In my first message on 1 Peter, I spoke to you about the problem that many Christians face today in terms of their spiritual identity as the people of God. You may have long since forgotten what I said, but my point in that inaugural sermon on 1 Peter was to awaken us all to who we are by virtue of what God has done for us in Christ. In other words, I’m talking about our corporate identity as the people of God, the church.
In that message, I asked you the question: “Who are we? How do we think of ourselves? What image comes to mind when you think of Bridgeway Church? What gives shape to our self-understanding? Is it the culture that defines who we are? Or perhaps it’s the secular media or the government in some capacity.”
I proceeded to argue that who we are is something that only God can determine and declare. The simple fact is, we are who God is making us to be in Christ Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit.
And precisely what is that? Nowhere does Peter say it with more clarity or force than right here in 1 Peter 2:5. You are like living stones, says Peter, who are “being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
The people to whom Peter wrote and virtually everyone else in the Christian world in the first century would have known immediately what Peter meant. At first mention of a “spiritual house” and a “holy priesthood” and “spiritual sacrifices” they would have known that Peter is saying in unmistakable terms that we, the church, are the true temple of God.
If you’ve ever wondered what God is up to here at Bridgeway, there it is in inspired and inerrant black and white: He is building a spiritual house in which you and I are the stones, all so that we might function as a holy priesthood to offer up to God spiritual sacrifices through Jesus Christ.
Now, your immediate reaction may be: “Wow. That’s a lot of high falootin’ biblical language that sounds really religious, but I’m not sure I know what it means.” Point taken. So let me try to make sense of this for all of us.
You need to be aware of something right up front. In order for me to help make sense of Peter’s language, I’m going to have to do two things. First, I’m going to have to take you back into the Old Testament and lead you on a very brief journey that focuses on the revelation that God has made of himself and in particular the way he has chosen to manifest his presence among his people. Second, I’m going to make some applications from this truth that some of you, perhaps many of you, will find not only theologically strange but politically explosive. So you’ve been warned. Let me begin.
Paul said in even more explicit terms in 2 Corinthians 6:16 what we see Peter saying here in v. 5. “For we are the temple of the living God”.
The starting point for understanding this crucial concept is the Old Testament narrative in which we find the visible manifestation of the splendor of God among his people, the shekinah of God, his majestic and radiant glory without which the Israelites would have been left in the darkness that characterized the Gentile world.
Before Solomon’s temple, God revealed his glory in the tent or tabernacle which Moses constructed. It was there that God would come, dwell, and meet with his people. “Let them make me a sanctuary,” the Lord spoke to Moses, “that I may dwell in their midst” (Ex. 25:8). It was there that “the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and [there that] the Lord would speak with Moses” (Ex. 33:9). It was there that “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle” (Ex. 40:34). The tabernacle was where the people of Israel would draw near to hear from God, to worship God, and to stand in his presence (cf. Lev. 9:23; Num. 14:10).
What was true of the tabernacle during the days of Israel’s sojourn was even more the case in the temple of Solomon. When the Ark of the Covenant was brought “to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the Most Holy Place, underneath the wings of the cherubim” (2 Chron. 5:7), “the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God” (2 Chron. 5:14).
To come straight to the point: throughout the Old Testament story of Israel’s history and relationship to God, the center of their spiritual life was the Temple. It was in that physical structure where God showed up. It was there that he spoke to his people. It was there that he made provision for the forgiveness of their sins. It simply can’t be emphasized strongly enough how fundamental and foundational the Temple was to the life of Israel.
It is against this preparatory backdrop that we read the stunning declaration of John that “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The word translated “dwelt” (skenoĊ) literally means “to pitch a tent” or “to live in a tabernacle” and unmistakably points back to the OT when God’s glory took up residence in the tent of Moses, the portable tabernacle, and eventually in Solomon’s temple.
