Comment on a Lectionary Reading

For those churches using the Revised Common Lectionary, this will be one of the Scripture readings for this Sunday.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation - if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in Scripture: “Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious, and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.” So the honor is for you who believe, but for those who do not believe, “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone,” and “A stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense.” They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. 

1 Peter 2:2-10

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Much is going on here. There's Peter's command for the saints to long for good spiritual teaching. Then, there are his comments on how Jesus is the living stone for the building of the Church, and that the saints are also living stones, and more. There are also Peter's comments about how God determines the destinies of people. The Spirit has provided much here to meditate on.

But I will limit myself to one sentence.

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

The first thing to notice is how Peter describes the saints, that is, how he describes you: a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession. These descriptions also merit some serious meditation. But I'm actually only going to focus on two words in this sentence. The first is 'that'. There is a purpose to being the people that God has made us to be. It's good to be reminded of this from time to time. The key reason for God's blessings - things like being His chosen race and all the rest - isn't our enjoyment of these blessings. We are blessed for a purpose that goes beyond us. We need this reminder because we live in a very self-centered world that actually does think, 'It's all about me'.

There is a purpose for these listed blessings that we actually do enjoy, and Peter is quite clear about what that purpose is. We are to 'proclaim the excellencies' of God. And that gets us to my second word. The word that Peter uses, translated 'excellencies', is really quite rich. It has to do with the virtuous character of a person along with the ways in which that person expresses that character. So, in this case the 'excellencies' are about the character of God (who God is), and the ways in which He expresses that character (what He does).  According to Peter, our purpose as God's chosen race… is to proclaim these 'excellencies'.

The question to ask now is clear. How do we do that? Here are three ways that the Scriptures identify.

First, there's worship. In worship, we proclaim back to God the excellence of who He is and the excellence of what He does. This goes a long way in defining what worship is to be about.

Then, as the communion of the saints, we proclaim God's excellencies to each other. This is one important way that we can encourage each other to persevere in the face of the difficulties of this life. We remind each other about the character and the works of God, the God who has committed Himself to us, especially since our experience of His character and works has changed our lives.

And then, we proclaim the excellencies of our God to the world. This lies at the heart of how we are to pursue our mission of changing the world for Jesus by the Gospel. We are to strive to vividly communicate to the world the beauty of who our God is and the wonder of what He has done in creation and redemption and what He will do in the consummation of all things. This is what evangelism is about.

So, as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation and a people for God's own possession, we proclaim His excellencies in worship, in community and in evangelism. I hope that this adds some clarity to what it means that we are Christians.