A Sense Of Identity

 

By Rev. Dr. Steve Voorwinde

 

Text: 1 Peter 1:13-2:12

 

Introduction

A few weeks ago I was asked to do something that I haven’t done for a while, but that many of you probably do quite often. I was asked to write a reference for a young person. It was for the sixteen year old girl who cleans our house once a week. After helping us out for a year she had decided it was time to get a real job and would I please be so kind as to write her a reference? What do you do in a situation like that? In the ministry I would often think, “Oh no, not another one!” But now with age I have begun to think a little bit more maturely. What for me is just part of my routine and a bit of a chore means so much more for the young person involved. For her it’s probably the first reference anyone has ever written for her, the first time anyone outside her family has had to think seriously about her talents, her character and her potential.

So I did the best I could and told whoever it might concern that she was always responsible and efficient, that she possessed a maturity beyond her years, and that she came from a loving and stable Christian family. Because she’s rather shy she didn’t say much. So a couple of weeks later I did the unthinkable and asked her mother whether the reference for Kate was okay. “Well,” she said, “Kate doesn’t have a new job yet, but she does read your reference every time she feels depressed!”

Maybe that was not the result I intended, but in its own way it was positive. Not only does she still clean our house, but now she has a reputation to live up to. If she does get a real job she knows that her employer has read my reference and I trust that she will rise to the occasion. That reference puts a certain amount of pressure on her to live up to its expectations.

I am sure this kind of pressure is not foreign to us.

When I was a young person I was once asked to propose a toast at a wedding. I think it was the groom himself who called me up with the words, “And now Steve will propose the first toast, and he’s a great speaker.” I felt it was a cruel compliment, as I had seldom spoken in public before and was terribly nervous.

Or what if you are the guest speaker somewhere and you’re introduced as the best preacher in all of Queensland? I am sure there are several here who could qualify for that honour, but think of the pressure it puts on you to perform!

• 1 Peter – The Big Picture

Now what does all this have to do with 1 Peter? Well, think of the people to whom he is writing. Turn if you will to the opening verses of chapter 1:

“Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, To God’s elect, strangers in the world, scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia,

² who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and sprinkling by his blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.”

Now if you know your NT geography, you will immediately realize that Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia take up an area that today would cover pretty well all of modern Turkey. So this is a vast area. Experts tell us that at the time Peter wrote there were no more than about 5000 Christians in all of these provinces. They were small, scattered, isolated communities of believers spread over a vast area. In some respects they were not unlike the CRCA. They were small, scattered and struggling. At the end of his letter Peter tells them that he has written them to encourage them (5:12). In their situation they obviously needed encouragement. And how does he encourage them? He begins by reminding them of who they are. They are “God’s elect, strangers in the world, and scattered.”

At first that may not sound like much, but to an ear acquainted with the language of the Greek Old Testament these words would have been like the sweetest music. Literally they were the elect strangers of the Diaspora. In God’s book they were up there with the best of them:

• Like the people of Israel, they were the elect of God.

• Like the patriarchs, they were strangers in the world.

• Like the later Jews, they lived in the Diaspora.

Do you see what Peter is beginning to do? He is starting to give his readers a strong sense of their biblical identity. Here again I see real similarities between Peter’s readers and our own denomination. Like those small, scattered communities in Asia Minor we need to have a strong sense of biblical identity. Who are we essentially? What defines us? What makes us who we are? Back in the nineties these questions reached fever pitch. I remember a believer who joined us for a time from another country. He made a very astute observation at the time, “The Reformed Churches of Australia are losing their sense of identity. This denomination is going through an identity crisis.” And he was right. We seemed to be going through all the turmoil of adolescence. Our churches were hemorrhaging at both ends – we were losing members at both the conservative and the progressive end of the spectrum. We could no longer depend on the ethnic glue that bound us together. It was getting hard and brittle and was starting to dry out. How could we reinvent ourselves? How as a migrant church were we going to make the transition from being an ethnic church to being an indigenous church? As a friend of mine said at the time, “We should no longer be defined in terms of our background, but in terms of the Gospel.” But how do you do that? How do we define ourselves in terms of the Gospel? How do we get our identity through the Gospel?

This was precisely the challenge that Peter faced. How was he going define his readers in terms of the Gospel? How was he going to give them a true sense of biblical identity? I think he does it in a masterful way. His approach is absolutely brilliant – it actually sounds like a sermon! He hits his readers with an introduction, three points and a conclusion.

His letter has an opening at the beginning and a closing farewell at the end. That takes care of the introduction and the conclusion.

Then in the main body of the letter he has three major sections that alternate between teaching and application. He teaches and he applies, he teaches and he applies, he teaches and he applies; it does sound like a sermon, doesn’t it!

So let’s think about the passage I have chosen as a text today.

First have a look at all the commands, in the first section:

• “Prepare your minds for action” (1:13).

• “Be self-controlled” (1:13).

• “Set your hope fully on the grace to be given you.” (1:13)

• “Do not conform to evil desires” (1:14).