John’s point is that God has now chosen to dwell with his people in a yet more personal way, in the Word who became flesh: in Jesus! The Word, Jesus of Nazareth, is the true and ultimate shekinah glory of God, the complete and perfect manifestation of the presence of God among his people. The place of God’s glorious dwelling is the flesh of his Son! The glory which once shined in the tent/tabernacle/temple of old, veiled in the mysterious cloud, was simply a foreglow, a mere anticipatory flicker, if you will, of that exceedingly excelling glory now embodied in the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ (cf. Col. 1:19).
God no longer lives in a tent or tabernacle built by human hands, nor will he ever again. God’s glorious manifest presence is not to be found in an ornate temple of marble, gold, and precious stones, but rather in Jesus. Jesus is the glory of God in human flesh, the one in whom God has finally and fully pitched his tent.
The point is that the temple of the Old Covenant was a type or foreshadowing or prefigurement of the glory of Christ. It was the place where the Law of Moses was preserved, of which Jesus is now the fulfillment. It was the place of revelation and relationship, where God met and spoke to his people. Now we hear God and see God and meet God in Jesus. It was the place of sacrifice, where forgiveness of sins was obtained. For that, we now go to Jesus. Israel worshipped and celebrated in the temple in Jerusalem. We now worship in spirit and truth, regardless of geographical locale (cf. John 4:20-26).
To meet God, to talk with God, to worship God, to receive forgiveness of sins from God, you no longer come to a building or a tent or a structure made with human hands. You come to Jesus! Jesus is the Temple of God!
But the story doesn’t end there. We, the church, are the body of Christ and therefore constitute the temple in which God is pleased to dwell. The shekinah of Yahweh now abides permanently and powerfully in us through the Holy Spirit. When Paul describes this in his letter to the Ephesians, he refers to Jesus Christ as the cornerstone, “in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph. 2:21-22). Simply put, God’s residence is neither a literal temple in Jerusalem nor simply heaven, but the Church, of which all of us who know Jesus are a part.
This formation of the temple is an on-going divine project, a continuous process (see also Eph. 4:15-16). Although it may seem strange to speak of a “building” experiencing continuous “growth”, Paul surely wants us to conceive of the church as an organic entity. Recall that Peter also refers to believers somewhat paradoxically as “living stones” (1 Peter 2:5)!
The practical, moral implications of this are stunning. Paul grounds his appeal to the Corinthians in this truth: “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple” (1 Cor. 3:16-17). In his plea for sexual purity, he again asks: “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
All this bring us to Paul’s consummate declaration in 2 Corinthians 6:16b: “For we are the temple of the living God”! To reinforce this point he conflates several OT texts (Lev. 26:11-12; Isa. 52:11; Ezek. 11:17; 20:34,41; 2 Sam. 7:14) which prophesied of a coming, end-times temple, one of which is Ezekiel 37:26-27 where God declares: “I will make a covenant of peace with them. It shall be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will set them in their land and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in their midst forevermore. My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Let me come straight to the point. Beginning with the incarnation and consummating in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, together with the progressive building of his spiritual body, the Church, God is fulfilling his promise of an eschatological temple in which he will forever dwell.
But what of the literal, physical temple in Jerusalem? This brings me to the politically explosive part of my message. Has it lost its spiritual significance in God’s redemptive purposes? To answer this we must return to Jesus’ words in Matthew 23-24.
In judgment against the Jewish people, the temple complex was abandoned by our Lord, both physically and spiritually, as he departed and made his way to the Mount of Olives. “Your house,” said Jesus, “is left to you desolate” (Mt. 23:38). It has thus ceased to be “God’s” house. When Jesus died and “the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom” (Mt. 27:51), God forever ceased to bless it with his presence or to acknowledge it as anything other than ichabod (the glory has departed).
Just as dramatically as Jesus had entered Jerusalem (Mt. 21:1-17, the so-called “Triumphal Entry”) and its temple, he now departs. This once grand and glorious house of God is now consigned exclusively to them (“See, your house is left to you desolate,” Mt. 23:38). The echoes of God’s withdrawal from the temple in Ezekiel’s vision reverberate in the words of our Lord (see Ezek. 10:18-19; 11:22-23). The ultimate physical destruction of the temple by the Romans in 70 a.d. is but the outward consummation of God’s spiritual repudiation of it. Jesus has now left, never to return. Indeed, the action of Jesus in departing the temple and taking his seat on the Mount of Olives (Mt. 24:3) recalls Ezekiel 11:23 where we read that “the glory of the Lord went up from the midst of the city and stood on the mountain that is on the east side of the city.”
