I have given the title of my message, “Who do you think you are?” You may recognise this as the title of a BBC TV programme in which celebrities try to find out more of who they are by tracing their ancestors. I’m really not sure how discovering that your great grandfather six times removed was hanged for stealing a sheep, or that you are distantly related to royalty from the 15th century helps to explain who you are, but it does make for entertaining television.
But I want to ask you, “Who do you think you are?” and to attempt something of an answer to this question from the first ten verses of 1 Peter chapter 2.
But first let me put this chapter in context.
The Apostle Peter is writing to Christians scattered throughout north-eastern Asia Minor, part of what we now know as Turkey. These Christians were all believers that Jesus is the Christ, the Jewish Messiah and Lord over all. Some of them may have been Jewish by birth like the Apostle Peter himself, but many seem to have been Gentiles, that is, non-Jews (see 1:18). Their backgrounds may have been different, but they now all have this in common, they have come to put their trust in the crucified and risen saviour: they “believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for [they] are receiving the end result of [their] faith, the salvation of [their] souls” (1:9).
But now they are beginning to face persecution from the Roman authorities who see Christianity as a threat since Christians believe that Jesus, rather than Caesar, is Lord. Peter writes to them to encourage them in the face of such threats and persecution to go on trusting in the Lord Jesus in the firm assurance and hope that they will be brought safely through such trials to glory.
Thank God that we do not currently face the same threats. Nevertheless, we also need encouragement to go on trusting in the Lord Jesus and holding fast to the faith we have confessed. We need to press on in following Christ “filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.”
And it is to help us to do that that I ask each of us to consider, “Who do you think you are?”
Looking at the first 10 verses of 1 Peter 2, I want to look at three answers to this question. They do not by any means describe all of who or what we are, but they are a good start. My three answers are: You are Gourmets, you are a Temple, and, you are Heralds.
One of the programmes which my wife and I like watching on TV is MasterChef. The contestants often cook the most marvellous meals and I wish that I could be there to taste them. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? But instead I have to return to my badly cooked discount sausages and lumpy mashed potato – that’s my cooking I hasten to add.
Peter says of the Christians to whom he is writing, Jewish and Gentile alike, “You have tasted that the Lord is good” (2:3). He is echoing the words of Psalm 34:8 which invites us to “Taste and see that the Lord is good”, with the promise, “blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.” But here Peter applies these words to the Lord Jesus.
Christians are those who have tasted that the Lord Jesus is good. In Peter’s words in verse 7 of this chapter, we have discovered that the Lord Jesus is precious. He is, in Jesus’ own words, the pearl of great price. He is the one who is altogether lovely to us. There is no one else like him. We have gained a taste for the Lord Jesus which makes us wholly dissatisfied with anything less than him. We want to feed on him. We want to feast on him, craving him like newborn babies thirsty for their mother’s milk. We cannot return to the distasteful diet on which we fed ourselves previously. As Peter expresses it in 1:18-19, we have been “redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to [us] from [our] ancestors”, [the way of life that previously preoccupied us with all its tawdry delights] … “[We have been redeemed] with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” And so Jesus is now supremely precious to us and we no longer have any taste for anything less than him.
It is the light of these things that Peter says to his first century readers, and also to us, “rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind” (2:1). Don’t turn back to the manner of life you lived before. It cannot satisfy. It is distasteful.
We as Christians, are gourmets. We have tasted that the Lord is good, and we no longer have any appetite for anything less. In Christ we have turned from our idols to serve the living and true God and to look with longing to the day when our Saviour shall return from heaven to make all things new. We are Gourmets: having tasted Christ we have lost our taste for the things the world around us seems to devour so greedily.
Is this you? Have you tasted that the Lord is good? Have you come to appreciate that there is no one and nothing else like him? He alone can satisfy the cravings of the hungry soul. Have you determined to feast on him and to turn away from all those idols that might tempt you to turn aside from him? Are you a spiritual gourmet who demands only the finest of foods, namely Christ.
Feast on him. Desire more of him. Desire nothing but what is to be found in him.
You are to be a gourmet. Secondly, you are to be a …
In verses 4-8 Peter puts together a series of Old Testament texts which he applies to the Lord Jesus Christ. He says that in Christ, God has laid the cornerstone to a new temple that he is building. In this, Peter echoes Jesus own words when he said “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days” (John 2:19, cf. Mark 14:58). Jesus was saying that he was the reality to which the temple in Jerusalem was just a pointer. He is the place where God has come to live among us. He is the thin place where heaven and earth meet. He is the place where a perfect atoning sacrifice has been made for sin.
