LESSON 9 STUDY OF PETER
1 Peter 2:5, 9-10
1 Peter 2:5, 9-10 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. … But you are a chosen [acquired (1)] people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
This passage covers a lot of ground. But because of time limitations, I will focus on one aspect that is often unclear or unknown among many believers: what does it mean that we are now THE PEOPLE OF GOD?
The word 'now' is important here. Most of the Evangelical Church would say that God's People are [Pick One] - - - The Jews, Israel, Americans, American Indians (the lost tribe), the Chosen People of God. What is the Reformed View? What is the Biblical View? What is your view?
PUNCHLINE AT THE BEGINNING SO YOU CAN GO IF YOU ARE BUSY
All true Christians are a chosen generation; they make one family, a people distinct from the world: of another spirit, principle, and practice; which they could never be, if they were not chosen in Christ to be such, and sanctified by his Spirit. Their first state is a state of gross darkness, but they are called out of darkness into a state of joy, pleasure, and prosperity; that they should show forth the praises of the Lord by their profession of his truth, and their good conduct. How vast their obligations to Him who has made them his people, and has shown mercy to them! (2)
The Call and Promise to Abraham
When God called out Abraham he gave him a promise in Genesis 12:2-3:
“I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
He reestablished his again in Genesis 17:1-2 instituting the Covenant of Circumcision
When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, “I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. Then I will make my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers.”
And so what later became the 12 Tribes of Israel, was inaugurated. With a promise and with a sign. Promise was a great people, many nations, and a blessing that would impact the whole world. And the sign was circumcision.
Israel – The Elect
God was never solely focused on the Children of Israel, the Jews, exclusively. Rather he selected a people for Himself, a people to give His Law to, a people to model God's Character to the nations. But most importantly, this was the physical channel God used to redeem a people from all nations, tribes and tongues through Jesus Christ.
Chapter 8 Of Christ the Mediator
1. It pleased God, in His eternal purpose, to choose and ordain the Lord Jesus, His only begotten Son, to be the Mediator between God and man, ... the Head and Savior of His Church, ...: unto whom He did from all eternity give a people, to be His seed, and to be by Him in time redeemed, called, justified, sanctified, and gloried.
6. Although the work of redemption was not actually wrought by Christ till after His incarnation, yet the virtue, efficacy, and benefits thereof were communicated unto the elect, in all ages successively from the beginning of the world,.... (3)
There is small hints of this throughout the OT. While the OT is largely concerning itself with God's revelation to and through the Jews. We also see bits and pieces that show us that God did not deal exclusively with OT Israel. He was dealing with the other nations as well. The two most vivid examples of this are Nineveh in the Book of Jonah, and Nebuchadnezzar in particular in Daniel 4.
God has always making for Himself a people, the Elect. And of course we see this most starkly in the Doctrine of Election. In effect the Ordo Salutis illustrates that God chose His Elect before Creation, modeled it through Abraham and his descendants, although not exclusively, and then brought it to outward realization in Jesus.
THE PETRINE HOUSE OF STONE
This is in a way a symbol of the culmination of God's work with the Jews: The Temple. This stone building was the image and the physical reality of the Jewish identity. It still is. The remaining foundation wall of the Herodian Temple on Temple Mount is probably without question the most holy site for all Jews today. The Temple was the physical tangible sign of God's presence among His people, and it embodied the confidence the Jews had that God approved of them. They were the chosen ones, they were God's Elect.
Peter uses this image of the then existing Temple to talk about the believers, in effect, likening the Church, the Elect, as the true Temple of God. From JFB
“Peter grounds his exhortations, 1Pe 2:2, 11, etc., on their conscious sense of their high privileges as living stones in the course of being built up into a spiritual house (that is, "the habitation of the Spirit"). 1 Peter 2:5” (4)
and
“...Christians are both the spiritual temple and the priests of the temple. There are two Greek words for "temple";... the whole building, including the courts wherein the sacrifice was killed; and ..., the inner shrine wherein God peculiarly manifested Himself, and where, in the holiest place, the blood of the slain sacrifice was presented before Him. All believers alike, and not merely ministers, are now the dwelling of God and priests unto God (Re 1:6). The minister is not, like the Jewish priest ..., admitted nearer to God than the people, but merely for order's sake leads the spiritual services of the people. Priest is the abbreviation of presbyter ... not corresponding to the Aaronic priest ... Christ is the only literal ...priest in the New Testament through whom alone we may always draw near to God. (4)
“ There follow afterwards prayers, giving of thanks, alms deeds, and all exercises of piety" [CALVIN]. Christian houses of worship are never called temples because the temple was a place for sacrifice, which has no place in the Christian dispensation; the Christian temple is the congregation of spiritual worshippers. ... Our sacrifices are those of prayer, praise, and self-denying services in the cause of Christ (1Pe 2:9).” (4)
And from R. Fowler White:
“Peter plainly confirms Paul, who quotes the passage as implying the call of the Gentiles to become spiritually that which Israel had been literally, "the people of God." (5)
“... after Peter talks about our rebirth as God’s children, he now talks about God building His house.And notice: we’re not just any house. We’re a spiritual house of holy priests. We no longer need a temple on earth; we are the temple on earth. Through Jesus Christ, we believers are now being built as that spiritual house,the site of sacrifices pleasing to God. (A) Christ Himself had taught that His resurrection would signal that God was building His new and final temple (B) Through Christ we’re holy priests who please God with spiritual sacrifices (2:5b). Through Him we offer up praise, the fruit of our lips, as a sacrifice; we present our bodies as a living sacrifice; we bring tithes and offerings as a fragrant offering. Something better than the OT temple is here! Joined to Christ, we’re God’s true and final temple!” (6)
THE CHOSEN PEOPLE OF GOD INCLUDE THE GENTILES
When the Church started, and as Jesus ministered to the Jews of his day, its members were Jews. But even then we see Jesus ministering to gentiles as well, as God did in the OT. The Syro-phoenician Woman is a case in point (Ma 15:21-28).
