1 Peter 2:9. Ye are a chosen generation.
This Epistle is addressed “to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Pet 1:1). These are supposed to have been Hebrews, and Peter appears to have preached the gospel of Jesus among them. They had lent a willing ear to it; the whole bearing of the Epistle proves that many of them had believed the gospel. These Jewish believers would recall the great deliverances God had wrought for them. They would point to the law and the worship established by God’s command, and ask, When did God deal so with any other people? They would be ready to imagine that, if they conformed to the religion of Jesus – so simple in its ritual and universal in its invitations – they would give up their high claims of being “a chosen . . . peculiar people”, and they would strip themselves of the privileges which distinguished them from the Gentiles as “an holy nation”, a people consecrated by God’s choice, honoured by God’s special favour, and devoted to God’s service.
In this Epistle, and especially in the verse which includes our text, Peter seeks to dissipate the mistaken views of those Jewish Christians – to show them that the distinctions and honours enjoyed by the Hebrews of old were just a type of still richer honours and privileges that were to be conferred on the spiritual Israel. The former were only the shadow, the latter the substance. Throughout the whole history of the Jewish people, there was an analogy between God’s dealings with His ancient Israel and His dealings with the ransomed Church of Jesus. Thus, in embracing Christ and adopting His faith, they would just be reaping the full harvest of privileges and blessings, of which the Jewish dispensation was nothing more than the seed time.
Fear not, Jewish believers, is Peter’s argument, that you lose any of your privileges in accepting Jesus; fear not that you will forfeit your right to be reckoned an elect people. You confirm the fact more surely than ever by professing the gospel faith; for all Christians have been elected “according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet 1:2). So it is specially true of them that they are “a chosen generation”.
1. The text represents the Church as a generation.
This expression conveys two opposite ideas: an idea of separateness and the existence of a union. These are both most applicable to the character and the circumstances of the Church of Christ. When you use the word generation, you distinguish one section of individuals from all others. Thus the Jewish nation was emphatically singled out from other nations – a generation characterised by privileges and favours beyond all other people, distinguished by duties, discipline and rules of faith and practice from all their neighbours. In this the Jewish Church is a type of the believing Church of Jesus.
Believers, you are a special generation, separate from an unbelieving world around you and distinguished by another faith, another character and other desires from those which affect the carnal. You cannot be united to Christ and the world, to sin and holiness, at the same time. “Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” You cannot enjoy the world’s friendship and God’s. If you are Christ’s people, then you must not be worldly in your habits, feelings, language, desires, but you must practise the habits, speak the language and cherish the feelings of your Lord. You must have such a saviour of Christ about you that men may take knowledge of you that you have been with Him; that the believer may recognise you as a brother, and that the worldling may not count you as one of his allies – that they may see that, though in the world, you are not of the world. You must be recognised as a little colony of heirs of glory, left here for a brief time, to ripen for the inheritance, and by your example reprove a world lying in wickedness.
But generation also implies a close connection. Among the Jewish nation of old, there were certain features of national character which distinguished them from the surrounding nations, but proved their connection as members of one great community, observing the same laws and worshipping the same God. They also had one and the same object. In the wilderness, they looked forward together to one resting place; while entering Canaan, they laboured together to expel the heathen; while dwelling in Canaan, they prayed together for the same kingdom to be established.
So it is with the people of Christ; though they are scattered throughout all lands, they are a united people, bound together by the same laws, cherishing the same feelings, practising the same habits, distinguished by the same privileges, and looking forward to the same glorious reward. They are as one great united body; if you touch one member, you affect the whole body. Their pains are one, and their pleasures also; although separated far from each other, they have one heart, one sympathy pervades the whole; so they feel they are brethren when they meet; they feel they have one common Head, one common heart, one common object, one common joy.
They have one common character.
They are united in their sympathies. The natural man has been slain; the new man has been assumed. The world has become a wilderness; eternity is their home. Their conversation is not of earth but of heaven. Their lives are not regulated by their senses but by faith. An atmosphere of heaven’s holiness and joy is around them; and Christ Jesus is inscribed on all they do, think and say. They are living epistles of Christ Jesus, exhibiting His character and publishing His will.
They have one common object:
to honour Jesus, to walk with Him, to be like Him, to have no mind but His, no will but His, no righteousness but His, no strength but His, no joy but in His presence. They are crucified with Christ and risen with Him, having had their sins nailed to His cross, and leaving their corruptions buried in His grave. Their constant aim, day by day, is to be conformed to His likeness, so as to manifest His glory.
