What is the church? The church is not the bricks and mortar building. I’m not thinking either about the human organisation we call the church – not the charity, not the business. We started to think last week about how the apostle Peter describes the church.
1 Peter 2 4 As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans but chosen by God and precious to him—5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Peter describes the church as a spiritual house, the new Temple, built up not of bricks but of living stones of individual believers. We thought last week about Christ who is the cornerstone and capstone of this new living building. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone of the church, the cornerstone of faith and the cornerstone of our lives.
We also remembered last week what Paul wrote to the Ephesians about this spiritual building.
Ephesians 2 19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.
The church of Jesus Christ is not a physical building but a spiritual building – the new Temple which has replaced the old Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. The spiritual house in which God lives by the Holy Spirit. The place where people can meet with God. The place where people can find forgiveness. We are the spiritual stones and God is building us up into this spiritual building.
But if this picture of the church as a spiritual temple was not wonderful enough, Peter goes on in our reading today to fill out what it is to be the church. In two short verses he unwraps the majesty and the glory of the church which Jesus is building – two verses which give us a mind-blowing glimpse of our wonderful destiny as the church of Jesus Christ. He starts in verse 9.
9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,
To understand this passage best we will look at it out of order. We need to begin by recognising that we are not part of the church because of anything good in ourselves. Not by birth. Not by our hard work. We only belong to the church because of what God has done.
9 But you are a chosen people, We are “a chosen people” because God has
called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.
Peter is very clear. Like everybody else, all Christians were once living in darkness. Our sin separated us all from the holy God who dwells in unapproachable light. But God has saved us from our darkness. By his grace he has brought us into his wonderful marvellous light!
Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God;
Initially, we didn’t belong to any group of people – now we belong to the people of God. In the Old Testament the nation of Israel were God’s special people. Since Jesus, the people of God are those who put their trust in Jesus and follow Jesus. We are the people of God. God has made us his beloved children and part of his forever family the Church.
once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
By nature we were God’s enemies. But God has changed us into his friends. God has shown us mercy. God has had pity on us. God brought us out of darkness into his wonderful light by forgiving our sins. We have been born again to a living hope and given a wonderful inheritance. We will see in the weeks to come how God accomplished this wonderful salvation. We are forgiven because of Jesus and his death on the cross.
1 Peter 2 24 ‘He himself bore our sins’ in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; ‘by his wounds you have been healed.’ 25 For ‘you were like sheep going astray,’ but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
1 Peter 3 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.
once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Because of God’s mercy, Peter says, now
you are a chosen people,
God has chosen to save us by his amazing grace. He has set his love on us – love which will never, ever let us go.
And there’s more! Because of God’s mercy, we are
a royal priesthood,
In the Old Testament kings could not be priests and priests could not be kings. In the church every one of us is both a king and a priest. From the newest believer to the most mature, from the moment we put our trust in Jesus to save us and are born again, we are kings and priests. In God’s eternal kingdom, we have the status and privileges of royalty. And at the same time, we have the duties and the ministry of priests. Priests pray and intercede with God on behalf of people. And priests teach the people the word of God and deliver God’s messages to people. And in God’s masterplan of salvation, every Christian is a priest – bringing the people before God and representing God to the people.
1 Peter 2 5 you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
As royal priests we are called to offer our lives as sacrifices to God. You may have heard the phrase, “the priesthood of all believers.” The Bible teaches us that every believer is a priest. But not just any common-all-garden priest. A royal priest.
Revelation 1:5 To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, 6 and has made us to be a kingdom and priests to serve his God and Father—to him be glory and power for ever and ever! Amen.
Revelation 5:9 “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals,
because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God
from every tribe and language and people and nation.
10You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,
and they will reign on the earth.”
All believers are priests and kings serving God and reigning in his eternal kingdom.
We are a chosen people. A royal priesthood. And there’s more!
We are a holy nation,
We thought about holiness two weeks ago in 1 Peter 1. There we saw three reasons for living holy lives. Christians are called to be holy, because God is holy. We should be holy because of the great price God has paid to redeem us.
1 Peter 1 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.
And we should be holy because we have been saved from death and born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable.
God has made us into his holy nation, set apart for him, consecrated to him. And there’s even more!
We are God’s special possession,
We are a people who belong to God. We don’t belong to ourselves any more. We aren’t free to live any way we like. We belong to God!
So what was God’s purpose in all of this? Why has God saved us? Why has God made us to be his 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.
This is why God has saved us. To declare his praises.
NRSV in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
Declaring, proclaiming, the word means to make a public announcement about something. Not whisper it but shout it from the rooftops. God has not saved us and made us into his spiritual temple and into his kingly priests just so we can put our feet up and enjoy the blessings of salvation. God has saved us so that we can announce to the whole world about what he has done.
Message – we are God’s instruments to do his work and speak out for him, to tell others of the night-and-day difference he made for you—from nothing to something, from rejected to accepted.
Psalm 107 begins like this.
1 Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good; his love endures for ever.
2 Let the redeemed of the LORD tell their story – those he redeemed from the hand of the foe!
God has saved us for the purpose that we should declare his mighty acts to the world.
9 …. you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession,
But sometimes we forget what the church really is – we forget what God has called us to be.
CS LEWIS wrote a book called THE SCREWTAPE LETTERS. It is a series of imagined letters from a senior demon to a junior demon giving instructions on how to lead human beings away from God. Here is a passage about some of the tricks the devil uses to make Christians forget what the church really is.
“One of our great allies at present is the Church itself. Do not misunderstand me. I do not mean the Church as we see her spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners. That, I confess, is a spectacle which makes our boldest tempters uneasy. But fortunately it is quite invisible to these humans. All your patient sees is the half-finished building on the new estate. When he goes inside, he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains. You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy’s side. No matter. Your patient, thanks to Our Father below, is a fool. Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. At his present stage, you see, he has an idea of “Christians” in his mind which he supposes to be spiritual but which, in fact, is largely pictorial. His mind is full of togas and sandals and armour and bare legs and the mere fact that the other people in church wear modern clothes is a real—though of course an unconscious—difficulty to him. Never let it come to the surface; never let him ask what he expected them to look like. Keep everything hazy in his mind now. Work hard on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman.”
What is the church? 1 Peter tells us what the church really is. Not a physical building but a spiritual building, the new temple where God lives by his Holy Spirit. And if we believe in Jesus and follow Jesus we are part of that spiritual building. These words are true of us. Thanks be to God!
10 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.
9 …. 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.