• “Be holy in all you do” (1:15).

• “Live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear” (1:17).

• “Love one another deeply from the heart.” (1:22)

• “Rid yourselves of all malice and deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind.” (2:1)

• “Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk” (2:2).

As you can see, this first section is chock-full of commands and exhortations. But that’s not all. All of these commands feed into or funnel into 2:5 where Peter says, “You . . . are being built into a spiritual house.”

That spiritual house is none other than the temple of God. Peter’s readers are the living stones that make up that temple. They are being built into a temple. And how are they being built into God’s temple? It’s by craving pure spiritual milk, it’s by ridding themselves of all malice and deceit, it’s by loving one another deeply from the heart. In fact, God’s temple is built up as they keep all those commands from 1:13 onwards. That’s how all of those small, scattered communities can be the temple of God in the localities where he has placed them. It’s also how we can be the temple of God in the communities where he has placed us. What a challenge! When Peter wrote his first epistle God’s temple in Jerusalem was soon to be destroyed. But never fear. God is in the business of temple construction in Pontus and Cappadocia and Galatia and Asia and Bithynia . . . and in Queensland and in NSW and Victoria and Tasmania and South Australia and Western Australia and New Zealand. We too are an integral part of his huge temple building program.

B. Our Status in Christ (2:6-10)

Now let’s have a closer look at how this works. This brings us to the next section, 2:6-10. We could call this section “The Readers’ Status” (2:6-10). In these few verses Peter gives his readers an incentive that should just blow us away. The encouraging reference that I wrote for my young friend Kate doesn’t hold a candle to what Peter is doing for his readers here. Peter wants his readers to be holy, to prepare their minds for action, and not to conform to their old evil desires. What incentive does he hold before them? How does he encourage them? He gives them the greatest sense of identity that you could possibly imagine. He defines them in terms of their relationship to Christ. And to do that, he digs deep into the OT. In verse 6 he writes, “For in Scripture it says . . .” And away he goes, proving from Scripture after Scripture that God is busy building his temple and his building materials are just amazing. Christ is the “living Stone – rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him” (v. 4). And we “like living stones, are being built up into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (v. 5).

Do you get the picture? Christ is the cornerstone. In ancient architecture this stone was of vital importance. If it were mislaid or misshapen, the whole building would be out of kilter. The whole bearing of the building was determined by the size, shape and position of the cornerstone. Your measurements couldn’t afford to be out or it would affect the dimensions of the entire building.

In this case no mistake has been made. This cornerstone isn’t out of line or out of shape for the simple reason that it has been laid by God himself. It may have been rejected by the builders. The Jewish leaders rejected the stone because it wasn’t the cornerstone they expected. Jesus was “a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall” (2:8). He is the stone that unbelievers trip over and that makes them stumble. He is also the stone that builders rejected. To men, even to prominent religious men, Jesus may have seemed an odd choice for a cornerstone. Perhaps to them he seemed odd, misshapen, out of place. So the builders reject him and throw him away, and unwary passers-by trip over him.

But God has made no mistake. Christ is his choice stone, his precious cornerstone. He was laid in precisely the right place, at precisely the right time. He was hewn and shaped to exactly the right proportions. He was not a millimeter out to the left or to the right. He is perfectly suited for the job that he meant to do. He is the ideal cornerstone to support the mighty edifice that is to be erected upon it. He can take it. He can handle it. As the living Stone can cope with the thousands and millions of living stones that will come to him to be built in to that mighty spiritual house that is the temple of God.

At this point the picture becomes decidedly challenging. Not only are believers living stones built on the cornerstone. We are also a “holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God.” So Peter’s imagery is fluid. We are stones in the temple, but at the same time we are priests who serve in the temple. We can say is that we are highly privileged. We are stones and we are priests. We make up the temple and we serve in the temple. We are like those carefully quarried stones that were so well placed in Solomon’s temple. And yet the edifice that God is building today leaves Solomon’s temple completely in the shade. Solomon’s temple was just a pale reflection, a faint outline, a puny representation of the temple that God is building today. And we’re part of it. We have a vital role to play in this giant divine construction project of the ages.

But you may say, “I don’t see that. I don’t see God doing that sort of thing in my church. I don’t see a glorious building at all. Sometimes all I see is a mess that has to be cleaned up.”

That kind of comment reminds me of an experience I had as a university student. Every day I would catch the bus in to uni, and every day I would cross the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It was during the years that the Opera House was under construction. And for years not much seemed to be happening. All I could see was cranes, scaffolding, piles of materials, and not much progress. Then I shared my observations with an architecture student, and his reactions were so totally different to mine. “What’s happening at Bennelong Point is just beautiful. It’s magnificent.” Why our different reactions? Because with his trained eye my friend could see the finished product.

