Christ Our Cornerstone 1 Peter 2:4-8

Who am I? This seems to be the question of the day today. Particularly as we are so entrenched in a highly individualistic society. More often than not, it seems that the answer given is, “whoever you want to be.” And so, we define ourselves, largely on what we do. I am dad. I am a mother. I am a son. I am a daughter. I am a builder, a nurse, a doctor, teacher, farmer, or lawyer. Whatever it may be, they are all about what we have made of ourselves.

But all that does is serve to point us inward into ourselves and if we only turn inward to find who we are, then our identity is like a mirage I the desert, deceivingly close but forever eluding. Because we never truly fulfil what it is that we define ourselves as. This is because fundamentally at our core, when we seek to define ourselves in this way, it will always be marred by sin and so will always end in despair.

This question, who am I? was one that was undoubtedly on the minds of the Christians Peter wrote to. He addressed them at the beginning of the book as those who are “elect exiles,” that is those called by God who are displaced and adrift. Like that of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob who lived in tents as they dwelt in a land that was promised to them but did not yet possess. Or the Israelites who had been taken from their home in the Promised Land to live in Babylon, these Christians were adrift among people who were not theirs’s. They were subject to trials and ridicule because like sojourners, they did not belong.

This feeling of not belonging is uncomfortable. I’m sure we’ve all felt that. Whether it’s starting a new job, or school, or moving to a new city or country. We feel a real tangible sense that we do not belong. We are fundamentally different. In the case of worldly change, it’s because we haven’t conformed to that culture.

But with these Christians, and with us, that sense of not belonging is because we have been fundamentally changed so that we can never become fully comfortable in the culture. This means that these Christians here stuck out, they didn’t participate in the standard Saturday activities that focused around temple worship.

We may go for a BBQ at the park or the beach with our friends on a Saturday, and we’ll pick up our sausages from the supermarket and go on our merry way. But for these Christians to do that, to hang out with their friends, meant to swing by the local meat market at the temple to pick up their steaks that had just been sacrificed to the local God’s. They couldn’t do that. They were outside the culture. They were cultural aliens.

Peter wrote to encourage them in such circumstances. And at the core of this encouragement to them is of identity. They have been called by God who by His power has caused them to be born again, who has ransomed them from the futile ways inherited from their forefathers by the precious blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.

So, they do not live in those ways that they once did, they now live a new life that is marked by holiness as the One who called them is holy. In contrast to an identity that is based in what they do or don’t do, the answer to the question of who am I? is whose am I? Identity is found not in ourselves, but outside us.

This is the same question that frames us now. Whose am I? We are God’s, in Christ. Contrary to being merely wanderers with nowhere to go, like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and like Israel, we are sojourning exiles on the way. We live not as hopeless individuals, but as a hope-filled people of God. And as such, we have a duty and an obligation, but it is an obligation that first flows from our identity. This is going to be our focus for this evening, which is that our lives would be offered as holy sacrifices, pleasing to the Lord through Christ, the Cornerstone.

This will be covered under three headings, Our Identity, Our honour, and Our Obligation.

Our Identity

To be deemed an exile can be somewhat disorientating. As I mentioned earlier, we are at odds with the culture. We don’t fit in. For the Christian, this can mean mockery and ridicule as these Christians were getting. It can also be accompanied by shame.

This was particularly the case in Roman times. Society operated on a scale of honour to shame. To have and keep honour in this society was to participate fully in it. There’s an element of this today, particularly as our society moves further away from Christian morality, not toeing the line becomes more obvious, and with it we slide down the scale from what is honourable to what is shameful.

It can also feel unsure. With shame can come the feeling that the things we base our lives on are shaky. But Peter wants to encourage us that despite how we feel due to ridicule, or what we are told, the basis for our identity is a sure foundation. Our status and our identity are based upon the status and identity of Christ.

Read vs 4-5b.

Head

Notice here where Peter locates the identity of a Christian, as Christ is a living stone, those of us who come to Him are also living stones! Not only that but we are following Him, being made into a spiritual house, the dwelling place of God!

It is wonderful that Peter here calls Christ the living stone after which we are made. In the Gospels Peter is the one who professes that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Jesus replied to him,

Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

Some have taken this to mean that Peter is the rock upon whom the Church is built. And though the grammar can be argued this way, Peter is hardly a sure foundation. Was Peter not the one who opposed Jesus when going to the cross? Was he not the one who sought to bring about Christ’s kingdom by the power of the sword? Was he also not the one who though brave in the face of swords, crumbled in fear before a slave girl, denying his Lord and saviour?

So, what a fantastic thing it is here that Peter declares that it is Christ who is the stone, the rock upon whom we are all built. Blessed then is everyone who follows after Peter, declaring that it is Christ who is the Son of the living God.

Heart

What surer a foundation do we need than this? What greater of an identity? Our identity is not found in ourselves, in whom there is sin, but in Christ who is the Son of Living God! This Christ, by His death has purified us of our sin, He has washed us clean. This Christ not only died but was resurrected and now lives and reigns.

Remember vs 4 of chapter 1? It is through this identity that we have a living hope that is kept in heaven, it is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading. An inheritance here on earth will perish, be defiled, and fade. But our hope is found in our identity with Christ.

