Consider further the blessing of the saints being a royal priesthood. This was promised to Israel of old, but upon reading the actual promise, we immediately spy the problem. It was a conditional promise, requiring that "ye obey My voice, and keep My covenant." Israel eagerly declared that it would do so, but Israel never could obey the Lord and keep the Old Covenant, so those promises could never be obtained. All of Israel's history shows this to be the case, as it is filled with rebellion, idolatry, disobedience, hatred, and betrayal against God. By the time Isaiah prophesied, the nation was filled with innocent blood shedding, injustice, and bribe-taking. God forbade their sacrifices, temple rituals, offerings, and incense. God refused to hear their prayers any more. If any promises were to be obtained, there would have to be a huge revision of the covenant of blessing, for it is manifest that blessing cannot be obtained by law keeping and obedience to God. That better covenant was laid down in Jeremiah 31, where a New Covenant was promised, by which God would write His law upon their hearts, they would be His people, and He would be their God. Moreover, God would forgive their iniquity, and refuse to remember their sins against them! By operation of the New Covenant, it must be with a truly saved people, and it would be unilateral by God to them, since God would perform all the duties of the covenant, and there would be no duties required of the people. How could God do that? Their animal sacrifices couldn't forgive their sins, and Aaron's priesthood had utterly failed. So long as Aaron is the priest, there could be no hope for Israel receiving these promises!

In his first epistle, Peter continued to stress the spiritual unity of believers by faith, turning away from any sectarian view of Jews and Gentiles, and stressing the spiritual temple being built by the Holy Ghost of all those with faith in Christ. Peter describes Christ as the rejected cornerstone, promised to Israel of olden times. It had been described as the place where rebellious Israel would be destroyed, and believing people would be saved! Christ is that living cornerstone, chosen by God, and precious. All who trust in that Stone are built up a spiritual house atop it, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Christ had told Israel that it would murder Him to seize possession of the kingdom, and that God would destroy the nation, and give the kingdom to a nation that would obey God. Jesus explicitly connects this judgment with the ancient prophecy of Israel's rejection of Himself as the cornerstone. Peter repeated the same judgment against unbelievers, Jews and Gentiles, and used the identical metaphor of the rejected, precious cornerstone. But then Peter described that other nation Christ had promised would be given the kingdom: you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a special people! These blessings Peter described to this spiritual nation that trusts in Jesus, are the very same blessings that God promised Israel just before He gave them His Ten commandments at Mount Sinai. But Israel had disobeyed God, and rejected the cornerstone, and tried to seize Christ's inheritance by destroying Him. Therefore, all those blessings fall upon a new nation, that glorious house of faith!

The salvation of the Gentile Cornelius at God's command was bound to result in negative repercussions in the church at Jerusalem from certain legalistic Jews. The cry arose, "they are not like us!" But Peter easily rebutted such objections. Gentiles had been saved when he obeyed Christ and preached the Gospel to them! The Judaizers took another crack at it sometime later. Now they insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised, and keep the Mosaic Law! In effect, Judaizers annex the curse of the law to the Gospel, because under the law, we are all condemned. But Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse in our place, when He was crucified at Calvary. Peter now recalled that God had chosen him to first carry the Gospel to the Gentile Cornelius. They had believed the Gospel, and God had placed His stamp of approval on their salvation, by filling them with the Holy Ghost, putting no difference between Jewish and Gentile believers, purifying all their hearts by faith. Peter then makes this argument: if we Jews couldn't keep the law, with our centuries of rebellion and idolatry, why should we now test God by forcing the law on Gentile brethren, as an added condition upon what God has already granted to them without the law? But then, Peter articulated a glorious truth: we Jews believe that we shall be saved, just like the Gentiles! This is a new-found insight for Peter. No longer would he say that the Gentiles were saved just like us Jews. They were saved without law-keeping, without circumcision. We had tried and failed at salvation before we believed on Christ, but the Gentiles had come directly on in by faith alone in the Gospel!

