An Exposition of 1 Peter, Part 11: Peculiar People

1 Peter 2:9-10

1 Peter 2:9–10 NKJV

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.

Introduction

We continue in our study of first Peter today. In the last passage we were reminded of the perils of unbelief. This is true within the church as well as without. Peter warned the believers that rejecting Jesus would cause one to stumble badly. It also served to remind us that we have an obligation to warn those outside the church, the very people who reject us when we became Christians.

Having dealt with this, Peter goes back to the theme of the preciousness of being a Christian, something he does throughout the epistle. It is a style similar to that of the Book of Hebrews which intersperses warnings to the believers not to fall away between sections of teaching material. 1 John also has this spiral structure. In modern times, we tend to dislike repetitions, especially in written discourses. It is good to remember that many of the members of the churches were illiterate, this is why there was an office of reader in the church. In spoken speech, there is no rewind button or the means of going back to a previous page. So repeating the main points serves to amplify and explain what Peter wants them to understand. One of these things is that the Christians are valued by God, even if they are valueless to those outside the church. Peter reminds the church that they must undergo suffering for a little while so that they might be refined and approved. Peter reminds them that the suffering and rejection they are suffering is not punishment from God for wrongdoing. Peter reminds us of the work of evangelism as we noted. So if Peter finds it necessary to refresh his hearers about these things, so shall I.

Exposition of the Text

But You are a chosen race — In the previous passage, Peter had described the fall of those who refused to believe. Israel refused to believe in Jesus and had stumbled. The Jews in the Old Testament were known as “The Chosen People.” Yahweh had chosen them for His purposes. Part of this purpose is that Israel might serve as a witness to the other nations. For example, we read in Isaiah 60:1-3:

Isaiah 60:1–3 NKJV

Arise, shine; For your light has come! And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you. For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, And deep darkness the people; But the Lord will arise over you, And His glory will be seen upon you. The Gentiles shall come to your light, And kings to the brightness of your rising.

The message Israel was to bring to the Gentiles (other nations) served two purposes. The first was a judgment against the evil practices and idolatry of the Gentiles. The other was a call to repentance and to believe in Yahweh, the God of Israel. the life Israel lived was to testify of the goodness and grace of the LORD and draw the Gentiles in. Although there were Israelites who took this call seriously, the nation as a whole failed to live up to expectations. Instead of being light, Israel itself stumbled into the same darkness which characterized the other nations.

So now Peter applies the epithet “Chosen People” to address the churches to whom he was writing. We don’t know the ethnic makeup of the churches in these areas, but God wanted a church composed of both Jews and Gentiles. It is the church which now is tasked to be a witness both to Israel as well as to all the other nations.

The church is a chosen race. Although the word can also be translated “generation”, the choice I have made to translate the Greek “genos” as race is made in the light of our current world situation. It seems that the term “racist” is thrown around as a means to smear people and to assert one’s moral superiority. Racism in which one promotes their ethnicity as superior to other ethnicities is certainly wrong. It is wrong in the world. but more importantly, it is biblically evil. The net result of racism and the corollary race-baiting is to cause division and multiply hate. So how does “chosen race” being applied to Christians sound to those outside the church? We recognize that the church is to be composed of people from every race, color, and ethnicity. the church is not to discriminate between one ethnicity or another. It is not to discriminate based upon economic status, or whether one is male or female. It is a race composed of all the races of the world. This should be reflected in our local congregations as well as the church at large. We must not give ammunition to the enemy to call us out on this matter.

The other issue we need to look at is that we are chosen. There is a lot of jealousy against those who are elite. The poor in this world envy the rich, and the rich despise the poor. There is something in the world called “virtue signalling,” something the Bible calls “hypocrisy.” Peter has already admonished the churches, and us, to be sincere in out conduct and in our love. The virtue signalers of this world are famous of trying to make a claim of moral superiority over the masses when their conduct is anything but moral. We need to remind ourselves that we were not chosen because of our moral conduct. Quite the contrary! We were chosen simply because of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. So, we need to be humble in our conduct and boast about Jesus and not ourselves. A sobering reality of our current situation in this world is that we are a “chosen race” in that we are called to carry our cross and follow Jesus. We are for a short season appointed to suffer for Christ as a witness to the world. Peter addresses churches who are suffering for the faith. The world had rejected and opposed them. Whatever status they might have once had in this world is gone. It is replaced by the fact that we are chosen by God.

