Faithful Christians cannot help but look strange to unbelievers of all sorts—progressive and conservative, urban and rural, young and old. But that doesn’t mean we fundamentally are strange, not from the standpoint of eternity. No, from the perspective of “forever and ever,” the strangest thing of all is this present world of sin, this God-ignoring age. 

You, like me, have probably watched it happen. A friend or family member gets excited about Jesus, comes alive to his gospel, joins his mission. In their zeal, they make a clean cut with former sins. They gladly associate with God’s church. They evangelize unashamed. They don’t mind looking strange.

But then, slowly, like the Israelites in the wilderness, they begin to cast backward glances, as if Egypt were calling them home. They remember parts of that former life; they want some things back. And though they once didn’t mind looking strange, now they do. They feel drawn to the normal they once knew.

To bring the point closer to home, you have probably not only watched it happen but felt it happen. Like me, you have probably passed through seasons where you became a little (or a lot) less strange in this world, where you traded your heavenly clothes for garments less conspicuous. You once were quite strange (and happy to be so); then, over time, you became quietly normal.

Christians are, by definition, “sojourners and exiles” in this world (1 Peter 2:11)—strangers. But we do not always live up to the name. We strangers need help staying strange.

Stay Strange

The apostle Peter was a man familiar with strangeness—familiar too with the difficulty of remaining so. As he surveyed his beloved churches, and as he considered his own soul, he saw an array of forces bent on making Christian strangers normal: the unrelenting passions of our flesh (1 Peter 2:11), a surprised and smirking world (1 Peter 4:4), a prowling devil (1 Peter 5:8).

Among these various forces, Peter seems to have been especially sensitive to the normalizing influence of the world—of friends and neighbors and family and coworkers who look at your life and “are surprised” at what you do and don’t do, what you say and don’t say (1 Peter 4:4). As the King James Version puts it, “They think it strange.” They think you strange.

However strong our identity in Christ, Peter knows that quizzical looks, awkward conversations, and constant cultural messaging can take their toll on Christian integrity. The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange. And for that, you need other strangers.

And so, amid his calls to Christian strangeness in 1 Peter 4, he describes the kind of community that keeps and cultivates that strangeness. Granted, Peter knows that not even the healthiest community can prevent all apostasy. But he also knows that if strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world. Only together do we stay strange.

So, over against the passions and patterns of unbelieving society, Peter mentions four features of a faithfully strange community—churches that offer a home on the journey to heaven.

1. Strange Posture

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

In 1 Peter 4:3, Peter lists the kinds of community sins these Christians once enjoyed and that their neighbors still enjoy: “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” His vision of Christian community in verses 7–11 offers an alternative society, a place where such passions are not only renounced but replaced by God-glorifying, soul-dignifying patterns.

The first of these patterns is love—earnest, sincere, sin-covering love. Sinful communities like those of verse 3 may know some kind of friendship or camaraderie; they do not know this kind of love. Nor did we know this kind of love when we were living in “malice and . . . deceit and hypocrisy and envy and . . . slander” (1 Peter 2:1). Back then, we stirred up sin in others and ourselves. Now, however, we cover it.

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