Good Citizenship Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Good Citizenship-------------------------- Date: 8/5/2001 Keyword: "citizen" Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: 1 Peter 2:11-12* 11. Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts, which wage war against the soul. 12. Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation. Questions 1. How are we to view our relationship to "fleshly lusts" (verse 11)?   2. What do these fleshly lusts do (again, verse 11)?   3. What will be the result when unbelievers view the good behavior of Christians (verse 12)?   Practical help Each of us is a citizen of a country, and most of us are happy to claim that country as our home. What happens when we visit another country? Do we automatically adopt the lifestyles and customs of that foreign country? The answer most of us would give is "maybe, maybe not." Good answer! If the custom in question in the foreign land does no damage to our conscience or scruples, we can adopt the practice with no problem. However, if the foreign custom violates the code of our homeland, we will abstain from that practice, even if it means looking a bit like a fish out of water in a new land. The Christian is an alien on planet earth, because his (or her) citizenship is in Heaven! The Apostle Peter’s remark about our being "aliens and strangers" is true. And the two verses quoted above give two excellent pieces of ammunition to any Christian seeking to be free from the grip of porn. First, citizens of Heaven should not feed "fleshly lusts" by consuming smut. Such a practice doesn’t reflect the priorities or the values of Heaven, our true home. Second, when Christians don’t feed fleshly lusts but live free from that shackling bondage, they entice observing unbelievers to transfer their citizenship from this world to an infinitely and eternally better home. eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 2001 by eXXit *"Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE®, © Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission."