coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
Parallel Translations
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coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
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to whom ye come as vnto a livynge stone disalowed of men but chosen of god and precious:
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To whome comming as vnto a liuing stone disallowed of men, but chosen of God and precious,
Cross-references (29)
Passages linked to 1 Peter 2:4 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Psalms 118:22-23 The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone. This is Yahweh’s doing. It is marvelous in our eyes.
- Acts 4:11-12 He is ‘the stone which was regarded as worthless by you, the builders, which has become the head of the corner.’ There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven that is given among men, by which we must be saved!”
- 1 Peter 2:7 For you who believe therefore is the honor, but for those who are disobedient, “The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone,”
- Isaiah 28:16 Therefore the Lord Yahweh says, “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone of a sure foundation. He who believes shall not act hastily.
- Luke 20:17-18 But he looked at them and said, “Then what is this that is written, ‘The stone which the builders rejected was made the chief cornerstone?’ Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, but it will crush whomever it falls on to dust.”
- Zechariah 3:9 For, behold, the stone that I have set before Joshua; on one stone are seven eyes: behold, I will engrave its engraving,’ says Yahweh of Armies, ‘and I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.
- Mark 12:10-11 Haven’t you even read this Scripture: ‘The stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord. It is marvelous in our eyes’?”
- Daniel 2:34 You saw until a stone was cut out without hands, which struck the image on its feet that were of iron and clay, and broke them in pieces.
- Isaiah 42:1 “Behold, my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights: I have put my Spirit on him. He will bring justice to the nations.
- Zechariah 4:7 Who are you, great mountain? Before Zerubbabel you are a plain; and he will bring out the capstone with shouts of ‘Grace, grace, to it!’ ”
- John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
- Isaiah 8:14-15 He will be a sanctuary, but for both houses of Israel, he will be a stumbling stone and a rock that makes them fall. For the people of Jerusalem, he will be a trap and a snare. Many will stumble over it, fall, be broken, be snared, and be captured.”
- Isaiah 55:3 Turn your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your soul will live. I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.
- Daniel 2:45 Because you saw that a stone was cut out of the mountain without hands, and that it broke in pieces the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold; the great God has made known to the king what will happen hereafter. The dream is certain, and its interpretation sure.”
- Matthew 11:28 “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.
- John 5:26 For as the Father has life in himself, even so he gave to the Son also to have life in himself.
- John 5:40 Yet you will not come to me, that you may have life.
- John 6:37 All those whom the Father gives me will come to me. He who comes to me I will in no way throw out.
- John 6:57 As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he who feeds on me, he will also live because of me.
- John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father, except through me.
- John 14:19 Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more; but you will see me. Because I live, you will live also.
- Romans 5:10 For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his life.
- Colossians 3:4 When Christ, our life, is revealed, then you will also be revealed with him in glory.
- 1 Peter 1:7 that the proof of your faith, which is more precious than gold that perishes even though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ—
- 1 Peter 1:19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ,
- 2 Peter 1:1 Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a like precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:
- 2 Peter 1:4 by which he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.
- Matthew 12:18 “Behold, my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom my soul is well pleased: I will put my Spirit on him. He will proclaim justice to the nations.
- Matthew 21:42 Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the Scriptures, ‘The stone which the builders rejected was made the head of the corner. This was from the Lord. It is marvelous in our eyes?’
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (26 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain To whom coming, is not to be referred simply…
To whom coming, is not to be referred simply to God, but to him as he is revealed to us in the person of Christ. Now, it cannot be but that the grace of God must powerfully draw us to himself and inflame us with the love of him by whom we obtain a real perception of it. If Plato affirmed this of his Beautiful, of which a shadowy idea only he beheld afar off, much more true is this with regard to God.
Let it then be noticed, that Peter connects an access to God with the taste of his goodness. For as the human mind necessarily dreads and shuns God, as long as it regards him as rigid and severe; so, as soon as he makes known his paternal love to the faithful, it immediately follows that they disregard all things and even forget themselves and hasten to him. In short, he only makes progress in the Gospel, who in heart comes to God.
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But he also shews for what end and to what purpose we ought to come to Christ, even that we may have him as our foundation. For since he is constituted a stone, he ought to be so to us, so that nothing should be appointed for him by the Father in vain or to no purpose. But he obviates an offense when he allows that Christ is rejected by men; for, as a great part of the world reject him, and even many abhor him, he might for this reason be despised by us; for we see that some of the ignorant are alienated from the Gospel, because it is not everywhere popular, nor does it conciliate favor to its professors. But Peter forbids us to esteem Christ the less, however despised he may be by the world, because he, notwithstanding, retains his own worth and honor before God.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain He goeth on forward in the same exhortation, and…
He goeth on forward in the same exhortation, and useth another kind of borrowed speech, alluding to the Temple. Therefore he saith, that the company of the faithful is as it were a certain holy and spiritual building, built of lively stones, the foundation whereof is Christ, as a lively stone sustaining all that are joined unto him with his living virtue, and knitting them together with himself, although this so great a treasure be neglected of men.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 4 To whom coming, as unto a living stone,…
4 To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,
Ver. 4. As unto a living stone] Living and all quickening, as Act 7:38. Lively, that is, lifegiving oracles. He that hath the Son hath life, 1Jn 5:12.
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Disallowed indeed of men] For the cock on the dunghill knoweth not the price of this jewel.
And precious] Far beyond that most orient and excellent stone Pantarbe, celebrated by Philostratus (in Vita Apol.); or that precious adamant of Charles Duke of Burgundy, sold for 20,000 ducats and set in the pope’s triple crown. (Alsted Chron.)
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain To whom; to which Christ.
To whom; to which Christ.
Coming; by faith: q.d. In whom believing, Joh 6:35,44,45. The word is in the present tense, the apostle describing here not their first conversion to Christ, but their present state, that they, being in Christ, were daily coming to him in the continued exercise of their faith.
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As unto a living; not, only having life in himself, but enlivening those that by faith adhere to him.
Stone; viz. a corner-stone, as 1Pe 2:6. Being about to set forth the church as a spiritual building, he first mentions Christ as the foundation, and corner-stone.
Disallowed indeed of men; rejected, not only by the unbelieving Jews and their rulers formerly, but still by the unbelieving world.
But chosen of God; either chosen to be the foundation of the building, and then it is the same as foreordained, 1Pe 1:20; or chosen is the same as choice, excellent.
And precious: a different expression of the same thing. Here seems to be an allusion to those stones which men count precious, and have in great esteem; and Christ’s being precious in the sight of God, is set in opposition to his being disallowed of men, to intimate, that their unbelief, and rejecting Christ, doth not make him less valuable in himself, when his Father so much honours him.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Observe here, 1. The denomination, or title, given to…
Observe here, 1. The denomination, or title, given to Christ, he is styled a living stone, and the chief corner-stone.
1. A living stone, that is, a lively stone, no dead foundation; a life-giving stone, having not only life in himself essentially but communicatively, imparting spiritual life to the whole building. Christ is not only an head of authority, but an head of vital influence to all his members; because he lives, they shall live also.
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2. He is styled also the chief corner-stone, both in regard of sustentation; the corner-stone supports the whole building, the church’s grace, the church’s peace, the church’s consolation, the church’s salvation, are all upheld and maintained by him: and in regard of union, the corner-stone unites, ties, and knits the other stones together, that they should not drop out of the building. Christ alone unites the several stones of the spiritual building to himself, and one another. And this corner-stone is of God’s own immediate laying, Behold, I lay in Sion a corner-stone. Christ was first manifested and offered to the church of the Jews, and then to the rest of the world.
Observe, 2. The titles given to believers; 1. They of lively stones are built a spiritual house. Believers are God’s temple, dedicated to, and set apart for, his special service, and also enjoying his gracious and special presence. "This is my rest for ever," says God concerning the believer’s heart; "here will I dwell, for I have a delight therein."
2. They are an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable through Christ.
Learn hence, that every Christian in this life is a priest, and ought to offer up himself a sacrifice or oblation unto God. In a sacrifice there was a separation of the thing sacrificed from common use; the beast was separated from the rest of the flock, so must the Christian be set apart from the rest of the world. There was an addiction, or dedication, or solemn consecration, of the thing set apart to some holy and special use and purpose: thus the Christian, that presents himself a living sacrifice unto God, does not only separate himself from the sin, the world, and the flesh, but does addict, and devote himself to God, to serve and please him, to honour and glorify him.
Observe, 3. The application which believers make to Christ, in order to their being his spiritual temple, and a royal priesthood. To whom coming as unto a living stone! the particle denotes a continual motion, by which the soul gains ground, and gets nearer and nearer to Christ; they are daily coming by faith to him, and gradually advancing in the knowledge of him, and love unto him.
Observe lastly, The sweet fruit and blessed effect of their faith, Whosoever believeth in him shall not be confounded: that is, not ashamed, as a person who is disappointed of his hopes and expectations; he shall not be ashamed of his choice, he shall not be ashamed of his profession, he shall never be ashamed of the cause and interest of Christ, which he has espoused, and at all times appeared for; nor of the work and service of Christ, nor of the time and pains expended in their work and service: nor shall he ever be ashamed hereafter that he never was ashamed here.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain I. The apostle here gives us a description of…
I. The apostle here gives us a description of Jesus Christ as a living stone; and though to a capricious wit, or an infidel, this description may seem rough and harsh, yet to the Jews, who placed much of their religion in their magnificent temple, and who understood the prophetical style, which calls the Messiah a stone (Isa 8:14; Isa 28:16), it would appear very elegant and proper.
1. In this metaphorical description of Jesus Christ, he is called a stone, to denote his invincible strength and everlasting duration, and to teach his servants that he is their protection and security, the foundation on which they are built, and a rock of offence to all their enemies. He is the living stone, having eternal life in himself, and being the prince of life to all his people. The reputation and respect he has with God and man are very different. He is disallowed of men, reprobated or rejected by his own countrymen the Jews, and by the generality of mankind; but chosen of God, separated and fore-ordained to be the foundation of the church (as Pe1 1:20), and precious, a most honourable, choice, worthy person in himself, in the esteem of God, and in the judgment of all who believe on him. To this person so described we are obliged to come: To whom coming, not by a local motion, for that is impossible since his exaltation, but by faith, whereby we are united to him at first, and draw nigh to him afterwards. Learn, (1.) Jesus Christ is the very foundation-stone of all our hopes and happiness. He communicates the true knowledge of God (Mat 11:27); by him we have access to the Father (Joh 14:6), and through him are made partakers of all spiritual blessings, Eph 1:3. (2.) Men in general disallow and reject Jesus Christ; they slight him, dislike him, oppose and refuse him, as scripture and experience declare, Isa 53:3. (3.) However Christ may be disallowed by an ungrateful world, yet he is chosen of God, and precious in his account. He is chosen and fixed upon to be the Lord of the universe, the head of the church, the Saviour of his people, and the Judge of the world. He is precious in the excellency of his nature, the dignity of his office, and the gloriousness of his services. (4.) Those who expect mercy from this gracious Redeemer must come to him, which is our act, though done by God's grace - an act of the soul, not of the body - a real endeavour, not a fruitless wish.
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2. Having described Christ as the foundation, the apostle goes on to speak of the superstructure, the materials built upon him: You also, as living stones, are built up, Pe1 2:6. The apostle is recommending the Christian church and constitution to these dispersed Jews. It was natural for them to object that the Christian church had no such glorious temple, nor such a numerous priesthood; but its dispensation was mean, the services and sacrifices of it having nothing of the pomp and grandeur which the Jewish dispensation had. To this the apostle answers that the Christian church is a much nobler fabric than the Jewish temple; it is a living temple, consisting not of dead materials, but of living parts. Christ, the foundation, is a living stone. Christians are lively stones, and these make a spiritual house, and they are a holy priesthood; and, though they have no bloody sacrifices of beasts to offer, yet they have much better and more acceptable, and they have an altar too on which to present their offerings; for they offer spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Learn, (1.) All sincere Christians have in them a principle of spiritual life communicated to them from Christ their head: therefore, as he is called a living stone, so they are called lively, or living stones; not dead in trespasses and sins, but alive to God by regeneration and the working of the divine Spirit. (2.) The church of God is a spiritual house. The foundation is Christ, Eph 2:22. It is a house for its strength, beauty, variety of parts, and usefulness of the whole. It is spiritual foundation, Christ Jesus, - in the materials of it, spiritual persons, - in its furniture, the graces of the Spirit, - in its connection, being held together by the Spirit of God and by one common faith, - and in its use, which is spiritual work, to offer up spiritual sacrifices. This house is daily built up, every part of it improving, and the whole supplied in every age by the addition of new particular members. (3.) All good Christians are a holy priesthood. The apostle speaks here of the generality of Christians, and tells them they are a holy priesthood; they are all select persons, sacred to God, serviceable to others, well endowed with heavenly gifts and graces, and well employed. (4.) This holy priesthood must and will offer up spiritual sacrifices to God. The spiritual sacrifices which Christians are to offer are their bodies, souls, affections, prayers, praises, alms, and other duties. (5.) The most spiritual sacrifices of the best men are not acceptable to God, but through Jesus Christ; he is the only great high priest, through whom we and our services can be accepted; therefore bring all your oblations to him, and by him present them to God.
II. He confirms what he had asserted of Christ being a living stone, etc., from Isa 28:16. Observe the manner of the apostle's quoting scripture, not by book, chapter, and verse; for these distinctions were not then made, so no more was said than a reference to Moses, David, or the prophets, except once a particular psalm was named, Act 13:33. In their quotations they kept rather to the sense than the words of scripture, as appears from what is recited from the prophet in this place. He does not quote the scripture, neither the Hebrew nor Septuagint, word for word, yet makes a just and true quotation. The true sense of scripture may be justly and fully expressed in other than in scripture - words. It is contained. The verb is active, but our translators render it passively, to avoid the difficulty of finding a nominative case for it, which had puzzled so many interpreters before them. The matter of the quotation is this, Behold, I lay in Zion. Learn, 1. In the weighty matters of religion we must depend entirely upon scripture - proof; Christ and his apostles appealed to Moses, David, and the ancient prophets. The word of God is the only rule God hath given us. It is a perfect and sufficient rule. 2. The accounts that God hath given us in scripture concerning his Son Jesus Christ are what require our strictest attention. Behold, I lay, etc. John calls for the like attention, Joh 1:29. These demands of attention to Christ show us the excellency of the matter, the importance of it, and our stupidity and dulness. 3. The constituting of Christ Jesus head of the church is an eminent work of God: I lay in Zion. The setting up of the pope for the head of the church is a human contrivance and an arrogant presumption; Christ only is the foundation and head of the church of God. 4. Jesus Christ is the chief corner-stone that God hath laid in his spiritual building. The corner-stone stays inseparably with the building, supports it, unites it, and adorns it. So does Christ by his holy church, his spiritual house. 5. Jesus Christ is the corner-stone for the support and salvation of none but such as are his sincere people: none but Zion, and such as are of Zion; not for Babylon, not for his enemies. 6. True faith in Jesus Christ is the only way to prevent a man's utter confusion. Three things put a man into great confusion, and faith prevents them all - disappointment, sin, and judgment. Faith has a remedy for each.
III. He deduces an important inference, Pe1 2:7. Jesus Christ is said to be the chief corner-stone. Hence the apostle infers with respect to good men, "To you therefore who believe he is precious, or he is an honour. Christ is the crown and honour of a Christian; you who believe will be so far from being ashamed of him that you will boast of him and glory in him for ever." As to wicked men, the disobedient will go on to disallow and reject Jesus Christ; but God is resolved that he shall be, in despite of all opposition, the head of the corner. Learn, 1. Whatever is by just and necessary consequence deduced from scripture may be depended upon with as much certainty as if it were contained in express words of scripture. The apostle draws an inference from the prophet's testimony. The prophet did not expressly say so, but yet he said that from which the consequence was unavoidable. Our Saviour bids them search the scriptures, because they testified of him; and yet no place in those scriptures to which he there refers them said that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. Yet those scriptures do say that he who should be born of a virgin, before the sceptre departed from Judah, during the second temple, and after Daniel's seventy weeks, was the Messiah; but such was Jesus Christ: to collect this conclusion one must make use of reason, history, eye-sight, experience, and yet it is an infallible scripture - conclusion notwithstanding. 2. The business of a faithful minister is to apply general truths to the particular condition and state of his hearers. The apostle quotes a passage (Pe1 2:6) out of the prophet, and applies it severally to good and bad. This requires wisdom, courage, and fidelity; but it is very profitable to the hearers. 3. Jesus Christ is exceedingly precious to all the faithful. The majesty and grandeur of his person, the dignity of his office, his near relation, his wonderful works, his immense love - every thing engages the faithful to the highest esteem and respect for Jesus Christ. 4. Disobedient people have no true faith. By disobedient people understand those that are unpersuadable, incredulous, and impenitent. These may have some right notions, but no solid faith. 5. Those that ought to be builders of the church of Christ are often the worst enemies that Christ has in the world. In the Old Testament the false prophets did the most mischief; and in the New Testament the greatest opposition and cruelty that Christ met with were from the scribes, pharisees, chief priests, and those who pretended to build and take care of the church. Still the hierarchy of Rome is the worst enemy in the world to Jesus Christ and his interest. 6. God will carry on his own work, and support the interest of Jesus Christ in the world, notwithstanding the falseness of pretended friends and the opposition of his worst enemies.
IV. The apostle adds a further description, still preserving the metaphor of a stone, Pe1 2:8. The words are taken from Isa 8:13, Isa 8:14, Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself - and he shall be for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence, whence it is plain that Jesus Christ is the Lord of hosts, and consequently the most high God. Observe,
1. The builders, the chief-priests, refused him, and the people followed their leaders; and so Christ became to them a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, at which they stumbled and hurt themselves; and in return he fell upon them as a mighty stone or rock, and punished them with destruction. Mat 12:44, Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder. Learn, (1.) All those that are disobedient take offense at the word of God: They stumble at the word, being disobedient. They are offended with Christ himself, with his doctrine and the purity of his precepts; but the Jewish doctors more especially stumbled at the meanness of his appearance and the proposal of trusting only to him for their justification before God. They could not be brought to seek justification by faith, but as it were by the works of the law; for they stumbled at that stumbling-stone, Rom 9:32. (2.) The same blessed Jesus who is the author of salvation to some is to others the occasion of their sin and destruction. He is set for the rising and fall of many in Israel. He is not the author of their sin, but only the occasion of it; their own disobedience makes them stumble at him and reject him, which he punishes, as a judge, with destruction. Those who reject him as a Saviour will split upon him as a Rock. (3.) God himself hath appointed everlasting destruction to all those who stumble at the word, being disobedient. All those who go on resolutely in their infidelity and contempt of the gospel are appointed to eternal destruction; and God from eternity knows who they are. (4.) To see the Jews generally rejecting Christ, and multitudes in all ages slighting him, ought not to discourage us in our love and duty to him; for this had been foretold by the prophets long ago, and is a confirmation of our faith both in the scriptures and in the Messiah.
