Faithful Christian Life as Sojourners and Exiles

An Essay Response to Stephen O. Presley’s,  Cultural Sanctification,

by David VanDrunen

Many Christians today feel the weight of increased cultural hostility toward their most valued convictions and wonder how to respond. As Stephen Presley notes in his book, Cultural Sanctification, they’re often tempted to move in one of two opposite, extreme directions. On one side is some version of quietism. This is the decision to give up cultural engagement as far as feasible and to retreat into insular Christian communities where believers can cultivate faithfulness apart from non-Christian influence. On the other side is some version of triumphalism. This is the quest for Christian dominance in the world, achieved at least in part through political power. It seeks to realize the kingdom of Christ in present political communities. Presley points his readers away from both of these extreme positions and toward a middle way evident in the early church.

I concur with Presley’s rejection of quietism and triumphalism and with his search for a middle path. One way I find helpful to describe this path is through the biblical ideas of sojourning and exile. First Peter 2:11 (ESV) says explicitly that this is our identity as Christians in the present world: “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.” These are complementary though not identical, concepts, both of them drawn from the Old Testament. It’s worth taking a moment to explore what they mean.

Being a sojourner implies that a person is on the move. In the Old Testament, Abraham was the paradigmatic sojourner. Genesis often notes that Abraham and his family sojourned here or there (e.g., Gen 12:10; 20:1). They lived in tents (Heb 11:9), not in permanent homes. God had promised Abraham and his descendants a land, but they had not yet taken possession of it. So they sojourned in other people’s cities, never fully at home wherever they lived. In comparison, being in exile implies that a person has a homeland but has been banished from it. Like sojourners, exiles are unsettled. They live in one place but their hearts pine for another. In the Old Testament, the paradigmatic exiles were the Judeans whom King Nebuchadnezzar took into exile in Babylon. They lived in a foreign city but they identified with another, namely, with the holy city of Jerusalem. 

It’s not difficult to see how these images of sojourner and exile show New Testament Christians a middle way between quietism and triumphalism. Think for a moment, first, about the stories of Abraham in Genesis. On the one hand, Abraham was a stranger in the places where he sojourned, but he participated in various facets of their cultural life. Abraham and his servants entered a military alliance with some local kings (Gen 14). He engaged in a judicial proceeding to resolve a dispute with another local authority (Gen 20). He made a real-estate deal with Hittites to acquire a place to bury his wife Sarah (Gen 23). Abraham even made a covenant—what we might call a political treaty—to live in peace with a local ruler (Gen 21). This is hardly the portrait of a quietist. On the other hand, Abraham was no triumphalist either. Genesis nowhere describes him as attempting to gain political power or to remake a city after his own image. Abraham expected his sojourning days to end not by taking over an earthly territory but, as the New Testament book of Hebrews explains, by inheriting a heavenly city (11:10, 13-16).

Second, consider the case of the Judean exiles in Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar’s destruction of Jerusalem was a traumatic event for God’s people. How were they to live now that they were in a foreign land rather than in their own Promised Land? God instructed them through a letter from the prophet Jeremiah, telling them to settle down, build houses, plant gardens, get married, and have children (Jer 29:5-6). He even added that they should pray for their new city and seek its peace (29:7). This too was no recipe for quietism. But this same letter also warned these exiles not to forget their true home. After seventy years, God would bring them back to Jerusalem (29:10-14). This left no place for triumphalism. These exiles were not to try to turn Babylon into a new Jerusalem. The real Jerusalem was their home and God warned them not to set their affections on any other city, even if it was their temporary home. The stories about Daniel and his three friends in the book of Daniel confirm such conclusions. They were educated in Babylonian schools (Dan 1:3-4), entered the civil service (1:5, 19), and became high officials in the Babylonian and later Persian courts (Dan 2-6). But they never tried to turn Babylon into a holy city. In fact, Daniel 9 recounts how Daniel, apparently rereading the letter of Jeremiah 29, begged God to fulfill his promise to bring his people back to Jerusalem after seventy years. If anyone had it good in exile and had a decent shot at remaking Babylon into a new Jerusalem, it was Daniel. But he was eager to leave it all behind for the sake of the real Jerusalem, his true homeland.

And so it is that new-covenant Christians are sojourners and exiles—not because they move around a lot (although some do) or because they’ve been banished from their native land (although some have), but because heaven is where their ultimate citizenship lies (Phil 3:20) and thus they have no lasting city on earth (Heb 13:14). They don’t try to leave the world, although that entails associating with unrighteous people (1 Cor 5:9-10). They are in the world but not of it (John 17:14-16).

But then how, exactly, should Christian sojourners and exiles engage their societies? One way is evangelistically. That is, the church should preach the gospel to all who will hear and seek to make new disciples of Christ. Christ enshrined this rule in the so-called Great Commission of Matthew 28:19-20. This missionary mandate actually distinguishes new-covenant Christians from Abraham and the Judean exiles in Babylon. God never gave his Old Testament people such a commission. But one aspect of Christians’ responsibility as sojourners and exiles is to call others to forsake ultimate allegiance to earthly homelands and to become sojourners and exiles like them, for the sake of a heavenly homeland.

