Yesterday we studied the Christian race. I wanted to cover Peter’s term chosen race, but I ran out of time. I don’t like getting hung up on the big cultural topics of our day, but sometimes it can’t be helped. When you look around and it seems everyone thinks everyone else is a racist, it’s wonderful to find that Christ has the solution to the “problem.” If you want to check out that study, please find it here: Race and Racism: The Quest: Day 39.0. Today, I want to cover the concept of a chosen race. Why would Peter choose those words? What might we infer from them? And, upon what might they be based?
9 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. 10 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 2:9-10
Chosen race
A chosen race? It sounds like an odd term to the modern ear. It might sound xenophobic or nationalistic. I can imagine people reading the term and feeling instant hostility. Let’s dig in and see if we can understand Peter’s reasoning.
2 They set out from Rephidim and came into the wilderness of Sinai, and they encamped in the wilderness. There Israel encamped before the mountain, 3 while Moses went up to God. The Lord called to him out of the mountain, saying, “Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: 4 ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. 5 Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’ These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel.”
Exodus 19:2-6
Chosen generation
If you had any upbringing similar to mine, you grew up with the King James Version handy. It uses the term chosen generation. So, if and when you see that phrasing throughout this study, you will understand why. Either way, today we are focused on the chosen aspect of chosen race, and so the second word matters less. Now, that’s behind us, let’s try to understand Peter’s frame of mind. Peter was a Jew, and the people of Israel were the chosen people of God. There is perhaps nothing in the B.C. history of the Israelite people as significant as God’s redemption of the people from Egypt. It is this event, along with God’s care for them in the wilderness and bringing them at last into the land promised to Abraham, which the prophets cite again and again as proof of God’s claim over them.
Peter’s perspective
In the verses above, it seems there are conditions placed upon the people of Israel. Moses wrote, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant… But, like all people, the Israelites seldom kept their end of the bargain with God. But, God always remained faithful. In the verses below we can see a picture Peter’s perspective as he applies the notion of a chosen race, previously reserve for the people of Israel, to all Christians.
6 “For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. 7 It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, 8 but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, 10 and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face. 11 You shall therefore be careful to do the commandment and the statutes and the rules that I command you today.
Deuteronomy 7:6-11
Why does God choose those He has chosen?
In a few days we will get to the concept of a holy nation and what that entails. For now, let’s look at what Moses wrote about God’s choosing. Moses wrote that God chose the people of Israel to be a treasured possession – or you might say, a peculiar people, but we will cover that in a few more days more. Why did God choose them? Was it because they somehow merited His favor? Was it because they were wiser than the other peoples? Was it because they were a greater, more numerous people than the peoples which surrounded them?
The answer to each of these questions is a resounding No. Put simply, God chose to do so because that was what He chose. This is a hard pill to swallow for some. It is like your parents telling you “Because I said so.” Yet, there it is. God had a plan from the time, if time it can be called, before Creation. This was part of His plan. If you are not content, let me offer the following verses. They will not soothe, but perhaps they will penetrate your heart. It is important to grasp, when we come to really grapple with who God is, that we can only ever understand minute aspects of who and what He is.
12 Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand
Isaiah 40:12-14
and marked off the heavens with a span,
enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure
and weighed the mountains in scales
and the hills in a balance?
13 Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord,
or what man shows him his counsel?
14 Whom did he consult,
and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge,
and showed him the way of understanding?
God is faithful
Why God stuck with His choice of Israel has everything to do with the divine attributes of God. It has nothing to do with the merit or righteousness of the people of Israel. God is faithful. God made a covenant with Abraham and Abraham’s descendants. It is true that there were expectations on the part of the people of Israel. It is also true that they continually trespassed the bounds of those expectations. A cursory glance through the Book of Judges, for example, will reveal many a “And Israel did what was wicked in the sight of God.” But, God made the covenant with Abraham, and God will not break the covenant.
Indeed, it is God who keeps faith on the part of both parties! The people of Israel rejected God, their faith, and broke covenant with God countless times. But, God remained, and remains true. Israel remained God’s chosen people. Through the people of Israel, God brought forth Christ so that all mankind might be brought into the fold. In this sense, we, the children of Abraham by faith, are still part of that covenant. We are His people, and will remain His people forever.
20 There is none like you, O Lord, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. 21 And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people, making for yourself a name for great and awesome things, in driving out nations before your people whom you redeemed from Egypt? 22 And you made your people Israel to be your people forever, and you, O Lord, became their God.
1 Chronicles 17:20-22
Chosen: sons and daughters from the ends of the earth
So, we can say and trust that through Christ we have become God’s chosen people. Note, that this is all God’s doing, part of His design, and that it was all accomplished in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. It is a wonder and a miracle. God, through Christ, extended the invitation to become part of His chosen people to men and women throughout time and around the globe. Again, this was not due to anyone’s merit, but of God’s own choosing. Why? For God’s own glory. Isaiah touches on this in his great passage about salvation.
