the rule, not the exception. Most of the time, for most Christians, the call is to ordinary, unspectacular submission to the structures of civil society. Pay taxes. Obey the laws. Respect the authorities. Work within the system for change when change is needed. Do not become a Christian troublemaker, making the Gospel offensive because of our disrespect for ordered society. This is the ordinary shape of Christian civic life, and it is what Peter is calling for.
Free, But Servants
Peter anticipates a possible misunderstanding. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. Christians are free. The Gospel has set us free from sin, from the Law’s condemnation, from the fear of death. But this freedom is not license. It is not an excuse for lawlessness. It is not a pretext for ignoring the ordinary obligations of human life. Christian freedom is the freedom to serve God rightly, including through the structures of human society that God has ordained.
The closing summary of verse 17 is pointed. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. Four commands in a tight sequence. Honor every human being, as bearing the image of God. Love fellow Christians with a special bond of fellowship. Fear God — the reverent, ultimate fear that belongs to Him alone. And honor the emperor — the structured respect that belongs to the office of civil authority. Notice that the emperor receives honor but not fear. Fear belongs to God alone. The emperor receives the respect appropriate to his office, but not the worship that belongs to God.
Servants, Submit
Peter now addresses a specific group in his reading community — household servants, whom we might call slaves in the modern sense, though the ancient institution differed from American chattel slavery in important ways. Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God.
This is one of the hardest passages in the New Testament for modern readers, and we must handle it with care. Peter is not endorsing slavery as a good institution. He is not telling masters that their treatment of slaves is acceptable. He is speaking pastorally to people who actually lived as slaves in the Roman Empire, and he is telling them how to live faithfully as Christians in that condition. The pastoral question is how the baptized can honor Christ when they have no power to change their external circumstances.
Ancient Slavery vs. Modern
A word is worth saying about the institution Peter is addressing. Slavery in the Roman Empire was widespread, but it differed from American chattel slavery in significant ways. It was not based on race. Many slaves held positions of trust and responsibility — managing estates, teaching children, practicing skilled professions. Many were educated, sometimes better than their masters. Slaves could and often did obtain their freedom, either through purchase or through their master’s will. The condition was painful, restrictive, and open to grave abuse, but it was not the same institution that would later be practiced in the American South.
This is not to minimize the real suffering of slaves in the ancient world. Nor is it to suggest that Peter’s instructions apply, without modification, to every situation of oppression across history. What it does suggest is that the passage should be read in its own context, as pastoral counsel to people in a specific and inescapable situation, rather than as a general endorsement of slavery or of all forms of submission to authority regardless of justice.
Enduring Unjust Suffering
The heart of the passage is the question of unjust suffering. Peter acknowledges directly that some of the masters are unjust — not good and gentle, but unjust. He does not pretend the unjust master is actually just, or that the slave’s suffering is deserved. He names the injustice. And then he does something remarkable. He speaks about the suffering as an opportunity — not in a cheap or sentimental sense, but in a deep pastoral sense. The slave who suffers unjustly while remaining faithful to Christ is doing something that is gracious in God’s sight. He is participating in something that reaches beyond his immediate circumstances.
Two things are important here. First, Peter does not tell the slave that his suffering is not really suffering. He does not deny the injustice. He does not say the master’s cruelty is somehow God’s gift. The suffering is real, and it is unjust. Second, Peter does not counsel resignation or passivity. He does not tell the slave to accept his condition as final or to abandon hope of change. What he counsels is faithful endurance within the suffering, with eyes lifted to God who sees and will ultimately set all things right.
This is pastoral care of the highest order. It takes the real situation seriously. It names the injustice as injustice. It does not pretend the situation is other than it is. And yet it gives the sufferer a frame within which to remain faithful. The slave who cannot change his circumstances can still remain faithful within them, and that faithfulness has meaning beyond the circumstances themselves. This is the ground on which faithful sufferers across history have stood — from Roman slaves to civil rights workers in the American South to persecuted Christians in every age. The suffering is real. And yet there is a way to suffer that participates in what God is doing in the world, and that way is worth everything it costs.
The Example of Christ
Peter now moves to the Christological heart of the passage. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His steps. And Peter then gives us one of the most beautiful brief passages on the passion of Christ anywhere in the New Testament — drawing on Isaiah 53, the Suffering Servant passage that Peter had clearly meditated on deeply.
He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
No Sin, No Deceit
The first description of Christ’s suffering is His innocence. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. This is essential to everything else Peter says. Christ’s suffering was not deserved. He was not being punished for His own failures. He was not learning His lesson. He was innocent — completely, in every way, without even the deceit that so often stains human speech. And yet He suffered.
For Peter’s readers who are suffering unjustly, this is crucial. Their suffering, insofar as it is undeserved, shares in the pattern of Christ’s own. He too was innocent, and He too suffered. He is not asking them to endure something He Himself refused. He walked this path before them, and the path He walked leads to resurrection and glory.
No Retaliation
The second description is Christ’s response to His suffering. When reviled, He did not revile in return. When suffering, He did not threaten. This is the hardest example of all. The natural response to being wronged is to return the wrong, either in kind or in threat. The natural response to being reviled is to revile back. The natural response to suffering is to threaten those who caused it. Christ did none of these. He received the reviling without reviling back. He received the suffering without threatening. He was silent before His accusers, as Isaiah had prophesied, like a lamb led to slaughter.
What did He do instead? He continued entrusting Himself to Him who judges justly. This is the heart of Christ’s response, and it is the heart of the response Peter calls for in his readers. When suffering unjustly, the Christian does not retaliate. He does not pay back evil for evil. He does not store up threats to be discharged later. He entrusts himself — continually, as a disposition of life — to the God who judges justly. The judgment will come. But it will be God’s, not his. And in the meantime, the Christian’s job is to trust the God who sees, who knows, and who will set all things right in His own time.
