1 Peter 2:4-10, The People of God

According to Wikipedia, “A people is any plurality of persons considered as a whole. Used in politics and law, the term ‘a people’ refers to the collective or community of an ethnic group or nation.” An ethnic group is “a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of perceived shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups.” Israel was a people, an ethnic group whose shared attribute was the offspring of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and that they were chosen by God to be His people who were in covenant with Him, and this distinguished them from other peoples.

^2:4 As you come to him, the living Stone, rejected by men but chosen and valuable to God, ⁵ you also, as living stones, you are being built together as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, offering up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. ⁶ Because in Scripture it stands, “Look, I’m placing in Zion a cornerstone, chosen and valuable, and whoever believes in him is not put to shame. ⁷ Therefore, to you who believe he is valuable. To those who do not believe, the stone the builders rejected, this very one has become the head of the corner ⁸ and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense. They stumble against this stone because they do not believe, for which, in fact, they were destined. ⁹ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for His possession, that you might proclaim the virtues of the One who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. ¹⁰ Those formerly not His people, are now the people of God; those not shown mercy, are now shown mercy.

Peter has been charging his readers with the responsibility of being holy, as God is holy, living in obedience to him as those who have been saved and who are going to be saved. But now he shifts gears and explains why they are able to be and charged with such holiness. They are holy. They are a holy temple and a holy priesthood, built on the cornerstone Jesus Christ; they are a holy people chosen by God to be shown mercy.

Peter is using imagery from the Old Testament that applied to Israel, and applying it to the church, the collective of people who had trusted in Jesus as the Messiah, Israel’s promised redeemer. This collective did not only include Jews, but Gentiles as well. Now, by virtue of being in Christ, in Messiah, they were included in the people of God, Israel. This does not mean that the nation Israel ceased to be in God’s promised future (see Romans 11), but that the people of God had been expanded to include all who followed Christ.

Christ is the cornerstone, Peter says, who was rejected by the builders to their own detriment. Peter is alluding to Isaiah 28, which speaks of Israel’s rejection of God’s cornerstone, the Servant of Yahweh, the Messiah. Christ followers have received Jesus as the cornerstone for the temple and, as living stones, are being built into the temple of God, the “spiritual house” in which the priests offered up sacrifices. In fact, Peter says, we are the royal priesthood, those who serve and belong to the King. He is mixing metaphors, of course.

Peter further says we once were not God’s people, but now we are His people to whom He has shown mercy. Peter is alluding to Hosea 2 where Yahweh speaks of Israel as the wife who is no longer His wife, the people who is no longer His people, rejected because of their unfaithfulness to Him, but who He is going to restore to that place of being His people. They have become Gentiles, the other nations or peoples, not His people, but then He redeems them and makes them His people once more. And this, Peter is saying, is what has happened with believers in Jesus. We once were not God’s people, but now we have become His people who were shown mercy in Christ.

This is our standing before God and the basis for our being holy. We are in a holy position and so can and must live holy lives. What we are is the foundation for what we must become. God’s child must act like God’s child and has the wherewithal to act like God’s child since he is God’s child. God is working in us, of course, to make us holy, but He commands us to holiness. Peter will continue encouraging his readers to such holiness in what follows.