2. Those who received him were highly privileged, Pe1 2:9. The Jews were exceedingly tender of their ancient privileges, of being the only people of God, taken into a special covenant with him, and separated from the rest of the world. "Now," say they, "if we submit to the gospel - constitution, we shall lose all this, and stand upon the same level with the Gentiles."
(1.) To this objection the apostle answers, that if they did not submit they were ruined (Pe1 2:7, Pe1 2:8), but that if they did submit they should lose no real advantage, but continue still what they desired to be, a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, etc. Learn, [1.] All true Christians are a chosen generation; they all make one family, a sort and species of people distinct from the common world, of another spirit, principle, and practice, which they could never be if they were not chosen in Christ to be such, and sanctified by his Spirit. [2.] All the true servants of Christ are a royal priesthood. They are royal in their relation to God and Christ, in their power with God, and over themselves and all their spiritual enemies; they are princely in the improvements and the excellency of their own spirits, and in their hopes and expectations; they are a royal priesthood, separated from sin and sinners, consecrated to God, and offering to God spiritual services and oblations, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. [3.] All Christians, wheresoever they be, compose one holy nation. They are one nation, collected under one head, agreeing in the same manners and customs, and governed by the same laws; and they are a holy nation, because consecrated and devoted to God, renewed and sanctified by his Holy Spirit. [4.] It is the honour of the servants of Christ that they are God's peculiar people. They are the people of his acquisition, choice, care, and delight. These four dignities of all genuine Christians are not natural to them; for their first state is a state of horrid darkness, but they are effectually called out of darkness into a state of marvellous light, joy, pleasure, and prosperity, with this intent and view, that they should show forth, by words and actions, the virtues and praises of him who hath called them.
(2.) To make this people content, and thankful for the great mercies and dignities brought unto them by the gospel, the apostle advises them to compare their former and their present state. Time was when they were not a people, nor had they obtained mercy, but they were solemnly disclaimed and divorced (Jer 3:8; Hos 1:6, Hos 1:9); but now they are taken in again to be the people of God, and have obtained mercy. Learn, [1.] The best people ought frequently to look back upon what they were in time past. [2.] The people of God are the most valuable people in the world; all the rest are not a people, good for little. [3.] To be brought into the number of the people of God is a very great mercy, and it may be obtained.
V. He warns them to beware of fleshly lusts, Pe1 2:11. Even the best of men, the chosen generation, the people of God, need an exhortation to abstain from the worst sins, which the apostle here proceeds most earnestly and affectionately to warn them against. Knowing the difficulty, and yet the importance of the duty, he uses his utmost interest in them: Dearly beloved, I beseech you. The duty is to abstain fRom. and to suppress, the first inclination or rise of fleshly lusts. Many of them proceed from the corruption of nature, and in their exercise depend upon the body, gratifying some sensual appetite or inordinate inclination of the flesh. These Christians ought to avoid, considering, 1. The respect they have with God and good men: They are dearly beloved. 2. Their condition in the world: They are strangers and pilgrims, and should not impede their passage by giving into the wickedness and lusts of the country through which they pass. 3. The mischief and danger these sins do: "They war against the soul; and therefore your souls ought to war against them." Learn, (1.) The grand mischief that sin does to man is this, it wars against the soul; it destroys the moral liberty of the soul; it weakens and debilitates the soul by impairing its faculties; it robs the soul of its comfort and peace; it debases and destroys the dignity of the soul, hinders its present prosperity, and plunges it into everlasting misery. (2.) Of all sorts of sin, none are more injurious to the soul than fleshly lusts. Carnal appetites, lewdness, and sensuality, are most odious to God, and destructive to man's soul. It is a sore judgment to be given up to them.
VI. He exhorts them further to adorn their profession by an honest conversation. Their conversation in every turn, every instance, and every action of their lives, ought to be honest; that is, good, lovely, decent, amiable, and without blame: and that because they lived among the Gentiles, people of another religion, and who were inveterate enemies to them, who did already slander them and constantly spoke evil of them as of evil-doers. "A clean, just, good conversation may not only stop their mouths, but may possibly be a means to bring them to glorify God, and turn to you, when they shall see you excel all others in good works. They now call you evil-doers; vindicate yourselves by good works, this is the way to convince them. There is a day of visitation coming, wherein God may call them by his word and his grace to repentance; and then they will glorify God, and applaud you, for your excellent conversation, Luk 1:68. When the gospel shall come among them, and take effect, a good conversation will encourage them in their conversion, but an evil one will obstruct it." Note, 1. A Christian profession should be attended with an honest conversation, Phi 4:8. 2. It is the common lot of the best Christians to be evil spoken of by wicked men. 3. Those that are under God's gracious visitation immediately change their opinion of good people, glorifying God and commending those whom before they railed at as evil-doers.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Ye also, as lively stones,.... Saints likewise are compared…
Ye also, as lively stones,.... Saints likewise are compared to stones; they lie in the same quarry, and are the same by nature as the rest of mankind, till dug out and separated from thence by the powerful and efficacious grace of God, when they are hewn, and made fit for the spiritual building; where both for their ornament, beauty, and strength, which they receive from Christ, they are compared to stones, and are lasting and durable, and will never perish, nor be removed out of the building: and because of that life which they derive from him, and have in him, they are called "lively", or "living stones"; the spirit of life having entered into them, a principle of life being implanted in them, and coming to Christ, the living stone, they live upon him, and he lives in them; and his grace in them is a well of living water, springing up into eternal life. It was usual with poets and philosophers to call stones, as they lie in the quarry before they are taken out of it, "living" ones: so Virgil (p), describing the seats of the nymphs, says, "intus aquae dulces vivoque sedilia saxo, nympharum domus", &c. but here the apostle calls such living stones, who were taken out from among the rest: the stones which Deucalion and Pyrrha cast over their heads after the flood are called (q) , "quickened stones", they becoming men, as the fable says. "Are built up a spiritual house"; these living stones being laid, and cemented together, in a Gospel church state, become the house of God in a spiritual sense, in distinction from the material house of the tabernacle, and temple of old, to which the allusion is; and which is built up an habitation for God, by the Spirit, and is made up of spiritual men; such as have the Spirit of God, and savour the things of the Spirit, and worship God in Spirit and in truth; among whom spiritual services are performed, as prayer, praise, preaching, and hearing the word, and administering ordinances. Some read these words in the imperative, as an exhortation, "be ye built up as lively stones; and be ye spiritual temples and holy priests", as the Syriac version. A synagogue with the Jews is called , "a spiritual house" (r); and so is the third temple which the Jews expect in the times of the Messiah; of which one of their writers (s) thus says:
"it is known from the ancient wise men, that the future redemption, with which shall be the third "spiritual" sanctuary, is the work of God, and will not be as the former redemptions: "I will fill this house with glory"; this is "a spiritual" one, for even the walls shall be "spiritual"--for even all this "house" shall be "spiritual"; for that which was then built, which is the second, shall be turned into another a "spiritual" one:
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and which has been already done, and is what the apostle means here, the church, under the Gospel dispensation, or the Gospel church state, in opposition to the worldly sanctuary, and carnal worship of the Jews,
An holy priesthood; in allusion to the priests under the law, who were set apart, and sanctified for that office; but now, under the Gospel, all the saints are priests unto God, and are all appointed and directed
to offer up spiritual sacrifices; their whole selves, souls, and bodies, as a holy, living, and acceptable sacrifice; their prayers and praises, and all good works done in faith, and from love, and to the glory of God; particularly acts of kindness and beneficence to poor saints; these are called spiritual, in distinction from legal sacrifices, and because offered in a spiritual manner, under the influence, and by the assistance of the Spirit of God, and with their spirits. So the Jews speak of spiritual sacrifices, as distinct from material ones:
"the intellectual sacrifice (they say (t)) is before the material sacrifices, both in time and excellency.--Cain brought an offering to the Lord of the fruit of the earth, and behold the intellectual attention did not agree with it, which is , "the spiritual sacrifice".
Now such are
acceptable to God by Jesus Christ; through whom they are offered up; for it is through him the saints have access to God, present themselves to him, and their services; and both persons and services are only accepted in Christ, and for his sake, and in virtue of his sacrifice, which is always of a sweet smelling savour to God,
(p) Aeneid. l. 1. (q) Eustathius in Homer. Iliad. 1. (r) Neve Shalom apud Caphtor, fol. 14. 1. (s) R. Alshech. in Hagg. ii. 7, 8, 9, 10. (t) Neve Shalom apud Caphtor, fol. 88. 2. Vid. Raziel. fol. 33. 1.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain To whom coming - By faith. As unto a…
To whom coming - By faith. As unto a living stone - Living from eternity; alive from the dead. There is a wonderful beauty and energy in these expressions, which describe Christ as a spiritual foundation, solid, firm, durable; and believers as a building erected upon it, in preference to that temple which the Jews accounted their highest glory. And St. Peter speaking of him thus, shows he did not judge himself, but Christ, to be the rock on which the church was built. Rejected indeed by men - Even at this day, not only by Jews, Turks, heathens, infidels; but by all Christians, so called, who live in sin, or who hope to be saved by their own works. But chosen of God - From all eternity, to be the foundation of his church. And precious - In himself, in the sight of God, and in the eyes of all believers.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 4. To whom coming, as unto a living…
Verse 4. To whom coming, as unto a living stone] This is a reference to Isa 28:16: Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation. Jesus Christ is, in both the prophet and apostle, represented as the foundation on which the Christian Church is built, and on which it must continue to rest: and the stone or foundation is called here living, to intimate that he is the source of life to all his followers, and that it is in union with him that they live, and answer the end of their regeneration; as the stones of a building are of no use but as they occupy their proper places in a building, and rest on the foundation.
Disallowed indeed of men] That is, rejected by the Jews. This is a plain reference to the prophecy, Ps 118:22: The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.
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Chosen of God] To be the Saviour of the world, and the Founder of the Church, and the foundation on which it rests; As Christ is the choice of the Father, we need have no doubt of the efficacy and sufficiency of all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of a lost world. God can never be mistaken in his choice; therefore he that chooses Christ for his portion shall never be confounded.
Precious] εντιμον. Honourable. Howsoever despised and rejected by men, Jesus, as the sacrifice for a lost world, is infinitely honourable in the sight of God; and those who are united by faith to him partake of the same honour, being members of that great and glorious body of which he is the head, and stones in that superb building of which he is the foundation.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 1Pe 2:4. To whom coming — With desire and…
1Pe 2:4. To whom coming — With desire and by faith; as unto a living stone — Living from eternity; alive from the dead; and alive for evermore: and a firm foundation, communicating spiritual life to those that come to him, and are built upon him, making him the ground of their confidence and hope for time and for eternity. The apostle alludes to Isa 28:16, where the formation of a Christian church, for the spiritual worship of God, is foretold under the image of a temple, which God was to build on the Messiah as the foundation-stone thereof. See the note there. There is a wonderful beauty and energy in these expressions, which describe Christ as a spiritual foundation, solid, firm, durable; and believers as a spiritual building erecting thereon, in preference to that temple which the Jews accounted their highest glory; and St. Peter, speaking of him thus, shows he did not judge himself, but Christ, to be the rock on which the church was built; disallowed — Αποδεδοκιμασμενον, rejected indeed of, or by, men — First and primarily by the Jews and their rulers, as not answering their carnal and worldly expectations, nor suiting their way of building; that is, not to be made use of for the carrying on and promoting of their worldly projects and interests. By representing Christ as being rejected of men, the apostle intimated that he was the person spoken of Psa 118:22; The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner; a passage which our Lord himself, in his conversation with the chief priests and elders, referred to as a prophecy which they were about to fulfil by rejecting him; but whose exaltation, notwithstanding all they could do to prevent it, should assuredly take place. See on Mat 21:42. But the Jews, or, added to them, the Turks, heathen, and infidels, are not the only people that have rejected, and do reject Christ; but all Christians so called, who live in known sin on the one hand, or who expect to be saved by the merit of their own works on the other, reject him; as do also all hypocrites, formalists, lukewarm, indolent, worldly-minded professors, and all those backsliders who, having begun in the Spirit end in the flesh, and draw back unto perdition, instead of continuing to believe, love, and obey, to the saving of their souls, Heb 10:38-39. But chosen of God — From all eternity, to be the foundation of his church; and precious — Of unspeakable dignity and worth in himself, in the sight of God, and in the eyes of all true believers.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain To whom coming - To the Lord Jesus, for…
To whom coming - To the Lord Jesus, for so the word “Lord” is to be understood in 1Pe 2:3. Compare the notes at Act 1:24. The idea here is, that they had come to him for salvation, while the great mass of people rejected him. Others “disallowed” him, and turned away from him, but they had seen that he was the one chosen or appointed of God, and had come to him in order to be saved. Salvation is often represented as corning to Christ. See Mat 11:28.
As unto a living stone - The allusion in this passage is to Isa 28:16, “Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste.” See the notes at that passage. There may be also possibly an allusion to Psa 118:22, “The stone which the builders disallowed is become the headstone of the corner.” The reference is to Christ as the foundation on which the church is reared. He occupied the same place in regard to the church which a foundation-stone does to the edifice that is reared upon it. Compare Mat 7:24-25. See the Rom 9:33 note, and Eph 2:20-22 notes. The phrase “living stone” is however unusual, and is not found, I think, except in this place. There seems to be an incongruity in it, in attributing life to a stone, yet the meaning is not difficult to be understood. The purpose was not to speak of a temple, like that at Jerusalem, made up of gold and costly stones; but of a temple made up of living materials - of redeemed people - in which God now resides. In speaking of that, it was natural to refer to the foundation on which the whole rested, and to speak of that as corresponding to the whole edifice. It was all a living temple - a temple composed of living materials - from the foundation to the top. Compare the expression in Joh 4:10, “He would have given thee living water;” that is, water which would have imparted life to the soul. So Christ imparts life to the whole spiritual temple that is reared on him as a foundation.
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Disallowed indeed of men - Rejected by them, first by the Jews, in causing him to be put to death; and then by all people when he is offered to them as their Saviour. See the notes at Isa 53:3. Psa 118:22; “Which the builders refused.” Compare the Mat 21:42 note; Act 4:11 note.
But chosen of God - Selected by him as the suitable foundation on which to rear his church.
And precious - Valuable. The universe had nothing more valuable on which to rear the spiritual temple.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain The living stone, rejected, &c. Christ is the chief…
The living stone, rejected, &c. Christ is the chief foundation of his Church, the corner-stone of the building, whom the Jews, and other obstinate unbelievers, reject to their own condemnation and destruction. See Isaias xxviii. 16.; Matthew xxi. 42.; Acts iv. 11.; Romans ix. 32. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain coming--drawing near (same Greek as here, Heb 10:22) by…
coming--drawing near (same Greek as here, Heb 10:22) by faith continually; present tense: not having come once for all at conversion.
stone--Peter (that is, a stone, named so by Christ) desires that all similarly should be living stones BUILT ON CHRIST, THE TRUE FOUNDATION-STONE; compare his speech in Act 4:11. An undesigned coincidence and mark of genuineness. The Spirit foreseeing the Romanist perversion of Mat 16:18 (compare Mat 16:16, "Son of the LIVING God," which coincides with his language here, "the LIVING stone"), presciently makes Peter himself to refuse it. He herein confirms Paul's teaching. Omit the as unto of English Version. Christ is positively termed the "living stone"; living, as having life in Himself from the beginning, and as raised from the dead to live evermore (Rev 1:18) after His rejection by men, and so the source of life to us. Like no earthly rock, He lives and gives life. Compare Co1 10:4, and the type, Exo 17:6; Num 20:11.
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disallowed--rejected, reprobated; referred to also by Christ Himself: also by Paul; compare the kindred prophecies, Isa 8:14; Luk 2:34.
chosen of God--literally, "with (or 'in the presence and judgment of') God elect," or, "chosen out" (Pe1 2:6). Many are alienated from the Gospel, because it is not everywhere in favor, but is on the contrary rejected by most men. Peter answers that, though rejected by men, Christ is peculiarly the stone of salvation honored by God, first so designated by Jacob in his deathbed prophecy.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain 4. The same lesson is now enforced by representing…
4. The same lesson is now enforced by representing Christian growth under the figure of building.
Coming—Daily and continually, by faith.
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A living stone—The reference is to Isa_8:14-15; Isa_28:16; <19B822>Psa_118:22; combined by the apostle. Christ is not here compared to a living stone: he is himself the living stone, the foundation stone of the spiritual edifice, the church; nay, he is the corner stone, binding together its walls. See note on Eph_2:20. He is called living, having full life in himself, and being the fountain of all life to his followers.
Disallowed—Rejected by the Sanhedrin, the official representatives of the nation and builders of the Church, and cast aside as a vile blasphemer; but chosen out of all possible stones by God, as in his sight the most perfectly fitted to be the foundation of the Church.
Precious—Better, honoured, that is, with this high dignity.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 4. To whom coming, as unto a living stone]…
4. To whom coming, as unto a living stone] The whole imagery changes, like a dissolving view, and in the place of the growth of babes nourished with spiritual milk, we have that of a building in which each disciple of Christ is as a “living stone” spontaneously taking its right place in the building that rests on Christ as the chief corner-stone. The new imagery is connected in St Peter’s mind with its use in Psa_118:22 and Isa_28:16, but it is not without significance to note that we have the same sequence of the two metaphors in 1Co_3:1-2; 1Co_3:10-11. It may be noted also that the Greek is bolder in its use of the image than the English, and has no particle of comparison, to whom coming, even to a living stone. The term “living” is used in its fullest sense, presenting the paradox of connecting the noun with the adjective which seems most remote from it. The lower sense of the word in which Latin writers applied the term saxum vivum to rocks in their natural form as distinct from those that had been hewn and shaped, is hardly admissible here.
disallowed indeed of men] The verb is the same as the “rejected” of Mat_21:42. We cannot forget that the thoughts on which St Peter now enters had their starting-point in the citation of the Psalm by our Lord on that occasion. In the substitution of the wide term “men” for the “builders” of the Psalm, we may trace the feeling that it was not the rulers of the Jews only, nor even the Jews only as a nation, but mankind at large, by whom the “head of the corner” had been rejected. Here again we see in the Epistle the reproduction of the Apostle’s earlier teaching (Act_4:11).
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but chosen of God, and precious] More accurately, but with God (i.e. in God’s sight) chosen, precious (or, held in honour). The two words emphasize the contrast between man’s rejection and God’s acceptance. Both are taken from the LXX. of Isa_28:16.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (4) To whom coming.—The word used is that which…
(4) To whom coming.—The word used is that which gives rise to the name of a “proselyte.” (Comp. Note on 1Pe_2:2.) It is also strangely used in something of the same sense in 1Ti_6:3. “Joining Him therefore as proselytes.” Not that St. Peter has any notion of a mere external accession. The Apostolic writers do not contemplate the possibility of a difference between the visible and invisible Church. From this point the regeneration-idea, which coloured the whole of the preceding portion of the Epistle, suddenly disappears. The thought is no longer that of a spiritual seed instead of a carnal seed, but of a spiritual Temple instead of the stone temple at Jerusalem.
