Friday 2 July 2010

D.A. Carson on 1 Peter 2:9-10

D.A. Carson, ‘“A Holy Nation”: The Church’s High Calling’, in Thabiti Anyabwile et al., Holy, Holy, Holy: Proclaiming the Perfections of God (Lake Mary: Reformation Trust, 2010), 75-89.

As R.C. Sproul explains in the preface, the chapters in this book originated as lectures at the 2009 Ligonier Ministries National Conference in Orlando, where the theme was the Holiness of God (vi).

The table of contents and Sproul’s own contribution – ‘“I am the Lord”: The Only God’ – are available as an excerpt here.

Carson’s chapter is available here.

It amounts to an exposition of 1 Peter 2:9–10, under the following three points:

1. Our Identity as Christians
Our identity as – a chosen people (referring to Isaiah 43:3-4, with Christians now constituting the locus of God’s chosen people), a royal priesthood (reaching back to Exodus 19:5-6), a holy nation (which also has its background in Exodus 19:5-6), a people belonging to God (again, grounded in Exodus 19:5-6), with all these overlapping, and in each case ‘an emphasis on God’s initiative, on supreme God-centeredness, and on the built-in implication of incalculable privilege over against every other form of self-identity’ (83).

2. Our Purpose as Christians
That we may ‘declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light’ (1 Peter 2:9), language drawn from Isaiah 43:20-21.

3. Our Foundation as Christians
‘Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God…’ (1 Peter 2:10), this time drawing on Hosea 1-2.

2 comments:

The Good Tale said...

It is written: A woman shall compass a man and create a new thing in the earth (Jer 31:22), the man is Satan(Isa 14:16), the new thing is turning the hearts of the fathers to the children. Satan has deceived the whole world (Rev 12:7), until the heel of time(Gen 3:15) when a woman shall expose his lies. Check out the bruising of Satan at http://thegoodtale.wordpress.com or http://thegoodtale.blogspot.com please read all posts before you judge it, thanks.

Carson RC said...

D.A. Carson, '“A Holy Nation”: The Church's High Calling', in Thabiti ... carsonrc.blogspot.de