Growing as a Temple - 1 Peter 2:4-8

Introduction

Peter has exhorted us to a vital new birth life, secured by the resurrection, focused on the eternal hope of glory, sustained by joy, and marked by rigorous personal discipline in mind, in heart, and in behavior. As we grow in our personal devotion to God in Christ, we must also grow in our corporate devotion to one another. This takes the form of fervent, sacrificial, familial love as seen at the end of chapter 1.

Having thus established sufficiently our regenerative new birth, Peter moves on to describe for us and exhort to us growth in this life begun at new birth.

Allow me to illustrate if I may.

My niece Sadie is coming up on four months old. Earlier this week I was looking at some pictures of her just days after she was born. As I looked at those photos and compared them to what she looks like now, I couldn’t help but be struck by her growth. Just a few months and she has doubled in weight.

This is the growth that Peter has in mind as he turns the corner into chapter 2. Christians start as babies in chapter 1, but they do not stay there. Peter therefore has these dynamics of spiritual growth in mind as he moves into chapter 2. Peter jumps off the springboard of 1:22-23 throughout chapter 2, as he prescribes distinctly corporate means of growth in Godliness. In other words, growth happens together. Growth happens in community. Growth happens in the church.

Last week we considered the first way we grow. Peter exhorts us to put away toxins from our spiritual diet. This is a spiritual elimination diet. Remove malice and hypocrisy and deceit and envy and slander. What’s left? Interestingly, it’s not what we would initially think of as the opposite of these sins to be put off. Rather, Peter exhorts us to consume the Word. For the Christian, God’s Word is a spiritual superfood, and consuming it will cause you to grow in respect to salvation. This is the key idea for Peter, coming out of verse 2: growth in respect to salvation. He will return to that idea tonight, and at other points through the letter.

Therefore, Word-consumption is the means of spiritual growth for the believer. Pulpit Word-consumption and private Word-consumption are the two prevailing principles of spiritual growth.

Peter now turns his attention to the goal of growth. As we grow spiritually by feating on the pure milk of the Word, we grow into something. Perhaps more accurately, we are being built into something. It is that end goal that captures Peter’s attention tonight.

Tonight I will seek to prove to you from this text the following maxim:

The goal of spiritual growth in the word is the formation of corporate, Christ-centered, unified new temple, in which acceptable and sacrificial worship is offered to God.

Peter is proving to his readers and to us that this is a good, true, and beautiful outcome of spiritual growth, and if your spiritual growth does not lead you here, it is neither growth, nor is it spiritual.

I intend to orient our study tonight around the three major verbs in the sentence that spans verse 4 and 5. We will consider Coming to the Stone, Building Up the House, and Offering Up the Sacrifices. We will conclude our study by examining the Old Testament proofs that Peter offers to support his proposition.

Coming to the Stone

The first part of this goal of spiritual growth involves coming to Christ. While Christ is not mentioned explicitly here, we can can infer that Lord in verse 3 must refer to Christ, Him refers back to Lord, and both are synonymous with the living stone of verse 4.

Let’s consider the identity of Him to whom we are to come, in 4 parts:

He is a stone

He is living

He is rejected by men

He is choice and precious in the sight of God

He is a stone

This idea ought not to be foreign to any of you who have been with us in Romans, as Paul uses this very same terminology and the very same Old Testament quotes at the end of Romans 9 to prove to us why the Jews suffered the plight they did concerning Christ. Peter now uses the same terminology but in a different way.

As a side note to the primary discussion, I think it’s important to note here that by his use of Psalm 118 and Isaiah 8 and 28 here in this way, a way that is significantly different from the way in which Paul uses it in Romans 9, Peter is teaching us that there is often more true meaning embedded in a text of Scripture than we may give it credit for. The Old Testament especially is rife with complex, deep and profound meaning that takes slow and careful study to unpack. Therefore, Peter would have us affirm that there are often and even usually layers of meaning, implication, and application in a Biblical text. That is the beauty of divine inspiration.

Returning to Peter, I won’t go into the rich Biblical theology of the stone picture pattern. If you would like that treatment, feel free to visit my website where all my notes are available for free and you can review the different uses and types of stones in view in the Old Testament. Here Peter has a specific usage of the word stone in mind, and that is the altar/temple/worship site usage. A few weeks ago in Romans we said that , in keeping with Isaiah 8 and 28 and Psalm 118, Christ is the first and primary piece of the perfect building. To be more specific, He is the first and primary piece of the new altar and the new temple. His rejected-and-exalted life, brought back from death, will now be the new site of true Israel’s worship.

