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. 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)
We are a congregation of Christians with a God-given passion to prize and proclaim the excellencies of our crucified and risen Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the One through whom the God of all grace chose us, sought us, saved us, and called us out of darkness and into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9).
We certainly weren't born with this passion. Nor did it appear out of nowhere, or because we decided it was time to settle down and become religious, churchgoing people. Like every son and daughter of Adam, we were born in sin (Psa. 51:5; Rom. 5:12-19). Prior to being rescued by the grace of God, we loved the darkness of our sin and wanted to continue wallowing in our filth and rebellion (John 3:19). We hated God (Rom. 1:30). We loved and idolized His gifts, but wanted nothing to do with Him (Rom. 1:25).
This hatred wasn't expressed in verbal utterances like, "I hate God," but was expressed by the way we lived our lives in wicked avoidance of the light (John 3:20). Although we, with the rest of mankind, had a real and inescapable sense of His existence, we refused to honor and give thanks to Him as the gracious Giver of life and breath and everything (Rom. 1:20-21; Acts 17:25). The glory of the immortal God, meant to be our joy and treasure, we sinfully exchanged for lesser, trivial, worthless things. Instead of drinking from Him as the fountain of living waters, we drank down sin as if it were water. Instead of seeking the God from whom every blessing flows, we sought to satisfy ourselves with everything but God, and proved - by our own experience - that what He had long ago spoken concerning the human race was and is still absolutely true:
None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one. (Romans 3:10-12)
Our attitude towards our Creator was identical to that which the citizens in Christ's parable had towards their nobleman: "We do not want this man to reign over us!" (Luke 19:14). Seeking to be our own gods, we despised His glory, ignored His laws, disdained His sovereignty, and had no desire to submit to His will. Though some of us were religious, churchgoing people, we were like those of whom God spoke when He said,
This people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. (Isaiah 29:13)
Like whitewashed tombs, some of us appeared beautiful and clean on the outside, but inwardly were fully hypocrisy, death, and all uncleanness. On the other hand, some of us could say with Thomas Terry,
There used to be a time when we were fine living life with no particular religious bend, pretending to be our own gods [and] inventing our own systems of belief so as to not depend on anything other than our own self-governing consent.1
Regardless of how different our pasts were, we all had one thing in common: we were dead in the trespasses and sins in which we once walked (Eph. 2:1). We followed the course of this godless world as blind captives of the devil. We all once lived in the passions of our sinful natures, carrying out the base desires of the body and the mind, and like the rest of mankind, we deserved God's wrath and curse for the countless ways we trivialized His majesty and belittled His glory. Our iniquities had risen higher than our heads and our guilt had mounted up to the heavens (Ezra 9:6).
Blinded by sin (1 John 2:11),
polluted with sin (Job 14:4),
enslaved to sin (Romans 6:17),
ruined in sin (Isaiah 6:5),
dead in sin (Ephesians 2:1),
and in love with sin (John 3:19),
we were hopelessly separated from Christ,
and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12).
It's only by the sheer kindness and tender mercy of God that our story didn't end here, even though it would've been perfectly just for God to leave us wrecked, ruined, and destined to die in our sin and be plunged into a hopeless, Christless eternity.
What unspeakable glory it is that God the Most High is also God the Most Merciful! In our helpless, hopeless, and hostile state, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob pitied us (Eze. 16:5). Moved by a passion for His glory and a love for our souls, He opened our blind eyes to see the enormity of our sin and the awful reality of our guilt. He caused us to see that we were undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving rebels who had only ever lived for our sinful selves in a theater of a world that exists to exhibit God's life-giving glory. The goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior came to us powerfully through the message of the gospel (Titus 3:4-7). His Spirit so moved in us that the message that some of us had long ignored and considered to be irrelevant and foolish was suddenly the greatest news and most important message we had ever heard (1 Thess. 1:4-5).
Our blind eyes were opened to see the beauty and glory of Jesus Christ as the all-sufficient Savior that He is, able and willing to save to the uttermost all who draw near to God through Him (Heb. 7:25). Our deaf ears were unstopped and we heard the voice of the Good Shepherd calling us out of the sheepfold of sin and into His lush pastures of life and liberty (John 10:3). By the power of the Holy Spirit, Christ became sweet to our souls and sin became disgustingly bitter (2 Cor. 5:17). We were granted the unspeakable privilege of seeing and savoring Jesus as the one pearl of greatest value (Matt. 13:45-46), the One worth losing everything for.
