Peter proceeded to clarify the nature of the church and in doing so explained the duty of Christians in the world.
2:9 All the figures of the church that Peter chose here originally referred to Israel. However with Israel's rejection of Jesus Christ (v. 7) God created a new body of people through whom He now seeks to accomplish the same purposes He sought to achieve through Israel but by different means. This verse that at first might seem to equate the church and Israel on careful examination shows as many differences between these groups as similarities.72
"But this does not mean that the church is Israel or even that the church replaces Israel in the plan of God. Romans 11 should help us guard against that misinterpretation. . . . The functions that Israel was called into existence to perform in its day of grace the church now performs in a similar way. In the future, according to Paul, God will once again use Israel to bless the world (cf. Rom. 11:13-16, 23-24)."73
Israel was a physical race of people, the literal descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The church is a spiritual race the members of which share the common characteristic of faith in Christ and are both Jews and Gentiles racially. Christians are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. We are not Abraham's literal descendants, unless we are Jews, but are his children in the sense that we believe God's promises as he did.
God's purpose for Israel was that she be a nation of priests (Exod. 19:6) who would stand between God and the rest of humanity representing people before God. However, God withdrew this blessing from the whole nation because of the Israelites' apostasy with the golden calf and gave it to the faithful tribe of Levi instead (Num. 3:12-13, 45; 8:14; cf. Exod. 13:2; 32:25-29). In contrast, every individual Christian is a priest before God.74We function as priests to the extent that we worship, intercede, and minister (v. 5; Rev. 1:6).75
"Whatever its precise background, the vision of 1 Peter is that the Gentiles to whom it is written have become, by virtue of their redemption in Christ, a new priesthood in the world, analogous to the ancient priesthood that was the people of Israel. Consequently they share with the Jews the precarious status of aliens and strangers' in the Roman world."76
"When I was a pastor, I preached a message entitled, You Are a Catholic Priest.' The word catholicmeans general,' of course. In that sense every believer is a catholic priest, and all have access to God."77
God redeemed Israel at the Exodus and adopted that nation at Mt. Sinai as one that would be different from all others throughout history (Exod. 19:6). God wanted Israel to be a beacon to the nations holding the light of God's revelation up for all to see, similar to the Statue of Liberty (Isa. 42:6). He did not tell all the Israelites to take this light to those in darkness, but to live before others in the Promised Land. He would attract others to them and to Himself, as He did the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10). However, Israel failed. She preferred to be a nation like all the other nations (1 Sam. 8:5). Now God has made the church the bearer of His light. God has not told us to be a localized demonstration as Israel was but to be aggressive missionaries going to the ends of the earth. God wanted Israel to stay in her land. He wants us to go into all the world with the gospel (Matt. 28:19-20).
God wanted to dwell among the Israelites and to make them His own unique possession by residing among them (Exod. 19:5). He did this in the tabernacle and the temple until the apostasy of the Israelites made continuation of this intimacy impossible. Then the presence of God departed from His people. In the church God does not just dwell among us, but He resides in every individual Christian (John 14:17; Rom. 8:9). He has promised never to leave us (Matt. 28:20).
The church is what it is so that it can do what God has called it to do. Essentially the church's purpose is the same as Israel's. The Great Commission (Matt. 28:19-20; et al.) clarifies the methods God wants us to use. These methods differ from those He specified for Israel, but the church's vocation is really the same as Israel's. It is to be the instrument through which the light of God reaches individuals who still sit in spiritual darkness. It is a fallacy, however, to say that the church is simply the continuation or replacement of Israel in the New Testament, as covenant theology does. Hopefully the preceding discussion has made that clear.78
"In the ancient world it was not unusual for the king to have his own group of priests."79
2:10 Peter highlighted the differences involved in our high calling by contrasting what his readers were and had before conversion with what they were and had after conversion. The church is not the only people of God in history. Nevertheless it is the people of God in the present age because of Israel's rejection of the Corner Stone (cf. Rom. 9-11).
"The evidence from the use of the Old testament in 1 Peter 2:6-10 suggests that the Old Testament imagery used to describe the church in 1 Peter 2:9-10 does not present the church as a new Israel replacing ethnic Israel in God's program. Instead, Old Testament Israel was a pattern of the church's relationship with God as his chosen people. Therefore Peter uses various aspects of the salvation, spiritual life, and service of Israel in its relationship with Yahweh to teach his recipients the greater salvation, spiritual life, and service they enjoy in Christ. In his use of the three people of Godcitations in 1 Peter 2:9-10, the apostle is teaching that there are aspects of the nation of Israel's experience as the people of God that are also true of the New Testament church. These elements of continuity include the election, redemption, holy standards, priestly ministry, and honor of the people of God. This continuity is the basis for the application of the title people of Godto the church in 1 Peter 2:1-10.
"The escalation or advancement of meaning in Peter's application of these passages to his recipients emphasizes the distinction between Israel and the church. Israel is a nation, and the national, political, and geographic applications to Israel in the Old Testament contexts are not applied to the church, the spiritual house, of 1 Peter. Furthermore, the initial application of these passages to the church by typological-prophetic hermeneutics does not negate the future fulfillment of the national, political, and geographic promises, as well as the spiritual ones, made to Israel in these Old Testament contexts."80
Christians generally speaking do not understand or appreciate God's purpose for the church that Peter presented so clearly here. Consequently many Christians lack purpose in their lives. Evidence of this includes self-centered living, unwillingness to sacrifice, worldly goals, and preoccupation with material things. Before Christians will respond to exhortations to live holy lives they need to understand the reasons it is important to live holy lives. This purpose is something most preachers assume, but we need to affirm and assert it much more in our day.
"Peter concludes the first major section of his epistle (1:3-2:10) by drawing the lines for a confrontation. Two groups are differentiated--'unbelievers' and you who believe'--on the basis of their contrasting responses to Jesus Christ, the choice and precious Stone' (v 6). The former are on their way to stumbling' and shame, the latter to honor' and vindication. The theological contrast between these two groups, with its consequent social tensions, will absorb Peter's interest through the remainder of his epistle."81
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