But now thus says the Lord,
Isaiah 43:1-7
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
3 For I am the Lord your God,
the Holy One of Israel, your Savior…
I give Egypt as your ransom,
Cush and Seba in exchange for you.
4 Because you are precious in my eyes,
and honored, and I love you,
I give men in return for you,
peoples in exchange for your life.
5 Fear not, for I am with you;
I will bring your offspring from the east,
and from the west I will gather you.
6 I will say to the north, Give up,
and to the south, Do not withhold;
bring my sons from afar
and my daughters from the end of the earth,
7 everyone who is called by my name,
whom I created for my glory,
whom I formed and made.”
No one is chosen based on merit or birth
The apostles, too, confirmed that there was no quality in ourselves which led to God choosing us. If you are not familiar with the term, this is what Reformed types call Total Depravity.
26 For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. 27 But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; 28 God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, 29 so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. 30 And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, 31 so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.”
1 Corinthians 1:26-31
Introducing John Brown
I found a great volume of commentary on 1 Peter from 1866. It is by John Brown. According to the books’ opening Brown was a Presbyterian minister in Edinburgh, Scotland, and an expository professor. I admit, I had not heard of him before I went looking for insight into these verses. His writing can be dense, and it is so filled with quote from scripture and writers of the early Church, that it is sometimes difficult to grab hold of a distilled paragraph or two which represents the sum of his thoughts on a given passage. But, I can recommend reading his exposition of 1 Peter without reservation. Here, he echoes the very sentiments of Paul quoted above. (The brackets in the quote below are mine, added for clarity.)
[Christians] are not selected for their previous moral worth: “Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God; yet such were some of you,” — [who are] now the “sanctified of Christ Jesus, called to be saints.” And even in the case of those who were not remarkable for depravity and guilt, the cause of their being selected cannot be found in their moral worth. In man, in every man born merely of the flesh, “dwelleth no good thing.” The only account that can be given, why any of the human family are selected, and why one rather than another is selected, is, “Even so. Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.” “He has mercy because he wills to have mercy; he has compassion because he wills to have compassion.” The cause of his own selection appears to every one of the chosen generation “a mystery hid in God;” and when he thinks of it, his heart overflows equally with gratitude and amazement: “What am I, and what is the house of my father, that I should be brought hitherto? Is this the manner of man, O Lord God?”
John Brown, Expository Discourses on the First Epistle of Peter Volume 1, 289, William Oliphant and Co. 1866
Chosen in spite of, not because of
So, we see, at the end of the day, Christians are the chosen race (or chosen generation, if you will) in spite of their moral failings, and not due to their moral superiority. The Church is indeed the body of Christ made up by all the saints past, present, and future. But, the saintliness of each of us is not a product of our rigor in devotion, our excellence in piety, or the impeccability of our virtues. It is because all saints are robed in the righteousness of Christ. The perfect goodness by which he lived his life, and the perfect obedience through which he offered himself up as the sacrifice of atonement for our sins are imputed to us as righteousness.
21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Romans 3:21-26
God, from first to last
I am not sure how to stress the point more than I already have. It is God’s doing from first to last. And, what a glorious relief that is! Certainly if it were up to any one of us to remain part of the chosen race by virtue of our behavior, we would all fail, just as the people of Israel failed in keeping God’s expectations of them. But, we know that it is God who chooses. He determines who is part of the chosen race. We know it is God who is faithful. He will look upon his chosen people and see in each the image of Christ, His son.
God will be glorified by His chosen and by everyone else
In reading John Brown, I came to this most excellent appeal to the chosen people of God. In it Brown describes our responsibility toward the unregenerate unbeliever. Certainly, we cannot will ourselves into some emotional or philosophical state in which we (at long last) are good enough, right enough, open enough, etc., to receive God’s calling. But, we can pray. Even the unbeliever can pray for faith. The lost can beg to be found. Brown’s words are powerful. I pray you will read it. I pray you grasp hold of the realization that we are all immortals. We will all live beyond this life. That eternal life can be one of great beauty, or one of everlasting despair. God will be glorified by both.
But are all here among “the called, and chosen, and faithful?” Would God it were so! But I more than fear that there are persons here, who, though called, often called, affectionately, earnestly called, have never been effectually called; who are yet without the pale of the chosen race, the kingdom of priests, the holy nation, the peculiar people, having no part nor lot in their peculiar privileges. For this class we ought to feel the deepest commiseration, the tenderest pity; and the best way of showing this is to endeavour to make them understand their real position. My dear fellow-immortals, there can be no doubt your duty is to show forth the praises of God. That is the first duty of every intelligent creature, and nothing can release you from its obligation. God will be glorified in you whether you will or not. If you will not give him glory, he will make your rebellion and its fearful consequences praise him.
John Brown, Expository Discourses on the First Epistle of Peter Volume 1, 323, William Oliphant and Co. 1866
