Just a Thought: Our salvation changed everything! When God makes us new (2 Cor. 5:17) Everything changes. Our old sin nature is gone and is replaced with a new spiritual nature. My old Body still has its old appetites. But I am no longer a slave to them. My old wicked and deceitful heart has been replaced by a new heart. And my life is no longer mine it belongs to the Lord (Gal. 2:20). The power of sin and Satan have been broken over me. I am not only a new person from the inside out. But I live on the outside with a whole new agenda. I live to the honor and praise of the one who saved me and secured me. I am not just a child of God. I am a representative of God! Peter describes it this way. “Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:10) “We are a chosen people a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.” (v. 9) At Sinai, God told Moses to tell the people, “You will be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Ex 19:6). Now believers in the Church Age are called a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God. Peter called Christians “a holy priesthood” (1 Peter 2:5) and “a royal priesthood” (2:9; cf. Rev 1:6). In other words, Christians are a special people because God has preserved them for Himself. While these descriptions of the church are similar to those used of Israel in the Old Testament, this in no way indicates that the church supplants Israel and assumes the national blessings promised to Israel (and to be fulfilled in the Millennium). Peter just used similar terms to point out similar truths. As Israel was “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God,” so too believers today are chosen, are priests, are holy, and belong to God. Which means, our salvation changed everything! Now that we are saved by the grace of God, we are not free to live as we please. But we are to live in manner pleasing to God who saved us! With great privilege comes great responsibility. To say, “I am saved and now I can live as I please, is a gross misunderstanding of God’s grace and a cheapening of it. To say I am saved and set apart for the honor and glory of my Lord is understand grace and to live by it. Our salvation changed everything! Which means, if I am truly saved, I understand I have been set apart to live for the Lord! If you claim to be truly saved, what has changed in your life that gives evidence to this fact? Would those who know you best describe you as God did Israel and Peter does the believers (church) today? If not, why not? God saved you so He could use you to draw others to Him. That’s not just good information; it is His great commission (Mt. 28:18-20)!
