1 Peter 2:10

‘Who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God, who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.'

He reminds all in the churches, both Jewish Christians and ex-Gentiles, of what their forebears had been before Christ came. In different ways they had been a ‘no-people' as far as God was concerned, the Jews because of their waywardness, the Gentiles because they had been part of a different world. But now in Christ (1 Peter 5:10; 1 Peter 5:14) they themselves have all become the very children of God. They have become s new ‘people', a new community. They had been without mercy, and yet now they had found mercy as one community of people.

The idea behind the words is found in Hosea 1:9. There the majority of Israel were depicted as a no-people because of their idolatrous behaviour. But the promise was then added that they would yet be called ‘the sons of the living God' (Hosea 1:10). But even more were the ex-Gentiles a no-people. And yet they too had been able to become sons of God. Paul cites these verses in Romans 9:25 and makes clear that they apply to both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 9:24).

As we sum up our thoughts on this passage with its clear revelation that God's chosen people continue on in the church we should note that to the Apostles this idea of the church as Israel was no legal fiction. It is not that the church is somehow a kind of ‘spiritual' Israel, a kind of offshoot until the main branch has got itself together again, and is therefore in contrast with physical Israel so that the two can run along on parallel lines, it is that in God's eyes the church  are  the continuation of physical Israel, with all disbelieving Jews being cut off from it, and all Gentile believers being grafted in. As far as God is concerned the true covenant people of Israel has never ceased. It has simply altered within and grown into the church which is the true Israel. As Peter declared in 1 Peter 1:10 it was to this Israel that the prophets pointed and concerning whom they made the promises.

But what of the old Israel? The answer is that there is no ‘old Israel' now. Any who claim to be so have been cut off from Israel because of unbelief (Romans 11:20). Is there then no future for them. The answer is, only if they are again grafted in, by being grafted into the new Israel. Israel has no future outside the church (compare Revelation 11 which has the church in Jerusalem in the last days in mind).