While God is busy preparing for the new creation, He is working on a special project. He is creating a chosen people, a holy nation, the “special authority” that Peter talks about in our lesson today.
Peter’s labels for God’s people are borrowed from the Old Testament. They were first used to describe ancient Israel, to reflect their special status as God’s chosen nation. Now those labels are given to the collection of all those who are “in Christ”, people of every nation and language whom God calls to himself, believers in Christ who are waiting for God’s new creation.
All those who confess Christ as Lord and Savior are part of the crowd that has gathered from all over the world and from every age. We whose life is “in Christ” are living signs of the great multitude whom God is gathering, a vital part of the coming new creation.
Look in the mirror with this Biblical lens today: If you are a believer in Christ, you are looking at a new creation – someone who is being made new in Christ. You are seeing a living sign of the great new creation that God is still building. And you are somehow looking at a universal, timeless, and much-loved assembly – God’s holy people. All this is proof that the old has gone, and the new has come!