A living stone.—The very structure and order of the sentence puts Jesus Christ first. Foundation first, building afterwards. It is a pity to insert “as unto” with our version; it takes off from the striking, attracting effect of the sudden metaphor. St. Peter is fond of explaining his metaphors—e.g., “inheritance . . . in heaven,” “tested genuineness . . . more precious than of gold,” “gird up . . . loins of your minds:” so here, “living stone.” It is more than doubtful whether St. Peter, in what follows, had before his mind the giving of his own surname. The word which he here uses is neither petros, nor petra, but lithos; and indeed the whole idea of the relative position of the Church to the petra and to the lithos is quite different. Neither petros nor petra could possibly be used of the squared wrought stone, but represent the native rocky unhewn substratum—part, or whole—which pre-exists before any building is begun, even before the “chief corner-stone” would be placed. (Comp. Mat_7:24.) Here, therefore, the idea is quite different: the substratum is not thought of at all; and Jesus Christ is a carefully selected and hewn stone (lithos), specially laid as the first act in the work of building. The only thing, therefore, which is, in fact, common to the two passages is the simple thought of the Christian Church being like a building. Our present verse gives us no direct help towards finding how St. Peter understood the famous name-passage. All we can say for certain is that he did not so interpret it as to suppose an official connection with his own person to be the one essential of the true Church, or else in again using the metaphor of building the Church (though in a different connection) he could hardly have omitted all mention of himself. He is, apparently, thinking only of the Messianic interpretation of Old Testament sayings as expounded by our Lord—the “unsophisticated milk of the word” of 1Pe_2:2.
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Disallowed indeed of men.—A direct reference to the passage (Psa_118:22), which is quoted below in 1Pe_2:7. It here says “men,” rather than “builders,” in order to contrast them more forcibly with God. The word “disallowed,” or “rejected,” implies a form of trial or probation which comes to an unsatisfactory conclusion. The human builders examine the stone, inspect all its qualifications, and find it unsuited to the edifice which they have in hand, and refuse it not only the place of honour, but any place at all, in their architecture. St. Peter wishes to bring out strongly the absolute opposition between God and the Jews.
But chosen of God, and precious.—Literally, but with God elect, honoured. This is a direct allusion to the passage, Isa_28:16, which is quoted in 1Pe_2:6. While the human builders saw the qualities of the stone, and rejected it because of its not fitting in with their ideal, on the other hand, “with God,” i.e., in God’s counsel and plan, it was “elect,” i.e., choice had been laid upon it, it had been selected for God’s building purposes; and not only “elect” (for this might be equally said of all the “living stones;” see 1Pe_1:2, where the word has precisely the same meaning), but also “honoured,” which is further explained to mean, singled out for the place of honour, i.e., for that of corner-stone. The designation of this stone as “elect,” brings out again what we have had in 1Pe_1:11; 1Pe_1:20, viz., the eternal predestination of Jesus to the Messiahship.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain To whom coming as unto a living stone. Omit…
To whom coming as unto a living stone. Omit the words, "as unto," which are not in the Greek, and weaken the sense. The participle is present; the Christian must be ever coming to Christ, riot only once for all, but always, every day. The "living Stone" is Christ; the "Lord" of Psa_34:8 is Jehovah. St. Peter passes from the figure of milk to that of a chief cornerstone. So St. Paul, in 1Co 3., after saying that he had fed his Corinthian converts "with milk, and not with meat," passes first to the figure of laborers on the land, and then to that of builders upon the one foundation "which is Jesus Christ." This, like so many other coincidences, indicates St. Peter"s knowledge of St. Paul"s Epistles. St. Peter may have been thinking of his own name, the name which Christ gave him when Andrew brought him to the Lord; though the Greek word here is not petra or petrov, but liqov not the solid native rock on which the temple is built, nor a piece of rock, an unhewn stone, but a stone shaped and wrought, chosen for a chief corner-stone. But the apostle does not mention himself; he omits all reference to his own position in the spiritual building; he wishes to direct his readers only to Christ. He is plainly referring to the Lord"s own words in Mat_21:42, where Christ applies to himself the language of Psalm 118, He described himself as a Stone; St. Peter adds the epithet living" (liqon zwnta). The figure of a stone is inadequate, all figures are inadequate, to represent heavenly mysteries. This stone is not, like the stones of earth, an inert mass; it is living, full of life; nay, it gives life, as well as strength and coherence, to the stones which are built upon it: for the Lord hath life in himself he is risen from the dead, and is alive for evermore. Disallowed indeed of men. St. Peter slightly varies the quotation, and attributes to men in general the rejection ascribed in the psalm and in the Gospel to the builders." He was despised and rejected of men." In his speech before the Sanhedrin, (Act_4:11) he had directly applied the prophecy to the chief priests. But chosen of God, and precious; rather, as the Revised Version, with God elect, precious, or perhaps better, honored; a reference to Isa_28:16.He was rejected of the builders, but chosen of God; despised of men, but with God held in honor. The adjective is not the same as that rendered "precious" inmov 1Pe_1:19: ti there marks the preciousness of the blood of Christ in itself; e]ntimov here, the honor with which God "hath highly exalted him.
Vers. 4, 5 (to "built up").
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Living stones.
We have here incidentally a plain proof that to Peter, Jesus Christ was Divine. He has just been quoting Old Testament words which speak of "the Lord" as "gracious," and he goes on, "to whom coming, as unto a living Stone." He therefore regards Christ as standing in the place of the Jehovah of the old covenant, and has neither scruple in asserting that he is the "gracious Lord" of the psalm, nor thought that he need pause to explain or vindicate the assumption. Obviously such a tone indicates that the truth of our Lord"s Divinity was familiar to the recipients of the letter. We have here, in broad, general outline, the great office which Christ sustains; the highest gift which he bestows; and the condition on which we receive it from him.
I CHRIST"S GREAT OFFICE THE FOUNDATION-STONE FOR ALL MEN"S LIVES AND HOPES.
In this metaphor many 01d Testament references unite. The Shepherd, the Stone of Israel had been celebrated in ancient poetry. Isaiah had spoken of the tried Foundation laid by God"s own hard in Zion, which yet should be a Stone of stumbling to those who refused to build on it. A psalmist of a later period had sung amidst the ruined walls of Jerusalem, and the effort to rear again the temple, of the Stone rejected by the builders becoming the Head of the corner. A prophet of the same epoch had seen in vision the head-stone of the completed and transformed theocracy brought forth with triumphant acclaim. Daniel had prophesied of a Stone cut out without hands, which should crash among the kingdoms of the earth like a boulder hurled by an avalanche among peasants" cottages and gardens. And all these streams of prediction had been gathered into one, in the words which Peter so well remembered, with which, in those last days of hand-to-hand conflict, his Master had silenced his antagonists, and claimed to be at once the tried Foundation, and the ponderous Rock which, when it was set in motion, would grind opposition and opposers to powder. The echoes of these mighty words stand here, as they have been interpreted to the apostle by all that has passed since he first heard them. He understands now better than he did, even when he fronted the Sanhedrin with the bold proclamation, "This is the Stone which is set at naught of you builders." He has learned that his Lord is not merely meant to be the Foundation on which Israel may build, but that on which "strangers scattered abroad may be gathered into one." In all aspects and relations Jesus Christ is the Foundation-stone. The whole universe rests on him. He is "the Firstborn of every creature," the Agent of creation, the Mediator through whom all things came to be, and based upon whom the mighty whole of the material creation continues to exist. He is the Foundation of humanity, the Root from whom it springs, the Head in which it is gathered into one. He is the Foundation on which the individual soul must build all hope, joy, and goodness. He is the Foundation of the highest and purest form of social life, in which ultimately all others shall merge, and men be one in him. He is the Basis of all true thoughts of God, man, immortality, and duty. He is the Motive and Inspiration of the purest life. His Person, work, and teaching underlie all being, all peace, and all nobleness. He is the "living Stone," inasmuch as in him is essential life, and he ever lives to be the Source of life to all who build on him.
II CHRIST"S GREAT GIFT, THAT OF ASSIMILATION TO HIMSELF.
Coming to him, we become living stones. One can scarcely avoid seeing here some allusion to the apostle"s own name, as if he would share whatever honor there was with all his brethren, and disown any special prerogative. art Peter" was, indeed, said to me; but you are all living stones. "On this rock" was, indeed, said to me; but Christ is the only Foundation." Peter"s own understanding of these much-controverted words is no bad guide to their meaning. The image here but puts under one aspect the wide general principle that transformation into Christ"s likeness is the great end of his work on us. Is he a Son? Through him we become sons. Is he "the Light of the world"? Illumined by him, we too become lights. Is he anointed with the Spirit? Through him we too receive that unction which invests us with his threefold office of prophet, priest, and king. We are one with him, and participate in his relation to God; we are one with him, and receive of his fullness, are clothed with his righteousness, and growingly conformed to his image. We are one with him, and shall be one in destiny. "As he is, so are we in this world." "We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is." And the deep truth which underlies all these representations is the actual communication of the life of Christ to us. That life rises up from the foundation through all the courses of the building. This truth is more obviously suggested by the kindred metaphors of the vine and the branches, and the head and members; but it is clearly intended here also, and is conveyed, though with some incongruity, by the expression, "living stones." The life which is in us is Christ"s life. Therefore it unfolds itself in us in a form like his, and the vital contact with the living Stone makes us, too, living stones.
III THE CONDITION OF ASSIMILATION.
It is expressed in grand simplicity by that one pregnant phrase, "to whom coming." The original word implies, by the force of a compound, a very close approach. We must be so near him as to touch him, if his transforming power is to flow into our hearts. A hair"s breadth of separation is enough to stop the passage of the electric current. The thinnest film of distance between the soul and Christ is thick enough to be an impenetrable barrier. There must be a real living contact if his life is to pour into my veins. And if we ask how this close approach is to be effected, our Lord"s own words are the simplest answer, "He that cometh unto me shall never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst." We come in the act of faith. To trust him is to draw near to him. Faith is the approach of the soul to Christ, and we touch when, with the reliance of our whole nature, we grasp his cross, and him who died on it, as our only Foundation. But that act of faith must be continuous, if we are to draw life from him in an unbroken stream. The form of expression in the Greek shows that the "coming" is not an act done once for all, but one constantly repeated. The grace drawn from Christ in a moment of active faith cannot be stored up for use in a time when faith has fallen asleep. As soon as we cease to draw near to him, the flow stops.
There must be a present faith for a present blessing. Let us, then, rely on no past acts of devout emotion, but hourly renew our conscious faith, and seek to nestle closer to his side, from whom all our life and all its hopes and joys, with all its goodness and power, proceed. So shall there rise up into us, from the living Root, the sap which shall produce in us flowers and abiding fruit. So shall there be one life in him and in us. A.M.
HOMILIES BY J.R. THOMSON Vers. 4-6.
The spiritual temple, priesthood, and sacrifices.
A Jew, writing to Jews, very naturally made use of language and of metaphors based upon the usages and practices of the Jewish religion. Peter knew well that the temple offices and observances, the building and its purposes, to which he here referred, had all their meaning in their relation to the Savior in whom he and his fellow-Christians believed, in their relation to the gospel which he preached.
I CHRISTIANS ARE THE MATERIAL OF THE TRUE AND SPIRITUAL TEMPLE.
1. They are built in and upon the divinely chosen Cornerstone Christ himself. Cephas, Peter, "the rock," thus witnesses to the Rock of Ages, whose perfect qualifications to occupy this position were well known to the apostle who enjoyed his intimacy and friendship. His nature, his character, his mediatorial work, all concurred to fit our Lord to be the Support, the uniting and central Force, of the spiritual edifice. None other could have constituted the living unity; none other could have served as the Cornerstone, and at the same time the Foundation-stone, of the new humanity.
2. They are individually living stones; in this differing from the fair and costly masonry employed in the temple at Jerusalem. An intimation this of the dignity of each Christian"s vocation, who has his own place to fill, his own work to do, in the spiritual sanctuary; and at the same time a summons to that life, that conscious and voluntary fulfillment of service, which distinguishes the living from the lifeless material.
3. They constitute in concert the "spiritual house," which is the glory of the "new dispensation;" the idea of which is in the mind of the Divine Architect, and which is gradually being brought to realization and perfection under his superintendence, and through the concurrence of those who can only very partially comprehend the bearing of their life upon the glorious whole which is in due time to be consummated. The whole edifice is based by faith upon Christ; the several stones are cemented by mutual love.
II CHRISTIANS ARE THE PRIESTHOOD OF THE TRUE AND SPIRITUAL TEMPLE.
1. This is asserted of the whole body of the faithful. There are indeed special ministries in the Church bishops, presbyters, deacons, etc.; but there is one general ministry to which all Christians are called, and that is the priesthood.
1. The character of this priesthood is stamped as "holy." From the Book of Leviticus and other parts of the Old Testament we learn what were the marks of the Hebrew priesthood their descent, their equipment, their
2. qualifications, their office. But the one all-pervading idea in these regulations was the inculcation of "holiness unto the Lord." Under the new covenant the holiness prescribed is holiness of spirit and of life; not merely purity of vesture, separateness of function, etc.
3. The office of this priesthood is specified: spiritual sacrifices are to be offered. What these are is not here specified, but other passages of New Testament Scripture leave us in no doubt upon this; the Christian sacrifices are comprehended under these two headings obedience and praise.
1. The acceptance of such service is assured through the intercession of the great High Priest, Jesus Christ. Thus the apostle, at the expense of combining metaphors scarcely consistent, sets forth more fully the dignity and the duty, the fellowship and the happiness, belonging to all those who are faithful and consecrated members of the living Church of Christ.
J.R.T.
Elect and precious.
Our Lord Jesus was both despised and rejected by men. But theirs was the judgment of the fallible and the conduct of the sinful. Very different was the esteem in which our Savior was held by the Divine Father, and by those whom the Father enlightened to discern as he himself discerned. In the view of the Eternal, who "judgeth righteously," Christ was and is "elect and precious.
I DECLARATIONS OF THIS ESTIMATION OF CHRIST.
1. Prophetical declarations, such as these: "The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit at my right hand;" "I have set my King upon my holy hill;" and, "Behold my Servant whom I uphold, mine Elect in whom my soul delighteth.
2. Evangelical. The Lord Jesus was conscious of the Father"s favor; he declared that "the Father loveth the Son," and desires "that all men should honor the Son." The forerunner received the witness concerning Jesus: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." The multitude were present when the voice came from heaven testifying from the Father: "I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
3. Apostolical. When the inspired and commissioned preachers of the gospel proclaimed Christ, they represented him as "approved of God," who had raised and exalted him, and had "set him at his own right hand." In the Epistles, as for example in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the approval and favor of the Father are mentioned with the view of inspiring a just conception of the dignity of the Divine Son.
II GROUNDS OF THIS ESTIMATION OF CHRIST.
1. His Divine Sonship.
2. His sympathy with the Father"s purposes of redemption.
3. His constant and perfect obedience to the Father"s will.
4. His devotion to the Father"s glory.
III PROOFS OF THIS ESTIMATION OF CHRIST.
These are in some instances intelligible to reason, but in other instances they are only to be apprehended by faith.
1. This accounts for the appointment of Jesus as the Founder and Head of the Church.
2. And for the supernatural indwelling of Christ by his Spirit in his Church.
3. And for the assurance that the kingdom of Christ, in contrast to all others, shall be universal and everlasting.
4. And also for the appointment of Christ as the one great Judge of all mankind.
IV PRACTICAL INFERENCES FROM THIS ESTIMATION OF CHRIST.
It is not a matter of doctrine only. All hearers of the gospel and all sincere and faithful Christians have reason to rejoice that their Savior Jesus is "elect and precious.
1. There is on this account hope for the future of humanity. If God the Father sets such honor upon Christ, there is encouragement to believe that Christ"s work shall not fail.
2. There is for each friend and follower of the Savior a sure prospect of individual salvation. God, who loves and honors the Shepherd, will not suffer the sheep of his flock, for whom he died, to suffer death and destruction. Their security, dignity, and happiness are assured. They are chosen in the Chosen; they are precious for the sake of the Precious.
3. Most obvious are the sin and the peril of those who despise and reject the Elect and Chosen One, the Honored of God himself. If Christ be what he is here declared to be, how clear and cogent is the statement of inspiration, "Neither is there salvation in any other! J.R.T.
Vers. 4-10.
Christian life crowned with wonderful honor.
This is the last paragraph of the doctrinal section of the Epistle. (Peter"s doctrinal teaching covers much less ground than that of Paul, and confines itself here to personal Christian life.) The key-words of the argument so far (see preceding homilies) have been "redemption," "holiness," "fear," "love," "growth," each of which comes in natural sequence. Now, what remains to be said may be gathered up in the word "honor." The central statement of this paragraph is in ver. 7, "Unto you therefore who believe is the preciousness." But "preciousness" does not harmonize with the tenor of the passage. And as the Greek word equally means "honor," and is often so rendered ("No man taketh this honor unto himself;" "Hath not the potter power to make one vessel unto honor?" "Hold such in reputation i.e. "honor because," etc.), we so read it here. The apostle contrasts their position in Christ, first with theirs who reject him, and then with their own former position out of him, both of these being positions of shame, the contrast to which is honor. Shame out of Christ, honor in Christ that is the idea: "Unto you who believe there is honor.
I CONSIDER THE HIGH HONOR OR THE PEOPLE OF GOD.
Not unnatural for this to be emphasized to the "sojourners of the dispersion," who were exposed to suffering and shame for the gospel. There are many illustrations in the Acts of the bitterness of the unbelieving Jews to their Christian brethren; from the Gentle world, moreover, the first mutterings of Nero"s persecution of the Church were beginning to be heard. The Epistle contains several references to a condition of reproach. (vers. 12, 15, 19-23 1Pe_3:9, 16 4:13-16) Peter, therefore, reminds them that, though scorned by men, they are crowned with great honor by God. And mark how he illustrates that. As a Jew, writing mainly to Jews, he fixes on what was most honored in Judaism the temple with its priesthood and sacrifices. Then he turns to their Scriptures, and shows that God"s Elect One, who should come, and who would be despised of the people, would be for a Foundation-stone of a spiritual temple, on and into which all who believe should be built; the honor of the Jewish temple was to pass over to the Christian Church. For instance:
1. The Church is God"s chosen dwelling-place. Of the temple it was said, "This is my rest forever. Here will I dwell, for I have desired it." The symbol of his presence was there. But of the Church founded on Jesus, he said, "Ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you;" "Where two or three are gathered together," etc. God"s dwelling! the place of his most glorious manifestation! Elsewhere we see him as Creator, Sovereign, Judge; here he is at home.
2. The Church is God"s peculiar possession. Over the portal of the temple the eye instinctively reads the unwritten inscription, "Holiness unto the Lord." "My Father"s house," said Jesus. But so the Church: "Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a people peculiarly his own." The Church is his as nothing else is his peculiar treasure; the object of his delight, thought, care, on which he lavishes himself so that it shows forth, as the text says, "the excellences of God.
