They Think It Strange That You Don’t Join Them

There is a cost to becoming a Christian that we do not always talk about.

Sometimes obedience to Christ changes not only what you believe but where you go, what you do, what you laugh at, how you spend your time, and what you are willing to participate in. And when that happens, people who once thought they understood you may begin to find you strange.

Peter expected this. Writing to Christians scattered throughout Asia Minor, he reminds them that they had already spent enough of their lives pursuing “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” Then he describes what happened when they stopped:

“With respect to this they are surprised when you do not join them in the same flood of debauchery, and they malign you” (1 Peter 4:4). That sentence could have been written yesterday.

When Refusal Becomes Offensive

Peter does not say that these Christians were following their old friends around condemning them. The conflict arose because they stopped joining them.

That distinction matters. There was a time when they participated. Then Christ changed them. Activities they had once considered normal could no longer be reconciled with belonging to Jesus. Their neighbours were surprised, and surprise eventually became hostility.

Our culture increasingly struggles to understand this kind of Christian non-participation. It is one thing to say, “You are free to live according to your beliefs while I live according to mine.” It is another thing to insist, “Unless you affirm what I am doing, you are harming me.”

That shift puts Christians in an increasingly difficult position. You may genuinely love someone while being unable to celebrate everything that person celebrates. You may treat a colleague with kindness while declining to participate in something that violates your conscience. You may have a friend whose sexual ethics are radically different from yours and nevertheless be a faithful friend. You may respect the dignity of every person while refusing to call good what God calls sin.

Increasingly, however, refusal itself can be interpreted as hostility. Peter says we should not be surprised. They are surprised that you have changed.

“The Time That Is Past Suffices”

But Peter gives Christians no room for smugness. Before describing “them,” he reminds his readers about us: “The time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do” (v. 3).

In other words, Remember where you came from.

The Christian does not stand outside the world pointing at sinners as though sin were somebody else’s problem. We know better. Apart from grace, we belong to the same rebellion.

Some Christians have dramatic conversion stories. They can remember precisely the drinking, sexual immorality, drugs, greed, bitterness, or destructive relationships from which Christ rescued them. Others were raised in Christian homes and spared much of that outward wreckage. But none of us came to Christ because we were naturally better people.

The same grace saved us all.

That should profoundly affect the way we speak about the sins of our neighbours. Biblical conviction should never produce self-righteousness. We can say without embarrassment that something is sinful while simultaneously remembering that Christ came into the world to save sinners like us.

Augustine understood this well. Looking back upon his life before conversion, he famously prayed in his Confessions, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” His former life had been an education in the inability of sinful desire to satisfy. The answer was not merely learning to suppress certain behaviours. Augustine had found a greater object for his loves.

That is what Christianity offers.

More Than Saying No

Peter therefore does not describe conversion merely as ceasing to sin. He says that the Christian no longer lives “for human passions but for the will of God” (v. 2).

That is much richer.

Christianity is not a life constructed around no. Do not get drunk. Do not sleep around. Do not join in idolatry. Do not follow every desire.

There are certainly things to which Christians must say no. But every Christian no exists because of a greater yes.

We have been given a new purpose: the will of God.

Christ has not merely rescued us from our old life. He has called us into a new one. Holiness is not empty deprivation. It is learning to live as human beings were actually created to live.

That is why Peter begins the chapter by pointing us to Jesus: “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking” (v. 1). Christ did not live according to the shifting desires of those around him. He came to do the will of his Father, and obedience led him all the way to the cross.

Following him means that his will now matters more than the approval of the crowd.

When Christianity Looks Strange

Christians should therefore become comfortable with a certain kind of strangeness.

Not manufactured strangeness. We have no biblical mandate to be peculiar merely for the sake of being peculiar. Nor should we confuse rudeness, ignorance, or unnecessary provocation with faithfulness.

But obedience will sometimes make us strange.

A young Christian who believes sex belongs within marriage will seem strange in a culture of casual sex. A husband and wife who receive children as gifts rather than inconveniences may seem strange. A Christian who refuses dishonest business practices may appear foolish. A believer who will not celebrate what Scripture identifies as sexual immorality may be called intolerant. A family that structures its week around the Lord’s Day may seem unnecessarily serious about religion.

So be it.

The church gets into trouble when we become more afraid of appearing strange than of becoming unfaithful.

Peter reminds us why. Those who malign Christians “will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (v. 5).

That is not a sentence Christians should read with glee. Judgment should make us sober, humble, and evangelistically urgent. But it reminds us whose verdict finally matters.

The judgment of our neighbours is temporary.

The judgment of God is not.

So when obedience to Christ makes you strange, resist two temptations. Do not become ashamed and return to the flood. And do not become proud and look down upon those still being carried by it.

Remember where you came from. Remember who rescued you. And remember what you now live for.

“The time that is past suffices.” By the grace of God, we have spent enough of our lives living for human passions. Whatever time remains belongs to the will of God.