Resident Aliens

Today's Scripture

A letter from Peter, a letter from Jeremiah, and a prayer from Jesus — all about the same posture.

1 Peter 2:11-12 — "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."

Jeremiah 29:7 — "But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare."

John 17:15-16 — "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world."

The Big Idea

The early Christians did not change the Roman world by seizing power or by hiding from it. They lived inside it as "resident aliens" — fully present, noticeably different, surprisingly kind. They joined the life of their cities and quietly refused the cruelty of their cities, and Rome could not look away. That double posture is still the church's job description.

Reflection

A letter about some very strange people

Sometime in the second or third century, an anonymous Christian wrote a letter to a curious outsider named Diognetus, trying to explain what kind of people these Christians were. The letter admits the strange part right away: you cannot pick Christians out by their country, food, or accent. They are ordinary — and then again, not ordinary at all:

"They dwell in their own countries, but simply as sojourners. As citizens, they share in all things with others, and yet endure all things as if foreigners. Every foreign land is to them as their native country, and every land of their birth as a land of strangers." — The Epistle to Diognetus

A "sojourner" is a temporary resident — someone living in a place that is not finally home. The letter says Christians are at home everywhere and fully at home nowhere. They marry, work, pay taxes, obey the laws. And yet they will not worship the emperor, will not attend the killing games in the arena, and will not abandon their unwanted babies — because Romans did abandon babies, leaving newborns they didn't want outside to die. Christians went out and picked those babies up and raised them.

The letter then reaches for a daring image:

"To sum up all in one word — what the soul is in the body, that are Christians in the world." — The Epistle to Diognetus

The soul lives in every part of the body but is not the body. It is invisible, often resented — and the body cannot live without it. That, says the letter, is the church in the world: scattered through every street of the empire, quietly keeping the whole thing alive.

Not a bunker, not a blender

How do you actually live like that? Two easier options were always available, and the early church refused both.

Option one is the bunker: pull out, protect yourselves, let the pagan city rot. But God had already closed that door centuries earlier. When Israel was deported to Babylon — the most hostile city imaginable — Jeremiah delivered shocking instructions. Jeremiah 29:5-7 — "Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters... But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare." Plant gardens in Babylon. Pray for Babylon. Want Babylon to flourish.

Jesus shut the bunker door even more firmly in his last long prayer, the night before he died. John 17:15-18 — "I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world... As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world." Read that slowly: Jesus explicitly does not pray for our evacuation. He prays for our protection on assignment. Not out of; into. The church is a sent people, not a sheltered one.

Option two is the blender: stay in the city and dissolve into it, until nobody can tell you apart. Peter blocks that exit in today's passage — Christians are to live as "sojourners and exiles," visibly honorable, noticeably other (1 Peter 2:11-12). The early believers found the balance in a sentence of Jesus that still startles. Matthew 22:21 — "Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." Pay the tax; refuse the incense. Caesar can have his coin. He cannot have your worship.

Peter compressed the whole civics lesson into four short commands. 1 Peter 2:17 — "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." Notice the verbs are ranked: the emperor gets honor — real honor, even from people he persecutes — but only God gets fear. Think of the new kid at school who joins the team, shows up to everything, learns everyone's name — and simply will not cheat, mock, or pile on when the group does. Present at everything, owned by Someone else. That was the church in Rome.

The people who loved the leftovers

What did this look like on an ordinary Tuesday in the empire? Mostly, it looked like love aimed at the people Rome had thrown away.

When plagues swept the cities in the second and third centuries, anyone who could afford to leave left — doctors and officials first. Christians stayed and nursed the sick, including their pagan neighbors, and many caught the disease and died doing it. Historians who study the period say this one habit, repeated through two great epidemics, did more to grow the church than any sermon. They ransomed prisoners, fed widows, and buried strangers whose bodies had been left in the streets, because a faith that says "the Word became flesh" cannot treat any body as trash. Tertullian reported how the watching world reacted:

"'See,' they say, 'how they love one another!'" — Tertullian, Apology

That was not a compliment from a friend. It was the baffled comment of outsiders. Two hundred years later, the church received an even stranger testimonial. The emperor Julian — history calls him "the Apostate" because he tried to roll the empire back to paganism — wrote to a pagan priest complaining that his revival was failing. His explanation is astonishing:

"The impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well." — Emperor Julian, Letter to Arsacius

"Galilaeans" was Julian's sneer-word for Christians. Read it again: the church's fiercest enemy admitted that Christians out-loved paganism on its own streets. He could fight their doctrine. He had no answer for their casseroles.

None of this was accidental. It was obedience to plain commands. Galatians 6:9-10 — "And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith." Good done to everyone — that little word is the whole strategy. And behind it stands Jesus' job description for his people. Matthew 5:14-16 — "You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden... let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven."

John Stott, the great London pastor, drew the uncomfortable modern conclusion. Salt and light only have one job each — so when a society goes dark and rotten, the first question is not about the society:

"We should not ask, 'What is wrong with the world?' for that diagnosis has already been given. Rather, we should ask, 'What has happened to the salt and light?'" — John Stott, The Message of the Sermon on the Mount

The Sojourner behind the sojourners

Where did ordinary people get the strength to live this way — generous to enemies, calm under slander, unafraid of plague? Not from trying harder. From watching their Lord.

Because the gospel is the story of the ultimate Resident Alien. The Son of God left his true country and moved into ours. He shared everything — our meals, our taxes, our funerals — and remained perfectly different, "not of the world." He loved the people his world threw away: lepers, tax collectors, foreigners, the dying. And at the end, the city he came to save handed him over to Caesar's cross. He was treated as the foreigner so that we, "sojourners and exiles," could be treated as family forever. The early Christians did not nurse plague victims to earn that love. They did it because they already had it, and it was spilling over.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from a Nazi prison cell where his own faithfulness had landed him, defined the church in one line:

"The Church is the Church only when it exists for others." — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

That is not a slogan about being nice. It is the family resemblance — a community shaped like its self-giving Lord. Paul says such a community glows in the dark. Philippians 2:14-15 — "Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world."

And in case anyone worries that heavenly citizenship makes people useless on earth, C.S. Lewis checked the record:

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next." — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

The early church proved it first. They were accused of disloyalty to the empire — and they quietly became the best thing in it.

Going Deeper

Do one "Diognetus deed" today: a concrete act of service for someone outside your circle, done without explaining yourself or posting about it. Carry something. Cover a small cost. Write the encouraging note. Visit, text, or call someone the crowd has moved past. The early Christians' reputation was built from thousands of unrecorded kindnesses exactly that size. Let yours join the pile — and let God decide who notices.