Are We A Chosen People?
June 9, 2024 § 2 Comments
In the elder days, Friends would sometimes refer to themselves as a “peculiar people.” By “peculiar” they did not mean that they were odd, though they were odd, and I think they knew they were odd. Rather, they meant that they were a a distinct people, a chosen people; they had been gathered by Christ as a people of God for a purpose.
This identity as a chosen people appears in the passage in the gospel of John from which we get our name as the Religious Society of Friends:
“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me, but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another. (John 15:12–17)
Integral to the identity that we claim with our name from this passage are five things:
- The commandment of love—“Love one another.”
- Direct and intimate communion with the spirit of the Christ—“You are my friends.”
- The promise of (continuing) revelation—“I have made known to you everything . . .” And
- Being chosen—“I chose you.”
- For a purpose: a mission as a called people of God—“Go and bear fruit.”
Pondering this passage today in meeting for worship raised some queries:
- Do we see ourselves as a chosen/called people of God?
- If so, what is our mission?
- Are we bearing fruit that will last?
Through the Flaming Sword 
Great reminder! Thank you.
Thank you so much for raising this question, Steve!
I’ve made the point, many times, that shortly before Francis Howgill went into the prison that he died in, in 1662, he was granted a revelation from God that the people called Quakers were a covenanted people of God, with whom God would never break His covenant! — So what can it mean that we have forgotten that we were, and therefore still are, or should be, God’s covenanted people? Shame on us!
But how could we have remembered that covenant, which implies a commission to share what we had, which early Friends called “the saving knowledge of God, and Christ” (a reference, I take it, to John 17:3 — look it up in Barclay’s Apology, Friends! It’s the very substance of his Proposition No. 1!) — How could we have remembered that covenant, if we’d lost that Pearl of Great Price, the saving knowledge of God?
Over the centuries, did we let that pearl slip away from us, and with it, the trust that if we committed ourselves to obey the Lord’s voice no matter what, we could listen for His voice and He would speak to us directly?
This beautiful earth is now close to bursting into flames, with melting icecaps drowning low-lying nations, because the world is ruled by advantage-seeking selfishness, which is bondage to the Devil! Can a people who repent of such selfishness, and submit, in obedience, to the rule of the living God, whose will is always, and only, for the good of all — can such an obedient people pull the earth back from its cliff of doom?
No, suffering won’t end with our death, for after death will come a judgment, where we must each reap what we’ve sown: it’s the law of karma, and every faith tradition but atheism teaches it! Have we people of faith no pity for the faithless destroyers of the earth? Theirs will be a terrible doom unless we warn them, and only Christ’s Holy Spirit can teach us how!
It’s time for Friends, and all who would live unswervingly by the promptings of conscience, to remember the covenant with God that we’ve been called to, and let go all other agenda.