CHRISTIANS:
PECULIAR PEOPLE

The result of Christ’s purifying work is the perfecting of God’s very own people, referred to in this passage from the King James version as “a peculiar people.”

Many of us know all too well that this word peculiar has been often used to cloak religious conduct both strange and irrational. People have been known to do rather weird things and then grin a self-conscious grin and say in half-hearted apology: “Well, we are a peculiar people!”

Anyone with a serious and honest concern for scriptural admonition and instruction could quickly learn that this English word peculiar in the language of 1611 describing the redeemed people of God had no connotation of queerness, ridiculousness nor foolishness.

The same word was first used in Exodus 19:5 when God said that Israel “shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people” (KJV). It was God’s way of emphasizing that His people would be to Him a treasure above all other treasures. In the etymological sense, it means “shut up to me as my special jewel.”

Every loving mother and father has a good idea of what God meant. There are babies in houses up and down every street, as you can tell by the baby clothes hanging on the lines on a summer day.

But in the house where you live, there is one little infant in particular, and he is a peculiar treasure unto you above all others. It does not mean necessarily that he is prettier, but it does mean that he is the treasure above all other treasures and you would not trade him for any other child in the whole world. He is a peculiar treasure!

This gives us some idea, at least, of what we are—God’s special jewels marked out for Him!

Exodus 19:5; Titus 2:11–14; 1 Peter 2:9

Who Put Jesus on the Cross?, 160, 161.