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. (1 Peter 2:9)

It’s A Lot Easier To Float Downstream Than It Is To Swim Upstream

The King James Version calls this chosen people, who are a royal priesthood and a holy nation now belonging to God, a peculiar people. The NASB adds that these are actually a people for God’s own possession, which is what makes this Body of Christ a most peculiar people. Matthew Henry brings out the awesome privilege God allows Christians as the result of His amazing grace:

All Christians, wheresoever they be, compose one holy nation. It is the honour of the servants of Christ that they are God’s peculiar people. These dignities and virtues of Christians are not natural to them; for their first state is a state of horrid darkness, but they are effectually called out of darkness that they should allow forth the virtues and praises of him who called them. (Matthew Henry’s Commentary In One Volume, 1943)

But unfortunately, as more and more of its leaders and pastors are slowly being conditioned (think frog in the kettle) that man’s concept of love is the same as God’s, today much of spineless evanjellyfish is floating downstream right back into that darkness. The tragic truth is, rather than loving the Lord and His Word enough to stand the risk of rejection they are, instead, seeking unity with each other. In their lust for acceptance and false church growth far too many have therefore begun to speak from the position of the world.

And to be sure the world, indeed, is listening to them (see—1 John 4:5); but not in the way these fools think. No, these people-pleasers want peace with the world instead of walking against it as commanded by God. No doubt many of these worshiping the powerless idol they’ve made of evangelicalism are nice people who are sincere in their beliefs. However they haven’t considered, for example, that when Luther was led by God to stand against the “Christianity” of his day the men holding leadership positions within it were also likely quite nice, and very sincere, in their own beliefs as well.

But according to the Word of God, which is where Luther made his stand as Jesus sustained him, these idolators with their apostate Roman Catholicism, were all quite nicely, and very sincerely, dead wrong. For those who can handle the truth, much of evangelicalism is just as apostate now as was the Roman Catholic Church in Luther’s time. And, it remains such. So beloved, following the spiritual principle underlying Joshua 24:15 to be totally committed to the Lord no matter what others around you do, let us resolve today to stay the course and say, “But as for me and my household, we will be peculiar.”