As the Israelites looked forward in hope while they were in Babylon, to their return to the Promised Land where their identity lay. As Abraham looked at the land of Canaan promised by God to Him, knowing that this was an image and type of the heavenly city and New Creation.

So, we also live with hope in our hearts, knowing that as surely as Christ was raised from the dead, so we also will be raised from the dead and that we now live as living stones modeled after Christ, to be made into God’s dwelling place at the return of Christ.

The hope for every believer is this.

We see the promise of the realization of this identity at the end of the book of Revelation in chapter 21.

Read Revelation 21:1-4; 9-11; 22-25.

This hope of a New Heavens and New Earth is the hope of every believer, for here man will dwell with God and God with man.

Our Honour

Contrary to what society and culture may tell us about our identity, that it is shameful, Peter says to us that belief in Christ is the highest honour.

Read vs 6-8

Head

How could anyone come away from the promises given to us in Revelation and conclude that there was any shame there? The beginning of the passage we read comes from Isaiah 65 where the Israelites were facing immanent exile to Babylon for their sins. They were to be punished. But that punishment was only momentary because God promised to them that though they suffer now, God will make all things new in the new creation.

Though Israel failed to obtain the promises of God, God will still fulfil them. They failed to make the little portion of land in the middle east God’s permanent dwelling place, but God promises to them that His dwelling place will encompass the whole earth.

He said to them earlier through His prophet Isaiah in chapter 28 of that book that despite their sin, God is laying a foundation, a cornerstone. This cornerstone will be the salvation of Zion and the way God fulfils His promises, and God promised to them that anyone who believes in Him will not be put to shame. Why? Because as Peter tells us here, that cornerstone is Christ and He is the one who has begun the New Creation that is promised.

Heart

Note here the contrast that the Gospel sets up. What is deemed foolishness and shameful by the world, to God is wisdom.

As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1:18-24

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God… it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. 22 For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, 23 but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, 24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Peter’s encouragement to these Christians is ours also, “the honour is for you who believe.”

Hearts

But those who do not believe stumbled over Christ. He may be the foundation for the household of God, but to those who reject Him, He is the cause for a stubbed toe. Why is it that Christ causes such offense?

I think it is found in the call of the Gospel. We desire in our hearts to seek to earn our way to God, or to follow our own sinful desires. Either way, what Christ says is offensive. To the one who wants to earn their way to God by doing good works but not believing in God’s promises, are like the rich young ruler who will go away sorrowful. For to truly obey the ends of the law is to forsake yourself and love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind, and strength and to love your neighbour as yourself.

But this is impossible to do on our own so, Christ says to come to Him and be cleaned. The one who loves their sin is offended by that same call. They love their sin, to deny themselves is to deny what makes them happy.

And so, people reject Christ, the cornerstone.

But the offer is set before all people and before you now. There is honour for the people of God because they believe in Christ, the cornerstone. There is honour because God dwells in you because of Christ. The honour isn’t from us, it is not by what we have done, but what Christ has done. Despite your sin, God has covered you in the blood of Christ.

Believe in this now, the promises of God are true and steadfast in Christ. There is great honour in the blood of the Lamb who was slain.

Our Obligation

As those called out by God, who are being made into the dwelling place of God, we have an obligation to fulfil. Our identity requires something of us. As God has saved you and covered you in the blood of the Lamb, now you offer yourselves back to God as a holy sacrifice.

Read vs 5

The identity that that Peter says we have, comes with and obligation attached.

Like what God said to Israel at Sinai in Exodus 19,

You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself… you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; 6 and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

He also says this to us now. As those claimed by God, we now live lives in service to Him. We are to offer Spiritual sacrifices to God.

This was the obligation put on Israel, they were to do what Paul says in Romans 12:1,

to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. 2 Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

But they failed. At the beginning of Isaiah’s case against Israel he says to them,

Read Isaiah 1:4

It wasn’t that they were failing to obey the letter of the law,

Read 1:11

No, what was required was,

Read vs 17

It is this that they failed in.

It is this that is good in God’s eyes. This is what it means offer spiritual sacrifices. It is easy to offer up a burnt offering or to come to Church. It is far harder to have a heart after the heart of Christ. To love those whom He loved.

Heart

But thanks be to God, He has not left us to pursue this on our own. Peter says that all our working now for God is purified by Christ. He says that these sacrifices are offered through Christ. God takes what is impure in your actions and sanctifies them by Christ.

Though our works may be as dirt, because Christ has redeemed us, and purifies us, and has gone ahead of us as our Perfect High Priest, as the author to the Hebrews tells us, We can freely, in gratitude offer up all that we have to God, and know that it is accepted. Not only is it accepted, but God is pleased with you.

Dear sinner, tossed about by the waves of life, burdened by sin, scorned by the world, you who feel as though you wander without a home. When you believe in Christ, all that you are is wrapped up in Him, you are found in Him as your identity. And God is pleased with you. What a wonderful, beautiful thing that is. The God Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, is pleased with you.

So, whose are you? You are God’s in Christ. His dwelling place in which He delights to dwell in. Your life is bound up in His and now you can walk in newness of life, knowing that all honour is yours not because of your works, but Christ’s who is the same today, yesterday, and forever. Amen.

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. 2016. Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles.