Those words from Peter's 1st letter have been quoted from pulpits more times than I can count... especially with regard to the 'peculiar people' part... the NIV translation renders it 'a people belonging to God'. From what I can understand, it would seem that the KJV (quoted above) is actually pretty true to the original Greek text.
We interpret 'peculiar' to mean odd and weird and unusual (in the negative connotation)... and in some ways I suppose that can be accurate... the original text may be more accurately tranlated as "set apart" or "different". And, the longer I live, the more I become convicted that children of God should be different from the world...
Where I seem to have failed (sometimes miserably) in my quest to be set apart is my propensity to develop some sort of christian arrogance about being saved... that somehow I am 'better' than my unchurched and unsaved friends.
It is only when I allow the Spirit to lead me to strike a balance of humble gratitude and outward living that my arrogance evaporates into true Christ-like-ness...
So perhaps our challenge is to pray for the Spirit's guidance... and allow God's hand to lead us to a place where we can truly believe as Paul believed:
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—
and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—
not by works, so that no one can boast
or, put another way:
"if I am saved, it is because God rescued me
and NOT because I learned to swim."
when we realize this, we will have no choice but to live it out by helping people who need help...in Jesus' name...now THAT's peculiar!
Blessings!
No comments:
Post a Comment