There are many instances of how God's power worked mightily in Peter, through the prayers of Jesus, to strengthen Christ's church. God instructed Peter that the Gospel was not just for Jews, but for despised Gentiles as well. When the Lord instructed Peter to go to Cornelius, Peter began to discern the true extent of Christ's revelation to him: that he must no longer separate himself from Gentiles as unclean persons, as the Jews did, because God would open the Gospel up to them also! The salvation of the Gentile Cornelius at God's command was bound to result in negative repercussions in the church at Jerusalem. Ethnic supremacy rises up whenever an exclusive privilege is opened up to others! The cry arises, "but they are not like us!" Cultural and ethnic clashes rose to the surface, and some Jewish believers objected to Peter's having consorted with uncircumcised Gentiles and even eaten with them! But this had been Peter's immediate objection when he told the Savior, "Not so, Lord!" The unthinkable things that had transpired, had been accepted by Peter, with the evidence of the Holy Ghost filling the new Gentile believers, so Peter was well suited to answer the demands for ethnic and religious separation that arose at the Jerusalem church. Peter related the entire sequence of events to the objectors, in particular Christ's command that Peter not call anything unclean which Christ has made clean. Peter had obeyed the Holy Ghost, doubting nothing. This itself was a rebuke to those who now insisted on second guessing Peter's actions and the Holy Ghost's commands to him. The Spirit's commandment trumped all their objections!

There are many instances of how God's power worked mightily in Peter, through the prayers of Jesus, to strengthen Christ's church. After Peter persisted in preaching Christ's Gospel, the rulers beat Peter and the others, again prohibiting them from preaching about Christ. But the prayers of Christ for Peter, and the strengthening of the brethren, resulted in them all rejoicing, that they were counted worthy to suffer shame and persecution for Christ's sake! They went right back out and kept on preaching the Gospel, defying what the rulers had commanded. Soon, God instructed Peter that the Gospel was not just for Jews, but for despised Gentiles as well. Christ accomplished this by showing to Peter various unclean animals in a vision, instructing Peter to partake of them. Peter at first refused, saying "not so, Lord!" Under the law, Jews were forbidden to eat unclean animals. But the Lord explained that Peter must not call anything common or unclean that He had cleansed. Meanwhile, God had instructed the Roman centurion Cornelius to summon Peter, and he would come tell Cornelius what the Lord required him to do. Upon seeing Cornelius and his family and friends gathered together to hear what the Lord wanted Peter to tell them, Peter described why he had come: you know that it is unlawful for a Jew to keep company with the Gentiles, but God has shown me that I should not call any man common or unclean! God had busted Peter out of his cultural heritage and prejudiced thinking, in order for Peter to lead the Gentiles to the Lord Jesus as their Savior. He could no longer avoid doing so by clinging to the idea that they were somehow inferior or outside of God's grace!

The rulers threatened the apostles not to preach in the name of Christ, but had to let them go that time. But the violence against the church escalated during the next encounter: Peter and the others were again preaching at the temple the Gospel of salvation by faith in Christ. The rulers arrested and jailed them, and reminded them that they had been told not to preach in the name of Christ, yet they were still doing so, filling Jerusalem with the Gospel, and accusing the rulers of murdering Messiah! How dare they try to bring Christ's blood down on the rulers' hands! Early Christians were very clear on this point, because it was true: Peter had repeatedly accused the people and the rulers of crucifying Christ, even as he proclaimed the glad tidings of salvation by Christ through faith in His offering for sin. What a privilege it was for the early Christians to be able to confront those wicked rulers who crucified Christ, and face to face, force them to acknowledge the accusation of what they had done. After all, these very same people had demanded of Pontius Pilate, that Christ's blood be upon their hands, and the hands of their children! But now they were not keen at all to be confronted with their crimes against Messiah. Once again, Peter made it clear: that it was obedience to God's command that they both preach the Gospel of Christ, and accuse the rulers of murdering Him on the cross! Peter refused to cease preaching, and would not withdraw the accusation, even before the face of those very rulers who strongly objected to the truth. Therefore, Peter did it again to their faces! "The God of our fathers hath raised up Jesus, Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree!"

