A RESIDENT ALIEN, a sojourner — para, 'beside', + epidēmos, 'staying in a place'; one who lives abroad only for a time, a stranger with no citizenship where he resides. ⚠ It is the keynote of 1 Peter, which addresses believers as 'chosen parepidēmoi of the Dispersion' (1:1) and 'strangers and parepidēmoi' again at 2:11: to be a Christian is to live as a temporary resident in a world that is not home, bound for an inheritance 'kept in the heavens' (1:4). The Greek Old Testament used it of Abraham, 'a stranger and sojourner among you' (Genesis 23:4), and of the psalmist, 'I am a sojourner with you' (Psalm 39:12) — the patriarch's rootlessness made the pattern of the Christian life. Hebrews 11:13 pairs it with xenos: the people of the roll confessed they were 'strangers and parepidemoi on the earth' — a foreigner and a long-term resident without citizenship, which was an ordinary legal category in the cities these letters went to, not a metaphor. → first discussed at 1 Peter 1:1