Jesus Christ is to the Church what a corner-stone is to a building: He establishes the lines on which the whole thing is built. As we saw in the last chapter the corner-stone had to be square in shape, sound in substance and sure in its setting so the building that grew from it would not end up crooked, or cracked or canted over. Its accuracy gave shape to the whole structure.
Truth all square, righteousness with no unsoundness in it and love that is unchanging and true. Upon this we build. These are the lines on which the structure of a congregation is to be shaped: only a temple built on those lines can be a fit dwelling-place of God by His Spirit, and that is what a congregation is to be - "a dwelling-place of God by His Spirit."
Truth, righteousness and love are to be the marks of the Church's corporate life. Not just of the individual Christian's life, but of our life together; nothing under-handed, nothing unwholesome, nothing unkind should ever spoil what we do together, or what we are to each other. We shall not achieve this by the strength of our resolve; these qualities are fed into our life together as we open our hearts continually to Christ and His Spirit. (Our private devotional life has a profound effect on our congregational life!) So we may summarise Peter's background to this passage.
Now Peter describes what the church that is feeding upon the Christ of the Gospel will be like. He tells us what is
(a) The Church's Nature - v. 9
(b) The Church's Task - v. 5 and v. 10
"You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people" ... four things. We shall look at them each in turn. All those phrases were used to describe God's people of old, the children of Israel. Peter is telling us that the Church has inherited Israel's task in the world. Jesus Himself had already made that clear when He said to the Jewish leaders of His day, "The Kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a nation producing the fruits of it."
"That nation," says Peter, "you are."
In the founding of Israel as the people of God at Mt Sinai God engaged them to Himself in solemn Covenant. He said to them (Exodus 19:4-6):
"You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all peoples; for all the earth is mine, and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel."
God has borne us on eagles' wings, brought us to Himself and established a New Covenant with us through Christ, and Peter's statement repeats the commission item for item -
I brought you to Myself (a chosen race),
a royal priesthood (a kingdom of priests),
a holy nation, (God's own people) my own possession.
Where Israel failed the church is to succeed!
Now in what ...? Why was Israel chosen, and what was she chosen for?
i. A Chosen Race
Why she was chosen is a riddle that has no answer except this: that it is in God's nature to bestow favour where none is deserved, and to set His love upon the unloved and the loveless. That is the only reason we shall ever find why God chose us! The ground of our election lies, not in any merit of ours, but in the character of God as mercy.
What is more to the point is, "What are we chosen for?"
We are chosen to fulfil the task first entrusted to Israel. She was chosen, not for her own advantage, but for the world's ... to know God, to show Him, and to share Him.
• To know God ... to have a true personal relationship with Him.
At the end of the day God is going to say to us, "I chose you to know Me." "That I may know Him ..." was Paul's first desire. The most awful and solemn words that may ever be pronounced over a human life - or a congregation's life - are the words God may speak: "I never knew you." Our first task is to know God. If we fail in this, nothing else in which we succeed is of any consequence. To this first we must bend all our energy and desire.
• To show God ... to demonstrate His character in our life together.
"You shall be holy, for I am holy."
"You shall be merciful, for I am merciful."
Wholesome, kindly lives ... if the church is no good at producing them she is good for nothing. It is not enough to know the truth - we must do the truth. And spread it ...
• To share God
... to communicate our knowledge of God and His grace to the rest of the world. "You shall be witnesses to me ..."
In Jerusalem - that is home.
In Judea and Samaria - that is our neighbourhood.
And unto the uttermost parts of the earth - that is Indonesia and Zambia and Bangladesh and Panama et al.
For this we have been chosen; for this we are hand-picked folk. The following phrases spell all this out.
ii. A Royal Priesthood
We are the King's Priests in His royal House.
Hebrews 5:1 tells us what a priest does: "Every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins." The priest in the Old Testament scheme of things had access to the nearer presence of God on the worshipper's behalf.
Christians are those who have access to the nearer presence of God - that is what salvation means. "The way in" has been opened to us through the blood of Christ, and we are to take that way; but not simply for ourselves - we are to go into the presence of God on behalf of others, bearing them upon our hearts.
There is committed to us the ministry of intercession. The people of God is to be a praying people. Understand that Peter is here addressing the church. He is not saying that every man is his own priest; he is saying that the whole people of God is to be a priestly people. There is no priestly caste among the people of God: the whole Church is called to be a priesthood. If we fail to pray together we fail in our calling "to act on behalf of men in relation to God."
Are we weakest where we should be strongest - right here at the point of corporate prayer?
Now the priest under the Old Covenant offered sacrifices; the Church under the New Covenant too has sacrifices to offer. We shall see below what they are. Move on to feature No. 3 for now.
iii. A Holy Nation
There are two strands that go to make up the meaning of the word "holy." One is "set apart," the other is "wholesome."
