Now You Are

1 Peter 2:9-10 (NIV)
⁹ But you 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.
¹⁰ 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.

The Greek word genos is translated as people in the NIV. What is implied is kinship. We are chosen in the sense we are special to Him, part of His family. We enter into this family by the Holy Spirit. We are begotten, not by our earthly parents, but by the grace and mercy of God. We become brothers and sisters in Christ and to Christ, born anew in the kingdom of God.

He enables us to become His children. Out of the darkness and into the light, He calls us from many peoples into a new family. We rise above our nations of origin to God’s holy nation. We are a new people in the Spirit. Our spirits are given wing to fly in the warmth of His light. We will land in the new creation that God has prepared.

Just as God created man from earth and breathed life into him, so has He taken us from the earth and breathed new life into us with His Holy Spirit. We are part of the new creation.

Once you were not, now you are.