The more you discover your identity in Christ, the less desire you’ll have to act out the old mindsets you used to act upon, including the ‘acceptance by performance’ mindset you may have thought God expected of you.
Our oneness in Christ is pictured here with Christ as the living cornerstone and us as living stones. Together we make up the spiritual house of God – not a man-made building where blood sacrifices are needed, but a people with one heart who live as a reflection of Christ, the ultimate sacrifice.
We are all God’s chosen people. God doesn’t favor one person over another. My faith in God helps me to see the value in all people, to go beyond the ‘us and them’ mentality. Sadly, we tend to see, or at least this has been my experience, we see many Christians caught in the mindset of ‘us and them’ or ‘right and wrong’ and the focus becomes more about believing the ‘right way’ and therefore trying to make everyone else believe the ‘right way’ in order to be accepted by God. We tend to be the ones who put limits on God’s love. Our lives should be a living, breathing example of the love of God. Our Christian history has some pretty dark stories, some very unloving stories, some very unChristlike stories… ‘believe like us or we’ll kill you’ stories. Those stories are heart wrenching. Those caught up in religion rather than relationship tend to think they need to convert others to their religion. Jesus didn’t come to start a religion. Instead, He showed us how to have a loving relationship with the Father.
What are people reading from your life? What vibes are you giving off? Do people see, hear, and experience love from your life, or judgment? I love verse 12 in The Mirror: The beautiful way in which you conduct yourselves in the company of people who are not familiar with your beliefs, will attract their attention to the resonance of their hearts as they witness for themselves God’s intentions as evidenced in your good works. This will be as clear as daylight to them and will completely disarm the rumors that they have heard about you.
Peter encouraged people to honor those in authority. Live in freedom but don’t use your freedom as a covering for evil. I hear a lot of Christians talk trash about our prime minister. I may not agree with everything our prime minister does but that doesn’t mean I should trash talk him. Remember that at the time Peter wrote this, Nero was emperor. Nero was known to be tyrannical and corrupt and to have tortured and executed Christians as well as others. Peter didn’t encourage people to use their God-given freedom to overthrow the government. He encouraged people to love like Jesus. Remember, Jesus didn’t encourage people to revolt against the government either. He loved even those who tortured and killed Him. Every now and then it’s important to measure ourselves. Are we being motivated by fear, anger, or love?
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