3. The Church is God"s means of making himself known to the world. Like the temple, the depository of sacred truth and influence, which therefrom are to stream into the world"s darkness like the light of day. Ye Christians are "the light of the world." Think what a Church is in a city that to which the weary, the tempted, the dark, the sorrowful, come for healing; to which, through the weekly toil, tired hearts look with longing, and in which men with all their wants find God. Such a sanctuary is the Church of Christ, the world"s one temple, through which alone can flow from God the healing for its woes. The Church is the fulfillment of the ancient predictions of the temple that should rise on Zion in the latter days, to which all nations should flow, and from which all should be blessed. Well may Peter write to the Church, "Unto you who believe there is honor.
II THE MEANS BY WHICH THIS HONOR BECOMES THEIRS.
"Unto whom, coming as unto a living Stone, ye also as living stones are built up a spiritual house the Church a fabric of "living" souls.
1. By coming to Christ as a Foundation. Peter said, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Christ answered, "Upon this rock will I build my Church." Rome speaks of Peter as the foundation of the Church, but this same Peter speaks of Christ. The Church, thus, are all those who have come to Christ as God"s Foundation-stone. And what is that but to come
2. to Christ, to build on him all our hopes on Jesus, Sacrifice, Revealer of the Father, Intercessor, Lord; not on personal experiences, etc., but on him?
3. That is coming to Christ as the Foundation of a holy temple. For many build on him who do not build to this end. Just to rest on Christ as an insurance against penalty, or to satisfy conscience whilst still belonging to the world, is not to be of the Church; for that we must so build on him as to become part of that spiritual house in which God lives, and walks, and reveals himself, and works.
1. And this coming to Christ as a Foundation of a holy temple, of which all his people form a part. Not to be isolated stones, but to be firmly knit together with the whole. Only thus is the idea of the temple fulfilled. God requires "the building up of the body of Christ, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith... unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ from whom the whole body fitly framed and knit together through that which every joint supplieth, according to the working in due measure of each several part, maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.
III THE CONTRAST BETWEEN THIS HONOR AND THEIR FORMER SHAME.
The apostle heightens the honor of the Church by reminding them of their once different position, of theirs who still have no part in him. This gives a rare impulse to joy, gratitude, and service. "Unto you who believe there is honor, but for such as disbelieve, the Stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the chief of the corner not "head," as though topstone, but foundation-stone, and a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of offence; for they stumble at the Word, being disbelieving same word as ver. 7, whereunto also they were appointed" appointed not to disbelief, but to find him a Stone of stumbling andRock of offence if they refused to believe. Hurt, maiming, destruction, are the appointed consequences of rejecting Christ, as salvation is for those who believe on him. Brethren, build on Christ, Peter seems to say, "Remember what you were, what you have escaped, and what you are. C.N.
Vers. 4-8.
The soul-temple, and soul-service.
The critic may read these verses and simply complain that he finds here a confusion of metaphors that Christian souls are here described as builders and a building. But in truth these figures illustrate two sides of one great fact, namely, that the worth of life, whether it be life in its progress or in its result, depends upon its relationship to Christ.
I THE BUILDER A TYPE OF MAN.
Paul in detail uses the same figure as Peter, and doubtless Peter learned its use as he listened to his Lord"s parable of the mere hearer and doer. These verses remind us:
1. That every man is incessantly building. He is placing stone on stone, layer on layer, in the structure of his character.
2. That character (the thing he is building) has at once an outward aspect and an inward relation. In the first, i.e. his reputation, it is a monument; in the second, i.e. actual character, it is a habitation.
3. Man builds well or ill as he regards or disregards the Divine Architect. "Coming to," i.e. having close, constant contact with "a living Stone," i.e. Christ, who is a Foundation that is more than the stone on which all rests; he is the Foundation out of which life proceeds, and the Corner-stone by which that life is held together and manifested.
II THE TEMPLE A TYPE OF THE CHRISTIAN MAN.
He is a structure as well as a builder. And what a structure! All characters are structures some are markets, some but pigsties; the Christly are temples. He is a temple:
(1) on the right Foundation;
(2) with glory of completeness;
(3) destined to permanence;
(4) and this strength and beauty not according to man"s standard, but God"s.
III THE PRIESTHOOD IS ALSO A TYPE OF CHRISTIAN MEN.
Here is further change of figure; but the truth taught is the same. Is he builder? he must build according to God"s plan. Is he temple? he must be dedicated by God"s presence. Is he worshipper? he must be utterly consecrated to God"s service. All Christians are part of the temple; all Christians are part of the priesthood. For all we turn to Christ for Model, Motive, and Merit. U.R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain To whom coming, as unto a living stone.
1Pe_2:4-5
To whom coming, as unto a living stone.
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Coming-always coming
The Christian life is begun, continued, and perfected altogether in connection with the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes when you go a journey, you travel so far under the protection of a certain company, but then you have to change, and the rest of your journey may be performed under very different circumstances, upon quite another kind of line. Now we have not so far to go to heaven in the guardian care of Jesus Christ, and then at a certain point to change, so as to have somebody else to be our leader, or some other method of salvation. No, He is the author and He is the finisher of our faith. We have not to seek a fresh physician, to find a new friend or to discover a novel hope, but we are to look for everything to Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Ye are complete in Him.
I. Here is a complete description of the Christian life. It is a continuous coming to Jesus. Notice that the expression occurs in connection with two figures. There is one which precedes it in the second verse, namely, the figure of a little child fed upon milk. Children come to their parents, and they frequently come rather longer than their parents like; it is the general habit of children to come to their parents for what they need. Just what your children began to do from the first moment you fixed your eyes on them, and what they have continued to do ever since, that is just what you are to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. You are to be always coming to Him-coming to Him for spiritual food, for spiritual garments, for washing, guiding, help, and health: coming, in fact, for everything. You will be wise if, the older you grow, the more you come, and He will be all the better pleased with you. If you will look again at your Bibles, you will get a second illustration from the fourth verse, To whom coming as unto a living stone, etc. Here we have the figure of a building. A building comprises first a foundation, and then the stones which are brought to the foundation and are built upon it. This furnishes a very beautiful picture of Christian life.
II. Now to answer the question, what is the rest way of coming to Christ at first?
1. The very best way to come to Christ is to come with all your needs about you. If you could get rid of half your needs apart from Christ, you would not come to Jesus half so well, for your need furnishes you with motives for coming, and gives you pleas to urge. Suppose a physician should come into a town with motives of pure benevolence to exercise the healing art. What he wants is not to make money, but to bless the townsmen. He has a love to his fellow men, and he wants to cure them, and therefore he gives notice that the poorest will be welcome, and the most diseased will be best received. Is there a deeply sin-sick soul anywhere? Is there man or woman who is bad altogether? Come along, you are just in a right condition to come to Jesus Christ. Come just as you are, that is the best style of coming.
2. If you want to know how to come aright the first time, I should answer, Come to find everything you want in Christ. I heard of a shop some time ago in a country town where they sold everything, and the man said that he did not believe that there was anything a human being wanted but what he could rig him out from top to toe. Well, I do not know whether that promise would have been carried out to the letter if it had been tried, but I know it is so with Jesus Christ; He can supply you with all you need, for Christ is all.
3. The best way to come to Christ is to come meaning to get everything, and to obtain all the plenitude of grace which He has laid up in store and promised freely to give.
III. What is the best way to come afterwards? The answer is-Come just as you used to come. The text does not say that you have come to Christ, though that is true, but that you are coming; and you are to be always coming. The way to continue coming is to come just in the same way as you came at first. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christ a living stone
I. Christ the sure foundation. Without Christ the Bible is meaningless, the world hopeless, heaven charmless. You might as well have a summer without a gleam of light, without the smell of flowers, or the song of a bird, as have a life without Jesus Christ. You might as well have a year without a summer, nothing but barrenness and death, as to have a life without Jesus Christ. You might as well have a night without a morning, as to live in this world, and die, and be buried without Jesus Christ. You might as well speak of the astronomy of the world and leave out the sun, as speak of history, philosophy, and creation, and leave out Jesus Christ. In Christ, and in Him alone, the real and the ideal meet. Christ was the perfect, the symmetrical Man, the true centre of redeemed humanity.
II. Christ rejected by many. He reveals character; He makes men declare themselves; He is the touch stone that draws worth and develops worthlessness. Come near to Christ, and if you have the elements of nobility you will be drawn toward Him; if you are worth less you will hate Him.
III. A startling contrast-Gods judgment of Christ as compared with that of men: Chosen of God, and precious. God knew Him, and He knew God as it is impossible for men to know Him; and this is the judgment which God here gives.
IV. In order to receive the blessing of Christs life, we must come to him. Gods promise includes Gods condition. (R. S. MacArthur.)
The living stone
I. The church or spiritual temple in its foundation.
1. Jesus Christ is here set forth as the foundation of the Christian Church.
2. The apostle here seems to violate the rules of rhetoric and elegant composition by attributing life to a stone. Gods thoughts were so infinite that the laws of grammar stood in constant need of expansion to receive them.
3. Disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God. This Divine choice does not refer primarily, if at all, to Gods eternal election of His Son to be the foundation of the Church, but to His choice of Him in consequence of His holy life and atoning death. The disallowing by men and the choosing by God were simultaneous processes. God chose Him, not arbitrarily, but on account of fitness after trying Him.
II. The Church or spiritual temple in its superstructure.
1. What then is the first step you should take to be built into the walls of this spiritual edifice? This-you must come to Jesus Christ. To whom coming; or, as the words might be rendered, To whom coming close up, to whom coming very near-so near as to be in personal contact with Him, nothing whatever intervening. You must remove all the earth and brush away every grain of sand, and build your house on the clean face of the rock, with nothing whatsoever between.
2. To whom coming close up, as unto a living stone, then it follows that ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house. The word for stones here suggests-I do not say it positively means, but it suggests stones dressed, smoothed, and polished, fitted to their place in the walls of the spiritual edifice-the root of the English word lithograph. Young people, and old, you will not do to be built into the walls of this temple in the rough, as you come from the quarry of the world. The Holy Spirit alone can prepare you for this.
III. The Church or spiritual temple in its service.
1. A priesthood. So there is a priesthood in the Christian Church. The whole body of believers forms the Christian priesthood.
2. An holy priesthood. A learned priesthood? No. An educated priesthood? No. No; an holy priesthood.
3. To offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. Spiritual sacrifices: what are these? Singing? Yes. Praying? Yes. Preaching? I am glad to believe it. Under the law material sacrifices were required-oxen, sheep, doves; but under the gospel only those sacrifices which proceed from a regenerate heart, and which testify to the gratitude and devotion of an emancipated spirit. God condescends to accept the offering for the sake of the love which inspires it. What else is necessary? That we present all by, or, as in the Welsh, through Jesus Christ. Our sacrifices must ascend to the throne through Him; and as they go through Him they are beautifully filtered and refined. (J. C. Jones D. D.)
Disallowed indeed of men.-
Christ disallowed
Disallowed lie was, indeed, of men: they called Him the carpenters Son, a Samaritan, winebibber, deceiver; they would have no other king but Caesar; with them Barabbas was meeter to live than He. What was the cause? They looked for one that should come as an earthly prince, to deliver them out of the hands of the Romans; but His kingdom was not of this world. They looked also for one that should have upheld their customs, laws, and traditions; but the date of them was out. Again, how came they to this height of disallowing Him? At the first of ignorance and blindness, but after of malice; so men grow (when they desire not to amend and see the truth) from one degree of wickedness to another. (John Rogers.)
Ye also, as lively stones, are built up.-
Living stones
Religious art finds its culmination in the temple of the ancients and the cathedral of the moderns. Higher than this it cannot reach. That the temple made a profound impression upon the minds of the apostles, that its association interpenetrated their religious life and coloured their teaching, we have unmistakable evidence. In his Epistle to the Ephesians Paul seizes hold of the idea to illustrate the stability, the growth, and the grandeur of the Church. It is precisely the same idea which Peter had in his mind. The idea is a grand one, and it has had a fascination for more than one of the great men of the Church. To mention only one instance, it has given to us the immortal work of John Howe, The Living Temple. Let us look at it. Rising slowly in the midst of the world, noiselessly and unobserved by the majority of men, are the fair proportions of a temple in comparison with which the grandest conceptions of man are but blurred and broken lines of beauty. Century after century has contributed its quota to the pile, and during the unborn ages it will continue to increase in symmetry and perfection, until with the last man the edifice will be complete. The text reminds us that believers are the living stones of this living temple. Let us pay a visit to the temple, and look upon the stones that are being built into it.
I. As soon as we approach our attention is arrested by some huge, unshapely blocks of stone, sharp angled, and disfigured here and there with mud. We glance hastily up at the superb building before us, re-examine the stones, and then in some wonder ask our guide, What possible use can these be put to? Touching the stone tenderly with his fingers, the master builder replies that there is no better material built up in the whole fabric than this. Despite their roughness and shapelessness, these stones, he says, possess a nature which yields readily to the tools and skill of the workmen. Do we understand the teaching? Have we not in our Church fellowship met with men and women freshly hewn from the worlds quarry, with such angularities of character, with such imperfect knowledge, with such lack of grace, that we have begun to question if such rough material could be used for anything but stumbling blocks in the cause of Christ? It may have been, even, that we have treated them with indifference, if not with contempt, and denied them the assurance of a brothers sympathy. Forgetting the hole of the pit from whence we have been digged, we have despised these little ones for whom Christ died. Let us be consistent with ourselves. We profess to believe in spiritual capacities and capabilities, and we cry each day out of the depths of our weakness and ignorance, Lord, help us. In what lies the difference between us and them? Are not their souls endowed with the satire faculties, the same capabilities, spiritually, as ours? But if we have seen anything of the operation of Divine grace upon the heart, we surely have seen enough to lead us to the belief that there is no limit to its power, that it can fashion the roughest into symmetry and grace. The tinker of Elstow is transformed into the immortal dreamer. Ah, surely bitter must be our humiliation if by our spiritual pride we mar the beauty and usefulness of our Christian life, and see those whom we have despised outstripping us in service, and bearing more vividly upon them the imprint of Divine favour. Proceeding in our examination of the stones, we have one pointed out to us as being of great importance.
II. Examining it we find that while it bears evident marks of the workmens tools, it is only a large plain block of stone, with no pretension to ornament whatever. We acknowledge at once its solidity, but have to ask an explanation of its use. We are led to a part of the building where the first stones are being laid in the freshly excavated earth, and there we are told that these plain blocks of stone are used for the wall foundations. What! we exclaim, are they to be hidden out of sight, and their worth never to be appreciated? True, replies our guide, they are hidden, and the thoughtless dream not of them; but the architect knows their value. They serve a grand purpose; upon them depends the strength, aye, and the beauty of the building, too. Unspeakable comfort this to many a lonely, toiling Christian. Look at that mother, the object of her childrens lavish affection-their most trusted adviser in times of difficulty and doubt. But she is unknown to the world and fame. Men do not know that the strength and nobility of character which they have been accustomed to admire in her son, has a foundation in her life and heart. Let us take courage, therefore, and labour on in the dark a little while longer. We cannot pass by these pillars without stopping a minute or two to admire their strength and various beauty.
III. In these pillars we see grace, strength, and utility combined. To be a pillar in the Temple of God is the highest honour to which we can reach. Do we covet their position, their fame, or their worth? Then we must drink of the cup they have drank of, and be baptized with the baptism they were baptized with. That the Church has had such pillars, and will continue to have them, is her strength and hope. Ah! more ornamental than useful, we exclaim, as we are called to look at some stones covered with filigree work, or highly finished carving. A judgment somewhat hasty and thoughtless, replies the architect. See, this stone you have despised because of its ornament is fashioned for a keystone, and its utility will be enhanced by its beauty. This other, with all its marvellous delicacy of carving, has a sound core, and is fashioned for the capital of one of these pillars. It will add grace to the pillar, and will sustain part of its load. Hasty and thoughtless judgments are, alas! too frequent among professing Christians. By some zealous workers the men and women of culture are despised as being necessarily more ornamental than useful. They are not seen to be enthusiastic in the service of the Master, and forthwith, without a moments calm thought, they are spoken of rather as hindrances than helps in the cause of righteousness. Have we been tempted to think so of anyone? Let us see to it that we have not been doing great injustice to a keystone or a capital in Gods Temple-living stones, perchance, not only more beautiful than we, but vastly more useful also. Some of the most zealous and humble Christian workers are to be found among the men and women of culture today. And not only is it so, but they do a work that the less cultured cannot do. Like the carved capital or keystone, they can catch the eye of the careless or sceptical men of culture and compel them, by the force of their intrinsic worth, to investigate the claims of religion. How beautiful is the polish on this stone! How it reveals the beauty of the granite! How it flashes back the sunlight! Such is our exclamation over a stone which our guide regards with a look of mingled tenderness and delight. Very beautiful, he replies, but at what cost! and then he explains to us the hard pressure, the constant friction, and the other processes to which it had been subjected before it took on this lustrous beauty. Just so. We have a friend in whose Christian life there is a sparkle, a heavenly beauty, as exceptional as it is delightful. Would we know the secret? Then let us look into his past life. Sorrow came to his heart suddenly, overwhelmingly. Made perfect through suffering! How difficult the lesson! Instinctively we shrink from pain. Truly, pain is a mystery. Hold, hold! cries the stone to the polisher when the cold water and rough sand are thrown upon it, and the heavy polishing plane passes over it for the first time. Hold, hold! Why this rough treatment? What wrong have I done? Have I not already suffered at the hands of workmen? Peace, foolish stone, cries the polisher. Dost thou not know that there are yet roughnesses in thy nature to be rubbed down, and wilt thou grudge the pain? Dost thou not know that I will bring to light thy hidden beauty by this process? Thou wilt become a mirror to catch the faintest smile of heaven if thou wilt but suffer it to be so now.
IV. What mean these quantities of small stones lying here and there? Is it possible that they can be used in the great building? To which question our instructor replies, The temple could not be built without them. There is not only a place for them, but there are places which nothing but they can fill. Unseen by the eye, these small stones supplement the deficiencies of the larger ones, and there would be many an interstice through which the wind and rain would penetrate were it not for these insignificant-looking stones. Little children living stones in Gods temple! Sweet thought! What parent does not clutch at it with unspeakable joy? The fact may well fire the zeal and intensify the love of every parent and teacher of the young in pouring out their souls labouring for their weal. We would do well to ponder-
1. In the first place, it is quite possible for the living stones to be deceived with regard to their position and importance.
2. In the second place, a true view of our own hearts, as well as of the importance of Christian service, will lead us to cast ourselves at the Masters feet, saying, Choose my place for me. (W. Skinner.)
