Receiving Mercy

Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, including those of Jewish ethnicity and those of non-Jewish ethnicity, constitute the true Israel of God, as Peter has explained (1 Peter 2:4–9). This is wonderful news indeed, for the Old Testament tells us that Israel is the recipient of the Lord’s salvation. The psalmist writes that God “will redeem Israel from all his iniquities” (Ps. 130:8). So if we want to be saved from the wrath of God, we must be a part of the true Israel of God, which has always been defined by faith and not by physical descent (Luke 3:1–9; Rom. 9:1–29; Gal. 3).

For a predominantly gentile audience such as the one that Peter was addressing, this meant that having once not been a people, they were now God’s people, and that once not having received mercy, they were now recipients of the Lord’s mercy (1 Peter 2:10). Peter is thinking in covenantal terms here, expressing a point similar to the one that Paul makes in Ephesians 2:11–13. We remember that God made His covenant of salvation with the Israelites and not the gentiles. To the Israelites, the physical descendants of Abraham, came “the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises” (Rom. 9:1–5). God saved the Israelites, not the gentiles, from slavery. Not being members of the commonwealth of Israel, gentiles had no access to these things; therefore, they were not God’s special people and did not know the Lord’s mercy. Gentiles, of course, could come to faith in the one true God during the old covenant period and become Israelites, taking on the Mosaic law. This sometimes happened, though it was not the norm (e.g., Ruth 1:1–18). Under the new covenant, however, things have changed. Since the coming of Christ, gentiles outside the covenant of salvation are joining the true Israel in great numbers such that all of us can now say that we have received mercy.

In stating that those who had once not been a people were now God’s people through faith in Jesus, Peter alludes to Hosea 2:14–23. Hosea’s prophecy foresaw a day when ethnic Israelites who had rejected the Lord would return to Him through faith. When ethnic Israelites under the old covenant turned away from God, they became no better than pagan gentiles. In fact, it was as if they became pagan gentiles. But if these former-Jews-turned-pagan-gentiles could become true Israelites by faith in the one true God, then the same can happen for other pagan gentiles as well.