"TO WHOM COMING AS UNTO A LIVING STONE"
“[p. 454] TO WHOM COMING AS UNTO A LIVING STONE”
The writing of this epistle had in view the assuring of the minds of those addressed as the Jews of the dispersion, the Jews scattered abroad. It was not written to the Jews living in the land, but to those scattered in the various countries, and the object of the apostle was to assure them that that which the nation had lost in a material way, faith had more than gained in a spiritual way.
The Jews had virtually lost everything both as to nationality and religion. All was gone in their being scattered abroad from their own land, and the same thing remains true today. This was spoken of prophetically by Hosea (chapter 3: 4), “The children of Israel shall abide many days without a king, and without a prince, and without a sacrifice, and without an image, and without an ephod, and without teraphim”. God intended to leave them for a time without false god or true God. That prediction has been fulfilled, but for faith a great deal more was secured in a spiritual way than had been lost in a material way, and it is this that is taken up in the beginning of the second chapter. The apostle puts before them the idea of a spiritual house and a holy priesthood. They had lost the original house and priesthood identified with the temple and Jerusalem, but he says, “Ye ... are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood”.
They had suffered also the deprivation of national privilege, but the apostle brings before them, “Ye are ... an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light”.
[p. 455] Christendom has got back to the material idea. When people in these days talk about the house of God they usually mean a building. God has not returned to that, nor will He now return to it. He rejected it. The witness of Stephen was, “Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?” But there is “a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices”; and, on the other hand, “an holy nation, a peculiar people” to shew forth God’s praises. I need hardly say that that is what God intended Israel to be in the world; it comes out in the Psalms, “Blessed is the nation whose God is Jehovah; and the people whom he hath chosen for his own inheritance”; that was God’s mind about Israel. It will be fulfilled in the future, but Israel is set aside for the time being.
Now I want to bring before you that what is spoken of here in regard to the Jews is equally true of all christians; it is spoken to Jews for the reason that Peter was the apostle of the circumcision. The Lord in John 21 gave Peter a special charge in regard to His sheep and lambs. That belonged to Peter; no one else had the same commission. The apostle to the gentiles was Paul; Peter never was exactly, but he writes to believing Jews as christians, and what is true of christian Jews is true of christian gentiles. As believing in Christ you come into exactly the same privileges as the Jews came into; no difference can be made in that respect. There is no difference between Jew and gentile when they are christians. The middle wall of partition is broken down and the privileges are common. So that the spiritual house and the holy priesthood belong to both.
At the end of the first chapter you will see there are three points spoken of as true of saints (verses 15, 18, 23), and another in chapter 2 (verses 2, 3), and in these believers are referred to individually. After that they [p. 456] are looked at in a certain sense as having come together. A house and priesthood being in the collective thought.
The three things spoken of in the end of the first chapter are that they were called, they were redeemed, and they were born again; that, of course, applies to every christian individually. They had been called of God and were to be holy; they were not exactly volunteers as christians, but they had been called of God. The gospel is the call of God; it is God calling souls out of the world to Himself. Christ gave Himself for us that He might deliver us out of this present evil world, and the call of the gospel is to that end, for the reason that God is going to judge the world. God called Abraham out of country, kindred, and father’s house, and now God is calling souls by the gospel out of the world.
The three thoughts to which I have referred must apply to every one of us individually. We should not be christians if these three things were not true of us; it is the foundation on which the apostle addresses the saints. He could not have taken up what comes out in the beginning of the second chapter apart from that foundation. Every christian is called and redeemed, and he is born again of incorruptible seed; that is, he has derived his moral being direct from God Himself; that is the idea of being born again. Naturally I derive a moral being from my parents, but the christian has derived it from God.
Now in chapter 2 we have the exhortation, “As newborn babes, desire earnestly the pure mental milk of the word, that by it ye may grow up to salvation if indeed ye have tasted that the Lord is good”. That is what individually we are to be set upon, that we grow up to salvation. Salvation in its realisation and practical bearing is a question of growth, and to this end we desire the sincere milk of the word, having tasted that the Lord is gracious. The object of the gospel is [p. 457] to build up souls in the knowledge of the grace of God. All that God is is presented to us in the gospel; it contains the whole light of God, and that is for our growth. Souls when first converted know very little about God, and the ministration of the gospel comes in to build them up in the knowledge of God and so to enable them to realise salvation from what is contrary to God.
Now I will speak of what is more collective as seen in verses 4 - 9. You get a remarkable expression in verse 4, “To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious”. I understand that verse to indicate the soul’s apprehension of the Lord in a new light. It had been said, “If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious”, but there is another light in which you can apprehend Christ, and that is not simply as Lord, but as the living Stone; and the living stone indicates the place which He has seen fit to take in connection with man. If I look at Him as Lord, He is on the behalf of God, fulfilling what we find in Scripture, “To us there is one God, the Father, of whom all things, and we for him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him”. He is administrator in the ways of God. He is Lord, to subdue everything for the glory of God the Father. Every tongue, of things in heaven and on earth and things under the earth, is to confess that He is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. But the living stone indicates the place which Christ takes in regard to man. He is the foundation stone of a structure built up of men, and we apprehend Him in that light. Coming to Him indicates, so far as I can understand, a sense in the soul of the grace of Christ seen in the place taken in connection with man. And we, too, are stones and a building of which He is the foundation. You will never understand the grace of Christ if you do not see that. Very many who own Christ as Lord [p. 458] and Saviour do not apprehend Him as the living stone, that is, as One whose pleasure it is to identify Himself with men, in being, as it were, the foundation stone of a building of which the other stones are men. You get the idea in other passages, such as this, “I will declare thy name unto my brethren, in the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee”. He identifies Himself with the saints and would have them to apprehend it; and our coming to Him as the living stone indicates the apprehension of Him as that. The Sanctifier and the sanctified are all of one.