The Church the temple of God
I. It is organised after a divine plan.
1. This is the leading plan in the worlds history.
2. This plan, though unknown by men, is being worked out by them.
II. It is compacted together into a necessary unity. Supreme love for a common Father, unbounded confidence in a common Christ, life consecration to a common cause, are the indissoluble bonds of union. This union is-
1. Independent of local distances.
2. Independent of external circumstances.
3. Independent of ecclesiastical systems.
4. Independent of mental idiosyncrasies.
III. It is the special residence of the eternal spirit. There is more of God to be seen in the true Church than anywhere else under heaven. In nature you see His handicraft, in saints you see His soul. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Living stones
The only idea which I think can be legitimately connected with purity of matter, is this of vital and energetic connection among its particles; and the idea of foulness is essentially connected with dissolution and death. Thus the purity of the rock contrasted with the foulness of dust or mould is expressed by the epithet living, very singularly given the rock in almost all languages; singularly I say, because life is almost the last attribute one would ascribe to stone but for this visible energy and connection of its particles; and so of water as opposed to stagnancy. (J. Ruskin.)
Cohesion in Gods spiritual house
The apostle assumes, as a matter of course, that if one is in Christ, one is also in His Church. Detached stones are mere rubble. There is contact, cohesion, mutual attachment and support in these living stones of Gods spiritual house. Based on the living stone, the bedrock of the Church, they grow together into Gods glorious human temple. (G. G. Findlay.)
Mind the temple is not built without you
Travellers sometimes find in lonely quarries, long abandoned, or once worked by a vanished race, great blocks squared and dressed, that seem to have been meant for palace or shrine. But there they lie, neglected and forgotten, and the building for which they were hewn has been reared without them. Beware, lest Gods grand temple should be built up without you, and you be left to desolation and decay. (A. Maclaren.)
Living stones
Tyndall, speaking of the frozen crystals in snowflakes, says: Surely such an exhibition of power, such an apparent demonstration of a resident intelligence in what we are accustomed to call brute matter, would appear perfectly miraculous. If the Houses of Parliament were built up of forces resident in their own bricks, it would be nothing intrinsically more wonderful. (Hours of Exercise on the Alps.)
An holy priesthood.-
The priesthood of the laity
Christians are a royal priesthood; they are united together in the Church to be a holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ: the joy of priesthood should be the tasted joy of every member of the Church of Christ. True it is that in its fullest sense there is but one priest-Jesus, the anointed of the Father. No other priest can be, since He ever lives and ministers in His priesthood. But He ministers as priest under two conditions-in heaven in His glorified human body: on earth in His mystical body-the Church. When He was on the earth in the days of His flesh, He ministered to men through His natural body. In it He interceded for them with God, and instituted and offered the holy Eucharistic sacrifice. By it He spake to them Gods words, and did among them Gods works. But when His body was taken up into heaven, it could not be the instrument of His priesthood on earth. So He created His mystical body-the Church. Thus the Church, as the mystical body of Christ, is the extension of His natural body, and so is the fulness of Christ, As, then before His ascension, Christ ministered on earth in His natural body, since His ascension He ministers on earth in His mystical body. Hence His Church is a sacerdotal society. It is a kingdom of priests, because its members are the ministers of Christs priest hood. Its priesthood is not one existing side by side with, nor is it supplemental to, the one priesthood of Christ. It is not the delegated representative of an absent Lord fulfilling priestly ministries on His behalf; it is the organism of a present Lord. It is the organism whereby Christ intercedes with God for men in prayer and Eucharist on earth, and by which He teaches men Gods faith, and ministers to them Gods grace. This sacerdotal vocation and character is not the exclusive possession of any one section of the mystical body of Christ-it is common to all Christian men. Each member of the mystical body of the Great High Priest is himself a priest unto God. But he is a priest called on to minister in the unity and in the order of that mystical body. Each member in it is placed in his position in its structure to fulfil the ministry proper to him as the organ of the whole body. The priestly character is common to all, but all are not called to the same measure of priestly ministries or gifts. The priesthood of the laity is recognised by the Church in confirmation. Christians are born to priesthood in the sacrament of regeneration as sons of the second Aaron, just as Aarons sons were born to the priesthood of Israel. But as in Israel of old those thus born were at a given age solemnly consecrated and commissioned to execute the priests office; so in the Church of Christ the regenerate are consecrated, commissioned, and dowered, for the lay priesthood in the sacrament of confirmation. This priesthood of the laity has, as priesthood always has, a two-fold aspect-Godward and manward. The Church, as a sacerdotal society, has primarily to minister to God-to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. The first duty of the lay priesthood is by cooperation with the consecrated ministers of the Church to offer to God continual worship in Christian sanctuaries. Closely allied with the ministry of worship is the ministry of intercession. He whose soul ascends to God and rests in God in adoration will share with God His love to men, and, sharing this love, he will breathe it out in intercession. Moreover, as Gods priest, the layman is called to minister to man for God in active service. He has his place in that great mediatorial system by which God wills to give to men the two great gifts of truth and grace. Each Christian Churchman is here in a position of grave responsibility. All wealth is a trust held by each for all. And, in addition to this, as the priest of God, the layman is called on to do what he can to bring his fellow men into the knowledge of the truth as he knows it, and with those gracious conditions of life in which he is privileged to live. He must be an evangelist-the bearer to others of the good tidings in the joy of which he is privileged to live. Let me conclude with two cautions bearing on this question of lay priesthood.
1. Avoid individualism in its exercise. Priesthood is an official status; it exists in the body of Christ, and can only be rightly exercised according to the will of God in the unity of that body. All its ministries must be performed decently and in order. God is not the author of confusion, but of peace, in all churches of the saints, and peace is, as St. Gregory of Nyssa teaches us, the harmony of ordered union.
2. The one motive of the layman in his priesthood must always be to reveal to men and to bring them to submit to the One Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, as He ministers in and through His Church. No one can rise to the realisation of his lay priesthood except he be one who, in the unity of the Church, tastes and sees the goodness of the Lord. (Canon Body.)
The Church the priesthood of God
I. The persons of whom this priesthood is composed. The apostle is here writing, not to Church officers, but to individual Christians scattered throughout the world. Why should they be represented as a priesthood?
1. On account of their entire devotedness to Divine service.
2. On account of their free access to the Divine presence (Eph_2:18; Heb_10:19-22).
II. The character by which this priesthood is distinguished. Holy. Moral holiness is resemblance to Christ-the spirit of supreme love to the Father and self-sacrificing love for man.
III. The service to which this priesthood is consecrated.
1. The sacrifices are spiritual.
2. Mediatory. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The Christian priesthood
The priesthood of the law was holy, and its holiness was signified by many outward things, by anointings, and washings, and vestments; but in this spiritual priesthood of the gospel, holiness itself is instead of all these, as being the substance of all. The children of God are all anointed and purified, and clothed with holiness. There is here the service of this office, namely, to offer. All sacrifice is not taken away, but it is changed from the offering of those things formerly in use to spiritual sacrifices. Now these are every way preferable; they are easier to us, and yet more acceptable to God. How much more should we abound in spiritual sacrifice, who are eased of the other! But though the spiritual sacrificing is easier in its own nature, yet to the corrupt nature of man it is by far the harder. He would rather choose still all the toil and cost of the former way, if it were in his option. A holy course of life is called the sacrifice of righteousness (Psa_4:6; and Php_4:18; so also Heb_13:16), where the apostle shows what sacrifices succeed to those which, as he hath taught at large, are abolished. In a word, that sacrifice of ours which includes all these, and without which none of these can be rightly offered, is ourselves, our whole selves. Now that whereby we offer all spiritual sacrifices and even ourselves, is love. That is the holy fire that burns up all, sends up our prayers, and our hearts, and our whole selves a whole burnt offering to God-and, as the fire of the altar, it is originally from heaven, being kindled by Gods own love to us, and the graces of the Spirit received from Christ, but, above all with His own merits. The success of this service; acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. The children of God delight in offering sacrifices to Him; but if they could not know that they were well taken at their hands, this would discourage them much; therefore this is added. He accepts themselves and their ways when offered in sincerity, though never so mean; though they sometimes have no more than a sigh or a groan, it is most properly a spiritual sacrifice. No one needs forbear sacrifice for poverty, for what God desires is the heart, and there is none so poor but hath a heart to give Him. But meanness is not all. There is a guiltiness on ourselves and on all we offer. Our prayers and services are polluted. But this hinders not, for our acceptance is not for ourselves, but for the sake of one who hath no guiltiness at all, acceptable by Jesus Christ. In Him our persons are clothed with righteousness. How ought our hearts to be knit to Him, by whom we are brought into favour with God and kept in favour with Him, in whom we obtain all the good we receive, and in whom all we offer is accepted! In Him are all our supplies of grace and our hopes of glory. (Abp. Leighton.)
The true priesthood, temple and sacrifice
I. First, all those who are coming to Christ, daily coming nearer and nearer to Him, are as living stones built up into a temple.
1. They are called a spiritual house in opposition to the old material house in which the emblem of the Divine presence shone forth in the midst of Israel, that temple in which the Jew delighted, counting it to be beautiful for situation and the joy of the whole earth. When we become holy, as we should be, we shall count all places and all hours to be the Lords, and we shall always dwell in His temple because God is everywhere.
2. We are a spiritual temple, but not the less real. The Lord has a people scattered abroad everywhere, whose lives are hid with Him in God, and these make up the real temple of God in which the Lord dwelleth. Men of every name and clime and age are quickened into life, made living stones, and then laid upon Christ, and these constitute the true temple, which God hath built and not man, for He dwelleth not in temples made with hands; that is to say, of mans building, but He dwelleth in a temple which He Himself hath builded for His habitation forever, saying, This is My rest forever; here will I dwell, for I have desired it.
3. This temple is spiritual, and therefore it is living. A material temple is dead, a spiritual temple must be alive; and so the text tells us, Ye also as living stones.
4. We are a spiritual house, and therefore spiritually built up. Peter says, Ye are built up-built up by spiritual means. The Spirit of God quarries out of the pit of nature the stones which are as yet dead, separating them from the mass to which they adhered; He gives them life, and then He fashions, squares, polishes them, and they, without sound of axe or hammer, are brought each one to its appointed place, and built up into Christ Jesus.
5. We are a spiritual house, and therefore the more fit for the indwelling of God who is a Spirit. It is in the Church that God reveals Himself. If you would know the Lords love and power and grace you must get among His people, hear their experiences, learn from them how God dealeth with them, and let them tell you, if ye have grace to understand them, the height, and depth, and length, and breadth of the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, for He manifesteth Himself to them as He doth not to the world. Hath He not said, I will dwell in them and walk in them?
II. In addition to being a temple, Gods people are said to be a priesthood. Observe that they are spoken of together, and not merely as individuals: they make up one indivisible priesthood: each one is a priest, but all standing together they are a priesthood, by virtue of their being one with Christ.
1. This stands in opposition to the nominal and worldly priesthood.
2. This priesthood is most real, although it be not of the outward and visible order; for Gods priests become priests after a true and notable fashion.
3. We are priests in the aspect of priesthood towards God. You are to speak with God on mans behalf, and bring down, each of you, according to the measure of your faith, the blessing upon the sons of men among whom you dwell.
4. And you are priests towards men also, for the priest was selected from among men to exercise necessary offices for mans good. The priests lips should keep knowledge, and if ye be as ye should be, ye hold fast the faith once delivered to the saints.
5. This is to be your function and ministry always and in every place. You are a holy priesthood; not alone on the Lords day when ye come into this house, but at all times.
III. Consider the sacrifices which we offer-spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
1. We offer spiritual sacrifices as opposed to the literal.
2. This sacrificing takes various forms. I beseech you, brethren, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice. You are to present yourselves, spirit, soul, and body, as a sacrifice unto God. You are also to do good and to communicate, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. To Him also you are to offer the sacrifice of praise continually, the fruit of your lips giving glory to God. To the Lord also you must present the incense of holy prayer; but all these are comprehended, I think, in the expression, I delight to do Thy will, O God. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The doctrine of sacrifice
The theory of sacrifice seems to be intuitively inherent in all religions. The sacrifice of the life and death of Christ is the one essential foundation of every acceptable offering which can be made to God. God never requires what we cannot offer. He never asks a sin or trespass offering from us. You and I could not offer that. But He asks what we can give, a sweet-savour offering, as a testimony of our gratitude and love. Not a sin offering. As far as Christs work was propitiatory, it stands absolutely alone: He offered one sacrifice for sin. But though no sufferings, no work, no worship, no service of ours can propitiate, God still requires from us offerings of another character. These are called spiritual sacrifices, which we are ordained to offer. There is no more attractive form in which a devout life can appear than that of a constant oblation to God, of all that we are, have, or do. Let the thought of sacrifice be inwoven into the texture of your life. Study to turn, not your prayers alone, but your whole daily course and conversation, into an offering. Surely the thought that God will accept it if offered in union with the merit of His Son, is enough to give stimulus to the sacrifice; to open purse, and hand, and heart. You can please Him if you give, strive, work in His name. To please God. What a privilege to lie open to us day by day, and hour by hour! What a condescension in our heavenly Father, when we consider the strictness of His justice, the impurity of our hearts, and our manifold falls, to admit of our pleasing Him, or to leave any room for our touching His complacency. We may have this dignity if we offer all in Christ. We need not go far to seek the materials of an acceptable offering; they lie all around us; in our common work; in the little calls of providence; in the trivial crosses we are challenged to take up; nay, in the very recreation of our lives. If work be done (no matter how humble) in the full view of Gods assignment of our several tasks and spheres of labour, and under the consciousness of His presence, it is a sacrifice fit to be laid upon His altar. If we study the very perversity of our enemies with a loving hope that we may find something of God and Christ about them yet, which may be the nascent germ of better things; if we try to make the best of men, and not the worst, treating them as Christ treated them, we may thus redeem an hour from being wasted, and sanctify it by turning it into a sacrifice to God. If you should obey an impulse to divert some trifle meant for self and luxury to Christs poor and charity, here, again, is a sacrifice, sweet smelling before God, which will buy the better luxury of His smile and love. And if you regard time as, next to Christ and the Holy Spirit, the most precious gift of God; if you gather up its fragments and put them into Gods basket by using them for holy things and thoughts-this, too, grows into a tribute which God will accept. It is the altar which sanctifieth the gift. Apart from Christ and Christs sacrifice, no offering of ours is redolent of the sweet savour, For our best gifts are flecked and flawed by duplicity and evil. (A. Mursell.)
Christians are priests
Christians, you are priests. Be like Christ in this,
1. Wherever you go carry a savour of Christ. Let men take knowledge of you, that you have been with Jesus; let it be plain that you come from within the veil, let the smell of your garments be as a field which the Lord hath blessed.
2. Carry a sound of Christ wherever you go. Not a stop, Christians, without the sound of the gospel bell! Even in smallest things, be spreading the glad sound, Edwards says, wherever a godly person enters, he is a greater blessing than if the greatest monarch were entering. So be it with you. (R. M. McCheyne.)
To offer up spiritual sacrifices.-
The Christians sacrifices
1. The offering up of our bodies and souls, and all that is in us to serve God; having neither wit, will, memory, nor anything else, but for the Lords use. It is meet we should offer this sacrifice, for it is His by right of creation, redemption, and continual preservation.
2. The sacrifice of a contrite and broken heart.
3. Prayer and praise.
4. Alms, mercy to all in hunger, thirst, sickness, prison, especially to the household of faith. (John Rogers.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain Chapter 6
Chapter 6
THE PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS
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1Pe_2:4-10
LEAVING the exhortation to individual duties, the Apostle turns now to describe the Christian society in relation to its Divine Founder, and tells both of the privileges possessed by believers, and of the services which they ought to render. He employs for illustration a figure very common in Holy Scripture, and compares the faithful to stones in the structure of some noble edifice, built upon a sure foundation. Such language on his lips must have had a deep significance. He was the rock-man; his name Peter was bestowed by Christ in recognition of his grand confession: and Jesus had consecrated the simile which the Apostle uses by His own words. "Upon this rock I will build My Church" {Mat_16:18} words which were daily finding a blessed fulfillment in the growth of these Asian Churches.
A rock is no unusual figure in the Old Testament to represent Gods faithfulness, and its use is specially frequent in Isaiah and the Psalms. "In the Lord Jehovah is an everlasting rock," {Isa_26:4} says the prophet; again he calls God "the rock of Israel"; {Isa_30:29} while the prayers of the Psalmist are full of the same thought concerning the Divine might and protection: "Be Thou my strong rock and my fortress" {Psa_31:2} "Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I"; {Psa_61:2} "O God, my rock and my Redeemer". {Psa_19:14}
But the language of the New Testament goes farther than that of the Old. Strength, protection, permanence-these were attributes of the rock of which Isaiah spake and David sang. The life-possessing and life-imparting virtue of the Spirit of Christ is a part of the glad tidings of the Gospel. Through Him were light and immortality brought to light. The rock which lives is found in Jesus Christ. In Him is life without measure, ready to be imparted to all who seek to be built up in Him.
"Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious." By purification of thought, and act, and word, that childlike frame has been sought after which fits them to draw near; and they come with full assurance. Jesus they know as the Crucified, as the Lord who came to His own, and they received Him not. Generations of preparation had not made Jewry ready for her Kings coming, had failed to impress the people with the signs of His advent; and so they disowned Him, and cried, "We have no king but Caesar." But the converts know Jesus also as Him who was raised from the dead and exalted to glory. This honor He hath "with God." No other than He could bring salvation. Therefore has he received a name that is above every name. And "with God" here signifies that heavenly exaltation and glory. The sense is as when Jesus testifies, "I speak what I have seen with My Father" {Joh_8:38} -that is, in heaven- or when He prays, "Glorify me, O Father, with Thine own self". {Joh_17:5} From this excellent glory He sends down His Spirit, and gives to His people a share of that life which has been made manifest in Him. Their part is but to come, to seek, and every one that seeketh is sure to find. "Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house." Not because they are living men does the Apostle speak of them as living stones. They may be full of the vigor of natural life, yet have no part in Christ. The life which joins men to Him comes by the new birth. And the union of believers with Christ makes itself patent by a daily progress. He is a living stone; they are to be made more and more like Him by a constant drawing near, a constant drinking in from His fullness of the life which is the light of men. In this light new graces grow within them; old sins are cast aside. By this preparation, this shaping of the living stones, the Spirit fits Christians for their place in the Spiritual building, unites them with one another and with Christ, fashions out of them a true communion of saints-saints, who, that they may advance in saintliness, have duties to perform both directly to God and for His sake to the world around. By diligence therein the upbuilding goes daily forward.
First, they are "to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." From the day when God revealed His will on Sinai, such has been the ideal set before His chosen servants. "Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation" {Exo_19:6} stands in the preface of the Divinely given law. And God changes not. Hence the praise of the Lambs finished work when He has purchased unto God men of every tribe, and tongue, and people, and nation is sung before the throne in the self-same strain: "Thou madest them to be unto God a kingdom and priests". {Rev_5:10} Under the early dispensation God was leading men up from material sacrifices to pay unto Him true spiritual worship. The Psalmist has learnt the lesson when he pleads, "Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in me" {Psa_4:6} and Hoseas sense of what was well-pleasing to God is made clear in his exhortation. "Take with you words and return unto the Lord; say unto Him, Take away all iniquity, and accept that which is good, so will we render as bullocks the offering of our lips". {Hos_14:3} The Apostle to the Romans is hardly more explicit than this when he urges, "present your bodies a living sacrifice," {Rom_12:1} or to the Hebrews, "Let us offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of lips which make confession to His name". {Heb_13:15}
But the Apostles could add to the exhortations of the prophets and psalmists a ground of blessed assurance, could promise how these living sacrifices, these offerings of praise, had gained a certainty of acceptance through Jesus Christ: "Through Him we have boldness and access in confidence through our faith in Him"; {Eph_3:12} and in another place, "Having Him as a great priest over the house of God," that spiritual house into which believers are builded, "let us draw near with a true heart, in fullness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water". {Heb_10:22} Thus do believers become priests unto God, in every place lifting up holy hands in prayer, prayer which is made acceptable through their great High-priest.
