I HAVEN’T DONE a lot of international travel, nor do I particularly relish the long, cramped hours in a plane. But I’ve enjoyed the privilege of being invited to speak or teach in places like Sweden, Singapore, and France. Each time, it’s an adventure, exploring the local culture and scenery.

Unfortunately, I only speak English. That wasn’t a problem in either Sweden or Singapore; I was able to communicate easily with everyone I met. But France was another story. The conference I was attending was in a smaller village in the south of France, and I was sometimes forced to limp along with whatever I could remember of my high school French. Conversations that I would normally have taken for granted — buying a pastry, telling a cab driver where I wanted to go — became stilted and awkward. Those interactions brought back the reality of my situation: I’m not at home.

But for us as Christians, what is home?

Back in college, the students in our campus ministry would gather every Wednesday night for Bible study. The meeting always began with praise songs to the accompaniment of a guitar or two. One of the songs we sang most often was “This World is Not My Home,” a rollicking, country-inflected tune: This world is not my home, I’m just a-passin’ through / My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue / The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door / And I can’t feel at home in this world anymore. We sang it in two-part harmony, with energy and enthusiasm.

But did we really mean what we were singing?

College isn’t just about stuffing our heads full of knowledge. It’s about trying to find our place in the world, finding our path through it. Yes, we learn information, but also values, perspectives, and priorities about what counts as “treasure” and what doesn’t. And these jumble together with what we’ve already learned in every place we’ve called home. The reality is that even when we sing “I can’t feel at home in this world anymore,” we are often trying to do just that: to make ourselves a home in the world, not out of it.

SO MUCH OF what we read in 1 John seems to echo themes already found in his gospel. As we’ve seen, this is particularly true of the so-called Upper Room Discourse, Jesus’ final words of wisdom to his disciples before his arrest. In the last part of that discourse, Jesus prays aloud for these men, and much of that prayer is directly relevant to John’s letter.

Much to their distress, he had already told them that he was leaving to go back to the Father. He says it again in the prayer: “I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you” (John 17:11, NIV). Because they must remain in the world without him, he prays that the Father would protect them:

I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. (vss. 14-16)

Jesus, the light of the world, came into a world that did not recognize him for who he was. But though he was born in the world, he was born of the Holy Spirit, and therefore never of the world, never defined by its values, priorities, or parameters.

Something similar could be said of his men, and by extension, of us. We speak so easily of Christians being “born again,” as if the words were nothing but a metaphor for “saved.” But the description traces back to Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus. Jesus tells him that anyone who wants to see God’s kingdom has to be born again. Confused, Nicodemus wonders how this can be: surely no one can climb back into their mother’s womb? Jesus gently chides him for not understanding as he explains further:

Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. (John 3:5-6)

Believers who are born of the Spirit are not of this world. Yes, we are in the world. Yes, we were birthed by our mothers. Yes, we have bodies. But our truest identity has to do with more than just our fleshly, bodily existence in this fallen world. We are not of the world any more than Jesus was of the world.

At least, that’s the theory.

Thus, in his letter, John reminds believers that so many of the things we take for granted — our desires, our goals, our sense of where our worth and identity reside — are “not from the Father but from the world” (1 John 2:16). As he writes, I imagine him having the words of Jesus’ prayer still ringing in his ears. We are in the world, but not of the world. We live in the world, but as it stands, it is not our true and final home, and we are not defined by its desires.

That’s not an excuse, of course, to withdraw from the world physically or socially, to be “so heavenly minded” that we’re “no earthly good.” Jesus’ own living example of compassion even to the outcasts of society should discourage that impulse. But what other impulses do we take for granted, and where do they come from? We need to keep asking ourselves that question, as we strive toward our real home.