A royal priesthood — We see this idea in Revelation 1:6 also. The concept of Israel serving as royal priests to God is found throughout the old Testament as well. In particular, Peter seems to be thinking about Exodus 19:6 as the next term “holy nation” appears there as well. The biblical idea of a priest is a man who acts as an intermediary between God and man. This emphasizes that the church’s mission is to reconcile men of God through the preaching of the gospel. It is a royal priesthood because we are commissioned by King Jesus and equipped for the task. It is also royal because King Jesus is also the great High Priest, We share in his priesthood.

A Holy Nation —Peter uses the idea of the believers being set apart to His service from the beginning of the epistle. This is the main definition of “Holy.” The fact that we have been set apart by God who is altogether righteous, graceful, and loving implies that we are called to reflect His character. The image of God is in us through Jesus Christ who is the perfect image of God. So “holy” is rightly associated with conduct becoming our calling (holy living). Whereas every individual Christian is called to be holy, the emphasis upon “nation” here is talking about our joint conduct within the church.

A peculiar people — Although it is probably a better translation to follow the NKJV in rendering this “His own special people,” there is something to be brought out by the King James rendering of “a peculiar people. This is because this is just what the world thinks of us; they think we are peculiar, as in very strange. To God, we are His own special people, but to the world, we just do not fit in. Being special to God is a two-edged sword. It gives us the greatest sense of security and hope when we believe the Good News. Although Peter uses different Greek words to describe being a stranger other than the usual “Xenos,” he addresses them as resident aliens scattered throughout the provinces. The believers are foreigners in their own land. The others in the areas where the churches resided had what could be called a bad case of xenophobia. We see some of this in the Western world when migrants start flooding into the land. The attitudes that the citizens hold to strangers would are those which face the Christian pilgrim, other than that the Christians were once their fellow-citizens. We also can see how the elite of this world use this division to their own purposes. Many in this country feel that the migrants have more rights than they as citizens have. The elite try to separate people by race and culture to which we have already stated. They want to divide people based upon vaccination status. They certainly wish to diminish the influence of Christians in society and replace christian values with their own values. Day by day, Christians feel the alienation that this causes. What the Christians undergo today in the West is not new. Nor is this sense of isolation particular to the West. Christians are despised most everywhere in the world because their conduct condemns the world.

Having said this, the Christian must not treat others the way they are treated. One might question the motives of migrants and the organizations that exploit them. But we are called to overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:21) We need to remind ourselves that we are strangers and pilgrims here. We should see these waves of migrants as a mission field that we might offer Christ to them. Those who have left their native lands because they felt alienated from the powers that be there and come here hoping to find acceptance and prosperity here need to realize that the most serious alienation that can be felt is their alienation from God. One might admit that the opportunities here seem to be better than from the lands which they came, or else they would not have come. But these benefits are temporal and subject to change at any moment. Peter reminds us of our eternal reservation we have. After we have undergone the necessary suffering and rejection by the world, we have an eternal weight of glory set before us. This is what we must proclaim to all.

That you might proclaim the praises of Him — The word translated “proclaim” here is similar to the verb “to evangelize.” Some translate this “show forth the praises of Him.” The question we need to answer is: “Show forth His praises to whom?” Obviously these need to be directed at God who is worthy of all praise. It is also true that we should proclaim this to one another to remind each other of our purpose, a purpose well-stated by the Westminster Confession that we exist to “Glorify God and enjoy Him forever. But we need to emphasize again that we are also witnesses of Christ and are called to proclaim Him to the world. Do our lives properly show forth His works and excellent greatness to the world?

The words “might proclaim” comes from a Greek aorist subjunctive verb. A subjunctive expresses an action which might or might not happen. It often occurs with “if.” But the aorist subjunctive also serves as an imperative. In this case, it might better be translated: “You must proclaim.”