They have one common hope.
There is a heaven of joy, glory and perfection before them, where the face of Jesus ever shines, where there is no night of sorrow, no cloud of sin. They are journeying to this their common home. Faith has revealed its glories to them from afar. She has told of its purity, whispered of its peace, exalted its joy and testified of its perfections. And since this privileged generation has beheld such glories in store, is it wonderful that, with one common heart, they should turn their backs on the world and their faces Zionward? Is it wonderful that, with united desires, they should press forward by Jesus as the way, facing perils, surmounting difficulties, triumphing over adversaries, fighting onward through all the opposition to that glorious resting place where this generation shall join together in one song of triumph and enjoy eternal rest?
Yet, in the world, they are not equally advanced in grace. Some are babes, others are youths, others strong in the faith. Some walk without being weary, having little joy but pushing on. Some run without being faint; they have more comfort and confidence, and make faster progress. Some mount up on wings as eagles, with wings that never weary. There is a difference in degree, not in kind. The same faith animates every heart; the same love glows in every bosom; the same hopes are kindled in every soul. Although they do not have equal strength, they are the same in nature and object. One star differs from another in brightness, yet the qualities of the light are the same; so while the believing people of God are not equally advanced, the same nature animates them all; all the stars in the firmament of the Church, though not of equal brilliance, combine to make their lights so shine before men that others, seeing their good works, may glorify their Father in heaven. The one great object which the meanest as well as the mightiest believer is desirous of advancing is the glory of Christ.
When you speak of a generation, you always combine it with the idea of a family, a body of individuals with a common father, united together by ties of a blood relationship. So the Jews were all one united family of the seed of Abraham. Believers in Christ, you have a more glorious Father, a more illustrious family. He is not your Father by creation alone; you are His children by grace; in Christ Jesus you have been begotten again by the Spirit of God, unto righteousness and true holiness. This is the grand secret of your separation from the world, of your union as a Church: the Holy Ghost has begotten a new nature in you, separating you from all your old nature loved, uniting you to Jesus, and by Him to all that is holy, pure, and heavenly.
You are one with Christ Jesus: members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones – partakers of His nature, animated by His Spirit. You are one in Christ; the same heart throbs through the whole mystical body; the same holy desires and affections animate it; the whole family are united in Him, and consequently united to one another. One is their Father and all they are brethren. All the living Church is one great family, animated by a family spirit, adorned by a family likeness and hastening on to the family home.
Is this not a glorious privilege? Do not deceive yourselves; you do not belong to this generation unless you were begotten again by the Holy Spirit – unless born again “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”. Unless the saving change has taken place, you belong to another generation: you are of your father the devil. By nature you were animated by his spirit, bore his name, loved his children, did his work. If you are not converted, this is still your condition.
Have you been converted? Does any one say, I do not know? I ask, Have you ever questioned yourselves thus: Am I separated from the world? Am I in love with holiness? Do I love God? Do I long after Jesus? Do I treasure His people? Do I reflect His image? Do I press forward after Him to heaven? Such alone have a right to consider themselves that “chosen generation” of whom God says, “I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters”.
2. Why have this generation the character described?
They are chosen to it: “a chosen generation”. It is all God’s work; none of it is your own. It would indeed have been long before you had chosen anything so pure, so precious, so soul-satisfying as the portion of the believer. God has chosen this generation for Himself. Believing brethren, you were chosen, and how?
1. God chose in His sovereignty.
The foundation of all genuine religion is to believe that we are all created to advance God’s glory; and that Jehovah has sovereign authority over all His creatures to advance that object. And the submission appropriate to the creature in God’s presence should express itself thus, Lord, glorify Thyself in me according to Thy will; I am ready as Thy creature to fulfill Thy pleasure.
In His sovereignty, Jehovah chose a generation for Himself when all had rebelled against Him. He saw the whole earth accursed, the whole race doomed to perdition, the whole universe in rebellion. In His sovereignty He passed by the rebel angels, reserving them under chains of darkness for ever. He passed by myriads of our guilty race, dooming them to eat the fruit of their own ways and be filled with their own devices. Seeing the guilty lying in their blood, He lays His hand on one here and another there, “one of a city and two of a family”, and says, Live. Thus He chooses of His own sovereign will and says, I will that you be saved; I will that you escape the fire; I will that you reach heaven; I will that you have life everlasting; I will have mercy on whom I will, and whom I will I make alive.