Peter brings this doctrine into sharp relief: Christ is the cornerstone of the new temple.

He is living

This is new material regarding stones, at least for our study. The life of the stone is not dealt with by Paul or Isaiah or the Psalmist, nor is it addressed directly by Christ when He used this terminology in connection with the parable of the vine grower.

Peter’s intent in describing the stone as living is two-fold.

First, in literary terms, he is establishing the metaphorical existence of the stone. It is not a physical stone, which has no life in itself, but is a figurative stone.

In this way Peter demonstrates his own hermeneutic and pulls back the veil of his own understanding of Christ and of the Old Testament. Peter attaches himself to a typological, figural method of Biblical interpretation and thereby affirms it’s validity for these believers and for us. For Peter, stones are not just stones. The cornerstones of Solomon’s temple existed and were recorded by the divinely inspired Chronicler for this purpose: to demonstrate a spiritual reality to the physical senses, namely, the reality of Christ’s primacy and first importance in the life of the New Covenant temple: the church.

Second, in theological terms, he is reminding these believers that the dynamic, vibrant, vital life of the temple which we will see in verse 5 is to be found exclusively in the life of the stone. Peter has in mind numerous episodes of Jesus’ ministry in which our Savior described His own life and livelihood. Peter appropriates and applies that here.

Peter invokes John 5:25-29

John 5:25–29 NASB95

“Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. “For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself; and He gave Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of Man. “Do not marvel at this; for an hour is coming, in which all who are in the tombs will hear His voice, and will come forth; those who did the good deeds to a resurrection of life, those who committed the evil deeds to a resurrection of judgment.

We observe that the life and livelihood of the persons of the Trinity is intrinsic to their existence. As God the Father has life, so God the Son has life, and this life is their essential being. Therefore, Christ can say with confidence, not that He has life, or lives life, but that He is life, just as He spoke to Martha at the death of Lazarus:

John 11:25 NASB95

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,

We will return to the life of the stone in a few moments.

He is rejected by men

Peter alludes to Psalm 118:22 here in verse 4 before quoting it outright in verse 7. The stone is rejected by men. We need look no further than the collaboration of Rome and Jerusalem in the crucifixion of Christ to see with crisp clarity the reality of Christ’s rejection by men. Such rejection still exists in our world today, and a survey of the theological and philosophical landscape yields a profoundly disturbing picture of this rejection.

The Barna Group surveyed Americans around the time of Resurrection Sunday in 2015, and those results show us a stark picture of the theological landscape of our own backyard.

Shockingly, 8% of Americans believe that Jesus was not a real person. They assert that he is product of Jewish legend, like Hercules or Poseidon. This means that 2.5m Americans don’t even acknowledge that Jesus was a real, historical figure. This is astonishing, and more than an example of theological illiteracy, this serves as an example of the baldfaced abandonment of truth that is wreaking havoc in our world today. Regardless of what you acknowledge and affirm about the identity and works and mission of Jesus, you must set aside all reason along with significant amounts of verified historical records to hold the position that Jesus did not exist. Yet, 2.5m Americans have rejected His historical existence altogether.

With that in mind, the next set of statistics ought not to surprise you as much, but will nevertheless reinforce my assertion that Christ is still rejected by men in our day.

The Barna Group discovered that 44% of Americans reject the proposition that Jesus is divine. The doctrine of Christ’s divinity has been contested for millennia, and was so important to the church fathers that Nicholas of Myra landed a blow on the jaw of Arius of Alexandria for denying it.

The church has historically confessed

Historic Creeds and Confessions Nicene Creed

one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

Yet, despite the witness of Scripture and of church history, we find ourselves in a culture that has utterly rejected Christ as God.

The Barna Group released other finds that are of a similar level of concern, but all bear witness to the timeless truth that Peter proclaims here: Christ was, is, and will continue to be rejected by men in their sin.

The next step in this logical progression, according to John 17:1-2, is that the life of the Triune Godhead would be imputed to all those whom the Father has given to the Son.

John 17:1–2 NASB95

Jesus spoke these things; and lifting up His eyes to heaven, He said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You, even as You gave Him authority over all flesh, that to all whom You have given Him, He may give eternal life.