Who has called you out of darkness — We always need to be reminded where we came from. The Bible says that Israel was called as a nation because of some inherent moral or numerical superiority. We read in Deuteronomy 7:7-8

Deuteronomy 7:7–8 NKJV

The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any other people, for you were the least of all peoples; but because the Lord loves you, and because He would keep the oath which He swore to your fathers, the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of bondage, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

The Children of Israel were called out of the darkness of Egyptian bondage. In their case, their slavery was not the result of their moral failings, although Israel failed time and again. But in our case, we were in moral darkness. We were slaves to sin. We had no purpose or hope beyond the occasional good times on this earth. We were metaphorically “without form and void” and the darkness was deep in our soul until the Spirit of God awakened us.

Into His marvellous light — Paul says :“If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) We remember in the creation account that God spoke into the darkness, and light was created. We who once were in the shadow of darkness has had the light of God shine upon us (Isaiah 9:2) We remember at Christmastide that Jesus came into this dark world. It is He through whom Creation came into being. It is Jesus who calls Himself: “I AM the light of the world.”(John 8:12)

This truth should have a profound effect upon the way we live our lives. The same Jesus who calls Himself the light of the world calls us the light of the world also. (Matthew 5:14). The Greek throws in the extra pronoun for “you” which makes it very emphatic, as emphatic as the extra pronoun, ego, “I”which Jesus uses for Himself. In Jesus’ case, he is also identifying Himself as YAHWEH (I AM) (Exodus 3:14). The light is not of ourselves. It is the light of Christ in us. The only way we can be the light of the world which used the exclusive “the” is because it is this light which shines in us. Jesus calling himself “the” light of the world is also exclusive. the only way both statements can be true is if the light is the same light.

Jesus also compares us to being a city on a hill which cannot be hid or a candle that must not be hid under a bushel. At first this sounds quite flattering, but we should note that in the Ancient Near East in which invaders come to plunder, being lit up and on a hill made the city a target. Note that cities refer to the collection of individuals. In like matter, Jesus uses the plural. The church is the city on a hill or which we are individual members. But we must shine, even when we draw unwanted attention.

Those who were once not a people — Peter now quotes from Hosea 1:9-10. Paul also uses this passage in Hosea. The first part of that passage says that the people of Israel were once His people but are no longer His people due to their disobedience and sin. The Gentiles were considered outsiders and strangers to the Covenant Yahweh made with Israel .(see also Ephesians 2:11-14) The Law allowed provision for Gentiles to come into the Covenant, but the terms were stringent.

Now are the people of God — Hosea prophesied that the day will come that the Gentiles who believed would be included in the people of God. What makes one an Israelite is believing in the God of Israel. When we remember that Jesus is the Son of God, equal with the Father and the Holy Spirit, then one has to believe in Jesus, whom the Father sent or one isn’t an Israelite at all, regardless of genealogy. God’s chosen people are those who believe in Jesus, whether Jew or Gentile. Those who do not believe are outside the Covenant.

The ones to whom no mercy was shown have NOW received mercy — This statement stands in parallel with verse 9. Those who were in the dark were dark in respect to mercy. But the call to the light is to receive mercy. This is a miraculous change of status. We now come to enjoy the mercies of God. We must remember that mercy is given to undeserving people. Mercy, like grace, is never earned. It is the gift of God.

Application

Even though we only covered two verses in this study, they are rich indeed. Peter employs repetition of similar words to remind us how precious we are to God and how holy is our calling. the world would call this “tautology” which is a dismissive term for unnecessary repetitions. “Royal Priesthood”, “Holy Nation,” and “people of His own special choosing overlap in meaning. Taken together, it makes our faith richer. The world is not interested in this at all. They would not wish to hear any of these labels even once, no less all three. Yes, the world thinks that the use of repetition to be somewhat peculiar. But this is just the point. We have been changed. We think differently than the world. We are no longer in the dark.

We should think of all these rich terms in the sense of a man who falls in love and marries the woman of his dreams. the bride wants to hear “I love you” over and over again. This is more than feeling secure in the relationship. What kind of husband would deny his wife the pleasure? It has been said in one of those old preacher tales of a woman who was starved to hear those words from her husband of many years. She kept asking him if he loved her. Each time he ignored her. But she kept at it. Finally, he replied “I told you when I married you that I loved you. If I change my mind, I’ll let you know.” We think of Jesus asking Peter three times if Peter loved him. By the third time, Peter was a little bit annoyed. God is always reminding us that He loves us, His Church, as any groom to be does for His bride. Let us respond in kind by reminding Him how precious He is to us.