Of the two the first is primary. God is "holy" because He is different. He is God and not man, He is Spirit and not flesh, He is uncreated, not created. He is to be held in awe because He is "wholly other." And whatever is devoted to His service, like the vessels used in the Temple, becomes holy simply by being set apart for God's exclusive use
That the Church is holy means first that it is set apart from all worldly uses to be devoted exclusively to God's service. We are to be wholly at His disposal. That is what it means first that we are "a holy nation."
There is a tendency today to think that the church is only doing her duty as she puts herself at the world's disposal. Not so. The world does not write the Church's agenda; God does. We are indeed to serve the world - but in obedience to God. We are to respond to God's call, not to the world's clamour. As we give Him our obedience His purpose for the world will be achieved through our service. His purpose for the world is to sanctify its life. The incarnation is not a case of man reaching up to heaven to bring God down to earth; it is God coming down to earth to lift man up to heaven. And God's purpose in making His own people holy is so that holiness may come upon the life of the world, until, as Zechariah saw in his vision, there shall be inscribed on the bells of the horses, "Holy to the Lord," and every pot and vessel in Jerusalem shall be as holy as the bowls before the altar. In other words our common life will be lived, all of it, unto the Lord. When it is, it will be wholesome. We have not been chosen to do what we like with our lives - or with our Church's life - but what God likes.
Fourthly, Peter says we are ...
iv. God's own people
Our value lies, not in what we are, but in whose we are.
I have been in the Wallace museum in England where many of Wellington's personal effects are preserved. You look at them and your first thought has to be, "They are worthless" - tatty, faded old jackets, hardened old leather boots no-one could ever wear again. But they are not worthless, they are priceless because they were Wellington's.
Our pride is in our Master; because we are His we may be proud - for no other reason. I heard Canon Patey of Liverpool Cathedral, as he was then, say once, "The Church is more glorious than it looks precisely because it is more foolish than it seems." What he meant was that the church often presents a tatty, faded appearance, and you are tempted to say of it, "It's worthless, useless." But it is not; it is priceless because it is God's. The church is the garment God wears in the world. It is this "peculiar people" whom He chooses, and through whom He works. "Old clay pots" we may be, as Paul said; but it is in those pots God has chosen to store His treasure. We are God's old pots. The Church is not made up of specially virtuous people, of wise or superior folk. It is made up of ordinary people - very ordinary people who are often all too lamentably human. But their glory lies simply in the fact that that is just the sort of material God loves to use ... and does. The Church's very weakness makes her testimony to God's power all the greater. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels," says Paul, "to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us."
I Cor. 1:26, "For consider your call, brethren; not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth; but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong, God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" ... but the glory may be His.
We are nothing ... we deserve nothing. But out of nothing God makes everything ... out of nobodies He makes Sons and brings them to glory. "Once you were 'nobodies'," says Peter, "but now you are 'somebodies' because you are 'God's bodies'." Same old bodies ... but His. That is what the wonderful deeds are that we are to proclaim (v. 9).
Finally Peter draws our attention to the Church's task.
Our task is twofold, priestly and prophetic.
i. It is priestly
We have already seen that this means we are to go into the presence of God on behalf of others. Our second priestly service is to offer up spiritual sacrifices What sacrifices are they?
• Our bodies
Romans 12:1: "I appeal to you, brethren, by the mercies of God,
to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to
God, which is your spiritual worship."
• Thanksgiving and Praise
Hebrews 13:15: " Through Jesus then let us continually offer up a
sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that
acknowledge his name." Praise is the most selfless activity of which
we are capable; nothing works better at "making us whole."
• Deeds of Kindness
Hebrews 13:16: "Do not neglect to do good and to share what you
have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."
And all these are acceptable to God, not because they are our
offerings, but because we offer them to God through Jesus Christ - it
is into Christ's offering of Himself to God in all these ways that we
are to be drawn.
ii. It is prophetic
Second, the Church's task is a prophetic task: we are to "declare."
Declare what? "The wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light." In the words of Jesus, "What I tell you in the dark utter in the light; and what you hear me whisper, proclaim from the housetops."
Not our wonderful deeds for Him, but His wonderful deeds for us - whereby we are not in the dark any longer, so there is no more guessing or groping. "We know," says John, "because we have been anointed by the Holy One ..."
No-one knows what love is till he has seen it in God.
No-one knows what goodness is until he has tasted it in God.
No-one knows what truth is till he has heard God speak it.
No-one knows what life is until he comes alive to God.
But love, goodness, truth and life all are ours - in Christ. He is the Light of the world.
The Church's task is priestly and prophetic. Dangers lurk in both those tasks. In her priestly service she has her face turned toward God as she prays for men: her back is to world as she does that. There is danger that in her preoccupation with God she will lose sight of the world for whose sake she goes to Him. In her prophetic service she has her face turned toward the world as she speaks to it for God; her back is to God as she does that. In her preoccupation with men there is the danger that she may forget God for whom she speaks.
Only as we hold the two in balance do we become what God means us to be, and serve as He means us to serve.
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