Our hard and calloused hearts were melted by the reality of the Savior's dying love. Our pride and arrogance were shattered when we were made to realize that it was our sin that led to His agony in Gethsemane and His abandonment upon Calvary. We were gripped by the fact that God's sinless Son was pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities (Isa. 53:5). What wonder of wonders that God would lay our iniquities upon His beloved Son and crush Him in our place! On the cross, the ever-blessed Son became a curse for us so that we who were cursed might stand forever blessed in God's presence!
Our hearts were even more ecstatic when we learned that Jesus not only died in our place and for our sin, but that after three days He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father for our justification (Rom. 4:25). The resurrection of Jesus gives us the greatest possible assurance that the sins of all of His people have been forgiven, paid for, and put away once and for all! As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (Psa. 103:12).
Some of us had heard the gospel several times, but when it pleased God to bring it to us "in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction" (1 Thess. 1:5), His abundant mercy caused us to be born again to a living hope (1 Pet. 1:3). We who once loved our sin found ourselves repenting and turning from our sin and idols, and we who formerly wanted nothing to do with Christ found ourselves placing all our hope, trust, and confidence in Him, convinced that He alone was able to save us, cleanse us, and present us faultless before the throne of God above (Col. 1:22).
Upon believing in Christ, God not only forgave our sins and purified our souls, but He declared us to be righteous in His sight, clothing us with the very righteousness of His Son (2 Cor. 5:21). Now adopted into His family and assured of eternal glory, we rejoice and find great comfort in the promise that He who began a good work in us will bring it to completion one day (Phil. 1:6). Our Savior has given us eternal life, and because of His death and ongoing work of interceding for us, we will never perish, and no one will ever be able to snatch us from His hand (John 10:28). We press on, knowing that His infinite power will sustain us to the end. By no means have we or will we obtain perfection in this life, but we press on toward the goal of the upward call of God in Christ. Each of us can say with John Newton,
I am not what I ought to be,
I am not what I want to be,
I am not what I hope to be in another world;
but still I am not what I once used to be.
It takes the Spirit of the Almighty to shatter our lofty pride and shut our boastful mouths so that we rest and acquiesce in the truth that the only thing we contribute to our eternal salvation is the sin that made it necessary, nothing more.
For reasons entirely outside of us, reasons that will fuel our eternal praise in glory, we are a hell-deserving people chosen by the sovereign mercy of God the Father, redeemed by the precious blood of God the Son, and regenerated by infinite power of God the Holy Spirit. We are not our own, but belong to the Triune God by virtue of the Son's selfless sacrifice in the place of His bride, the church. Once we were not a people, but now we are God's people (1 Pet. 2:10). Our identity as individual believers, and as a church, is bound up in who God is for us in Jesus Christ and what He's accomplished for us through the work of our Savior.
The God of all grace spoke His death-defying gospel into our deep, dark dungeon of despair and triumphantly led our captive souls to the life, light, and liberty found only in His Son (John 1:4, 8:36). And it's God's voice, heard in the Scriptures and through the gospel, that continues to sanctify, strengthen, and satisfy our ransomed souls.
Isaac Watts, the great hymn writer, attempts to capture the sweetness of God's saving grace that has become our story and song:
Plunged in a gulf of dark despair,
We wretched sinners lay,
Without one cheerful beam of hope,
Or spark of glimmering day.
With pitying eyes the Prince of grace
Beheld our helpless grief;
He saw, and, O amazing love!
He ran to our relief.
Down from the shining seats above,
With joyful haste He fled;
Entered the grave in mortal flesh,
And dwelt among the dead.
O for this love, let rocks and hills
Their lasting silence break;
And all harmonious human tongues
The Saviour's praises speak.
Angels, assist our mighty joys,
Strike all your harps of gold;
But when you raise your highest note,
His love can ne'er be told.
Our attempt through this article is to show that there isn't anything unique about who we are as Christians, but rather, we lock arms and joyfully identify with our brothers and sisters throughout the history of the church who were raised from the same ruins, rescued by the same grace, redeemed by the same blood, and regenerated by the same power so as to raise our voices in singing the same eternal song:
Worthy is the Lamb who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing! . . . To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever! (Rev. 5:12-13)
By God's grace, we are Christians, which is why each of us can join the apostle Paul in confessing,
...by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. (1 Corinthians 15:10)