If Jesus is the cornerstone, then the believers are the stones that are laid on the stone in order to build up a Temple. Peter compares the people of God to the stones that make up a “spiritual house.” If Jesus is like the chief cornerstone (in some ways like the foundation and in other ways like the capstone), then those who are in Christ are the other components of that building. This is not too far from Paul’s “body of Christ” metaphor, in which Christ is the head and believers are the members of the body.
Peter describes God’s people with Temple language in verse five. The people of God are a “spiritual house.” The text does not say “temple of the Holy Spirit,” the metaphor Paul used in 1 Corinthians, but it is not quite the same. Any Jewish person hearing the phrase “spiritual house” in the first century would have immediately thought of the Temple in Jerusalem, and even in the Diaspora there was a certain pride in the Temple as God’s dwelling place. Buy not all would agree that the Temple was a real, spiritual house.
There are several well-known critiques of the Temple, including the Temple Action by Jesus just before his crucifixion. Jesus called the activity around the Temple as a “den of thieves” and threatened to tear the Temple down and rebuild it in three days. We know now that he was talking about his body and the coming resurrection, but there were many who saw this as an attack on the Temple itself.
Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 is often seen as critical of the Temple and the aristocratic priesthood. Stephen claimed that there is simple no need for a “spiritual house” in the present age, and he was lynched for this attack! The Qumran community in particular considered the activity of the Temple to be corrupt. The community seems to have considered their activity near the Dead Sea as a kind of replacement for Temple worship until the Temple was cleansed by the coming messiah.
In the same way, the original readers would have understood “holy priesthood” in the light of the Temple. In fact, the priests were the only ones who permitted to offer sacrifices at the temple. Peter describes all believers as a “holy priesthood,: not just those members of the tribe of Levi or the family of Aaron. The high priest was to come from the line of Zadok, but after the Maccabean Revolt the Hasmoneans served as priest-kings, despite only being from the tribe of Levi. Since they were not Zadokites, the Qumran community rejected them proper high priests.
At the time this letter was written, the high priests were appointed to the office by the Sanhedrin. The high priest Ananus son of Ananus was removed from office in A.D. 63 because he executed James the brother of Jesus (Josephus, Antiq., 20.9.1). The high priest Joshua ben Gamla obtained the office in 64 after his wealthy wife bribed the right people; the final high priest, Phannias ben Samuel, was not even in the priestly line, but was appointed by the Zealots. Josephus said that he was a “mere rustic “and “a man not only unworthy of the high priesthood, but that did not well know what the high priesthood was.” (Josephus, JW, 4.151-158).
The believer is superior to the Temple priest because they are able to bring “acceptable sacrifice to God” because they are offering them “through Jesus.” Again, if there were some Jewish groups that considered the Temple and the priesthood corrupt, then can their sacrifices be acceptable to God? If, for example, the high priest was not actually holy when he brought the Day of Atonement sacrifice (on the wrong day even!), is it possible that God did not accept that sacrifice?
All of this language sounds like Peter is describing the present people of God as a kind of New Israel, but it is not the case that Peter is saying that the present Church (the Body of Christ) replaces the old Israel. For a Jewish writer and reader this new priesthood and temple service replaces the old one that was ineffective. The believers in Asia Minor in the first century are now all priests that are capable of offering acceptable sacrifices to God.
it seems to me that Peter may not have been referring to an entirely new Israel but to a restored version of the old Israel. With the resurrection of Christ there were many changes with how to worship, such as the new priesthood and temple service. Some may have taken it too literally when they heard this just like those who took it to literally when Christ said that he would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, meaning his own body but everyone else thought that he meant the actual temple itself. There is never any kind of new Israel, just a revised one.
First, the first sentence in paragraph 2 doesn’t make sense. Don’t mean to be picky, just thought you might want to know.
Onto the actual post. It is worth bringing up the question of whether the church has become another “temple” of the old days, or if it still remains the same to this day. Jobes outlines Peter by bringing up how similar the modern age is to the pagan issues of Rome, and perhaps that can even be applied to the church. When churches focus on being successful businesses and having the most people and largest buildings, is that different or similar to the Temple of Israel?
To me, this passage seems to speak of this idea that we, the believers, make up the new Temple of Israel. The idea of Jesus being the cornerstone and us being the blocks may not specifically be referencing some kind of new temple, but it is worth remembering that Jesus and other believers should be what builds our temples, regardless of the existence of some spiritual temple. When a church loses that cornerstone…is it still a church?