This applies equally to any supposed future temple that many believe will be built in Jerusalem in the general vicinity where the Dome of the Rock now stands. It’s entirely possible, of course, that people in Israel may one day build a temple structure and resume their religious activities within it. The political and military implications of such, not to mention the religious furor it would provoke, are obvious.
Whether or not this will ever occur is hard to say, but if it does it will have no spiritual or theological significance whatsoever, other than to rise up as a stench in the nostrils of God. The only temple in which God is now and forever will be pleased to dwell is Jesus Christ and the Church, his spiritual body.
It would be a horrific expression of the worst imaginable redemptive regression to suggest that God would ever sanction the rebuilding of the temple. It would be tantamount to a denial that the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It would constitute a repudiation of the Church as the temple of God and thus an affront to the explicit affirmation of Paul in 2 Corinthians 6 and Peter in 1 Peter 2.
Finally, let’s not lose sight of the practical point Paul is making. It is because we as the church are the place of God’s presence in the world today that we must guard ourselves against any and every expression of idolatry. We are not simply another cultural institution or “social service meeting the felt needs” of our neighbors. “Instead, as the new covenant people of God, the church is the ‘family of God’ united by a common identity in Christ and gathered around her common worship and fear of ‘the Lord Almighty’” (Hafemann, 292
Look now more closely with me at the overall flow of Peter’s argument.
In God’s commitment to construct a spiritual house in which he may gloriously dwell and be worshipped, he has chosen the most precious and priceless gemstone imaginable: Jesus! Read v. 4! Again, read v. 6.
He is the living stone because, as we saw last week, he is alive! He has been raised from the dead. As paradoxical as it may sound, the cornerstone on which the church is built is alive. Most of us think of a stone as lifeless and inert and dead and lacking vitality. But in this metaphor Peter uses he stresses that this house, the church, the true temple of God, is pulsating with life; it is a vibrant and ever increasing organic reality that grows and expands by the power of the Holy Spirit. This is what you are!
That is Peter’s primary point in this passage, but there are several other things Peter touches on here that we can’t afford to ignore:
(1) Jesus Christ is “chosen and precious”.
He is chosen of the Father and precious! He is of immeasurable value to God the Father and must therefore be precious and of immeasurable value to us! Treasuring Christ is God’s response to Christ and therefore should be ours.
Think about it: God is omniscient. He knows everything. He sees not merely the outward appearance but the inner reality. Nothing is hidden from him. And above all that, he has limitless wisdom and discernment. He knows what is valuable and what isn’t. He knows what is of great worth and what is worthless. And according to these many OT texts in vv. 6-8 and the testimony of Peter himself, God says that Jesus, His Son, is infinitely precious.
If God embraces his Son as indescribably and incomparably precious, shouldn’t we also? One of the primary functions of the church, God’s temple, perhaps even the most important function of the church, is that we prize Jesus as precious so that all the world may see him as such! We exist, as vv. 9-10 make clear, to make known in all our lives, in our speech and works and jobs and families, we exist to make known how excellent he truly is.
Saving faith is more than mere intellectual agreement with doctrines. When I talk about believing in Jesus and trusting Jesus and having a personal relationship with Jesus I’m talking about our having a new heart and a new nature that cherishes him and desires him and adores him as precious above all else. Do you prize Jesus as the treasure of the universe? Is he worth more to you than everything else in the world? Are you willing to sacrifice everything to know him and to make him known?
Paul gave us a living example of this parable. He said in Philippians 3:7ff., “Whatever gain I had, I counted loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I might gain Christ.”