It was only from oral teaching that these Asian Christians knew of those lessons which we now can quote as the earliest messages to the Church of Christ. The Scripture was to them as yet the Scripture of the Old Testament, and to this St. Peter points them for the confirmation which it supplies. And his quotation is worthy of notice both for its manner and its matter: "Because it is contained in Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious; and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame." The passage is from Isaiah; {Isa_28:16} but a comparison with that verse shows us that the Apostle has not quoted all the words of the prophet, and that what he has given corresponds much more closely with the Greek of the Septuagint than with the Hebrew. The latter concludes, "He that believeth shall not make haste," and contains some words not represented in the version of the Seventy. The variations which St. Peter accepts are such as to assure us that for him (and the same is true for the rest of the Apostles) the purport, the spiritual lessons, of the word were all which he counted essential. Neither Christ Himself nor His Apostles adhere in quotation to precise verbal exactness. They felt that there lay behind the older record so many deep meanings for which the fathers of old were not prepared, but which Gospel light made clear. To somewhat of this fuller sense the translators of the Septuagint seem to have been guided. They lived nearer to the rising of the daystar. Through their labors God was in part preparing the world for the message of Christ. The words which Isaiah was guided to use express the confidence of a believer who was looking onward to Gods promise as in the future: "He shall not make haste." He knows that the purpose of God will be brought to pass; that, as the prophet elsewhere says, "The Lord will hasten it in its time." {Isa_60:22} Man is not to step in, Jacob-like, to anticipate the Divine working.
But "shall not be ashamed" was a form of the promise more suited to the days of St. Peter and these infant Churches. For the name of Christ was in many ways made a reproach; and only men of faith, like Moses and the heroes celebrated with him in Heb 11, could count that reproach greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Other and weaker hearts needed encouragement, needed to be pointed to the privileges and glories which are the inheritance of the followers of Jesus. And in this spirit he applies the prophetic words, "For you therefore which believe is the preciousness." Faith makes real all the offers of the Gospel. It opens heaven, as to the vision of St. Stephen, so that while they are still here believers behold the glory of God to which Christ has been exalted, are assured of the victory which has been won for them, and that in His strength they may conquer also. Thus they receive continually the earnest of those precious and exceeding great promises {2Pe_1:4} whereby they become partakers of the Divine nature.
But all men have not faith. The Bible tells us this on every page. God knows what is in man, and in His revelation He has set forth not only invitations and blessings, but warnings and penalties. Life and good, death and evil-these have been continually proclaimed as linked together by Gods law, but ever with the exhortation, "Choose life." Of such warning messages St. Peter gives examples from prophecy and psalm: "But for such as disbelieve, the stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner," {Psa_118:22} "and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense"; {Isa_8:14} "for they stumble at the word, being disobedient." Here the Apostle touches the root of the evil. The test of faith is obedience. It was so in Eden; it must be ever so. But now, as then, the tempter comes with his insidious questionings, "Hath God said?" and sowing doubts, he goes his way, leaving them to work; and work they do. Now it is the truth, now the wisdom, of the command, that men stumble at. But in each case they disobey. Those leave it unobserved; these despise and set it at naught. And the penalty is sure. For mark the twofold aspect of Gods dealing which is set forth in the passages chosen by St. Peter to enforce his lesson. Spite of mans disobedience, Gods purpose is not thwarted. The stone which He laid in Zion has been made the head of the corner. Though rejected by some builders it has lost none of its preciousness, none of its strength. Those who draw near unto it find life thereby; are made fit for their places in the Divine building, in the kingdom of the Lords house which He will most surely establish as the latter days draw on. But they who disobey are overthrown. The despised stone, which is the sure word of God, rises up in mens self-chosen path, and makes them fall, and at the last, if they persist in despising it, will appear for their condemnation. "Whereunto also they were appointed." The Apostle has in mind the words of Isaiah, how the prophet, in that place from which he has just quoted, declares that many shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. This is the lot of the disobedient. These penalties dog that sin. It is the unvarying law of God. The Bible teaches this from first to last, by precepts as well as by examples. The disobedient must stumble. But the Bible does not teach that any were appointed unto disobedience. Such fatalist lessons are alien to Gods infinite love. The two ways are set before all men. God tries us thus because He has gifted us above the rest of creation, that we may render Him a willing service. But neither prophet nor Apostle teaches that to stumble is to be finally cast away. Both picture Gods mercy in as large terms as those in which St. Paul speaks of the Jews: "Did God cast off His people? God forbid…They, if they continue not in their unbelief, shall be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again". {Romans 11}
A hardening in part hath befallen Israel, and to the Church of Christ there is offered the blessedness which aforetime was to be the portion of the chosen people. But the offer is made on like terms of obedient service, and involves large duties. St. Peter marks the likeness of the two offers by choosing the words of the Old Testament to describe the Christian calling, with its privileges and its duties. Believers in Christ are a peculiar treasure unto God from among all people, a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation, even as was said to Israel {Exo_19:5-6} when they came out of Egypt and received the Law from Sinai. But among the dispersion, for whom he writes, there were those who had been heathens, as well as the converts from Judaism. That he may show them also to be embraced in the new covenant, and their calling contemplated under the old, the Apostle points to another of Gods promises, where Hosea {Hos_1:10-11; Hos_2:1-23} tells of the grace that was ready to be shed forth on them which in time past were no people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Thus all, Jew and Gentile, are to be made one holy fellowship, one people for Gods own possession.
And this kingdom of Gods priests has its duty to the world as well as unto God. Israel in time past was chosen to be Gods witness to the rest of mankind, so that when men saw that no nation had God so nigh unto them as Jehovah was whenever Israel called upon Him, that no nation had statutes and judgments so righteous as all the Law which had been given from Sinai, they might be constrained to say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people," and might themselves be won to the service of a God so present and so holy. And now each member of the Christian body, while offering himself a living sacrifice to God, while delighting to do His will, while treasuring His law, is to exercise himself in wider duties, that Gods glory may be displayed unto all men. One of the psalmists, whose words have been in part referred to Christ Himself, testifies how this priesthood for mankind should be fulfilled: "I have published righteousness in the great congregation; lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, Thou knowest. I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation; I have not concealed Thy loving-kindness and Thy truth from the great congregation." {Psa_40:9-10} These were the excellences which the Psalmist had found in Gods service, and his heart ran over with desire to impart the knowledge unto others. With juster reason shall Christs servants be prompted to a like evangel. They cannot hold their peace, specially while they consider how great blessings those lose who as yet own no allegiance to their Master.
"That ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light." This theme fills the rest of the letter. The Apostle teaches that in every condition this duty has its place and its opportunities. Subjects may fulfill it, as they yield obedience to their rulers, servants in the midst of service to their masters, wives and husbands in their family life, each individual in the society where his lot is cast, and specially those who preside over the Christian congregations. Wherever the goodness of Gods mercy has been tasted, there should be hearts full of thanksgiving, voices tuned to the praise of Him who has done great things for them. Lives led with this aim will make men to be truly what God designs: a holy nation; a kingdom of priests. And ever as men walk thus will the kingdom for which we daily pray be brought nearer.
The opportunities for winning men to Christ differ in modern times from those which were open to the earliest Christian converts; but there is still no lack of adversaries, no lack of those by whom the hope of the believer is deemed unreasonable: and now, as then, the good works which the opponents behold in Christian lives will have their efficacy. These cannot forever be spoken against. A good manner of life in Christ shall, through His grace, finally put the gainsayers to shame. They shall learn, and gain blessing with the lesson, that the stone which they have so long been rejecting has been set up by God to be the foundation of His Church, the head stone of the corner, and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 4, 5. To whom coming. To Christ the Lord.…
4, 5. To whom coming. To Christ the Lord. A living stone. Christ is often called a Stone, or Rock, as the foundation whom which we build our spiritual life, and of the church; a “living stone” because he imparts life to all who build upon him, and himself lives eternally. See 1 John 1:1; Rev. 1:18; Acts 4:11. Disallowed. Rejected by the Jewish nation. Chosen, not of men but of God who raised him from the dead. See also verse 6.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain 1Pe_2:4.—The figure is now changed, and the apostle deals…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1Pe_2:4.—The figure is now changed, and the apostle deals with the Christian Church rather than the Christian individual. Two things were present to his mind—the material Jewish temple and the spiritual Jewish dispensation. He makes the one help to the understanding of the other. The Christian Church is like a new temple, built up from its very first foundation-stone. It is like a new dispensation, only instead of the new religious nation being represented by an order of priests, it is a kingdom of priests, represented only by one great High Priest. To whom coming.—In order to make a beginning in building the spiritual house. Living stone.—Not here natural rock, as distinguished from stone shaped by the mason; but spiritual foundation of a spiritual house. Chosen of God.—The rejection of Christ by the Jews is a historical fact: the acceptance of Christ by God is the spiritual fact implied in our Lord’s resurrection. Precious.—Or honourable. The assumed criminality of the crucifixion deceived neither God nor good men. No matter what Christ seemed to be, He was “holy, harmless, undefiled.”
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1Pe_2:5. Lively.—Better, living, with the same idea as above. Men quickened with a spiritual life, therefore spiritual men; stones to match Christ, the living stone. (Perhaps the sentence should read, “Build yourselves up.”) Spiritual house.—The Christian Church, thought of as the spiritual reproduction of the Jewish Temple. Holy priesthood.—In old days the true spiritual temple was the nation of devout worshippers; it was represented by the tribe (twelfth part of itself), which was wholly devoted to the Temple ministry. The Christian Church is the new spiritual temple, every member being a priest, and all together offering up spiritual sacrifices. The blending of figures is sometimes puzzling; “the priests who sacrificed in the true temple were themselves the stones of which that temple was built.” R.V. has “a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.” Spiritual sacrifices.—No longer material sacrifices, but the spiritual things—thankfulness, love, devotion, etc.—which they represented. By Jesus Christ.—Who offered the model spiritual sacrifice—who offered Himself.
1Pe_2:6. In the Scripture.—Not precisely quoted from either Heb. or LXX. of Isa_28:16. The apostle evidently wrote from memory. In Sion.—The Temple was built on Moriah. Corner-stone.—With possible allusion to the corner of the Temple area that was built right up from the valley. But one of the stones in the foundations of ancient buildings was usually spoken of as the foundation-stone. Elect.—Better, “selected.” Precious.—Counted honourable. Confounded.—The idea given by the rendering in the LXX. Building on this foundation, we build securely; do not find our confidence misplaced.
1Pe_2:7. Precious.—Still the same idea, “held in honour “or in confidence. Such is your esteem that you have no hesitation in building on this foundation. Disobedient.—Involving unbelief finding expression in active rebellion. Disallowed.—Left in the quarry as unsuitable and unworthy. Head of the corner.—Is put in the most honourable position.
1Pe_2:8. Stone of stumbling, etc.—See Isa_8:14. “Their stumbling implies the judicial punishment of their rejection of Messiah. They hurt themselves in stumbling over the corner-stone.” Appointed.—The Jewish mind always regarded what did happen as what God had arranged should happen. No doubt the reference here is to the prophecies which had so plainly anticipated the rejection as well as the acceptance of Messiah. “Those who stumbled by disbelief were marked out by prophecy as men who would stumble.” But prophecy refers to a class, not to individuals.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Pe_2:4-8
The Spiritual House.—The figures of this paragraph are precisely adapted to those who were familiar with the associations of Judaism, and more especially with the material tabernacle and the Temple, and the outward religious system associated with them. The material house of Judaism is contrasted with the spiritual house of Christianity. It is the contrast that is so fully elaborated in the epistle to the Hebrews. That was a material house, in which earthly men fulfilled prescribed temporal duties, and carried out a ritual and ceremonial system. This is a living, spiritual house, of living, spiritual men, who offer in it living, spiritual sacrifices. And yet St. Peter recognises that there was a spiritual within that old material. The spiritual had always been revealed to the spiritually-minded. The spiritual could now be more fully apprehended, and the old material building may now fade away, or be removed, as scaffolding is removed, when the Temple is complete. Or, using another figure, St. Peter says, the people of Israel were separated, consecrated people; the whole people were a “holy priesthood,” devoted to the service of God. This fact was represented, and so kept ever before their minds, by the separation of one tribe entirely to the priestly service. St. Peter sees that truth concerning Israel carried over into Christianity, and spiritually realised. The Church wants no delegation of any portion of itself for priesthood, because spiritually every member is a priest, and the entire Church makes up the “holy priesthood.” Fixing attention on the “Spiritual House,” notice three things:—
I. Its foundation.—It is a living man—that is, a spiritual man. “Unto whom coming, a living stone.” It is the spiritual, Divine man, the Lord Jesus Christ. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, even Christ Jesus.” The figure of the foundation stone is doubtless taken from that corner of the Temple-area which was built up from the valley with gigantic masonry. The figure of a foundation is somewhat difficult for us to apprehend, because our buildings do not in any sense rest upon a single stone. The right thought may come to us through the schools of philosophy, systems of theology, or other religions. We speak of Socrates as the founder or foundation of the Socratic School; of Calvin as the founder or foundation of the Calvinistic system of theology; of Mohammed as the founder or foundation of the Mohammedan religion. In each case we mean that on one man’s thoughts, doings, teachings, rests the house of thought or truth which has been reared. Christianity is the house of truth and life reared upon the thoughts, doings, teachings, sufferings, of the Lord Jesus; and it is a spiritual house, because the spiritual is the range of Christ. What He thought, did, felt, taught, were the spiritual things on which the spiritual house was reared.
II. The stones of the building.—Living men—that is, spiritual men. Living in the sense in which Christ is spoken of as living. Connect with the idea of being begotten again, born again, quickened with the new, the spiritual life. St. John is the apostle of this new life. He “conceives of religion as consisting in the immediate personal relation of the soul, to God or to Christ. It begins with an impartation from God. To be born of God means to receive from Him a communication of spiritual life, whereby the soul is more and more transformed into Christ-likeness.” The stones of the building must be of the same nature as the foundation. Of material stones build the old Temple, on a foundation of stone from the quarry. Of spiritual stones—men alive unto God—build the spiritual temple, on a foundation of the spiritual stone, the man alive unto God, the spiritual man Christ Jesus. But another idea is suggested by the term “lively” or “living.” A living thing is a moving, acting thing, and the stones of the spiritual house are living men in their activity. It is a difficult association for us, but Eastern minds delight in involved and mixed metaphors. It may at least suggest to us that we give ourselves to Christ as living ones, “living sacrifices”—those who serve.
III. The service within the building.—“To offer up spiritual sacrifices.” The building is a temple. And this is true whether we think of a single life or of the corporate Church. Within the temple of the individual life spiritual sacrifices have to be offered. Within the temple of the Church must be kept up the holy ministries. What the spiritual sacrifices are we may learn from the services of the older and material Temple. Find what was at the heart of the old ritual, and that, without the ritual, is the spiritual sacrifice of the new dispensation. Illustrate, from the inner significance of the primary form of sacrifice, the burnt-offering. That was the giving of a man’s whole self to God, represented by the giving of an entire animal. That giving of the whole self to God is the spiritual sacrifice which we can now offer as quickened, living men. And spiritual sacrifices include acts of praise, thanksgiving, trust; include everything that can fitly find expression for the new and spiritual life. That is the one and essential condition of acceptance. The new life must be in everything we say or do in the living temple. Formalities are of no value now, save as they are instinct with Divine life. One law applies to the whole service of the spiritual temple,—it must express the life of men who are “born of God.”
Note by Dean Plumptre on the words “through Jesus Christ,” 1Pe_2:5.—“In the addition of these words, we have at once the sanction for the Church’s use of that form of words in connection with all her acts of prayer and praise, and the implied truth that it is only through their communion with Christ as the great High Priest, and with His sacrifice, that His people are able to share His priesthood, and offer their own spiritual sacrifices.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Pe_2:5. The Spiritual Temple.—This passage suggests that the Tabernacle and Temple were types and symbol of the true Church of God and even of the individual believer. Here the terms of communion with God are set forth in the altar of burnt offering, and the laver; one signifying expiation by blood, and the other the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Place, with its three articles of furniture, the golden candelabra, the table of shew-bread, and altar of incense, typifies the forms of communion, as Prof. Moore of Virginia beautifully phrases it. Here we are taught first the duty of a burning and shining testimony for God; secondly, of consecrated and constantly renewed offerings; thirdly, of unceasing prayer and heart-worship. The Holiest Place, with its cherubim, mercy seat, and shekinah, may represent heavenly and complete fellowship, in the immediate presence of the glory of God, where a redeemed and glorified humanity, reconciled to God and in perfect harmony with all created being, the Law of God perfectly enshrined in the heart, communes immediately and within the veil with Jehovah!—Anon.
The Worshippers and the Temple the Same.—It is obvious, then, how fit, how essential it was that there should be a temple of stone for the partial dispensation; the presence of God in Christ for the transition state, when it was yet partial, but preparing to be extended; and for this last dispensation, which was to embrace all the world, what temple would have been sufficient but a temple co-extensive and identical with the worshippers themselves? As in the true Atonement there was no victim worthy of the priest but He who combined both in His own person, so, in the true worship, there could have been no adequate temple, unless the worshippers and the temple had been the same.—Bishop Hinds.
The Christian Temple, or Spiritual House.—St. Paul, in his epistle to the Corinthians, speaks of the Christian Church under the symbol of a temple, but he uses the word—ναὸς—nowhere else, and St. Peter never uses it at all. There can be no doubt, however, that when he wrote these words the idea was in his mind, and that he thought of the Temple of Jerusalem, in contrast with which he calls believers a spiritual house—οἶκος—of which the Lord Jesus is the foundation, or the corner-stone.
I. The foundation of this Temple,—
1. It is Christ Himself. St. Peter was a stone laid upon the foundation-stone, as also were each of the apostles. They were the first layer of the Temple, next to the foundation; but the foundation itself is Christ and none other. He is called “the living stone”; He has life, and gives life, spiritual and eternal, to all who trust in Him. A stone is hard, cold, and rigid, but this Stone lives and imparts life to every other stone of which the Church is built.
2. Its excellence is set forth by a contrast—“rejected, indeed, of men, but chosen of God and honoured.” St. Peter had said, before the Sanhedrin, “This is the Stone set at nought by you builders” (Act_4:11). Christ is still rejected of men. The sceptic rejects Him. The rationalist rejects Him. The worldling rejects Him. God honours Him. Believers count Him “precious,” “honourable.”