I have never thought of the body of believers as living stones before. As you mentioned, I have always thought of believers as the body of Christ. The metaphor of believers being living stones that build the temple or church with Christ as the foundation is interesting and understandable. Christian believers are the church, instead of the building which is commonly viewed as the church. The church is created by the believers and through the believers. It is heartbreaking to think that Stephen understood this truth and was martyred for the faith because of this belief that was foreign during his time. Often times in society church is mistaken for the building, instead of the people. The church is only a place a meeting, whereas the people are the ones who carry Christ within themselves and when all the believers are gathered together, either at the church building or not, that is when the church is connected together. Christ is often referred to as the cornerstone, where Karen Jobes in “Letters to the Church” is the part of the architecture that holds the piece that is being built together. Christ holds the believers together and unites them, but the believers make up and create the atmosphere of the church.
I really like this stone and building analogy. If Jesus is the cornerstone, He is the very thing our faith depends on and is built upon. This has a couple of implications. The first is that our faith and salvation depends on Christ. This clearly points back to the crucifixion and shows us that the only way to the Father is through Christ. There is no other way. Just as the cornerstone provides somewhat of a foundation for which the other stones are built, so is Christ the foundation for our faith and relationship with Christ.
The second implication that I believe comes from this analogy of Christ as the cornerstone is that He provides a model or precedent by which the bricks or stones get placed in order to create a building or structure of any kind. Christ is our example, He sets the precedent by which we are to live our lives and grow in our relationships with God. Without His example, we would have a terribly hard time knowing what to do or how to live our lives. It is like a building without a blueprint. Or, we could put something in place of Christ as our cornerstone and live our lives in accordance with that. This could cause a faulty foundation and a poor structure.
At the end of the day we need to realize the importance of Christ and what He’s done as well as His proper place in our lives.
As I mentioned in the article of be holy, in the first book of Peter, he sets forth three distinctive marks every Christian should follow that first: “Be holy” (1 Peter 1:14-16), second: “Be reverently fearful” (1 Peter 1:17-19), and third: “Be priests” (1 Peter 2:4-5).
The term living stone in 1 Peter 2:5 is used as a metaphor to illustrate the secure and intimate relationship believers have with Jesus. We know that the name Peter means “rock” and the Catholic Church tells us that Jesus meant he was going to build his church upon Peter. But Jesus himself is the rock. The foundation of God’s building is his Son, Jesus Christ, the living Stone. The living stones, in turn are believers who come to Jesus and place their lives upon this foundation. The living stone is precious, but some men reject the living stone in order to build their lives their own way, not God’s way.
And every believer who comes to Christ is like a stone built upon that rock, Jesus. That rock upon which God is lay down the foundation called the church. God is building us up as a priesthood, as a people dedicated and offered to God, special and holy, set apart for God. God want us to declare to the world what he has done for us. As we do so, we offer to God a sweet-smelling offering and a savoir of worship to him. Our Lord, Jesus Christ, the foundation stone, is alive forevermore and will never crumble. He will support us eternally.
When talking about stones, one must turn their attention to Jesus Christ, who is referred to as the cornerstone. While Jesus is the cornerstone, also known as the foundation, James states that the believers in Jesus are the stones that create the spiritual temple upon the foundation or cornerstone. If believers are stone to the spiritual temple, then the more believers together create a stronger structure. On this matter Jesus states, “where two or three gather in my name, there I am with them” (Matt. 18:20), showing God is present when his believers are gathered together. Therefore, all believers should seek unity amongst other believers, to build a single temple based on the foundation of Jesus Christ. Although there may be parts of the temple that have different beliefs, they all have the same foundation, Jesus Christ. Much like the members of the Body of Christ come together to make a functioning Church, under the head, Jesus Christ. These same believers need to come together to make a spiritual temple with Jesus being the foundation. For the temple appears to be the structure for the Body of Christ. The temple is formed through unity amongst believers, whereas the Body of Christ is formed when believers with different strengths and gifts come together to help each other. Thus, believers stand together.
I had never thought of Christians as living stones, I knew that we have been reborn through Christ’s death and resurrection but hadn’t thought about the fact that we are part of the new Temple or home that is being built. Christ is the cornerstone and all new believers have piled onto that to create a new home. Jobes talks about how Peter talks about how a Christian must come to belief willingly. She also talks about how we are coming around the cornerstone to build unity and a purpose of believers, that is to help others come to Christ. Christ was rejected and suffered and because we are called as living stones like Christ, we will also suffer and be rejected, although this is not the eternal home we are looking forward to. Peter also calls believers a part of the “holy priesthood” that follows from Jewish beliefs, this may be an illusion to how we are creating the new Temple from the old. It is interesting to think about this because it went against the Sanhedrin who were the people to appoint the high priests. So Peter writing that all believers were part of a “holy priesthood” must have been like a slap in their face as this told them that maybe they weren’t as important as they thought they were and that maybe they weren’t the highest authority on the Temple(or the new Temple being created as they thought.
