Sojourners and Exiles? (1 Peter 2:11)

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When God raises someone who was dead in their sins to life, He gifts them with a new heart, a living heart! At that moment, the affiliation of the believer's soul is forever changed. As the redeemed sinner begins to walk with God and learn about who God is, this living heart causes the believer to understand that the earth they have always known as their home is no longer home for them. They begin to long for a new place, a place where they truly do belong. 

God has recreated them from a dead person to one who is alive; therefore, a dead earth cannot be their home. They have been given eternal life and require an  eternal home to live in. Humans are indeed made for the earth, and the earth for humans; however, since the fall, spiritually dead people have been residing on a dying and decaying earth, awaiting the end of their lives or the end of the earth. 

Jesus understood that the people He was going to call to Himself could not live forever on a dying earth. That is why He said He was going to prepare a new place for His people. Those who die cannot inhabit the lands which are deathless, nor can those who are deathless inhabit the lands that die. Christ's church would require a new earth to live out their new lives in fellowship with their Savior. 

This is the idea that Peter was driving at when he called the believers “sojourners and exiles.” Believers cannot go back to paradise lost, but through the work of Jesus Christ in the resurrection of their souls and, eventually, bodies to eternal life, believers will go forward into the new paradise. One designed for the never-ending pursuit of life and the worship of God.

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