As children of God and citizens of Heaven you are living for now in a foreign land as strangers and aliens. This world is not your home. It is not where your citizenship lies. Your citizenship is in Heaven and your true residence is securely established there.
You shouldn’t think it unusual or unexpected that you are being treated as illegals that don’t belong here.
While you are here, remember who you are and why you are here. Be holy – just like your heavenly Father is holy. While “in Rome” don’t act like the Romans.
Instead, live like the citizens of Heaven you really are – representing the social order of your own country – so that the native people of this land will see your example and might be brought to Christ.
This means that you are not to respond to their abuse as they expect: with malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy or slander. It affects how you interact with authority, whether that is government, a master, or a husband and how you treat those over whom you might have authority. Your goal should be to live your lives in such a way that they attract questions about your homeland and provide you with an opportunity to give a reason for the hope that is in you. So be prepared with answers.
…………. Key verses: (2:11-12) “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against your souls. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.“