In 1 Peter 2:11, the apostle Peter turns the “marvelous light” of God (vv. 9–10) upon the daily lives of the holy and royal priests to whom he writes, addressing them as “sojourners and pilgrims.” They were, of course, sojourners in the lands of their dispersion, as the first verse of the Epistle told us, but this is not what is alluded to here. Every Christian is a sojourner and pilgrim, and we need not be surprised at this, since by the very fact that we are brought into such near and honored relationship with God there must be a corresponding severance from the world. The world is entirely antagonistic to God, and we cannot hold with both at the same time. It must be one or the other. For us it is relationship and communion with God, and hence sojourn and pilgrimage in the world. The world itself began with Cain, who was “a fugitive and a vagabond” (Gen. 4:12). We may summarize the matter thus:

A fugitive is a man who has fled from home. A vagabond is a man who has no home. A sojourner is a man who is absent from home. A pilgrim is a man who is on his way home.

The actual presence of God is the true home of our souls, and we are disconnected from the world system so as to be sojourners in it, though left in it for a time to show forth the excellencies of God. Still, we do not wander aimlessly, for we are pilgrims also, and this means that we have an objective before us, a fixed point of destiny to which we make our way.