He Bore Our Sins
And then Peter gives the substance of Christ’s suffering. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. This is the atonement proclaimed in its most beautiful form. Christ bore our sins. He carried them in His body to the tree. He was punished for them, in our place, as our substitute. And the purpose of this substitution is transformation — that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.
The phrase by His wounds you have been healed is taken directly from Isaiah 53. It is a statement of paradox. Wounds heal. The blows that fell on Christ, the nails that pierced His hands and feet, the spear that opened His side — these are the very instruments by which our healing has come. What looked like catastrophe was the means of salvation. What looked like defeat was the victory. The cross is the great reversal of appearances, where the very suffering that seemed to disprove everything turned out to accomplish everything.
For Peter’s suffering readers, this reversal is the deepest comfort the Gospel can offer. Their sufferings, however real, however unjust, however hard, are held in the larger pattern of Christ’s own suffering, which turned out to be the salvation of the world. The pattern of suffering followed by glory, of death followed by resurrection, of wounds followed by healing, is the pattern of the Gospel itself. And those who suffer faithfully in the meantime are participating in that pattern, even when they cannot see the outcome.
Returning to the Shepherd
Peter closes the section with a pastoral image that recalls Isaiah once more. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. The language of straying sheep returning to the shepherd is deeply biblical, going back to the Psalms and to Jesus’ own parables. His readers, whatever their earlier wandering, have now returned to the Shepherd who keeps their souls.
This ending reframes everything. The sufferings Peter has been speaking of are the sufferings of sheep who have returned to their Shepherd. They are not wanderers anymore, out in the wilderness of their former ignorance. They are in the flock, under the care of the Shepherd who laid down His life for the sheep. Whatever they suffer in this age, they suffer under the eye of the Shepherd. Whatever wolves come, they come against a flock that is guarded. The sheep are not alone. They have returned to the one who will keep them safely home.
Gathering the Threads
Peter has given his readers, in this passage, a vision of the Christian life as it actually takes shape in the world. The magnificent identity of chapter two’s opening is lived out in ordinary vocations — in submission to civil authorities, in honest engagement with the surrounding culture, in faithful service in difficult work situations, in the patient endurance of unjust suffering. None of this is glamorous. All of it is ordinary. And all of it is the priestly service of the baptized, offered to God through Christ.
For the Lutheran Christian, this is the biblical foundation of vocational theology. The Christian life is not primarily lived in dramatic acts of religious intensity. It is lived in ordinary places — the household, the workplace, the civil community, the relationships of daily life. And every faithful act in every faithful calling is a spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God through Christ. The mother teaching her child to pray. The farmer working his land with honesty. The magistrate administering justice with integrity. The servant bearing difficult circumstances with patience. Each is a priest serving in his appointed place.
The Christological center of the passage is what makes all of this possible. Christ has gone before us in this pattern. He has suffered unjustly without retaliation. He has entrusted Himself to the God who judges justly. He has borne our sins and healed us with His wounds. And He has returned the straying sheep to the Shepherd and Overseer of their souls. Whatever the Christian is called to endure, he is called to endure in the wake of the one who has walked this path before him, and whose faithfulness in suffering has opened the way of salvation for us all.
For Discussion
The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.
Peter calls his readers to live as sojourners and exiles, with honorable conduct among those who do not yet share their faith. Where in your life do you most experience the tension of being a sojourner? Where is your conduct most visible to those who do not share your faith?
Submission to civil authorities is a difficult teaching, especially when the authorities are unjust or act against God’s will. How do you hold together the call to submission with the exception that we must obey God rather than men when they conflict?
Peter’s teaching to household slaves has been misused across history to defend oppression. How should this passage be read in a way that honors Peter’s pastoral intent without endorsing the abuse that has sometimes been justified by appeal to it?
Christ did not retaliate when He suffered. When you experience unjust treatment — whether at work, in your family, in your community — what does it look like for you to entrust yourself to Him who judges justly, rather than returning evil for evil?
Peter says Christ left us an example that we might follow in His steps. What does this mean, practically, for how Christians are to live in a hostile culture? Is this example something we should imitate directly, or is it something more nuanced?
The passage closes with the image of straying sheep returning to the Shepherd. How does it shape your sense of your own suffering to know that you are under the care of the Shepherd, even when circumstances are hard?
Looking Ahead
Next week, Peter continues his treatment of vocation by addressing marriage specifically. His teaching to wives and husbands in 3:1–7 is one of the most delicate passages in the letter, and it requires careful handling in a modern context where questions about marriage and gender are contested. Peter’s instruction points to the ancient virtues of the gentle and quiet spirit, and to the calling of husbands to live with their wives in an understanding way. We will see how this passage applies the broader principles of submission and faithful vocation to the specific sphere of marriage.
Before next session, read 1 Peter 3:1–7 at least twice. Pay attention to the way Peter grounds his teaching — not primarily in social convention but in the example of Sarah, in the inward adornment of the heart, and in the recognition that wives and husbands are heirs together of the grace of life. As with the slavery passage this week, this is pastoral counsel for specific circumstances, and it rewards careful reading.
Closing Prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, who committed no sin and in whose mouth no deceit was found, who when reviled did not revile in return and when suffering did not threaten, teach us to entrust ourselves to the Father who judges justly. Keep us faithful in the ordinary vocations You have given us — in our work, in our families, in our civic life. Where we suffer unjustly, give us the grace to endure without retaliation. Where we are tempted to use freedom as a cover for evil, remind us that we are servants of God. And bring us always to the Shepherd and Overseer of our souls, whose wounds have healed us, and whose keeping will bring us safely home. Amen.