1 Peter 2:9

All the figures of the church that Peter chose here originally referred to Israel. However with Israel’s rejection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:7) God created a new body of people through whom He now seeks to accomplish the same purposes He sought to achieve through Israel but by different means. This verse, which at first might seem to equate the church and Israel, on careful examination shows as many differences between these groups as similarities. [Note: See John W. Pryor, "First Peter and the New Covenant," Reformed Theological Review 45:1&2 (January-April & May-August 1986):1-3, 44-50, for an example of how covenant theologians, who believe the church replaces Israel in God’s program, interpret this and other passages dealing with Peter’s perception of the identity of his readers.]

"But this does not mean that the church is Israel or even that the church replaces Israel in the plan of God. Romans 11 should help us guard against that misinterpretation. . . . The functions that Israel was called into existence to perform in its day of grace the church now performs in a similar way. In the future, according to Paul, God will once again use Israel to bless the world (cf. Romans 11:13-16; Romans 11:23-24)." [Note: Blum, p. 231.]

Israel was a physical race of people, the literal descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The church is a spiritual race, the members of which share the common characteristic of faith in Christ and are both Jews and Gentiles racially. Christians are the spiritual descendants of Abraham. We are not Abraham’s literal descendants, unless we are ethnic Jews, but are his children in the sense that we believe God’s promises as he did.

God’s purpose for Israel was that she be a nation of priests (Exodus 19:6) who would stand between God and the rest of humanity representing people before God. However, God withdrew this blessing from the whole nation because of the Israelites’ apostasy with the golden calf and gave it to the faithful tribe of Levi instead (Numbers 3:12-13; Numbers 3:45; Numbers 8:14; cf. Exodus 13:2; Exodus 32:25-29). In contrast, every individual Christian is a priest before God. [Note: See John E. Johnson, "The Old Testament Offices as Paradigm for Pastoral Identity," Bibliotheca Sacra 152:606 (April-June 1995):182-200.] We function as priests to the extent that we worship, intercede, and minister (1 Peter 2:5; Revelation 1:6). There is no separate priestly class in the church as there was in Israel. [Note: See W. H. Griffith Thomas, "Is the New Testament Minister a Priest?" Bibliotheca Sacra 136:541 (January-March 1979):65-73.]

"Whatever its precise background, the vision of 1 Peter is that the Gentiles to whom it is written have become, by virtue of their redemption in Christ, a new priesthood in the world, analogous to the ancient priesthood that was the people of Israel. Consequently they share with the Jews the precarious status of ’aliens and strangers’ in the Roman world." [Note: Michaels, p. liv.]

"When I was a pastor, I preached a message entitled, ’You Are a Catholic Priest.’ The word catholic means ’general,’ of course. In that sense every believer is a catholic priest, and all have access to God." [Note: McGee, 5:692.]

God redeemed Israel at the Exodus and adopted that nation at Mt. Sinai as one that would be different from all others throughout history (Exodus 19:6). God wanted Israel to be a beacon to the nations holding the light of God’s revelation up for all to see, similar to the Statue of Liberty (Isaiah 42:6). He did not tell all the Israelites to take this light to those in darkness, but to live before others in the Promised Land. He would attract others to them and to Himself, as He did the Queen of Sheba (1 Kings 10) and Naaman (2 Kings 5). However, Israel failed. She preferred to be a nation like all the other nations (1 Samuel 8:5). Now God has made the church the bearer of His light. God has not told us to be a localized demonstration, as Israel was, but to be aggressive missionaries going to the ends of the earth. God wanted Israel to stay in her land. He wants us to go into all the world with the gospel (Matthew 28:19-20).

God wanted to dwell among the Israelites and to make them His own unique possession by residing among them (Exodus 19:5). He did this in the tabernacle and the temple until the apostasy of the Israelites made continuation of this intimacy impossible. Then the presence of God departed from His people (cf. Ezekiel 10). In the church God does not just dwell among us, but He resides in every individual Christian (John 14:17; Romans 8:9). He has promised never to leave us (Matthew 28:20).

The church is what it is so that it can do what God has called it to do. Essentially the church’s purpose is the same as Israel’s. The Great Commission (Matthew 28:19-20; et al.) clarifies the methods God wants us to use. These methods differ from those He specified for Israel, but the church’s vocation is really the same as Israel’s. It is to be the instrument through which the light of God reaches individuals who still sit in spiritual darkness. It is a fallacy, however, to say that the church is simply the continuation or replacement of Israel in the New Testament, as most covenant theologians do. [Note: For further information on the subject of the church’s distinctiveness, see Charles C. Ryrie, Dispensationalism Today, pp. 22-47; idem, Dispensationalism, pp. 23-43; or Robert L. Saucy, The Case for Progressive Dispensationalism, pp. 205-12.] Most theologians agree that the most basic difference between dispensational theology and covenant theology is that dispensationalists believe that the church is distinct from Israel whereas covenant theologians believe that the church is the continuation and replacement of Israel, the so-called "new Israel."

"In the ancient world it was not unusual for the king to have his own group of priests." [Note: Davids, p. 92.]