What Are You Proclaiming?
I’ve been reading 1 Peter this week and it has been such a timely read! Peter addresses his letter to “the elect exiles.” His audience are people who feel out of place, who are suffering and being grieved by various trials. And isn’t that such an apt description of many Christians today… feeling out of place politically and culturally, and grieved by various trials like job loss, sickness, death, stressful distance learning situations, and more.
When we feel out of place and under the pressure of various trials, it produces a tension, one we are eager to get out of. Like a taut rubber band, we’re always pulling to get back to a position of rest and ease. And that longing for reprieve naturally leads us to look around and identify anything that will solve our problems. What will make us feel more at home in this world? What can alleviate our suffering? And whatever we deem most helpful to solve those problems, we will champion and proclaim. Can’t you see this happening all around you?
Peter too saw the need to proclaim something and he penned these words to those early Christians who were suffering and displaced:
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. (1 Peter 2:9)
Brothers and sisters — something supernatural has happened that has forever united us to one another. We are a chosen race! A royal priesthood! A holy nation! A people for his own possession! Even as we are feeling out of place and facing various trials, we are “being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.” (1 Peter 2:5) But why? Why have we been joined together as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ?
To proclaim something.
But not just anything… to proclaim the excellencies of God!
In the midst of our tension, as we feel out of place in our own culture and country… In the midst of our tension, as we suffer various trials, we are not called to proclaim solutions to these tensions. We are not called to declare the excellencies of a particular political party or idea. We are not called to declare the excellencies of certain vaccine or homeopathic alternative. We are not called to declare the excellencies of our favorite solution to the distance learning challenges. That is not why we have been saved. That is not why we have been united into this royal priesthood.
We are called to proclaim the excellencies of God!
“But that doesn’t solve our problems."
That’s my first response to this truth. Maybe it’s yours as well. And you’re right. To direct all our proclamations to celebrate the excellencies of God doesn’t work to change the circumstances causing the tension we feel. But that’s because this proclamation is aimed at another problem. Not the problem of our painful circumstances but the problem of souls still dead in the darkness around us.
If we give ourselves to proclaiming the excellencies of God, who called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light, we become a lighthouse in the fog for those still dead in their sins. Our lips and our lives proclaim that there is a greater threat than what we will ever face in this life—an eternity of darkness and death. And we—the holy nation, the royal priesthood—have been spared from that destination. Our proclamation says, “our greatest and most terrifying problem has been solved! And the door is still open for all to come in!”
This gospel proclamation is even more potent when we are in the tension of suffering and exile. If we proclaim God’s amazing saving work in good times, when we are at ease and rest, it is powerful but often ignored. But if we proclaim God’s amazing saving work in hard times, when we are in the tension of exile and suffering, it is powerful and unavoidable. It forces those around us who are still in darkness to consider that there might be something more at stake than the things in this life.
Brothers and sisters— Join me today and resist the urge to proclaim anything less than the excellencies of God who has called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light. It is for this reason that we have been joined together in faith as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession.
May God be magnified through our lips, through our emails, through our posts, through our small talk in our communities, through our conversation in front of our kids. May the words we proclaim be a lighthouse to all lost in darkness, beckoning them to come to Christ in faith and repentance.