You see, we are workers on the construction site of God’s temple. Construction sites by definition are messy and sometimes dangerous places. We see people tripping over the building material, particularly over the cornerstone. There can be days on end when not much progress seems to be made. We can easily become discouraged. But God is still in the temple building business and he is using the humble services of the likes of you and me. So let’s be more like my architect friend and with the eye of faith see the finished product. We are involved in the greatest building project of all time. Compared to what we’re doing the Sydney Opera House, the Taj Mahal and even the Great Wall of China will look pretty ordinary. We are exceedingly privileged people. That’s the point that Peter his making, and let’s never forget it.

 

C. Our Identity and Responsibility (2:9-12)

But there is still more to come. We move on to verse 9. In verses 6-8 Peter has been describing the living Stone, Jesus Christ. He is the corner stone, the stone that the builders rejected and the rock that makes men fall. Now in v. 9 he turns his attention from the living Stone to the living stones, and that’s us:

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Here Peter is telling us two things – who we are and what we do. He is now zeroing in on our identity and our responsibility. He has already told us a bit about both. Earlier in the chapter he has reminded us that we are living stones and a holy priesthood. As a holy priesthood we also have the responsibility to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God. Now he tells us what those spiritual sacrifices are: “to declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

But we begin with our identity as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” It is not hard to see what Peter is doing with this kind of language. He is using some of the choicest titles that God used for Israel in the OT and he boldly applies them to these scattered groups of Christians in Asia Minor. When it comes to establishing their identity this is stroke of genius. He takes some of God’s most eloquent love language lavished on Israel and without qualification uses it of these Christians. These are not just cold titles. This is the warm language of wooing love.

Like the Israelites of old they are a “chosen people and a royal priesthood.” Moses called the Israelites a kingdom of priests and that’s exactly what Peter has in mind. So not only the Levites but all the people were priests. And the same is still true today. Not only the clergy but all the people are priests. But what precisely does this mean? I used to think that they had a priestly role with respect to the nations. They were to intercede for the nations. Now that may be an implication, but there is nothing of that in either passage. Their priesthood relates them not so much to others as to God. The point is that Israel has been brought into such close fellowship with God that their access to him is priestly. God dwells among them. They are holy because he is holy.

So that’s who we are – “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” But now what are we to do?

The NIV says that we are to “declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.” Now that sounds pretty straightforward till you start looking at other translations. What precisely does Peter mean when he tells us to declare God’s praises? The word “declare” is simple enough. It just means to “proclaim” or “tell”. Not too many problems there. But the commentaries and translations go into spasms over the word “praises”. Some give the translation “excellencies” or even “goodness”, while others speak of his “mighty acts” or “wonderful deeds”. So what are we to declare? What are we to proclaim? Are we to tell of his excellencies or his moral attributes, like God’s wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and truth. Or are we to tell of his great redemptive accomplishments, such as the exodus from Egypt, the return from Babylon and Jesus’ victory over death?

Well, I am happy to say that we really don’t have to make a choice. Here we can legitimately have it both ways, because it is precisely in his redemptive acts that we see his moral attributes most clearly. It was through the exodus and the return from Babylon and the death and resurrection of Jesus that we most clearly see the moral attributes and the excellencies of our mighty God. Where do we have a clearer demonstration of his love, his power, his justice, his wisdom and his truth? These are not abstract qualities, but are demonstrated precisely in the great events of redemptive history. These great deeds ought to be told, sung, declared and proclaimed. That’s what our church life is all about. That’s the heart and soul of it. These are the spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God.

So there in verse 9 you have this very compact summary of both our identity and our responsibility. This is what we are – “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” And this is what we do. We “declare the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

And then in the next verse Peter alludes to Hosea to remind us once again how privileged we are. Our identity is purely the result of God’s grace: “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.”

So there you have it. Once you were not a people. But now you are a people – a chosen people, a holy people, a priestly people.

But there is also a part of our identity that we may not enjoy so much. We are also a different people and a foreign people. We all want to be good Australians. We want to be an Australian church. But then when he starts his next lot of commands, Peter addresses his readers as “aliens and strangers in the world.” There’s a warning there. Don’t be too comfortable. Don’t feel too much at home. Don’t get too settled. Remember the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. They were aliens and strangers. And so are you. But how? By “abstaining from sinful desires that wage war against the soul.” How different is that! And yet that is what we are called to be. That’s what a holy people looks like. And that has a powerful evangelistic cutting edge. For Peter goes on: “Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.” (v. 12). Evangelism and worship go hand in hand. Evangelism has reached its goal when pagans are praising God.

 

Conclusion

So what does all this do for our sense of identity? Like Peter’s readers we are small, scattered communities spread over a wide area. What can define us? My friend was right, we need to define ourselves in terms of the Gospel. And that Gospel tells us in no uncertain terms who we are. We are the living stones who have come to the living Stone. We are a holy priesthood offering spiritual sacrifices. And those sacrifices are declaring the praises of him who called us out of darkness into his wonderful light. That’s how God builds his temple. As we are busy working on God’s great construction project our identity won’t be a problem. And if ever that work gets you down, if ever you get depressed about your church or your ministry or about our denomination, then read the reference that God has written for you in our passage in 1 Peter. There he tells you that “you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God.” It doesn’t get any better than that!