Jehovah elects them as trophies in His sovereign authority out of a rebellious world. And who will say to Him, What doest Thou? Or who dare assert that He has assumed an authority or exercised a prerogative that is not His? The sovereignty of God, His absolute propriety in His creatures and His absolute authority over them, is a doctrine too little appreciated and too little believed. You will never be happy until you recognise God’s hand in all things, until you see God working in everything that occurs – and until you are ready to say, He does all things well. It may often be hard to bear His dealings and difficult to understand them; it may often be long before you see the end from his beginning; but you will never be happy until you are able to see the hand of a sovereign in it all, and amid darkness, clouds, fears and pains to say, “Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight”.
2. God chose in justice and holiness.
The language of the believing heart is: He “is righteous in all His ways, and holy in all His works”; but, the carnal man says, How can God pass over one and save another, when all are equally guilty? But who are you, O worm of the dust, that would call the Sovereign of the universe to account? Would He not be just in condemning you? Was not the sin your own voluntary act, and is not damnation your fitting doom? Has He doomed you to one pang more than you deserve?
All are guilty and condemned, and would it not be just in God to allow all to perish in hell for ever? He did so to the apostate angels, and where was the injustice? So He will do with impenitent men, and even souls in perdition dare not say that their doom is unjust. Can it be unjust in Him to allow some to endure the doom which all deserved? Or can it be unjust in Him to save some from the perdition which their sin deserved? Was it unjust to save from falling the angels that kept their first estate, while He left the fallen angels to perish? Was it unjust in Him to choose Abraham and his seed to high privileges, while the rest of the world was left in darkness? Assuredly, where all deserved death, it could not be injustice to choose some to eternal life.
See how it is in ordinary matters. If from a thousand traitors who have forfeited their lives, the king grants a free pardon to a few, does this involve any injustice to those that bear the fury of the law they have broken. So no sinner can charge Jehovah with injustice in passing by guilty souls, leaving them to eat the fruit of their own ways, while He saves souls just as guilty, thus proving His sovereign propriety in His creatures. Let every mouth be stopped that would condemn God’s justice; let us rather recognise God’s justice in harmony with His mercy, the one ransoming souls from death, and the other condemning guilty, unbelieving souls for their iniquities, thereby proving Jehovah’s righteous authority in condemning the breakers of His law. Let us then say with Paul: “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another into dishonour?”
Yet if God had passed over sin without punishment, He might have been reckoned unjust; if He had pardoned the elected sinner without an atonement, God would have been unjust – not to men, but to His own holiness, righteousness, truth and law. The elect could not be saved unless their sins were punished and the law of God avenged. Thus the electing decree ordained the means as well as the end. The souls of the elected were chosen in Christ. He is their covenant Head in grace, as Adam represented the race in the first covenant. And as Adam broke the covenant, and made himself and all his seed covenant breakers, even so, as Christ fulfilled the law, all His seed are reckoned covenant fulfillers in Him. As the first brought sin upon his seed, so the second brought righteousness as an inheritance to His offspring; as the first brought death into the world and all our woe, so the second brought life and immortality; as the first Adam brought the curse and lost the blessing, so the second bore the curse and regained the blessing.
In Jesus, the decree ordained that sin should be punished. In Him the law was honoured, and the holiness of God vindicated. Therefore He is the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world, judicially offered in covenant, virtually offered when the first promise brought the balm of hope to the guilty heart, typically offered in all the sacrifices of the Old Testament, actually offered on the cross of Calvary. When He thus bore “our griefs, and carried our sorrows”, when He bowed His head and died for sin, God’s justice was more honoured than if every sinner perished for ever.
Look at this work and rejoice. See justice sheathing its sword in Immanuel’s bosom, the law visiting His holy soul with its curse, the wrath of Jehovah smiting Him. Then give thanks at the remembrance of God’s holiness; give thanks at the vindication of His law and say, My God is a holy as well as a loving God. And when you see justice arming itself against unselected, unbelieving sinners, hide in Christ and take God as your shield.
3. God especially manifested His love in the electing decree.
Election is usually, in plan and purpose, ascribed to God the Father; but this is solely because the initial step in executing the decree is the Father’s. The act of election is equally also the act of the Son and the Spirit. All the Persons of the Godhead were at one time enacting, ordaining, concurring in and consenting to the act – exercising their independent functions as three divine Persons, and their united functions as one divine essence. While the Father gave His Son, the Son gave His life, and the Spirit devotes Himself to arresting, converting and sanctifying the souls of those ordained to life everlasting.
