"Be careful to live properly among your unbelieving neighbors.
Then even if they accuse you of doing
wrong, they will see your honorable behavior, and
they will give honor to God when he judges the world."
-1Peter 2:12
These verses are talking about Christ being the 'living' cornerstone of God's temple, and we are living stones in God's temple. We are also royal priests, and a holy nation, and God's possession as He has called us out of Darkness and into light.
Peter continues a theme that we are foreigners in this world, and in these verses, he lifts up the believer, letting us know that we belong to a different leader, different nation. What does this do to any sense of nationalism that we may have for our own country? I think this doesn't eliminate our nationalism, or pride we have in our earthly nation, but this isn't our home. It's much like when a person becomes a citizen of another country, their loyalties and love change to the new country. Thousands of people come to Canada because they have to flee their old country because of threats to them, or the living conditions, but immigration isn't so easy, if you want to become a citizen of Canada, you have to show that you can hold down a job, do something to be productive to Canada. It's the same way in a sense when we become a Christian. We still love our earthly country, but our allegence is to God first, and when we are living for God, we need to be active ... to know that we are holy priests, that we are living stones of God's temple, that what we do in this world should reflect our citizenship with God.
The verse on top of this page is interesting, that our lifestyle, how we live not only gives praise to God in judgement, but the testimony of the people around us about us will give honor to God when he judges the world. This could man that they will accept Christ because of our testimony also. It just emphasizes that our lifestyle needs to reflect God's work in us.
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