To Encourage You

1 Peter 2:10 “Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people”

Have you ever felt like an outsider?  Have you ever found yourself in a situation where everyone around you had something in common, but it was something other than you possessed?  People liken it to being a square peg in a round hole, i.e., not really “fitting in” for one reason or another. 

Some years ago, I had such an experience in Russia. I was visiting the city of Arkhangelsk on a short-term mission trip.  Because none of our team spoke Russian, everyone was provided with the services of an interpreter.  The language was an obvious barrier, but one that seemed to be adequately overcome with the help of this intermediary.  It felt good to be able to communicate in this way. However, I remember in particular one moment when I was communicating with about seven or eight Russian women, all of them schoolteachers. I would speak and then the interpreter would speak to them, and then one of them would speak and the interpreter would translate for me. It was slow-going, but we were communicating as best we could.  But then, as the result of one of the questions that was asked, all the women began to speak to one another, in Russian, of course.  As I observed them, I was struck with how I was definitely an outsider. I didn’t share their life experience, friendship, or language.  It was at that moment that I saw that I would never be one of them.  There were too many barriers to overcome.  I was an outsider, and I was very aware of it.  

Have you ever felt like that?  It can be a little unsettling to not feel like one is a part of the group.  These are among the thoughts that came to my mind as I reflected on the words above from 1 Peter 2.  It talks about what it’s like to be an outsider to the family of God.  It says that everyone was once like this.  Christians, i.e., true Christians, not those who are “Christians” in name only, are different from those who are not Christians.  They think differently, speak differently, and act differently. Their life experience is different from that of an unbeliever.  They have something in common that others just don’t have. And if, by God’s grace, we were ever moved to wonder why, God may have opened our minds to the difference.  

It is because Christians have a personal relationship with God that everything about their life is different from the lives of those who don’t. For one, the very essence of their being is different. They have what the Bible calls spiritual life, while everyone else is spiritually dead.  As such, they see things to which others are blind, hear things to which others are deaf, and speak things about which others are mute. They have friendships that are unlike those they possessed before they were believers, for they all share in common a friendship with Christ.  In fact, more than that, He is their brother.  Also, believers have received from God some very high and unique privileges and positions.  1 Peter 2:9 says that all believers are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, (and) a people for (God’s) own possession.”  Like those Russian women to whom I was an outsider (and would always be), unbelievers are all outsiders to these privileges.  However, unlike my experience in Russia, unbelievers don’t have to remain outsiders for they who “are not a people” can become the chosen, blessed, holy people of God, if they will only believe. 

But how does that belief come?  For the most part, it comes by invitation of those who are right now the people of God.  You see, in the same place in 1 Peter that tells Christians of their very great privileges as people of God, they are told of the great responsibilities that come with those privileges. Namely, it is that “you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” It’s a call to preach the gospel, for it’s by belief in this life-giving message that those who are not currently a people can become the very people of God.  

So, are you currently an outsider when it comes to such things?  Does it all seem foreign to you?  If so, do you want a way in? Are you tired of being shut out from the privileges of the people of God? Are you wondering about the hope that such people have? If so, you don’t have to remain on the outside looking in, for to you Jesus has spoken the following promise: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37), and “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). 

There’s no reason in this world to remain an outsider, and there’s every reason if you are an “insider” to tell the unbelievers in your life about the One Who is the Way in.