**Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth** **Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones** “Beloved,…

**Strangers and Pilgrims on the Earth**

**Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones**

“Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul” (1 Peter 2:11).

The Christian is referred to as a stranger, a pilgrim only passing through this temporary world. Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, and the people of faith in the Old Testament “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). What are the main characteristics of a Christian pilgrim?

1. By becoming a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), the Christian pilgrim does not live for the things of this temporary world. His citizenship is in heaven where Christ is. He knows that he is only passing through this world as a stranger on his way to his heavenly eternal abode.

2. The Christian pilgrim seeks to abstain from worldliness in thought, dress, and deeds. He does not want to become attached to the fleeting pleasures and lusts of this world, but to be as completely different from it as Christ.

3. The Christian pilgrim does not seek to lay down any lasting foundations of value in this doomed world, but seeks to be a steward of His Lord’s money and time while travelling through this world of vanity and sin, and store up his treasures in heaven.

4. The Christian pilgrim desires to tell the people of the world “to flee from the wrath to come”, to preach repentance towards God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, so that many of the captives of the prince of this world might be delivered and translated into the kingdom of Christ and of light, and thereby be his travelling companion to the Celestial City.

5. The Christian pilgrim is willing to endure all kinds of persecutions and sufferings in order to be Christ’s ambassador while passing through this world whose outlook is anti-God and anti-Christ.

6. The Christian pilgrim seeks to teach, exhort, and encourage all Christians that he meets during his earthly pilgrimage to abstain from the worldly lusts, temptations, and vanities, and to give their lives in following and serving Christ on this narrow road that leads to eternal life.