Are We Living in a Time of Exile?

If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile.

What is the time of our exile?  Considering when Peter is speaking.  It is the first generation after the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.  Jesus' return is considered to be imminent, quite literally any day.  There seems to be an expectation that this return is somehow hinged to how the message of Jesus will be spread, that, when it hits ‘everyone’, this is a trigger for Jesus’ return.  It is implicit to the message.

The idea of ‘exile’ is central to the mentality of the Jewish faith.  For seventy years, the Israelites were carried into exile in Babylon.  That was the end of Israelite independence.  Under the Roman occupation, to use this word is a deliberate buzz word by Peter to think back to an unpleasant time.

Peter is assuming his readers know that they are in an unpleasant time (his immediate readers, not so much us).  In his theological introduction (through verse 12), there is this immediate sense, that the gifts of Jesus were coming at the end of time, and that end of time was not far away.  Thus, the time until then, Peter’s present, was an exile, not yet arrived at the time of perfection, but looking forward to it.

We have lived in this exile now for two thousand years.  We have learned now not only to survive, but to thrive in this exile.  I am of a mind that the gifts of God, given through Jesus, outlined by Peter, are given to be fulfilled in our lifetimes.