See now God’s sovereign love exhibited in election – His sovereign grace in choosing, His victorious grace in executing. This is the theme of the believer’s praise, the source of his joy, what binds him more lovingly to his Lord. When surveying all he was, all he is, and all he hopes to be, well may he say, “By the grace of God I am what I am”. It was all of love, of free grace, on God’s part – of compassion in His heart, and no merit in us.
God chose you, believers. You had no claim on Him; you had fallen from your holiness when it was in your power to have resisted temptation, and so you could have no claim on Jehovah. Yes, you had a claim on His wrath, a full title to hell. If the unjustified soul was to claim from God his due, what would he ask but wrath and ruin? But such were not His sovereign purposes towards you, believers; in love He chose you to enjoy His love, but not because of anything in you. You had nothing but what was filthy and hateful – all the race was corrupted. Yet then grace came.
God did not chose you, believers, because of works you would do. You were elected to bring forth fruit to God. The works wrought in the believer by the Spirit are not the reason for his salvation; it is electing grace. The worst reprobate in hell, had God seen fit to choose him, would have been as precious a vessel of mercy in God’s hands as the brightest soul in glory.
Nor did God choose you because of the works wrought by Immanuel for you. From all eternity God loved the elect. This love was the source of the covenant; the covenant was not the source of the love. It was the love of God that sent the Son, and not the achievements of the Son that begat the love. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to save lost souls. O that our souls were now lost in wonder, in the heights and depths of this matchless love of God, who thus from all eternity chose a people for Himself, ordaining them in Christ to life everlasting.
Believers, you all have reason to adore this love. The work is all grace. It is grace in the decree; it is grace in the execution of the decree; therefore let grace have all the praise. “Ye have not chosen Me,” says Jesus, “but I have chosen you, and ordained you.” It is all of sovereign grace in electing, in converting – grace in issuing the decree and in executing it. Here is free forgiveness, a full salvation; yet, believers, did you not pass by them a thousand times, until the grace of God opened your eyes, ears and hearts, to adore the wonders of electing grace and redeeming love?
Let no one say the decree is past. If I am elected, I am safe; God will accomplish His decree, and I may leave it in His hands! If I am not elected, all my labours are unavailing; my soul is lost. But God has ordained the means along with the end; the end is hidden, you cannot see it, your heart cannot be affected by what is unseen and unknown. But you see the means; He tells you to use them, and He promises to bless the use of the means.
Use the same argument in the ordinary things of life. God has decreed the number of your days. Will you say it is needless to provide food and clothes for your bodies because of this decree of God, leaving God to provide, without any effort of your own? The merchant sends his vessels to the ocean, although the result of the voyage has been decided from eternity. He ventures his treasures and his life, although he does not know but his ship may founder under the first blast of wind.
And what is God’s message? Here is a salvation, freely offered without money and without price. Here are means provided by which to find salvation. Here is the blessing promised to all who use the means and seek the salvation. And if you reject the invitation, if you neglect the means, is God to be blamed for your obstinacy? Rather is your damnation not of your own choosing? In all its features, electing grace is to be praised; even the condemned can bring no accusation against it, for it threw no hindrance in their way. Everyone who is redeemed must rejoice in it, confessing that, if electing grace had not chosen him, he would never have chosen God; and if supporting grace would not uphold him, he would never reach heaven.
Now let me put a practical question to you all; press it solemnly to your heart: Are you a chosen generation? Let no one reply, How can we tell? Are you chosen to heaven? Yes, but not first; you are first chosen to holiness; and without holiness wrought in you, you shall never reach heaven. Unless you are a chosen generation, the decree of election can give you no comfort.
Have you received Jesus as your Saviour? If so, remember that they who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh. What have you done to prove this? What passions have you curbed, what lust crucified? Search your hearts. If you find something to comfort, you will find much to humble – much sin to be cast out, much corruption to be crucified; all calling for greater earnestness for the comforts and duties of which Paul speaks, “The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are His. And let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity”.
[1]Taken from The Free Church Pulpit, vol 3, and abridged. Fergusson (1811-97), spent most of his ministry as a Free Church minister in Scotland, but when this sermon was published he was minister of St George’s English Presbyterian Church in Liverpool.