For the Jews, it was so foreign and even blasphemous to consider sinful humans and the Gentiles as the Holy Temple or the “spiritual house” of God. To be the ones God chose to be the living stones (2:5), the author of 1 Peter is comparing believers to Jesus who is the ultimate Living Stone. Although this seems like an odd name for Jesus, it is easily explained when you flip through the Bible and see passages such as Psalm 188:22-23, Isaiah 8:14-15, and Matthew 21:42 that refer to Christ as a stone. Jobes states that this name is given because “he is living because of the resurrection, and he is a Stone because he is the first and foundation human being in God’s great plan of redemption” (284). Therefore, Peter then says because we share in Christ with his sufferings, we will also share in his resurrection and life. Thus, God uses us, who are living in the new life, to build his Kingdom and church.
In the first part, you had made the analyzation that we are like stones in Gods house and God is like the chief cornerstone, it reminds me of another Phrase I heard about humans’ interaction with God. What someone said was that God is the Master Welder, who can weld anything he wants, and make it as big or as small as he would life, some projects take more work and patience than some other projects, but in the sense, God is the welder and his people is the iron, or the materials that are used to create something with. Every day, God wakes up as we do, and he molds us into a new project, or a new creation every single day. God has 7 billion welding forms and each and every project is different. Some welding projects take decades to build, some take months, but we should always know that the welder never quits or is too frustrated to keep working, instead he uses more strength, uses other materials, uses a bigger hammer to firmly create what we were set out to be, and ultimately after I heard this story it all made the most sense to me.
“The believer is superior to the Temple priest because they are able to bring “acceptable sacrifice to God” because they are offering them “through Jesus.” Again, if there were some Jewish groups that considered the Temple and the priesthood corrupt, then can their sacrifices be acceptable to God” (Long, 2018)? This statement undergirds the Christian identity within the true grace of God, with Jesus Christ exposited as a “living stone.” The living stone metaphor embodies how Christ is the chief cornerstone of the temple, the first stone in Greco-Roman society laid down upon which other stones were constructed. According to Jobes (2011), “The image of Christ as the cornerstone in 1 Peter should be understood in reference to first-century Roman architecture and not in modern terms. . . Today many public buildings have a cornerstone on which is engraved the year the building was erected or some honorific inscription” (p. 319). This metaphor is lost today since the cornerstone is commonly the last stone laid for a building. However, the entire scheme reminds me of Revelation 22:13 (ESV), “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Much like the cultural variance of a cornerstone, Jesus is both our firm foundation and upon whom we ultimately place our lasting faith as the End comes. The hymnal “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less” immediately comes to mind when considering the grounding and institution Jesus as the cornerstone provides.
The idea of a solid “rock” is ultimately based on Peter, upon whom Jesus says He will build His church (Matt 16:18). Thus, the living stone is an offshoot ideal, “rejected by people but chosen by and precious to God” (Jobes, 2011, p. 318). Jesus is definitionally the rejected stone (Matt 21:42; Mark 12:10-12; Luke 20:16-18) and simultaneously the most important component of the body of Christ (Jobes, 2011, p. 318). The birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus constitutes the “laying” of the stone which has been “plumbed with justice and righteousness and to which, Peter says, all who come to Christ are joined as they are placed into God’s grand building project” (Jobes, 2011, p. 319). Suffering need not scare Christians, for they are constructed and consecrated to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable, pleasing, and palatable to God (1 Peter 2:5). Disobeying the gospel message results in one tripping and falling over the living stone, and those who reject the stone for their projects has great consequence for the temple which will extend all around the world, spreading God’s word to the very outskirts of the globe.
Jesus is the center of everything and all of us here on earth. I like how it is described by Long (2018) that since Jesus is the cornerstone, then we are the stones in the pathway that leads to Jesus. This is important to think about because those who do not know Jesus follow the pathway that we lead to be able to have a relationship with him, it is kind of like we are the stepping stones to God which I like to have thoughts about. We as believers in Christ are described by Peter as a spiritual house (v. 5) which indicates that we are all who make up the kingdom of God. It can be understood that Peter is specifically stating that the followers of Christ are the ones who make up the spiritual foundations of faith in Christ and this can be beneficial for others to come to Christ.
I think it is important to look at when Peter describes all believers as a holy priesthood (Long, 2018) because, in verse 2:1-3, it states that even though there are sins in mankind we are to be stronger than those sins. After all, we have the love of the Lord. I believe that it is important to look at the context before verse 5 simply because there is a lot of information that can conclude that we are like stone and that Jesus is the cornerstone. We as Christians are to give spiritual influence to others to take our knowledge of the Lord and to share it with those who are not a stone in the kingdom of God.