But Peter takes this picture further. He says that Jesus is also the cornerstone of this new temple. This new temple is not a built of great blocks of stone but of living stones – of men and women. It is built of those who have come to this precious cornerstone and have been joined to him by faith. We are this temple, this spiritual house, built upon the Lord Jesus Christ. We are a temple, a people among whom the living God is pleased to dwell and to display his glory.
Remember that Peter is writing mainly to non-Jews. Just like Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, Peter is writing to those “were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world” (Ephesians 2:12). That separation was made very visible in the architecture of the temple in Jerusalem which had a series of courts. Closest to the most holy place, a picture of God’s dwelling, was the court of the priests – an area that only the priests could enter. Beyond that was the court of Israel, that was accessible only to Jewish men. Then there was the court of the women which Jewish women could enter. Furthest of all from the most holy place was the court of the Gentiles. Those who were not Jews were kept far off from the presence of the living God. But with Jesus’ death, the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. It was as if God himself had burst out of the most holy place to embrace the whole world, Jew and Gentile, male and female. That’s what Paul is saying in Ephesians 2; “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ” (Ephesians 2:13).
And that is what Peter is saying here. You who once were excluded from the temple, separated from the presence of God, have now, in Christ, become a living temple. You are a people in whom the living God dwells by his Spirit. You are a people who have intimate union with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. You are the temple of God.
And what does this mean for us? It means that the living and triune God is with us and in us. We can never again be separated from him (see Romans 8:35-39). It means that God knows us intimately from the inside out and loves us passionately. It means that he knows every situation we face and that his presence and power are always with us.
It means also that we are called to be a holy people, a people fit for the dwelling place of a holy God. This is a high calling, but he who calls us to be holy is also the one who makes us holy; he is in us by his Spirit to transform us into the likeness of his Son.
Reckon on this reality moment by moment. You are a temple. God is with you and in you.
And it means that people may encounter the living God through you … but that leads me neatly into my third point. Thirdly …
In verse 9 Peter writes, “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.”
Here Peter echoes words spoken by God to the children of Israel after he had rescued them from slavery in Egypt and brought them safely to meet with him at Mount Sinai. God told them:
You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. Exodus 19:4-6a
God's saving purpose for Israel does not involve his rejection of the rest of the world – the whole earth is his. And so he has saved and protected this people for the sake of the covenant he made with Abraham promising to bring blessing to all the nations of the world through him and his offspring. The Israelites are to be a kingdom of priests; they are to act as mediators between the living God and the nations of the world, to be the means by which all nations enjoy the blessings promised by God to Abraham. They should not think that God has chosen them and rejected the other nations; he has chosen them for the sake of the other nations; he has chosen them that they might be a light to the Gentiles.
But Israel failed to live up to God’s calling. So God sent his Son into the world to be the one through whom all nations shall be blessed. And as Peter applies these Old Testament words to the predominantly Gentile Christians to whom he writes he is telling us that in Christ we have inherited this calling. We are a “chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that [we] may declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
We are a royal people, part of the Kings family; “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.” (2:10). But in choosing and saving us God has not rejected the rest of the world, he has called us to be the means by which his salvation may be declared to the world.
We are therefore a priestly people, mediators between God and his world. We are to bring the world before God in our prayers and we are to bring God to the world as we testify to what God has done not just for us but for this whole world, a world he loves and claims as his own. We are to “declare the praises of him who called [us] out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
And we are to be a holy people, a people who reflect the character of our God; a people whose lives reflect rather than undermining the message we proclaim. We are to be holy heralds, a people whose words and actions declare the praises of our God and fill the world with the light of his glory.
People are to come face to face with the living God through us.
Is this you?
Who do you think you are?
You are gourmets: You have tasted that the Lord Jesus is good and you have an appetite for him alone.
You are a temple: The living God is in you by his Spirit. You have a share in the risen life of Christ. You are a holy people.
You are Heralds: commissioned to declare the praises of him who has called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. You are to shine the light of God’s presence into the darkness of the world around you.
May God help us to be the people we profess to be, for his name’s sake
Holy God, you have redeemed us by your Son. Help us by your Spirit to live as your redeemed people this day. Turn our hearts away from the empty way of life that marks this present age. Help us to set our hearts on the grace and glory that will flood this world when Christ appears. Enable us to live in a way that will show the world something of the glory of the age to come. And open our mouths that we might speak your praises. May others come to taste the goodness of Christ through the testimony of our lives and of our lips. May they be drawn to feast on him.
Peter Misselbrook: Whiteshill, 11/10/26; Quakers Road, 18/10/26