Who are the people of God?

He shall be their God, He is ours as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is our God as we are in relationship with Him as sons, being associated with the Son of God. We are also His people as the apostle Peter teaches in 1 Peter 2:10. James in his summing up in the crisis of Acts 15, refers to Peter's declaration of how God had visited the nations to take out of them a people for His Name. Israel, now Lo-Ammi — not My people — will be Ammi, in new Covenant blessing (cf. Hosea 1 and 2). They will then be set up with a national polity of their own on earth yet, nonetheless, distinct from the Gentiles. The people of God are completely taken out today, from Jew and Gentile, "our citizenship is in heaven."

All those who have believed the gospel of their salvation (Eph. 1:13) and are hence joined into one body (1 Cor.12:13) – whether they are from the Jews or from the Gentiles.

Tous ceux qui croient l’évangile de leur salut (Eph. 1, 13) – ceux des juifs et ceux des nations. Ils sont ainsi unis ensemble en un seul corps (1 Cor. 12, 13).

But remember that vague ideas prevail as to what is meant by "the people of God." The proper force of that expression in the Old Testament is seen in the public relationships God had with them when He identified His name with them as His nation chosen out from all others. This tie was broken at the time of the Babylonish captivity. The Jews then ceased to be openly and formally the people of God. This in no way whatever interferes with His having persons in the midst who had living faith. There were such who by grace looked for the woman's Seed before the call of the people of God or their first father Abraham. In fact we have all been deeply injured by the current phrases of modern religious language, and indeed of ancient theology. Thus when people speak of the people of God, they almost always understand the line of believers. Now this is not the meaning of the people of God in the Bible, manifestly not in the Old Testament. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the saints before them, as Noah, Enoch, Abel, are never called the people of God. It was a new fact that began with the call of Israel, who were put in a national relationship with God, with the law subsequently to regulate their walk, and a sanctuary, ritual, and priesthood. Then a king was demanded on their part, and given in God's anger (for it was to reject Him); and when they began to fail under the new regime, and when prophets were raised up more and more on the total ruin of the house of David, and the final acceptance of idolatry by that house and the most faithful part of the people that had been raised up as a witness against it, then they lost their title. They were thenceforward to be Lo-ammi (Not-my-people). But this does not at all imply that no more believers were among them. As believers had been before "the people of God," so there were afterwards. In short to have believers in the midst is a wholly different thing from being the people of God: else all nations would be so. Whereas at most it can only apply to Christians now while Israel is disowned; and strictly speaking seems only applied in scripture to that portion of the Jews who believe while the rest refuse the Messiah. Compare Romans 9 and 1 Peter 2; though of course the principle applies to all baptized in His name.

But in the direct answer to the question (verse 2), we have not only the assertion of individual election, but also the assurance that, though Israel be nationally cast off and lost, in the righteous award of Divine judgment, still the people of God remain secure. The expression "people" in this verse I understand in a double sense. First, the election of grace draws lost sheep of Israel to the bosom of Christ, just as it does godless and hopeless Gentiles. The Church, thus formed, is a people for His name. But, secondly, the Spirit of God would, I believe, by the use of this expression, still keep our minds fixed upon the nation as the object eventually of Divine favour, according to the truth of the mercy sworn of old. This will appear more distinctly as we proceed.

However, Paul also knew that ‘they are not all Israel, which are of Israel’ (Rom. 9:6) — in other words, that not everyone who was ‘of Israel’ by birth had faith in God and hence was truly one of His people. The ‘Israel of God’ in Galatians 6:6 is that part of the Jews which had repented and trusted in God and become part of the assembly (i.e. the ‘remnant according to the election of grace’ referred to in Romans 11:5). On this basis, they are truly His people.

We can understand why they were the objects of this care. Firstly, by the work of Christ upon the cross, these believers had been brought to God (1 Peter 3:18). They, and not their unbelieving Jewish brethren, were the true people of God (1 Peter 2:10). They were the servants of God and as such could be sure of His care for them (1 Peter 2:16; 1 Cor. 9:9-10).

As a preface to the covenant of works, Jehovah announced Himself as Israel's God (Ex. 20:2). The fruit of that covenant was the nation's disherison, and the turning of His wrathful curse upon a sinful and rebellious house. The better promise of the second Covenant is, "I will be their God." But this once-prophetic (and, to its natural objects, yet unfinished) word of grace, has now become to the believer an established and eternal truth. The beginning of that perfect law of liberty which God has put into His people's minds, is the knowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord. But where the heart believes unto righteousness, confession is likewise made unto salvation. And this confession of the name of Jesus is to the glory of God the Father. God knows His people by this token. Thus, also, is He known of them who see the brightness of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. God has a people now, though Israel be not gathered; and Jehovah-Jesus is that people's God. He is their Lord and their God (John 20:28). Viewed, however, in His special relation to the better Covenant, He is its ever-blessed Mediator. Characteristically, therefore, it is not Jehovah that is to us the peculiar memorial of God as the Author and Fulfiller of the Covenant of promise. "To us there is one God, the FATHER" (1 Cor. 8:6). Our God is He who has brought His people, not out of Egypt for an earthly Canaan, but out of darkness into His marvellous light;delivering us from the power of darkness, and translating us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. The hope of a believer is the birthright which belongs to him as begotten again by the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1). In the fellowship of a Divine adoption we are called by the Spirit to the knowledge of the Father's love. We have Him in the Son. The fulness of the Godhead dwells bodily in Him who, as the Surety of this better Covenant, has based for us, on that foundation, the sanctuary of eternal peace. Jesus has pitched the tabernacle of His priestly ministry upon the settled ground of finished and established promise. There can be no repudiation of a people thus brought nigh. For never can the God of truth deny Himself. He could not continue to be Israel's God, because they broke His covenant, and forsook His truth. He cannot cease to be the God of His believing people; for by an infrangible Covenant of life and righteousness He has built up truth for ever in His Christ. He has bound His people to Himself in Him. He is the God of the believing sinner; to justify, to sanctify, to glorify him; to keep him safely all his journey through, and to present him faultless before His presence with exceeding joy. This He is, according to the unfaltering purpose of His mercy, which made Christ the sure Holder of His people's life before the world began (2 Tim. 1:9-10). Believing sinners are His acceptable people; to continue such for ever, to the praise of the glory of His grace, who has appointed their inheritance. They are His in the life below, to prove the exceeding riches of that faithfulness and mercy which sustains them day by day; to learn His holiness, and to glory in His grace. They are His worshippers, His servants, and His sons. God will dwell among His people; and, with the Lamb who has redeemed them, He will be their Light and their unending praise, in the place which He has built in heaven for His everlasting Rest.

The apostle is led of the Holy Spirit to assure these believers that they already stood in this relationship with God as His people, those in whom He could now find delight, and from them obtain a response in thanksgiving and praise to the grace and mercy He had shown towards them. Two things were now true of them as the "people of God" — they stood in divine favour as in relationship with God, and they were capacitated to respond to Him in grateful praise for the delight of His own heart of love.

Religiously, however, the Jews continued to retain their place as God's people until the Lord came. But they rejected and crucified Him. Then God no longer confined Himself to one nation only, but went out in grace to all men. For in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, but all on one common level (Eph. 2). From this we may gather, surely, that at present God does not own an earthly people as witnesses for Himself upon the earth, but is, on the contrary, gathering out from all nations a people, "partakers of a heavenly calling," who shall constitute the bride, the Lamb's wife.