So in effect we are seeing Hosea's Prophesy being fulfilled in the Church. And of course Peter's realization and revelation in Acts 10 with the unclean lunch vision makes this beyond dispute.
Hosea 1:9-10; 2:23 Then the LORD said, “Call him Lo-Ammi, for you are not my people, and I am not your God. “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted. In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘sons of the living God.’ … I will plant her for myself in the land; I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. ’ I will say to those called ‘Not my people,’ ‘You are my people’; and they will say, “You are my God.”
So not only are we sons of God in the prophetic sense, be we are also stones of God as in being His Temple on earth 1 Corinthians 3:16:
Don't you know that you yourselves are God's temple and that God's Spirit lives in you?
The Church as Israel versus The Replacement Theory
The assembly of God's Elect, the Church, is the post-Incarnation form of the OT Church in the Wilderness which we know of as Israel. There are a couple of ways of understanding this: 1) the church is the same as Israel only containing believers in Christ both Jew and Gentile, 2) the church replaces Israel.
The Replacement Theory can be a bit confusing to consider, because it implies that God abandoned the Jews and went with the Gentiles. This is a Dispensational understanding based on their view of Israel's rejection of Christ. This is largely an eschatalogical model to explain why all the prophesies concerning Israel are still valid, but on hold, not having been fulfilled yet. But this is a convoluted model in my view.
The sounder way is found in the Confession, which sees the Elect as God's Chosen people from all time past, present and future. The prophesies and promises are the Elects through Christ. And the Elect is comprised of peoples from all nations, tribes, tongues, and favorite baseball teams. Not universalism in all, but all in the sense of no discrimination based on differences in people. The types and shadows of the Church have changed, but not the substance.
There are a myriad of sub-viewpoints on this, particularly in the study of eschatology. I will not cover these. Suffice it to say my view, and I believe the Confessional and Reformed view, sees that there has only ever been one people of God: the Elect. And while that formally was comprised mostly of Israeli Jews, it is now a mixture of Jew and Gentile believers in Christ.
WCF 7 Of God's Covenant with Man
5. This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the Gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances delivered to the people of the Jews, all fore-signifying Christ to come; which were, for that time, sufficient and efficacious, through the operation of the Spirit, to instruct and build up the elect in faith
6. Under the Gospel, when Christ, the substance, was exhibited, the ordinances in which this covenant is dispensed are the preaching of the Word, and the administration of the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord's Supper: which, though fewer in number, and administered with more simplicity, and less outward glory, yet, in them, it is held forth in more fullness, evidence, and spiritual efficacy, to all nations, both Jews and Gentiles; and is called the New Testament. There are not therefore two covenants of grace, differing in substance, but one and the same, under various dispensations.(7)
Chapter 19 Of the Law of God
3. Besides this law, commonly called moral, God was pleased to give to the people of Israel, as a church under age, ceremonial laws, containing several typical ordinances, partly of worship, prefiguring Christ, His graces, actions, sufferings, and benefits; and partly, holding forth divers instructions of moral duties. All which ceremonial laws are now abrogated, under the New Testament.
4. To them also, as a body politic, He gave sundry judicial laws, which expired together with the State of that people; not obliging under any now, further than the general equity thereof may require. (8)
Chapter 25 Of the Church
1. The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect, that have been, are, or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the Head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of Him that fills all in all.
2. The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the Gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion; and of their children: and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. (9)
FINAL THOUGHTS AND TAKE AWAYS
The people of God, His Elect, are the dwelling place of the Spirit of God on earth
We are not a temple in the OT sense, since no sacrifices are made, only worship, and no priests are present, but only ministers of the Word, no ceremonies only the Sacraments
But like the Temple we are the visible representation of a sort of God's presence on earth
Israel can now be thought of as the Church, not as a replacement but as the fulfillment.
The Nation of Israel today is of no particular eschatological significance today
NOTES
The word 'chosen' also means 'acquired' as in Acts 20:28:“Keep watch over yourselves and all the flock of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers. Be shepherds of the church of God, which he bought with his own blood”
Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary on the Whole Bible; Ref 1 Peter 2:9-10
The Westminster Confession of Faith, The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle PA, 2018, pg 44
NB: All quotes from JFB are from Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, “JFB”, by Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown, published 1871, Bible Publisher Hartford : S.S. Scranton & Co. ; Hillsdale, MI [NB: original publisher uncertain]
R. Fowler White (Green Baggins Blogpost 1/26/21 accessed 1/27/23
Ibid
(7) The Westminster Confession of Faith, pgs 40 – 42
(8) Ibid, pgs 97-98
(9) Ibid, pgs 137-138