(2) Life in the body of Christ is an on-going, ever-increasing experience of growth and development in him. We “are being” built up in and for the sake of Jesus Christ
Read Eph. 2:19-22. Notice the “in whom” phrase with which both v. 21 and v. 22 open. The point is that this building, this “temple” functions only in relation to Jesus Christ. Or to use Peter’s language, any ministry or structure or organization or denomination or network that is built on any “cornerstone” other than Jesus is futile and false and of no lasting value.
Think more closely about Peter’s reference to us as the “living stones” that constitute this house. These stones are not just lying about on the ground, scattered, lifeless, and isolated. Neither are they heaped up, haphazardly, in some pile. Each living stone is placed by the Spirit into this house to function and serve and minister so that we all, as believer priests, might offer our lives as sacrifices to God.
The church is not a business or corporate organization or even a social gathering. It is the new temple, a spiritually alive body of believers who are being built up in God and as a dwelling place for God.
The main thing here is that we as a church are meant by Christ to be a corporate dwelling of God in the Spirit. It's true that each of us is the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). But there is more of God to be known and enjoyed than anyone can know in isolation. We are being fitted together, Paul says, for a temple and for a dwelling of God by his Spirit. There is a presence and power and manifestation of the Spirit of God meant to be known in this gathering of worship and in our house churches and in our D-groups that we do not know at any other time in isolation.
The stones are meant to so fit together in this house called Bridgeway that something whole, something more than a collection of individuals comes into being—a temple, a dwelling of God by his Spirit.
And how does all this happen? Well, Peter mentions one way, perhaps the primary way. It’s right there at in vv. 2-3 and in the opening of v. 4. READ!
We are being built up into this spiritual house, this temple, this place for God’s glorious dwelling, as we are nourished and strengthened by the milk of God’s truth as found in God’s Word. More than that, Peter says it is also “as” we “come to him,” i.e., to Jesus.
This “coming” to Jesus is not a reference to conversion; that initial coming to Christ. Peter is talking about a moment by moment, daily, hour-by-hour drawing near to Christ as a strong, living Lord.
If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord, then (v. 2) long for the Word of Christ the way a baby longs for milk. If you have tasted the kindness of the Lord, then (v. 4) come to Christ.
Coming to Christ is what you do when you long for his Word the way a baby longs for milk, and, longing for it, come to it and feed on it and find Christ in it. "They feast on the abundance of Thy house and Thou givest them drink from the river of Thy delights" (Psalm 36:8).
If we are going to be a spiritual temple for God's presence, and if we are going to be a holy priesthood, and if we are going to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God, then we must day-by-day, hour-by-hour come to Christ. We must taste his kindness by feeding on his Word: his promises, his commands, his teachings, his warnings, until we are so filled with him that his Word will dwell among us richly as we teach and admonish one anther with thankfulness in our hearts to God.
(3) We are a “holy priesthood” and offer up “spiritual sacrifices” to God through Christ. We’ll return to this in our study of vv. 9-10.
(4) Jesus is the touchstone for eternity. He is a stone to all, either for offense and stumbling or belief and glory.
In vv. 6-8 Peter refers to several OT texts, all of which describe a stone that in God’s purpose is chosen to become the cornerstone of the spiritual house that he is building. This stone is the foundation upon which God is building his church. The “stone” in each of those OT texts was prophetic of Jesus.
Now all that might sound sort of distant and abstract and far removed from you and your needs in life, but I assure you it isn’t. This is a metaphor, obviously, but one with deep and very personal meaning for each of us. Peter’s point is that Jesus is like a stone in every person’s way. He isn’t the sort of stone that you can walk around lest it bruise your foot, or that you can jump over, or even simply ignore. He is the sort of stone in God’s purposes that either you regard as useless and offensive and thus pick up and throw away, or you regard as chosen and precious and you build your life upon him.
If you find him precious and thus respond in faith, he is the cornerstone on which you build your life in community now and the rock on which you will stand without shame or disappointment in the ages to come. If you find him to be offensive and unappealing and respond to him in disobedience and unbelief, he is the stone over which you will stumble and fall, both now and forever.