But Christian sojourners and exiles need to engage non-Christians in other ways as well. Christians have many interests in common with all their neighbors. They share interests, for example, in economic prosperity, in peaceful communities, and in just legal systems. Whether or not their neighbors become Christians too, Christians should want them to work hard, avoid violence, and support just causes. But how is it possible to do so with those who don’t embrace the same ultimate values, accord Scripture any authority, or honor Christ’s church?

An important traditional Christian answer points to natural law (The literature on natural law is vast, but for my own basic introduction to it, see David VanDrunen, Natural Law: A Short Companion). Natural law refers to the law of God made known through the created order. As my own Reformed tradition would put it, God reveals himself and his law not only through special revelation (as preserved in Scripture) but also through natural revelation. Romans 1 explains: God’s existence and attributes “have been clearly perceived…in the things that have been made,” which leaves all people “without excuse” (1:20). This isn’t mere theoretical possibility of knowing God and his law, for people actually know God (1:21) and know that those who pursue wicked ways deserve God’s righteous judgment (1:32)—although sinners also foolishly suppress this knowledge and become “futile in their thinking (1:21-22).

Natural law is thus a revelation of his law that God gives to Christians and non-Christians alike. Natural law is by no means a magical instrument for building moral consensus across religious lines. Sinful people are prone to resist God’s law however they learn it. It would be delusional to think that appeals to natural law might produce some utopian social order. Yet as sojourners and exiles, Christians have much more modest aims anyway. The New Testament makes clear that this world will remain a more or less hostile place for Christians. Like the Judean exiles in Babylon, Christian exiles scattered across the globe should have no illusions or aspirations about turning their cities of residence into a new Jerusalem. Yet also like them, we seek the peace of our commonwealths and pray for our civil authorities (cf. Jer 29:7). Such prayers have a relatively modest aim: that “we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way” (1 Tim 2:1-2). This accords with the apostle Paul’s exhortation elsewhere, “if possible,” to “live peaceably with all” “so far as it depends on you” (Rom 12:18).

As Christians seek as peaceful and just a co-existence with their non-Christian neighbors as possible, natural law is an indispensable tool. Christians need not refer to “natural law” as they engage these neighbors in matters of common concern. In fact, that may be more distracting than helpful. But confident of the reality and power of God’s natural revelation, Christians have many opportunities to prick the consciences of their neighbors. Through God’s common, preservative grace, non-Christians remain divine image-bearers (Gen 9:6). The law written on the heart provokes their consciences both to accuse and excuse (Rom 2:15). Despite the ravages of sin, knowledge of and a certain attraction to truth, beauty, and justice remain in fallen humanity.

Consider the story of Abraham again (see Gen 20). At one point he “sojourned in Gerar.” Fearful of the harm this city might do on account of his wife, he asked her to say she was his sister. Armed with this information, the local king, Abimelech, took her into his harem. But when he learned who Sarah really was, Abimelech confronted Abraham and accused him of doing “things that ought not to be done.” This is quite remarkable. The pagan king accused Abraham, God’s special covenant partner (see Gen 15; 17), of wrongdoing that anybody can recognize. There are some things that human beings simply shouldn’t do to each other! And when Abraham attempted a halfhearted defense of himself, he said that he thought there was no “fear of God in this place.” The implication? Abraham admitted he was wrong: there was a fear of God in this pagan city. Even if its citizens lacked faith in Abraham’s covenant Lord, they retained some respect for a power higher than themselves and it restrained their immoral behavior (But I wish to emphasize that it didn’t restrain all sin. Civil officials taking unmarried women into harems is also terrible. But Gerar’s apparent respect for marriage is hardly a small thing.). Of course, examples of this lingering testimony of God’s natural law among people across cultures and religions is all around us. Amidst much evil, a variety of humans far and near take care of their children, are kind to their neighbors, run productive businesses, and stand up for justice even at personal cost.

How to engage our neighbors through the moral witness of natural law is a big and difficult question. God’s natural revelation is vast and rich, and human experience is varied and complex, so we can surely be creative and flexible in utilizing it. Different circumstances may call for different sorts of appeals. Developing sophisticated philosophical arguments to support controversial moral convictions may have a place, but this is far from the only option, and probably rarely the best. The world is full of ordinary evidence that living in accord with the natural moral order promotes peace and prosperity far better than resisting it. Christian sojourners and exiles shouldn’t expect unmitigated success in pointing to this evidence, but neither should they despair of modest victories as wait for their ultimate hope, the revelation of the new creation at Christ’s return.

David VanDrunen (J.D., Ph.D.) is the Robert B. Strimple Professor of Systematic Theology and Christian Ethics at Westminster Seminary California.