The apostle Peter, inspired by the Spirit, wrote his first letter to Christians scattered throughout modern-day Turkey who were experiencing hardships for the sake of Christ. They lived in a world full of gods and when they confessed Christ as Lord it meant stepping outside of their culture. As God's chosen people, they were living in a world that was not (yet) their home. That's why Peter called them "exiles" and "sojourners" (1:2, 2:11). But he also encouraged them with the reality that, although the experience of exile was difficult, they had been born again "to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1:4). He directed their hearts to the "eternal glory in Christ" (5:10) to which they had been called.
We live in an increasingly post-Christian, secular age that looks ever more like the first-century world, and so we also feel ever more like the exiles we've always been. These expositions of First Peter, therefore, seek to encourage twenty-first-century Christians with the same good news: although we are sojourners called to suffer for the sake of Christ, the resurrection of Christ has secured our glorious future so that we can be characterized by a living hope while we wait for "the revelation of Jesus Christ" (1:7).