There’s simply no escaping the clear message of Peter: one’s response to the Living Stone, Jesus, either rejecting him or coming to him, determines one’s relationship to God and one’s eternal destiny. See Acts 4:11-12.
Note well: for those who believe in him there is no shame, but only honor, and he will never let you down. You will never be disappointed in him and he will never fail you. Others will, but he won’t.
Now that is a great encouragement: if there were a way never to be disappointed or a way never to be ashamed, wouldn't you want to know that way? Peter says: the way is to trust what Jesus will be for you as God's "chosen and precious corner stone." God says, "You cannot lose. You cannot be disappointed in having done this. You cannot be put to shame." That is tremendously encouraging.
But there is a flip side as well, and the news for those who do not believe is as bad as the news is good for those who do believe. We read in v. 7, "But for those who do not believe, 'The stone that the builders rejected, has become the cornerstone.'" He's telling us that not believing in Jesus is like rejecting the stone that God has laid as the corner stone. God sends his Son to be the main stone in the building of his church, his people. But some do not trust him; they reject him.
But don’t think for a moment that this has any negative effect on God’s purposes. God is not defeated or thwarted in his goals by unbelief. The point is: If you believe on this stone, you can't lose; and if you disbelieve on him, you can't win. “Human unbelief does not frustrate or defeat the ultimate purposes of God. If God plans for Jesus to be the chief corner stone, humans can betray him, desert him, deny him, mock him, strike him, spit on him, hit him with rods, crown him with thorns, strip him, crucify him, and bury him, but they cannot stop him from being what God destined him to be, the Living Corner Stone of a great and glorious people” (Piper).
This is again what Peter means in v. 8b, a passage that many find shocking and unappealing. There he says that these “stumble because they disobey the word (i.e., they reject the gospel), as they were destined to do.”
“In other words if any proud unbeliever should boast and say, ‘I have chosen my own destiny—my own disobedience and my own stumbling—to show God that I have the final and ultimate say in my life; I have the power of ultimate self-determination; and I can frustrate the purposes of God with my own self-determining will’—if anyone boasts in that way, Peter responds with the awesome words: No, you can't; you only think you can. But you will discover sooner or later that whatever you choose—and mark this, your choice is real and crucial—whatever you choose,” (Piper) to this you were “destined”.
Now why does Peter teach such a thing? Why does he even bring it up? The reason is for our encouragement. What he means is that human choices cannot finally destroy the temple of God. They are not ultimate. A person can reject the chosen and precious Stone of Jesus Christ. But if they do, two things are still true: the stone will not be rejected by God, but will still be put in the place of honor and glory forever and ever as the chief corner stone; and the one who rejects the stone will never be able to boast over God that he frustrated God's ultimate design for his temple. Even unbelievers fulfill God's appointments. He cannot be defeated. He triumphs even in his own rejection.
Newsweek issue of April 13,2009 – Cover story: “The Decline and Fall of Christian America.” Statistics rise and fall; religious trends come and go; faith surges and it recedes. But through it all, nothing will hinder God as he builds his temple, his spiritual house, his church, no, nothing, not even the unbelief and disobedience of the majority of our nation or any nation on the earth!
You say to me, “But Sam, how can those who reject the gospel and stumble be morally responsible for their choice if they were already ‘destined’ to do so?”
Make no mistake: they make the choice; they choose to disobey; they reject the chosen and precious cornerstone. Their stumbling over the stone who is Jesus is not some inadvertent accident in which they never see the stone and unintentionally trip over it. No, they see it and spurn it. They refuse to cherish and embrace this stone as precious.
Cf. Acts 2 and 4 for an example of God’s sovereign appointment or predestination being compatible with human accountability. Their guilt is not diminished simply because their deeds were ordained.
Peter wants his readers to know that evil in this world is not outside of God’s control. God still reigns, even over those who reject him.
The fixed purpose of God is fulfilled as much in the disbelief and destruction of the non-elect as it is in the belief and salvation of the elect.