Good morning! Continuing in 1 Peter 2:9-10, I want to look at the second descriptor Peter uses to describe his Christian audience. Yesterday we covered the chosen aspect of chosen race. This morning let’s take a dive into royal priesthood. Like chosen race, royal priesthood has it’s origins in the relationship between the people of Israel and God through the covenant God made with Abraham. Remember, Peter is not just borrowing this sort of language from the Abrahamic covenant. Instead, Peter is illustrating the fulfillment of that covenant and the establishment of the new covenant which were realized through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.
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
Royal priesthood origins in God’s covenant with Abraham
The covenant between God and Abraham was not the first covenant between God and man. We can point to many covenants before. Most importantly there is the implied covenant between God and Adam and the covenant between God and Noah. The Bible also covers a number of covenants after that between God and Abraham, e.g., God and Isaac, God and Moses, etc. There is no doubt that Christ was the fulfillment of all these covenants. But, the covenant between God and Abraham is the central covenant of the Old Testament, in which God chose Abraham and his descendants to be his people. (Genesis 15, Genesis 17)
God is faithful, regardless
In Genesis 15 God makes his covenant with Abraham. God passes through the halved carcasses of the sacrificial offerings as a fire-pot to illustrate His dedication to it. Abraham only observes. As we mentioned in yesterday’s study, God fulfilled His side of the covenant in spite of the conduct of the people of Israel. For their part, they transgressed every expectation laid upon them by the covenant. They, like us, were unable to perfectly keep their end of the bargain. But, God kept both sides of the covenant. He never wavered from His side. But, He also kept their side, from which they constantly strayed.
A Covenant Theology aside
In Genesis 17 we read many important aspects of this covenant between God and Abraham. But, for the purposes of this study, I want to cover two. Remember, we are not studying Covenant Theology this morning. We are looking into what Peter had in mind when describing Christians as a royal priesthood. First, in Genesis 17, God tells Abraham that he will be the father of nations. There is an important distinction made by God himself in these verses. It is especially important to Christians. Why? Because we are the children of Abraham in the faith (Galatians 3:7). We can see the distinction in the way God describes the future generations of Abraham and Ishmael.
Descendants of Abraham in the faith
Here are a number of verses in order to illustrate my point.
4 “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. 5 No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. 6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you.
Genesis 17:4-6
15 And God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. 16 I will bless her, and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”
Genesis 17:15-16
20 As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation.
Genesis 17:20
So, briefly, we can see that, whereas God blessed Ishmael and determined to make him into a great nation, God blessed Abraham and Sarah even more. He determined to make them into a multitude of nations. This is important because it ties into so many Old Testament prophecies about the coming of a time when God would gather His chosen people from all over the globe, even from among the Gentiles. We can think of the people of Israel (and indeed this is how they thought of themselves) as one nation. If that is the case, we know from the very start of the covenant between God and Abraham that the fulfillment of the covenant would include nations beyond Israel.
Circumcision and regeneration
Second, the sign of the covenant with Abraham was circumcision.
10 This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised…14 Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
Genesis 17:10, 14
Circumcision was a sign of the covenant in the flesh. Christians bear the mark of the new covenant on their hearts (Romans 2:25-29). If you have not read the studies on 1 Peter 2:4-8 (Cornerstone, The Obedient, The Disobedient) I humbly recommend them. In them we read Ezekiel 11:17-21 and other verses which discuss the change of heart that comes through God’s regeneration of the believer.
Another Covenant Theology aside
(There are some who believe that baptism is the outward sign of the new covenant. Others believe that regenerate belief – an inward sign – is the parallel to circumcision under the new covenant in Christ. I do not want to try to work through that today. I will save it for our studies in Romans and 1 Corinthians. My point today is to get to the concept of royal priesthood, and how Christians are numbered as such under the fulfilled covenant in Christ.)
A royal priesthood
This was all a long way of saying that in Christ we are part of the multitude of nations who are Abraham’s descendants in the faith. And, that, like the sign of circumcision, Christians are part of the fulfilled covenant with Abraham and bear the mark of the new covenant in Christ on their hearts. In this fulfilled covenant, we no longer require a tribe set apart to be our priests. Why? Because the word of God is written on all of our hearts.
31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 34 And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
Jeremiah 31:31-34
A royal priesthood serving in God’s sanctuary
Like we discussed in the studies (mentioned above) on 1 Peter 2:4-8, Christians are the living stones from which the Church is built. Each Christian is, as an image bearer of Christ our High Priest (Hebrews 7:26-28), himself a priest before God. Together, in Christ, we are made into a kingdom of priests (Revelations 1:4-6). The temple in which we serve is the sanctuary made up of all believers. It is the body of Christ, God’s sanctuary in our midst.
26 I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. 27 My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 28 Then the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel, when my sanctuary is in their midst forevermore.”
Ezekiel 37:26-28
John Brown on royal priesthood
Yesterday, I introduced you to the writing of John Brown. His expository writing on 1 Peter has been very edifying to me. Today, I will close with his thoughts on the concept of Christians as a royal priesthood.
They are a kingdom, but they are “a kingdom of priests.” They belong to, complexly taken they form, the kingdom that is “not of this world.” They belong to a spiritual-monarchy, at the head of which is Jehovah, in the person of the only-begotten Son. They are his subjects; and being his subjects, all their duties are religious duties, all exercises of the priestly function. “Whatsoever they do,” in the way of duty, they are required to “do it as to the Lord.” “They serve the Lord Christ.” “Whatsoever they do, whether in word or deed, they do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.” And “whether they eat or drink, or whatsoever they do, they do all to his glory.”
John Brown, Expository Discourses on the First Epistle of Peter Volume 1, 291-292, William Oliphant and Co. 1866
