Brooklands Gospel Centre
Dundonald, Northern Ireland
Worthy is the LAMB that was slain
Revelation 5:12
Strangers and Pilgrims
“So then you are no more strangers and pilgrims, but fellow citizens with the saints
and household of God “ -
“These all died in faith….having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims
on the earth” -
In 1678 John Bunyan published his PILGRIMS PROGRESS. Bunyan shared in the intense
persecution of the dissenters under Charles II. For twelve years he was a prisoner
in Bedford gaol because he would not give an assurance to stop preaching the word
of God -
“Blest cross, blest sepulchre, blessed rather be the man who there was put to shame for me’
Being reminded recently of the title of Bunyan's epic PILGRIMS PROGRESS led me to ponder the texts from Ephesians and Hebrews.
The two passages, as often happens in Scripture, appear to be contradictory, but not so as we shall see. The “no more” of our first text must be read in the context of the previous verse 12. “...alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, without hope and without God in the world”. The Apostle is saying, it is no longer like that, there is now hope because of your relationship with God and Christ.
The Hebrews passage saying that they WERE strangers and pilgrims has to do with chapter 13:14 “...for we have not here an abiding city, but we seek one to come”, it is said in the context of an alien world without God.
To be a stranger in the Ephesian context is the idea is that of a homeless wanderer, with no friends, no comfort, no joy, hopeless, aimless and worthless. In their unconverted days, without realising it, they were all these things because they were without God “afar off”. But now all is changed conversion has come. They have been apprehended by God, arrested on the downward path to perdition and endless despair. They have been given the gift of Eternal life and made a new creation in Him. So in the negative sense they are no longer walking aimlessly in the darkness of their sinborn nature, but on the positive side they are as the faithful ones of Hebrews 11; they are strangers in a Godless world that will persecute them even to death.
Not now strangers because THEY were without God, but strangers to the world because
IT is without God. To be a ‘stranger’ is to lose the flavour of the world and to
switch off from things that deprive you of fellowship with God. We are told in Romans
12:1-
We live in days of self assessment, filling in our own forms, truthfully or otherwise, but it is well to remember that the Lord is assessing us in the totality of our relationship with the world and with Him.
Now some thoughts on our PILGRIM character.
It has often been said that ”to travel in hopeful anticipation is better than to arrive”. But no sense of disappointment for the Christian PILGRIM. It is as Hebrews 13 tells us ”we seek a city to come” Abraham “sought for a city whose builder and maker is God” .
The eyes of the Christian pilgrim is not on the route travelled, but on the destination
awaiting -
The Saviour called it “My Father’s house” -
Now finally, let us think briefly on the JOURNEY itself.
It begins when someone awakes from the sleep of spiritual death, from being dead
in sins to being alive in Christ. The pilgrims beginning is not at birth but at their
NEW birth! So we can say that the pilgrimage has to do with RELATIONSHIPS. As the
Apostle John reminds us -
As sons and daughters of God we are to pilgrimage as our Master did. The Apostle
Peter refers to “following his steps” -
DREW CRAIG