Applause rang out as a school’s top students received certificates of excellence for academic achievement. But the ceremony wasn’t over. The next award celebrated students who weren’t necessarily the school’s “best”, but instead were most improved. They’d worked hard to raise a failing grade, correct disruptive behaviour or commit to better attendance. Their parents beamed and applauded, acknowledging their children’s turn to a higher path—seeing not their former shortcomings but their walk in a new way.
The heart-lifting scene offers a small picture of how our heavenly Father sees us—not in our old life but now, in Christ, as His children. “Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God,” wrote John (John 1:12).
What a loving perspective! So Paul reminded new believers that once “you were dead in your transgressions and sins” (Ephesians 2:1). But in fact, “we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (v. 10).
In this way, Peter wrote, we 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,” and we are now “the people of God” (1 Peter 2:9-10). Through God’s eyes, our old path has no claim on us. Let’s see ourselves as God does—and walk anew.
By Patricia Raybon
REFLECT & PRAY
How does God see you? In Him, how should you walk?
On this new day, dear Father, please inspire me with Your view of me.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
When Peter uses the language of “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation” (1 Peter 2:9), he’s encouraging his readers by drawing from the story of Scripture in which God first chose Abraham and then the nation of Israel to reveal His ways to the world (Genesis 12:1-3; 18:19; Isaiah 41:8). The audience of 1 Peter was primarily gentile (non-Jewish), but Peter was assuring them that because of Jesus the story of God’s redemption had expanded to include gentiles: “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God” ( 1 Peter 2:10). Through Christ, they were now part of the continuing story of God’s redemption of the world. They were part of His family, chosen to reveal who He was to the world. This gave them a new identity that could transform how they lived (vv. 11-12) as they experienced suffering (vv. 21-25).
Monica La Rose
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