His son, Jehoiakim was twenty-five when he became king and he reigned for eleven years. During that time the Lord spoke to Jeremiah and said, “Take a scroll and write on it all the words I have spoken to you concerning Israel, Judah and all the other nations from the time I began speaking to you in the reign of Josiah till now. Perhaps when the people of Judah hear about every disaster I plan to inflict on them, each of them will turn from his wicked way; then I will forgive their wickedness and their sin.” Jeremiah did just that and when Jehoiakim heard about it he sent one of his people to get the scroll and read it to him. “It was the ninth month and the king was sitting in the winter apartment with a fire burning in the fire pot in front of him. Whenever Jehudi had read three or four columns of the scroll, the king cut them off with a scribe’s knife and threw them into the fire pot, until the entire scroll was burned in the fire. The king and all his attendants who heard all these words showed no fear, nor did they tear their clothes.”

Two kings. Father and son. Two totally different responses to the word of the Lord. I only tell these accounts because, like them, we always have a choice when we hear the word of the Lord. What will our response be to what we hear? We can either obey or simply edit out what is unpleasant. In some ways, Peter is giving us that same choice. How will we respond?

1.  So, he begins this chapter to the “strangers and aliens” with how they are to treat each other. While he says “rid yourselves” or “put away” I think he also had in mind what we replace or put on instead. It’s not enough to rid ourselves of things or to think that we can be holy by eliminating as much as possible from our lives. We have to also add things to our life and that is how I want us to look at this list. What are the things we need to put off?

Malice – That is all unkindness and assuming the worst about people. It is a simmering anger about people that controls us and makes us cynical and critical. It is being mean-spirited. Instead, we are to put on thoughtfulness and kindness that helps us understand people and their weaknesses. We don’t live with anger and resentment but with compassion.

Guile – That is lying in wait for people to slip up. It is when we are anxious for them to make a mistake so we can leap on it. The word means “entrapment” or “ambush”. It is the way sharks hunt. They wait until your back is turned and they attack you from behind. Instead, we are to put on honesty, frankness, telling the truth in love.

Hypocrisy – It’s wearing a mask and not being what you seem. People sense it when we are two-faced and not true to ourselves. Instead, put on trustworthiness and integrity. “What you see is what you get.”

Envy – It’s wanting more than you have but it is personal. It is wanting what someone else has and often just because it is theirs. We never have enough when we see what others have. We are comparing ourselves to others and coming up short. Instead, the opposite of envy is confidence. Whatever we have is enough. We are grateful.

Detraction – We cannot stand to see others in the limelight. We are jealous when they are recognized and so we make sure we point out their foibles and flaws. We look for imperfections and reasons to believe their success is the result of things being fixed in their favor. Instead, we are to put on finding strengths and commending people. We are to congratulate and encourage those who have success.

2.  These are the character qualities of living stones used to build the church and their opposites are what destroy fellowship and trust. As we can see, none of these things are about our own personal development but, instead, how we are to live in harmony with other. God is not interested in a collection of individual stones in glass cases. He is building a Church with those stones. He is shaping each of those stones to fit into a whole of which we are a part.

This is why we sometimes misuse the word “Saint” as if it refers to the unique qualities of an extraordinary individual. The word “Saint” is used 62 times in the New Testament and only once in the singular form – and even there it is implied to refer to the whole. Each living stone is a saint and to even think of a saint outside the context of the group is a contradiction. There are no isolated saints.

3.  Peter uses many names to describe these strangers and aliens. Why? Because they were once people without names or without any identity. They were people in the darkness with no purpose or meaning in their lives. Paul says it one way in 1 Corinthians, “Brothers, think of what you were when you were called. Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are…” That is who these early Christians were and yet they were being told they were now royalty, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, the bride of Christ. How do you move people from being dregs to being rulers? That was the challenge of the apostles, wasn’t it. It was similar to the challenge Baron Von Steuben faced when he first confronted the ragtag armies of George Washington. How do you turn farmers into a fighting force? He did. He did not start with crack troops but with “foolish things of the world” and so it is with God and us. He is turning us into what we could never imagine – even now when we are satisfied with what we are.

We are royalty in disguise who are being fitted for purposes we often cannot see. It is one of the temptations of growing older, frankly. It’s easy to think you have come as far as you can and now it is a matter of holding on to what you have or simply maintaining. You don’t think about growth or change. But, God is not satisfied with that. As Paul says in Philippians, “He who began a good work in you will carry it to completion.” That work is never finished in our lifetime and every stage is a platform for the next phase of growth. Is that what you are thinking about your life right now?

That “good work” is growing because we have a royal purpose. I was reading in Business Insider about how young royalty are being prepared to take over the thrones of their countries and it was discouraging. Instead of being given challenging assignments many of them talked about their hobbies and interests. They described their live of fashion, travel, fine dining, sports, films, cars, and even becoming expert camel riders. Yet, there was no responsibility – only a royal lifestyle. That is not our case. We are being prepared for extraordinary roles. Remember what Jesus said to the disciples when they were arguing about who was the greatest among them? He said that it is the servant of all who is the greatest of all. He went on to say, “You are those who have stood by me in my trials. And I confer on you a kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Heaven has responsibilities. Heaven has work for us to do. This is a staging area for what we will be and what we choose to put on in this life is how we prepare for that “real” life. It is how we become, in the words of C.S. Lewis, solid people. That is the work that has begun – our being changed from weightless and insubstantial people into people of weight and substance.

Here is how he describes it in the first part of “The Great Divorce.” The bus has just arrived in Heaven.

“At first, of course, my attention was caught by my fellow-passengers, who were still grouped about in the neighbourhood of the omnibus, though beginning, some of them, to walk forward into the landscape with hesitating steps. I gasped when I saw them. Now that they were in the light, they were transparent-fully transparent when they stood between me and it, smudgy and imperfectly opaque when they stood in the shadow of some tree. They were in fact ghosts: man-shaped stains on the brightness of that air. One could attend to them or ignore them at will as you do with the dirt on a window pane. I noticed that the grass did not bend under their feet: even the dew drops were not disturbed.

Then some re-adjustment of the mind or some focusing of my eyes took place, and I saw the whole phenomenon the other way round. The men were as they always had been; as all the men I had known had been perhaps. It was the light, the grass, the trees that were different; made of some different substance, so much solider than things in our country that men were ghosts by comparison. Moved by a sudden thought, I bent down and tried to pluck a daisy which was growing at my feet. The stalk wouldn’t break. I tried to twist it, but it wouldn’t twist. I tugged till the sweat stood out on my forehead and I had lost most of the skin off my hands. The little flower was hard, not like wood or even like iron, but like diamond. There was a leaf-a young tender beech- leaf, lying in the grass beside it. I tried to pick the leaf up: my heart almost cracked with the effort, and I believe I did just raise it. But I had to let it go at once; it was heavier than a sack of coal. As I stood, recovering my breath with great gasps and looking down at the daisy, I noticed that I could see the grass not only between my feet but through them. I also was a phantom.”

We make a great mistake when we think the New Testament writers were focused only on how to have a better life now. We make the same mistake as teachers and pastors when we try to shoehorn eternity into the present and take our eyes off what is to come but is not yet. Our purpose is in the end not to have a royal lifestyle but to have royal responsibility. Our purpose is, as Peter says, to live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us. All of creation – pagan and believing – will stand and applaud – just as we do now for Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus. All of creation – in heaven and on earth and under the earth – will bow at the name of Jesus and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.

And that is only the beginning.