After healing the lame man at the temple, and preaching the Gospel to the amazed crowd that gathered, the wicked rulers tried to shut Peter and the others up. Peter confronted them by the Spirit with great boldness, but they rejected the Gospel, and showed no conviction or conversion at all. These wicked rulers didn't believe, because the Holy Ghost did not work in their hearts to believe. God had other purposes for them – not salvation, but wrath and judgment! They threatened Peter and the others not to preach in Christ's name again! The response by the church to all these threats, and this hatred by the rulers, is very revealing! It shows just how well Peter and the other apostles had obeyed Christ's command to strengthen the brethren. It turns out that they had all been very well prepared to react properly to the very first persecution of the church by the world. First, we find that they all raised their voices in praise to Almighty God as the creator of everything. This is in keeping with numerous psalms which were prefaced with the same attitude of worship. Next, they recited David's prophecy, that the nations and the people would rebel against Messiah. David asked the question, why do they rebel against Messiah? But the church now understood why: it was in order to carry out the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus by the hands of those rebellious people! God had before determined that they should do all those things. Why would that be? Because Messiah MUST BE put to death for the sins of His beloved ones, so that He could suffer all the demands of the divine justice that our crimes warranted from the hand of a holy, righteous God.

It was by the power of God's work in Peter, and by the intercession of Christ, that Peter believed, and not because of Peter's own so-called bravery and boldness! There are many instances of how God's power worked mightily in Peter, through the prayers of Jesus, to strengthen Christ's church. At his powerful sermon preached at Pentecost, Peter was bold in the Holy Ghost, and confronted the enemies of Christ, called them out for their sin in murdering Jesus, and commanded them to repent of their sin and have them washed away by the blood of Christ's sacrifice for sinners. After healing the lame man at the temple, and preaching the Gospel to the amazed crowd that gathered, the wicked rulers tried to shut Peter and the others up. Peter confronted them by the Spirit with great boldness, but they rejected the Gospel, and showed no conviction or conversion at all. In the Gospels, those same rulers were described as exceedingly wicked, accusing the Lord Jesus of evil crimes, and falsely condemning Him to death. Then they betrayed Him into the hands of their pagan tyrant Pilate, and gloated at the foot of Calvary as Jesus died there to save His people. Those very same rulers brought Peter and the others before them, and demanded to know by whose authority, and by whose name, they had healed this man. Such is always the way with sacralist, state-church religions, that they seek to control the Gospel, and to shut down "unauthorized" Gospel preachers. This is the challenge of the established religion, and explains the murder of Tyndale by popery, the imprisonment of John Bunyan by the Anglicans, and the persecution of Isaac Watts by the same crowd.

Peter is an example of Christ's power to save us in spite of our fears and failures, because God has given us our faith, by the power of the Holy Ghost, and Christ prays for our faith to be upheld and strengthened. At his powerful sermon preached at Pentecost, Peter was bold in the Holy Ghost, and confronted the enemies of Christ, called them out for their sin in murdering Jesus, and commanded them to repent of their sin and have them washed away by the blood of Christ's sacrifice for sinners. Not only were believers strengthened and encouraged by the manifest demonstration of the power of the Spirit, but thousands of lost souls fled to Christ for forgiveness and salvation that very day! Peter testified to the glorious ministry of Jesus, and how the evil men in his audience had murdered Him by wicked hands. This was carried out in accordance with God's foreknowledge and determined counsel. Yet they were all still guilty of regicide and deicide. This was a bold accusation of criminal conduct of the worst kind! No longer was Peter afraid of these wicked people, but stood up to them and held nothing back of the truth. This sermon by Peter brought extreme fear and conviction in the hearts of many of his listeners: men and brethren, what shall we do, they cried out. This gave Peter his entrée to declare salvation and forgiveness of sin by the Lord Jesus! Repent and be baptized for the remission of sin! Soon after this, Peter and John healed a lame man at the temple gate by the power of the Lord Jesus. Peter then launched into the praises of Christ, how that the God of Israel had glorified His Son Jesus, the very same person Whom they had delivered up to Pilate.