VERSES 9 TO 10 TELL US that all believers in Christ have been chosen by God’s grace to be His holy people (“a chosen race”, “a holy nation”), who are to serve God as His priests (“a royal priesthood”) and prophets (“that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light”). Every disciple is to be a spokesperson for God. God’s servants − His redeemed people − are to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ to others, so that they too can receive God’s mercy, have eternal life, share in God’s community and become part of Christ’s Kingdom of light. A faithful walk in the Lord (our mandate) results in testifying and proclaiming “that which we have seen and heard” (1 Jn 1:3) – through our words, deeds and evangelism (our mission). Gospel proclamation by God’s people must take place in the marketplace. As George MacLeod wrote: “I simply argue that the cross be raised again at the centre of the market place as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write his title in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek…at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where he died. And that is what he died about. And that is where churchmen should be and what churchmen should be about.”²

² George F. MacLeod, Only One Way Left (Wild Goose Publications, 2000), 38.