Your fundamental identity is not primarily that people around you reject you as a Christian

or cast your name out or isolate you or ostracize you or label you. That's not your fundamental

meaning in life. So what is our fundamental meaning in life? Answering that question correctly

is critical for living as a Christian in a hostile culture. In this episode of light and

truth, John Piper considers our identity as elect exiles from 1 Peter 1, 1 and 2. This sermon

was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on September 26, 1993.

The first word, the very first word that Peter uses to identify the believers scattered throughout

the regions of Asian, Bethinian, Cappadocia, and Pontus is the word elect. Now you can't see that

if you have a new American standard Bible or if you have a King James Bible or if you have a revised

standard Bible, you can see it if you have a new international version. The reason you can't see

it is because the translators are very eager to take the word elect or chosen and move it from

its first place down either at the end or at the beginning of verse 2. End of verse 1 or

beginning of verse 2 because they want to show that it is connected directly to the three phrases

in verse 2 which tell us three things about our election. We are elect according to the four

knowledge of God. We are elect by the sanctifying work of the Spirit. We are elect to obey Jesus

Christ and be sprinkled with His blood. Those three things define election. They tell us about the

origin of our election in the four knowledge of God. They tell us about the experience of election

in the sanctifying work of the Spirit and they tell us about the goal or the purpose of election,

namely that we might obey Jesus. It's so crucial to see the connection between election

and those three things in verse 2 that most translators take the word from its

position at the beginning and move it to the end of verse 1 or put it at the beginning of verse 2.

And that's helpful. You might miss the connection if they didn't do that, but where there is gain,

...