FROM DARKNESS TO MARVELOUS LIGHT

”...that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT” – 1 Peter 2:9b

Believers in Christ are Living Realities of supernatural translation and transformation FROM DARKNESS to LIGHT: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT” (1 Pet.2:9). We are God’s Special Possession, endowed with the Grace to declare the praises of Him Who called us out of domains of darkness into Realms of His Wonderful Light. We’re to consciously live in His Marvelous Light. In the natural, we often take our familiar surroundings for granted, and miss out on the marvels we’ve been blessed with.

Peter wrote this letter as he approached the end of his life, wanting his readers to remember what was truly important and hold on to the truth that God had committed to them. Specifically, he addressed the need for us Believers to not take for granted the eternal blessings we have in Christ. We’re to value what these blessings mean for us in our daily lives in order to thankfully share God’s goodness with others. We want to avoid two extremes: Going through this life ignoring the people and responsibilities around us, while exclusively focusing on eternity; and seeing eternity as so far away to be meaningless to our everyday life.

We’re encouraged to realize what God has made us. We were by nature sinners and set enemies of God. In the rebellion of our sin, we were fighting against God, and deserved the punishment of hell. We were cut off from God and would have been separated from Him forever. But He translated and transformed us to become the polar opposite of what we were by nature. Naturally separated from God, now we belong to Him. Rejected because of our sin, now we are a chosen people. Vile to God and polluted by sin, but now we are His royal priests. We were at war with God, but now we are His own holy nation.

This complete role reversal happened because we were called “out of darkness into HIS MARVELOUS LIGHT” (v.9b). We didn’t make these changes, God did. We were in darkness; He called us to His light. We were rejected; God made us His people. We had no mercy shown to us, but God has shown us His mercy (v.10). That mercy came in the form of His Son, Jesus, Whose mission was to come and live in our place. Jesus became the rejected one, the despised one, the one punished for all sin – even though He did nothing wrong. He became sin in our place and suffered the wrath of God so that we would not. This eternal perspective is meant to affect us now: Not simply that we WILL BE, but by God’s Grace, WE ARE all of those things that proclaim God’s Praise!