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1 Peter 2:9-10   But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, 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.

Peter’ language here is very interesting.  He is writing to people who are suffering persecution and rejection because they have come to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah and the only Saviour from the bondage of sin.  Peter himself had said to the Jewish authorities who were giving him and John a hard time for healing someone in the name of Jesus, “Jesus is ‘the stone you builders rejected, which has become the cornerstone.’  Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved”  (Acts 4:11-12).

Peter was therefore all too clearly aware of the sort of opposition that would come to all who would identify themselves as ‘CHRISTians’ and members of the  fledgling Church.  So, the interesting thing about what he writes to them is that he is using the very words Moses uses in the Pentateuch to describe the nation of Israel as God’s special Chosen People, and the words of the prophet Hosea who was commissioned to call the alienated nation back into the relationship they should enjoy as the loved People of God.  So Peter, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is identifying the Christian Church as the ‘New Israel’.

This is not surprising because the only meaningful way in which we can interpret all the optimistic promises given to David and the Old Testament Prophets about an ‘eternal King’ who would rule over an ‘everlasting Kingdom’, is by seeing them fulfilled in a spiritual sense in the Church which Jesus the ‘Messiah’ (‘Christ’) would build, and against which even the ‘Gates of Hell’ would not prevail (Matthew 16:18).

While ever the nation of Israel today fails to recognise and acknowledge Jesus as the ‘Messiah’ God promised them, they will forfeit these promises because they no longer apply; they are fulfilled in Jesus and the Church which he is building. Of this, Peter was especially aware, because of the special mention by name that he received in Jesus’ promise at Caesarea Philippi!  Acknowledging King Jesus, the Prince of Peace (Isaiah 9:6), is central to establishing lasting peace in the Middle East. Sadly, all attempts at solutions that fail to acknowledge who he is inevitably remain futile.

– Bruce Christian