Who Am I in Christ? You Are My People

It’s 6:58 on a Thursday, and you’re standing at a folding table in the fellowship hall with a marker cap between your teeth.

The sticker says HELLO, MY NAME IS in red letters, with a white strip underneath. The woman leading the new small group has just said, “Write your name, and then one word that describes you.”

Your name took two seconds. The second word came up before you could stop it, in your father’s voice, from the doorway of your room when you were fourteen: Quitter.

You wrote nothing. You pressed the sticker onto your sweater with just your name on it and took the chair nearest the door.

The short answer: In Christ you are who God says you are, not who your past named you. Peter puts it plainly to believers: “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people” (1 Peter 2:9). Then he tells you where that identity comes from. It is a new name God spoke over an old one: “who once were not a people but are now the people of God” (1 Peter 2:10).

The List Ends With a Name

You’ve probably seen the list, maybe printed out and taped inside a kitchen cabinet. Chosen. Royal. Holy. His own. All true, and all in 1 Peter 2:9.

Now hear it the first time it was read. Peter’s letter goes to “the pilgrims of the Dispersion” (1 Peter 1:1), scattered across five provinces. Picture it read in a rented room in Cappadocia, to people whose families had never belonged to Israel’s God. Someone reads the list out loud. Chosen. Royal. Holy. Faces look up.

And Peter does not stop there. He ends on a before-and-after: “who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy” (1 Peter 2:10).

He does not invent the words “not a people” for them. He reaches back more than seven hundred years, to a house in Israel and a little boy.

A Boy Named Not My People

The prophet Hosea had three children, and God named every one of them. The second was a daughter, Lo-Ruhamah, “no mercy.” Then: “Now when she had weaned Lo-Ruhamah, she conceived and bore a son. Then God said: ‘Call his name Lo-Ammi, For you are not My people’” (Hosea 1:8–9).

Lo-Ammi is lōʾ ʿammî, “not my people”: two Hebrew words, lōʾ, “not,” and ʿammî, “my people.” It was a verdict on a nation that had walked away from the LORD (Hosea 1:2), and it was put on a child.

Picture the house at suppertime. Somebody stands in the doorway and calls the boy in. Not My People. He comes when he’s called, because that’s his name.

And then, in the very next breath of the same chapter, God says this:

“And it shall come to pass In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not My people,’ There it shall be said to them, ‘You are sons of the living God’” (Hosea 1:10).

In the place where. Not somewhere far away. The new name would be spoken on the same ground where the old one was said.

He Takes Out One Word

Here is what most readers never see, because it hides in the Hebrew. A chapter later, God promises: “Then I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’” (Hosea 2:23).

In Hebrew, “those who were not My people” is the boy’s name, lōʾ ʿammî, “not my people.” And “You are My people!” is ʿammî ʾattâ, “my people, you.” Read word for word, the verse says: I will say to Not-My-People, “My-People, you.”

God does not start over with a stranger’s name. He takes the name the boy was called by and removes one word. Not.

That is the line Peter reaches back for, writing to scattered believers whose families had never been His people: “who once were not a people but are now the people of God.” And the second half, “who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy,” is the boy’s sister’s name, Lo-Ruhamah, “no mercy,” turned the same way (Hosea 2:23).

So here is what you can stop doing. You can stop introducing yourself to God by the old name. You can stop waiting until you’ve gotten far enough from the place, or the people, or the year, before you let Him call you His. He said the new name would be spoken right where the old one was said, and Peter says it has been: “now the people of God.” Hosea even gives you the answer to say back: “You are my God!”

What the Name Cost

A name like that is not cheap to change. Peter says what it cost a chapter earlier: “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19).

Received by tradition from your fathers. Peter knew the old name comes down a family line, sometimes in a father’s voice from a bedroom doorway. The new one was paid for in blood. Here is what the blood of Jesus does. And because the name is given, not earned, you can live from His approval instead of working for it.

When They Say It Again

Here we go.

You thought it with your hand on the screen door of your mother’s house, a foil-covered casserole on your hip, at 1:25 on a Sunday. Through the mesh you could see your aunt at the stove, stirring gravy with the wooden spoon she’s had since you were born. You’re thirty-nine, a loan officer at the credit union, the one who keeps the nursery schedule at a church forty minutes away. In this kitchen you’re still the one who ran off at nineteen.

Aunt Carol saw you first. “Well. Look who found her way home.”

Somebody laughed by the sink.

You set the dish on the counter. On your phone, in the notes app, was the verse you’d typed at the last red light. You didn’t take the phone out. You said it once under your breath, with the screen door still swinging shut behind you: “who once were not a people but are now the people of God.”

Then you peeled the foil back, and you hugged her first.

Say It in the Same Place

Here’s the one thing to do this week. Go to the place where the old name gets said. The mirror where you hear it. The driveway outside the house. The chair by the door.

Stand there and read Hosea 1:10 out loud. Then read 1 Peter 2:10. Then answer Him with the words Hosea gives you: “You are my God!” Say it once, plainly, in that spot.

Then walk in.

Scripture to Keep When the Old Name Comes Back

• “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;” (1 Peter 2:9)
• “who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.” (1 Peter 2:10)
• “Then I will say to those who were not My people, ‘You are My people!’ And they shall say, ‘You are my God!’” (Hosea 2:23)
• “but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” (1 Peter 1:19)
• “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1)

A Prayer for When the Old Name Comes Back

Father, I have answered to the old name for a long time. You know the word, and You know who said it. I will not introduce myself to You by it anymore. You redeemed me with the precious blood of Christ, and You have called me Yours. You have said it in Your Word, and I take it here, in this place, where the old name was said. You are my God. In Jesus’ name, amen.

The blood that bought your new name is the heart of The Power of the Blood of Jesus: redemption, identity and authority, traced from Genesis to Revelation.

I heard what they called you, child. I was standing in that doorway too. I’m taking the “not” out of your name. I’ll say it right there, where they said the other one. You’re Mine. You were bought with My Son’s blood. Now answer Me.

He did not wait for you to leave the place. He spoke your new name right where the old one was said.