3. The results of its being laid. “Unto you, therefore, which believe in the honour of belonging to the Stone, and of being united to the building of which it is the foundation.” Such is the import of 1Pe_2:7.
II. Look, at the superstructure.—“Ye also as living (ζῶντες) stones are built up a spiritual house.”
1. The materials are living stones. Such are Christian believers. Drawn out of nature’s quarry, they are cut and polished by the Spirit of the living God, and are then prepared for the place they are to occupy in the temple of the Lord of hosts. Of such materials must God’s house be built.
2. Composed of such materials, this temple is called a spiritual house. God has had three temples on earth—the temple of stone, the temple of Christ’s body, and the living temple of the Church. The first was destroyed and swept away; the second was removed, and is now in heaven, the third remains; and will continue to grow until the top-stone be brought forth with shoutings—“Grace unto it!” In the temple of stone the shekinah dwelt; in the temple of Christ’s body dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead; in the temple of the Church the Spirit dwells, filling all its courts with the light and glory of the Lord.
3. In this spiritual house there is a holy priesthood. Every living stone in this temple is also a consecrated priest, and has access by faith into the holiest of all by the blood of the everlasting covenant.
4. A temple implies sacrifices, and they are offered here. The sacrifices of God always were, and still are, spiritual sacrifices—the sacrifice of a broken and contrite heart; the sacrifice of earnest prayer and faith; the sacrifice of a holy and devoted life.—Thornley Smith.
1Pe_2:7. “The Preciousness.”—The alteration made in the R.V., which reads, “For you therefore which believe is the preciousness,” is less serious than at first sight it appears to be. It in no way changes the sentiment, it only alters the form in which it is expressed. It keeps in the line of the figure which the apostle is using—a characteristic figure for him who had himself been called a “stone”; the “rock-man,” on whose witness for Christ the Church was to be founded. St. Peter had spoken of coming to the Lord, the Lord Christ, as unto a “living stone,” that could be the foundation-stone on which to raise the temple of a holy life. He was not writing of the first coming of the soul to Christ, with the burden of sin—the coming for forgiveness and renewal—but of the coming of the believer when he proposes to make the endeavour to build a godly life. As Christ is the foundation of our hope, so He is the foundation of our life of character. Build a character upon nothing, and it sways with every wind, and is overthrown with the first storm. Build a character upon the self of resolve and human wisdom, and it is as the house upon the sand, which keeps fair enough under the summer rains, but is undermined and imperilled when the winter floods surge around it. Build a character upon the rock of Christ; let the foundation be His Divine claim and His model humanity, as held in the grasp of our faith; and then let life bring round what storms and floods of trial and temptation that it may, the house of character which we build may be weathered and worn, but it will not fall; it cannot be shaken. It is founded upon a rock: that rock is the “Rock of Ages.” That is the “living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious.” “It is contained in Scripture, Behold I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall not be put to shame.” The Temple of Solomon is evidently present to the mind of the apostle, and suggests his figure. That Temple was built upon the living rock of Mount Moriah; but the summit of the mount was not sufficiently large or level to permit the full size and proper shape of the Temple court. On the one side the ground dipped suddenly, and to complete the form of the required area, a corner-piece had to be raised, in heavy masonry, right up from the valley to the Temple level. It was a stupendous work for the age in which it was accomplished. It came to absorb attention rather than the rock of the hill itself. It was the national pride. It seemed as if the Temple was really built on that corner; as if that were its real foundation-stone. Every believer has a temple to raise—the temple of a Christly character, the temple of a holy life. There is the natural rock of disposition and heredity on which every man builds his house of character; but the believer wants something more than this. He needs a completion of its incompleteness and insufficiency by the laying of a “chief corner-stone.” That alone can make the foundation area satisfactory: that alone can be trusted to bear the full weight of the building; and that alone can give noble character to the building. And that chief corner-stone of the temple of a godly life God has provided for every man. It is Jesus the Lord, elect, precious: “the tried stone, the precious corner-stone.” But St. Peter points out that, though the corner-stone foundation is actually provided, and available for all, it must be individually accepted and individually used. And so it becomes the test of every professor. Where there is no actual, practical faith, giving tone to the daily endeavour to live the godly life, that corner-stone is neglected; it may even be “a stone of stumbling and rock of offence.” But where there is practical, living faith, there the stone is valued, held honourable; the grace of its provision is recognised, its uses are understood, and the life of holiness is so raised upon it that every part of the life feels the strength and support of that foundation. It is the interest which the man of faith has in the chief corner-stone, on which he wants to build every part of his spiritual house, which St. Peter suggests to us in this passage. And it does not matter whether we keep to the figure of the stone—an impersonal thing—and say, “Unto you therefore which believe is the preciousness”; or, seeing who it is that is meant by the stone—the personal, living Lord Jesus, our Saviour and Sanctifier—say, “Unto you that believe, He is precious.” As we may, however, gain a little freshness in the form and setting of very familiar truth thereby, we will take advantage of the impersonal figure preserved for us by the R.V., and let our text mean—
I. By the believer the preciousness is discerned.—It will not be possible to deal wisely with this or the other points to be brought before us unless we first understand clearly who is meant by the “believer.” It cannot be too often asserted that the epistles are not written to unconverted persons as persuasions to a saving belief. However unworthy of the Christian name those addressed in the epistles may be, the assumption is that they do all bear the Christian name; they have all accepted Christ as their Saviour and Lord; they are all believers. The distinction is not sufficiently recognised between the act of faith and the life of faith. The act of faith is the beginning of a life of faith, and it has no effective value unless it is followed up by such a daily faith. The apostle expresses the belief in which we are just now interested when he says, “The life that I live in the flesh is a life of faith on the Son of God.” The act of faith ought to establish an attitude of faith, and that attitude should be a permanent attitude. It is by that daily and permanent attitude of our souls that the preciousness of Christ is discerned. To use the figure of the photographer, we may say that the act of faith renders the whole plate of the soul sensitive to particular things, sensitive to spiritual things; and they make their due impressions according as, day by day, their sensitiveness is maintained. There is a school of thought which exaggerates the importance of the act of faith. Salvation is regarded as the Divine response to that act; and a daily renewal of the act is required only as keeping up the daily right to the salvation. But our salvation is a much larger thing than the setting us in a new relation with God; it includes getting that relation rightly toned. And what we need to see so much more clearly, and to feel so much more adequately, is that our daily believing is a power of discernment, and a power of receptivity, and a secret of growth and sanctifying. Constantly, therefore, must believers be urged to believe. It may even be pressed upon us that the maintenance of the attitude of trust is the condition of all joy, and of all growth in the Divine life. It is not of chief importance to ask, “Have you believed unto the salvation of your soul?” It is most important, and it is most searching, to ask, Are you believing unto the sanctification of your whole life and relationships? To that life of faith the mystery of Christ is revealed: by that permanent daily mood of belief, of living trustfulness, the preciousness of Christ is discerned. In the Song of Solomon the lover is taunted with the words, “What is thy be loved more than another beloved?” He is all the more to her by what her love discerns in him; and Christ is all the more to us by what our faith—our trust, which is simply our faith with love in it—can discern in Him. Here is the figure of Christ presented in the gospels; here is the estimate of Christ formed by His apostles; here are the accumulated sentiments concerning Christ of saintly souls through all the ages. And yet, do most men, with all this help, discern the preciousness of Christ? They admire Him, it may be; they write about Him, it may be; they wrangle over Him, it may be; but they cannot discern His sweet secret. That comes only to the man of faith; that is the discovery of the trustful soul. It is “hid from the wise and prudent,” who think they know; it is “revealed unto babes,” who can only trust. Is it not a simple fact that these who are living lives of faith do see in Christ more, and more precious things, than any one else can see? It is no wonder at all that men should accuse us of extravagance when we speak of our Divine Lord. They cannot see in Him what we see, and they never will while they keep in their present conditions. To us He is “the chiefest among ten thousand,” the “altogether lovely.” The older prophet shows the difference that a true discernment can make in Messiah and in His mission. “We did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God and afflicted. But He was wounded for our transgressions.” This daily faith is the quickening of new powers, and that will partly explain our keener and fuller discernment. There are spiritual powers. They lie dormant until faith quickens them. The man who believes in Jesus finds himself possessed of unexpected powers; and what is so remarkable about the new powers is that they are ever enabling him to discern more and more of the preciousness of Jesus. And the daily life of faith is ever training and culturing those new powers to a higher efficiency. Keep up the daily soul trust, and the spiritual eyes will be ever gaining quicker, keener vision; the spiritual ears will be ever gaining subtler sensitiveness to every sound of the Divine voice; and the spiritual hands will be ever gaining firmness to grasp the duties which are set before us by the Divine will. And what is it that the cultured powers will discern in Christ? What of His preciousness does stand out clear to those who live the life of faith? The answer can but be a series of hints. They see Jesus Himself, but Jesus in all His varying moods, graciously adapted to all their moods. Always in direct and helpful relations to them. Just the Jesus they need when the sunshine is all about them, and seems to have got into their souls. Just the Jesus they need when the clouds hang low over them, earth toil seems hard, and heaven “far to go.” Yes, that is the preciousness of Jesus which the man of faith discerns. His real and abiding presence, involving His relativity to all our changing need: Jesus, vestured as no worldly eye ever beheld Him, practically helpful in every endeavour of our godly life. There is a certain Eastern character in the figure of the text that makes it sound somewhat strange to us, but we can catch the idea it suggests. Let the stones, quick with a living faith, be put on the living stone, the corner foundation-stone, and there surely will be the thrill of life into life. The Living Stone will, as it were, bind and keep all the stones, and there will be the Life ever present in every stone, keeping in place all the spiritual house. Unto you that believe there is that preciousness of discernment. You can see how much He is to you who is your Living Stone, your sure foundation. But keep near to heart and thought, that the power of discernment must always depend on the believing, on the life of faith. Here, as in so many things, the law holds good, “According to your faith it shall be unto you.”
II. By the believer the preciousness is enjoyed.—We only derive pleasure from things that answer to us, things with which we have affinity. And so the things that give pleasure to men are manifold, and vary from the trifling to the sublime. A diamond is no more precious to a child than any prettily coloured stone, or shining bit of stone. Only when trained to appreciate it can the precious stone be enjoyed. As we are cultured, as mental faculties, and moral sentiments, and religious interests, are developed, directed, and enlarged, we find our pleasure in ever higher, and nobler, and purer things. The merely material ceases to satisfy us, the moral and the spiritual prove able to provide ever-increasing enjoyment. We begin with pleasure in things, we advance to pleasure in truth, and in character; we attain our apprehension of the very highest pleasure when we find our joy in God. Christ is no personal interest, no source of ever-satisfying pleasure, to the great mass of men. When they see Him there is “no beauty that they should desire Him.” Why is this? He is what He is, but what He is is nothing to them. It is that they do not believe; the soul’s power of trust has never been awakened; the great gratitude of the sinful soul to its all-sufficient Saviour has not awakened the eyes to discern the transcendent loveliness of that Saviour. Only those who are living the life of faith can ever enjoy His preciousness. Everything depends on the mood of the mind. And it is singular to notice how the joy of the soul in Christ goes up and down with the varying moods of its faith. Cannot we make this a test of our spiritual state?—“Unto you that believe He is precious.” Do not ask, Are you full of admirations of Christ? Can you recognise His Divine fitness as the Saviour of the world? Be more searching than that. Ask yourself, Am I personally enjoying Christ? Does He fully satisfy me? In the love of Him do I find my soul’s rest? Is the “dearest spot on earth to me” that where I meet with Him? When I think of the beautiful does He seem to me more beautiful still? When I yearn for happiness do I find myself running right in to the shadow of His all-comforting love? Is He, indeed and in truth, my joy and my crown? Can I walk earth’s highway with a song in my soul—His song, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love”? And do I turn from all the glory and bliss of heavenly scenes to fix all eye and heart on Him that sitteth on the throne, the “Lamb as it had been slain?” Then surely by us the preciousness of Jesus is enjoyed; and it must be that, in some measure at least, we are living that life of faith. Is there any test of Christian standing better—more searching and more satisfying—than this? “What think ye of Christ?” Nay, rather, What is Christ to you? How do you feel towards Him? For “unto you that believe is the preciousness.” Our cherished sentiments concerning Christ keep pace with the daily faith that brings Him ever into the field of our soul-vision and our touch.
III. By the believer the preciousness is responded to.—It is not that he only sees it; it is not that he only enjoys it; it is that he meets it, he answers to it. It becomes the holiest of forces moving him, the sweetest of constraints upon him. It presses him to all loving obediences, to all loyal services, to the constant endeavour to attain the likeness of the beloved one, and to a life of virtues and sweet charities as the only life well-pleasing to Him. The Christian life has its sentiments, and nourishes them; but the sentiments are impulses and inspirations; they are active powers; they give tone to conduct; they help the holy living. Let faith glorify Christ, and keep Him ever near, the object of unceasing admirations, the source of undying satisfactions, and then the soul will surely have its perpetual prayer, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” And the life will be one prolonged endeavour to do what the loved one would have done. We know in our every-day relations what a sweet and powerful constraint the enjoyment of our loved ones is. Who among us is not a better man or woman day by day because the preciousness of our loved ones is so fully discerned and enjoyed. Life for us is the sweet response we make to those whom we fully trust, whom we deeply love, whose fellowship we so much enjoy. And yet in the earthly spheres we are only learning Divine things. Away even from the earthly spheres and relations we soar into the regions of the spiritual. There, with the power of our faith—our trust, which is faith with love in it—we discern the preciousness of Jesus, our tried cornerstone, our sure foundation. There we feel the sweet fascination of Jesus, and enjoy the fellowship and all-embracing love, and find it heaven begun to sit at His dear feet. There we feel ourselves caught and held in His restraints, bound by love-cords to His service, and perfectly willing, gladly willing, to be just what He would have us be, go just where He would have us go, and do just what He would have us do.
1Pe_2:7. Our Honour in Christ.—“Unto you therefore, the believers, belongs the honour.” So said in reference to His being called “a stone elect, honoured,” taken in conjunction with “shall not be ashamed.” Both the Hebrew and the Greek word rendered “precious” may, with equal propriety, be translated “honoured,” and this contrasts better with the “shame” just spoken of. Thus Dr. Lightfoot takes it. The argument is this: “God has selected Jesus for special honour, and has promised that all who trust in Him, instead of scorning Him like the Jewish rulers, shall have no cause to blush. Now, you do trust in Him, therefore to you belongs the promise, and the honour bestowed by God on Him reflects on you. You, like Him, are made parts of the Divine imperishable architecture.—Ellicott’s Commentary.
Christ a Precious Saviour.
I. To whom is He precious? To them that believe.
II. Why is He precious to believers?
1. Because recognised as the medium of all earthly blessings; and
2. As the source of all spiritual blessings.
III. When is He thus precious?
1. In certain frames of mind, as when the soul hungers after righteousness.
2. In certain duties, as in secret prayer, worship, etc.
3. In certain seasons, as times of danger, bereavement, sickness, trial.—J. M. Sherwood.
Christ All in All.—Christ is all in all to His people. He is all their strength, wisdom, and righteousness. They are but the clouds irradiated by the sun, and bathed in its brightness. He is the light which flames in their grey-mist and turns it to a glory. They are but the belt and cranks and wheels: He is the power. They are but the channel, muddy and dry; He is the flashing life which fills it and makes it a joy. They are the body, He is the soul, dwelling in every part to save it from corruption, and give movement and warmth.
“Thou art the organ, whose full breath is thunder;
I am the keys beneath Thy fingers pressed.”
—A. Maclaren, D.D.
The Christ of Experience.—This is one of the undertones of Scripture, heard in all the pauses of its history or its argument. It is a recognition of the practical religious value of the Christ, of what He is to those who have put Him to experimental tests. Such recognitions make the New Testament the religious book of men’s practical life. Peter was a man far less profound and intentional than John, more realistic, more under the power of externalism and of mere ethics. He moves upon a lower plane of spiritual conception and Christian life. And yet how the fervency of his heart of religious love breaks forth! Here he is, setting forth the great value of Christianity as a source of strength and comfort and hope in the trials of human life. A stricter rendering of the text would be, “Unto you who believe is the honour.” So far from making you ashamed, trust in Him will be your highest honour; for through your trust in Him you will attain to all that constitutes the salvation of a man, the noblest life here, and everlasting glory hereafter. What is the estimate of Christ which they form who have tried Him? who have submitted their minds to His ideas, their hearts to His claims, their lives to His control? “He is precious.” The fundamental idea is value. In the commercial sense of the term, a precious thing is a priceful thing, a thing which fetches a price. Three things constitute value:
1. Rarity.
2. Beauty;
3. Serviceableness. All the qualities that constitute preciousness are in Christ, in a degree of excellence that imagination cannot overcolour, that even love cannot exaggerate. In respect of serviceableness, of personal beneficial relations to men, as their Redeemer from sin, His preciousness transcends all our words or thoughts. This is the form of the apostle’s thought. He speaks of the experimental value of the Christ—His preciousness to those who have practically come to Him as the living foundation stone; through whose vitalising properties they have been quickened into living stones of the spiritual Christian temple.
1. We might apply a comparative test, and put the preciousness of Christ into comparison with all other possessions of our human life. Or we might subject Him to a comparison with other good men.
2. Our estimates are largely influenced by the judgments of others. Think, then, of the estimates put upon Christ’s character and work by other moral beings. It is significant of His excellence that He attracts the most readily, and attaches the most profoundly, the holiest and noblest natures? Christ is never rejected because His moral teaching is false, His moral character defective, His moral inspirations corrupting.
3. The conclusive appeal is, however, to the conscious experience of our own religious souls. In personal experience we find our chief grounds for a high estimate of Christ.
I. Christ is precious when we grope and stumble at the mystery of God.
II. Christ is precious when the sense of sin is quickened within us.—When we awaken to the grave culpability of its guilt, when we realise its essential antagonism to the Divine holiness.
III. Christ is precious in our struggle with practical evils.—As we fight with lusts, resist temptation, overcome worldliness, subdue selfishness, or mourn over failures and falls.
IV. Christ is precious to us in times of great sorrow.
V. Christ is precious in our own mortal conflict.—It is not a question of notions or beliefs about Christ, but of living experience of Him, practical appropriation of the grace that He brings, practical quickening by the life that He is.—H. Alton, D.D.
The Verse a Quotation.—The words of this passage are quoted directly from the LXX., and properly represent the Hebrew. Almost all the best modern critics consider the psalm from which this verse is cited to be a late psalm, written subsequent to the return from Babylon, in which case it is most probable that the composer was directly thinking of the prophecy of Isaiah above quoted. The Messianic interpretation of the psalm would be no novelty to the Hebrews who received this epistle (see Mat_21:9), though probably they had not perceived it in its fulness.—A. J. M.
A Christian Test.—One of the testing passages, which help us to gain assurance of our Christian standing. Uncertainty about our personal religious condition may be neither right nor necessary, but it is felt by all Christians at times. Two other tests may be suggested.
