By the author of "The Christian & Worldliness”
Christ According to You
by Ray C. Stedman
I n 1 Peter 2:9 we read, "But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” This is a great statement of the nature and the purpose of the Church and of each individual Christian as well. Peter’s purpose in this verse is to remind us of something of what we are and why we are what we are. You can see how easily this verse divides into two divisions; there are two phrases that stand out in it. Peter begins, "But ye are,” and tells us what we are. Then in the middle o f the verse he says, "that ye should shew forth,” and tells us why we are what we are and what God has designed us to do because of what we are. Look at the verse again and you will notice that the revelation of the first half makes us either feel very humble or very smug, one o f the two. These names once belonged to Israel alone, but now Peter takes them up and by the inspiration of the Spirit o f God applies them to the Church, and this is what he says the Church is. Let me give it to you from the Williams trans lation which gives a very accurate rendering here: "But you are the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the consecrated nation, the people to be His very own.” You’ll notice' the emphasis there is on the article "the.” The chosen race . . . sought out by the Holy Spirit, brought out of darkness into marvelous light. The royal priesthood, and we need to remember this today. We are priests with a special access to God that other people do not have, wielding authority as kings before Him in the world in which we live. Royal priests! The consecrated nation, far more precious to God than any other nation or kingdom on earth. And you are a people who are peculiarly His very own. You are in God’s intimate family circle. You’re as
dear to Him as your own children are to you. Peter is simply declaring facts when he states these things. I hope we recognize, as we consider this, that it’s a tre mendous thing to have these privileges before God. These are gifts of God’s grace, given to the undeserving, and He’ll never take them back. If you know Jesus Christ, you can lay claim to these four tremendous privileges today. You belong to a royal priesthood, a chosen race, a conse crated nation and a peculiar people, i.e., a people for His very own possession today. This is the way God sees us. It is what we are in Christ. The reason why But I do not want to spend much time with this. I want rather to center on the latter part of the verse because there we learn why we are what we are. "• ■ •Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” In other words, God does not give us these privileges in order that we might gather robes o f self-righteousness around us and live our own sweet lives in smug isolation from the world around about us. God doesn’t want us to be Pharisees and say, "O Lord, we thank you that we’re not like these other people. We don’t act evilly like they do. We pay our tithes, we keep the law, etc., etc., etc.” God didn’t give us these privileges in order for us to assume an attitude like that. You notice that He says we are all these wonderful things in order that we might show forth Him, display the excellencies o f Him who called us out o f darkness into His marvelous light. God has made
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