1. Tenderness of conscience about sin.
2. Manifest difference in the things we now love and choose. In the text we have.—
I. A description of the Christian.—“You that believe.” That fits precisely into apostolic preaching. In Acts we find St. Peter calling upon men to believe in Christ as Messiah, proved to be by His resurrection. Belief is more than, other than, knowledge, and indicates the Spirit’s power. Christians are they who in the teaching of the Spirit have come to believe, with a soul-reliance on Christ.
II. A test of the Christian.—“He is precious.” The word is “honour,” “preciousness.”
1. Christ is honoured. Occupies the highest place of respect; the Divine place of worship. He who can speak lightly of Christ is no Christian.
2. Christ is valued. Precious, in the sense of costly. Involving a right estimate
(1) of Christ’s person;
(2) of Christ’s work.
3. Christ is loved. Those are precious to us whom we love. We love to think of His salvation, to realise His presence, and to do His will. In this way the testing of our spiritual condition is put in its most gentle, persuasive, and attractive forms.
1Pe_2:8. Appointed unto Stumbling.—When St. Peter says that these unhappy Jews were appointed to stumble, he primarily means that the clear prophecies of the Old Testament which he has quoted marked them for such a destiny. It was no unforeseen, accidental consequence of the gospel. It had never been expected that all who heard the gospel would accept it. Those who stumbled by disbelief were marked out in prophecy as men who would stumble. Still, in fairness, we must not shirk the further question which undoubtedly comes in at this point. It cannot be denied, that, in a certain sense, it was God Himself who appointed them to stumble. There is no reference to condition after death. God does put men sometimes into positions, where, during this life, they almost inevitably reject the truth. These things remain unexplained, for the trial of faith.—Ellicotl’s Commentary.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 4. All sinners are the devil’s dead rocks, while…
ARGUMENT 8
THE SPIRITUAL OFFICE
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4. All sinners are the devil’s dead rocks, while Christians are God’s living stones. The Church of God, the divine ecclesia, not human ecclesiasticism, is here symbolized as a beautiful and majestic stone edifice, the apostles and prophets constituting the foundation, while Jesus Christ is the head of the corner The two pairs of parallel walls, i.e., Jew and Gentile constituting the grand quadrangular superstructure, are consolidated in the corners by the Chief cornerstone, secure against all the storms dashing against it by the caprice of men and the rage of devils.
5. “And you as living stones are built up a spiritual house.” You see how every saved soul becomes a constituent stone in that grand and majestic superstructure, destined forever to stand towering among the angels, the delight of cherubim and seraphim, and the admiration of the universe. Pursuant to this beautiful and instructive imagery, all truly sanctified people, in the capacity of efficient soul savers, are stone-masons. We go out into the devil’s mountains with an ample supply of God’s dynamite. We drill down into Satan’s profound strata, deposit the dynamite, apply the celestial electricity and witness smashings, explosions, blowing up and disintegrating the devil’s rock. This is the Sinai Gospel of a true spiritual conviction. Then every fellow lights on his own rock with his chisel, transforming it into the shape requisite for its place in the glorious edifice, beautifying it with the gorgeous luster of celestial splendor, transporting it on the salvation wagon to the building site and depositing it in its proper place in the gorgeous superstructure. All this is the Calvary Gospel of regeneration. Now the stones gathered from Satan’s mountain ranges, girdling the globe, have all reached their predestinated places in the glorified Church of the First John, there to abide, unjostled, despite earthquakes and volcanoes, in perfect and imperturbable rest through all eternity. This is the Pentecostal Gospel of entire sanctification, the soul’s sweet, unutterable and eternal repose.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain 1 Peter
5
1 Peter
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LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE
1Pe 2:4-5.
I wonder whether Peter, when he wrote these words, was thinking about what Jesus Christ said to him long ago, up there at Cæsarea Philippi. He had heard from Christ’s lips, ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church.’ He had understood very little of what it meant then. He is an old man now, years of experience and sorrow and work have taught him the meaning of the words, and he understands them a great deal better than his so-called successors have done. For we may surely take the text as the Apostle’s own disclaimer of that which the Roman Catholic Church has founded on it, and has blazoned it, in gigantic letters round the dome of St. Peter’s, as meaning. It is surely legitimate to hear him saying in these words: ‘Make no mistake, it is Jesus Himself on whom the Church is built. The confession of Him which the Father in heaven revealed to me, not I, the poor sinner who confessed it--the Christ whom that confession set forth, He is the foundation stone, and all of you are called and honoured to ring out the same confession. Jesus is the one Foundation, and we all, apostles and humble believers, are but stones builded on Him.’ Peter’s relation to Jesus is fundamentally the same as that of every poor soul that ‘comes to’ Him.
Now, there are two or three thoughts that may very well be suggested from these words, and the first of them is this:--
I. Those that are in Christ have perpetually to make the effort to come nearer Christ.
Remember that the persons to whom the Apostle is speaking are no strangers to the Saviour. They have been professing Christians from of old. They have made very considerable progress in the Divine life; they are near Jesus Christ; and yet Peter says to them, ‘You can get nearer if you try,’ and it is your one task and one hope, the condition of all blessedness, peace, and joy in your religious life that you should perpetually be making the effort to come closer, and to keep closer, to the Lord, by whom you say that you live.
What is it to come to Him? The context explains the figurative expression, in the very next verse or two, by another and simpler word, which strips away the figure and gives us the plain fact--’in Whom believing.’ The act of the soul by which I, with all my weakness and sin, cast myself on Jesus Christ, and grapple Him to my heart, and bind myself with His strength and righteousness--that is what the Apostle means here. Or, to put it into other words, this ‘coming,’ which is here laid as the basis of everything, of all Christian prosperity and progress for the individual and for the community, is the movement towards Christ of the whole spiritual nature of a man--thoughts, loves, wishes, purposes, desires, hopes, will. And we come near to Him when day by day we realise His nearness to us, when our thoughts are often occupied with Him, bring His peace and Himself to bear as a motive upon our conduct, let our love reach out its tendrils towards, and grasp, and twine round Him, bow our wills to His commandment, and in everything obey Him. The distance between heaven and earth does part us, but the distance between a thoughtless mind, an unrenewed heart, a rebellious will, and Him, sets between Him and us a greater gulf, and we have to bridge that by continual honest efforts to keep our wayward thoughts true to Him and near Him, and to regulate our affections that they may not, like runaway stars, carry us far from the path, and to bow our stubborn and self-regulating wills beneath His supreme commandment, and so to make all things a means of coming nearer the Lord with whom is our true home.
Christian men, there are none of us so close to Him but that we may be nearer, and the secret of our daily Christian life is all wrapped up in that one word which is scarcely to be called a figure, ‘coming’ unto Him. That nearness is what we are to make daily efforts after, and that nearness is capable of indefinite increase. We know not how close to His heart we can lay our aching heads. We know not how near to His fulness we may bring our emptiness. We have never yet reached the point beyond which no closer union is possible. There has always been a film--and, alas! sometimes a gulf--between Him and us, His professing servants. Let us see to it that the conscious distance diminishes every day, and that we feel ourselves more and more constantly near the Lord and intertwined with Him.
II. Those who come near Christ will become like Christ.
‘To Whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also as living stones.’ Note the verbal identity of the expressions with which Peter describes the Master and His servants. Christ is the Stone--that is Peter’s interpretation of ‘on this rock will I build My Church.’ There is a reference, too, no doubt, to the many Old Testament prophecies which are all gathered up in that saying of our Lord’s. Probably both Jesus and Peter had in mind Isaiah’s ‘stone of stumbling,’ which was also a ‘sure corner-stone, and a tried foundation.’ And words in the context which I have not taken for consideration, ‘disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious,’ plainly rest upon the 118th Psalm, which speaks of ‘the stone which the builders rejected’ becoming ‘the head of the corner.’
But, says Peter, He is not only the foundation Stone, the corner Stone, but a living Stone, and he does not only use that word to show us that he is indulging in a metaphor, and that we are to think of a person and not of a thing, but in the sense that Christ is eminently and emphatically the living One, the Source of life.
But, when he turns to the disciples, he speaks to them in exactly the same language. They, too, are ‘living stones,’ because they come to the ‘Stone’ that is ‘living.’ Take away the metaphor, and what does this identity of description come to? Just this, that if we draw near to Jesus Christ, life from Him will pass into our hearts and minds, which life will show itself in kindred fashion to what it wore in Jesus Christ, and will shape us into the likeness of Him from whom we draw our life, because to Him we have come. I may remind you that there is scarcely a single name by which the New Testament calls Jesus Christ which Jesus Christ does not share with us His younger brethren. By that Son we ‘receive the adoption of sons.’ Is He the Light of the world? We are lights of the world. And if you look at the words of my text, you will see that the offices which are attributed to Christ in the New Testament are gathered up in those which the Apostle here ascribes to Christ’s servants. Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Temple of God. Jesus Christ in His manhood was the Priest for humanity. Jesus Christ in His manhood was the sacrifice for the world’s sins. And what does Peter say here? ‘Ye are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.’ You draw life from Jesus Christ if you keep close to Him, and that life makes you, in derived and subordinate fashion, but in a very real and profound sense, what Jesus Christ was in the world. The whole blessedness and secret of the gifts which our Lord comes to bestow upon men may be summed up in that one thought, which is metaphorically and picturesquely set forth in the language of my text, and which I put into plainer and more prosaic English when I say--they that come near Christ become as Christ. As ‘living stones’ they, too, share in the life which flows from Him. Touch Him, and His quick Spirit passes into our hearts. Rest upon that foundation-stone and up from it, if I may so say, there is drawn, by strange capillary attraction, all the graces and powers of the Saviour’s own life. The building which is reared upon the Foundation is cemented to the Foundation by the communication of the life itself, and, coming to the living Rock, we, too, become alive.
Let us keep ourselves near to Him, for, disconnected, the wire cannot carry the current, and is only a bit of copper, with no virtue in it, no power. Attach it once more to the battery and the mysterious energy flashes through it immediately. ‘To Whom coming,’ because He lives, ‘ye shall live also.’
III. Lastly:
They who become like Christ because they are near Him, thereby grow together.
‘To whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also, as living stones, are built up.’ That building up means not only the growth of individual graces in the Christian character, the building up in each single soul of more and more perfect resemblance to the Saviour, but from the context it rather refers to the welding together, into a true and blessed unity, of all those that partake of that common life. Now, it is very beautiful to remember, in this connection, to whom this letter was written. The first words of it are: ‘To the strangers scattered abroad throughout,’ etc. etc. All over Asia Minor, hundreds of miles apart, here one there another little group, were these isolated believers, the scattered stones of a great building. But Peter shows them the way to a true unity, notwithstanding their separation. He says to them in effect: ‘You up in Bithynia, and you others away down there on the southern coast, though you never saw one another, though you are separated by mountain ranges and weary leagues; though you, if you met one another, perhaps could not understand what you each were saying, if you "come unto the living Stone, ye as living stones are built up" into one.’ There is a great unity into which all they are gathered who, separated by whatever surface distinctions, yet, deep down at the bottom of their better lives, are united to Jesus Christ.
But there may be another lesson here for us, and that is, that the true and only secret of the prosperity and blessedness and growth of a so-called Christian congregation is the individual faithfulness of its members, and their personal approximation of Jesus Christ. If we here, knit together as we are nominally for Christian worship, and by faith in that dear Lord, are true to our profession and our vocation, and keep ourselves near our Master, then we shall be built up; and if we do not, we shall not.
So, dear friends, all comes to this: There is the Stone laid; it does not matter how close we are lying to it, it will be nothing to us unless we are on it. And I put it to each of you. Are you built on the Foundation, and from the Foundation do you derive a life which is daily bringing you nearer to Him, and making you liker Him? All blessedness depends, for time and for eternity, on the answer to that question. For remember that, since that living Stone is laid, it is something to you. Either it is the Rock on which you build, or the Stone against which you stumble and are broken. No man, in a country evangelised like England--I do not say Christian, but evangelised--can say that Jesus Christ has no relation to, or effect upon, him. And certainly no people that listen to Christian preaching, and know Christian truth as fully and as much as you do, can say it. He is the Foundation on which we can rear a noble, stable life, if we build upon Him. If He is not the Foundation on which I build, He is the Stone on which I shall be broken.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Lively stones built up on Christ:
Lively stones built up on Christ:
v. 4. To whom coming, as unto a living Stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious,
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v. 5. ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
v. 6. Wherefore also it is contained in the Scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief Corner-stone, elect, precious; and he that believeth on Him shall not be confounded.
v. 7. Unto you, therefore, which believe, he is precious; but unto them which be disobedient, the Stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the Head of the corner,
v. 8. and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, even to them which stumble at the Word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed.
This entire paragraph refers to the Lord, of whom St. Peter had spoken in verse 3. Making use of a new figure or picture, the apostle writes: To whom coming, to that living Stone, rejected indeed of men, but chosen on the part of God, precious. The Christians have become partakers of the new spiritual birth, they are children of God. Mindful, therefore, of the sacred obligations and privileges which their new state lays upon them, they will come to the Lord, they will be joined to Him, they will range themselves on His side. They know that their Lord, Jesus, Christ, is the living Stone, Psa 118:22; Isa 28:16, the Source of all spiritual life, and that they can retain their own life only in proportion as they remain in fellowship with Him. This living Stone, Jesus the Messiah, was indeed rejected by the builders, by the leaders of the Jewish nation, by men in general, for most of them concur with the Jews in rejecting the Savior. But the judgment of God does not agree with that of the blinded world, for He has chosen this Stone as a most precious stone, as the Headstone of the corner, Isa 8:16. This fact, that Christ, although scorned and despised by the children of the world, is given such great honors in the sight of God, should encourage the Christians at all times to set aside the scornful attitude of the world and accept the judgment of the Lord instead.
With the reference to Christ as the living Stone agrees the description of the believers: And yourselves like living stones be built up as a spiritual house, unto a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices that are well-pleasing to God through Jesus Christ. In order to remain in fellowship with the Corner-stone, Christ, it is necessary that the believers partake of His nature, be filled with His life. It is then, and then only, that they can be built up as a spiritual house, their faith sinking deeply and ever more deeply into this unshakable foundation of His eternal love, their mutual faith uniting them in mutual love, connecting them in one vast organization. In this way the Christians are built up as a spiritual house, built up on Christ and in Christ, unto a holy priesthood. The apostle is here describing the holy Christian Church, the communion of saints, the sum total of all the believers in Christ, an edifice of living persons filled with the Spirit of God. Every member of this Church is incidentally a priest of God in the sacred edifice which is erected upon Christ. Whereas in the Old Testament there was a special hierarchy, composed of members of the house of Aaron, of the tribe of Levi, Heb 5:1, there is now, by virtue of the vicarious action of Christ, a general priesthood of believers. Every Christian has direct and free access to God, because the sin which formerly divided between us and God has been removed by Christ. Of this priestly dignity the believers should always be conscious; they should keep their relation toward God intact and ever draw more closely to the heavenly throne. At the same time, all these spiritual priests should be active in offering to the Lord such spiritual sacrifices as are well-pleasing to God. The entire life of a Christian, all his thoughts, desires, and deeds, are such sacrifices, because it is the Spirit of God that lives in them and teaches them to be duly grateful to the Lord for the gifts of His salvation, both in hymns of praise and in good works, Rom 12:1.
In Support of these statements the apostle does not quote an Old Testament passage outright, but makes it the basis of an explanation in which he uses also other texts: For it is contained in the Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a Stone, a Corner-stone, chosen, precious; and he that believes on Him shall not be brought to shame. See Isa 28:16. Note that the reference is to a book which is a definite, well-known entity, which went by the name "Scripture" and was generally conceded to be the Word of God. The gist, or tenor, of the passage in Isaiah is given. In Zion, in His Church of the New Testament, the Lord places or appoints a Corner-stone, one that is at the same time a Rock of Salvation. For not one person that puts his trust in Him will be found ashamed on the last day. The congregation of believers that is built up on this Stone shall not be overcome even by the portals of hell.
The apostle now makes his application of the prophetical passage: To you, then that believe He is preciousness; but as for the unbelievers, the Stone which the builders rejected, this has become the Corner-stone, and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, who stumble at the Word, being disobedient, whereunto also they were appointed. See Psa 118:22; Isa 8:14. In the case of all believers, in which number Peter pointedly and emphatically includes his readers, the living Stone, Jesus Christ, the Rock of Salvation, is preciousness; they partake of the wonderful value of this Stone, and should properly appreciate the honor which is thereby conferred upon them. Altogether different is the case with the unbelievers. To them that prophecy of the rejection of the Corner-stone applies, for they follow the Jews in their blind foolishness, in scorning the one way of salvation, through the redemption of Christ Jesus. And therefore they, who should have been built up with the saints, in their blind enmity stumble over this Stone, trip over this Rock, since they refuse to be obedient to the Word, to accept the truth of the Gospel. They stumble, they fall, they perish in the destruction which their stubborn refusal of salvation has brought upon themselves. They harden their own hearts against every effort of the Spirit to reveal the Savior to them. And thus the judgment is carried out in their case; their unbelief condemns them. They come under that terrible sentence of God according to which those that harden their hearts in spite of all calling of the Lord are finally appointed to that lot that the Word of Salvation becomes to them a savor of death unto death. It would hardly be possible to warn against the sin of unbelief in a more emphatic way.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 General Information:
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Peter begins to tell a metaphor about Jesus and the believers being living stones. (See: Metaphor)
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Come to him who is a living stone
Peter speaks of Jesus as if he were a stone in a building. AT: "Come to him who is like a stone in a building, but alive, not a dead stone" (See: Metaphor)
who is a living stone
Possible meanings are 1) "who is a stone that is alive" or 2) "who is a stone that gives life."
that has been rejected by people
This can be stated in active form. AT: "that people have rejected" (See: Active or Passive)
but that has been chosen by God
This can be stated in active form. AT: "but that God has chosen" (See: Active or Passive)
You also are ... being built up to be a spiritual house
Just as people used stones to build the temple in the Old Testament, believers are the materials that God is using to build a house in which he will live. (See: Metaphor)
You also are like living stones
Peter compares his readers to stones that are alive. (See: Simile)
that are being built up to be a spiritual house
This can be stated in active form. AT: "that God is building into a spiritual house" (See: Active or Passive)
a holy priesthood that offers the spiritual sacrifices
Here the position of priesthood stands for the priests who fulfill its duties. (See: Metonymy)
translationWords
life
reject
chosen one
God
spirit
house
holy
priest
sacrifice
Jesus
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 2:4-10 Throughout the letter, Peter encourages the suffering believers…
2:4-10 Throughout the letter, Peter encourages the suffering believers by reminding them of their exalted spiritual status. In this paragraph, he presents the Christian community as the new temple built on the foundation of Christ, and as heirs of the blessings granted to God’s covenant people.
2:4 rejected by people, but he was chosen by God for great honor: This is an allusion to Ps 118:22, which is quoted in 1 Pet 2:7.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.