The living Stone was disallowed indeed of men. The Jews disallowed Him. He was rejected on the one hand, but on the other hand chosen of God and precious. The greatest act of disallowance on the part of men was death, and God raised Him, proving that He was chosen of God and precious. I have no doubt the passage brings Christ before us as risen, and in resurrection He takes a place in identification with His people down here. You get the same idea elsewhere. “In whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord: in whom ye also are built together for an habitation of God through the Spirit”. Christ is Himself spoken of as the living Stone, then it is that you get the recognition of those who come to Him as living stones. They are looked at as living stones. They have come away from man and from man’s order — Judaism, or christianised Judaism now in the world — and they have come to the living Stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious, for that is what Christ is. It is the soul leaving the world for Christ, and apprehending Him as the foundation of an edifice which God is building.
There were two things which applied to Israel, that is, they had a house, God’s house, and a priesthood. Now when once God has set up anything upon earth, He never gives up what He has set up. That is a [p. 459] principle prevailing through the whole of Scripture. Things may come out in a different light and character, but God never gives up anything that He has once established on the earth. If God sets up a house on earth He never intends to give up the house, and if God has established a priesthood He never gives up the priesthood; though it may change its character, it is still there. Israel had the house; it was their peculiar privilege, and they boasted in it, and at the same time the priesthood. They have not that now; the material house is trodden under foot of the gentiles, because Israel knew not the time of their visitation, and the Aaronic priesthood has come to an end; but has God ceased to have a house and a priesthood? Certainly not. The house has changed its character, living stones coming to the living Stone are built up a spiritual house. A material house will not do for God now. The time has come to worship God in spirit and in truth. “The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth”. For the worship of God and for His house you want nothing but saints and the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit descended on the day of Pentecost there was no material house required; the Spirit of God did not need the temple. It is remarkable that Christ never went into the temple proper, that is, the temple building; He went into the courts of the temple teaching, but not being a priest on earth He did not go into the temple, and the Holy Spirit did not come to the temple; but there were one hundred and twenty whom Christ had prepared here, redeemed and called and born again, and they became the spiritual house. It might have been said of them at that time, “a spiritual house, an holy priesthood”. And so of the Jews of the dispersion, who were called and redeemed and born again, and had come to the living Stone, the apostle could say here, “Ye ... are built up a spiritual house”; dispersion did not affect this. Christians depend on human order and human arrangement for the service of God, but for the true service of God all that you need is the Holy Spirit. The virtual displacing of the Holy Spirit is not acceptable to God. I do not think God can be pleased by anything that is of man, by anything outside of the power of the Holy Spirit. Nothing that has its source in man can really be employed in the true service of God. Saints who are called and redeemed and born again, and have come to the living Stone, are living stones, are built up a spiritual house, really God’s house, and are a holy priesthood, like Aaron and his sons, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
I do not understand spiritual sacrifices to describe worship in the highest sense: sacrifices (except the blood on the day of atonement) were not carried into the house. What I understand by sacrifices are rather the sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving to God, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name; and there is another character of sacrifices, that is, doing good and communicating, and with such sacrifices God is well pleased. God is no longer approached with material sacrifices such as were offered by the priesthood in Israel; the time for that is past; it is spiritual sacrifices, because the house is spiritual and the priesthood is holy, sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
It is a great thing to know that we have access to God. Two things mark a priest, access to God on the one hand, and discernment in regard to man on the other. “Through him [Christ] we both have access by one Spirit unto the Father”; and “the spiritual discerns all things”. These are the two things which mark a priest. In the present time there is no special priestly class; the notion of it is a delusion; this epistle is addressed to simple believers, and they are told that they are a spiritual house, a [p. 461] holy priesthood. Those who claim in christendom to be a priestly class have taken up in a way material sacrifices, going back to the past covenant. They have largely given up christianity, and gone back to Judaism. Now, God is working in this day to deliver us, that is, to lead us out of these human arrangements, to apprehend what the proper privileges of christians are; that saints are built up a spiritual house. We have had to recognise that Christ is disallowed of men; that is a most solemn consideration. The Lord said, “Now is the judgment of this world”, and we are living in a world in which He has been disallowed, but the Holy Spirit has come down to report His glory above; He is the witness that the One who has been rejected of man has been exalted to the right hand of God.
I want to say a few words further as to what there is before men (verses 7 - 10): “A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people”, is what christians are before men. It is what they are as God’s testimony; in a certain sense it is what Israel should have been. Christians are here to show forth the praises of Him who hath called them out of darkness into His marvellous light. Our witness in the presence of man is the fruit of being in God’s marvellous light. God has seen fit to reveal Himself, and has called us out of darkness into the light of His love. God has given to us the Holy Spirit in order that we may know Him, and our testimony is that we are in His light here in the world. The testimony of christians is not simply in what they say, but in what they are; nothing in a christian should be inconsistent with the light of God. If I am conscious of the light of God it has its effect on all my ways in detail in this world. If I were to resort to crooked or underhand ways it would only prove that I am not in the light of God. Your ways must be according to the light into which it has pleased God to bring you. Nothing can [p. 462] be more deplorable than for christians to fall into crooked and perverse ways, for they falsify the light of God. People naturally judge of God by the profession of christians; the heathen do so; they derive their impressions from what they see in christians. That is often, alas, wicked and perverse and self-seeking ways, and the truth of God is falsified in their mind! Christ has given Himself for us that He might redeem us to Himself from all lawlessness, a peculiar people, zealous of good works.
Being in the light of God, we grow in the knowledge of God, at the same time bearing fruit, showing forth His virtues who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light; able to witness of the grace, the righteousness, the faithfulness, and the love of God. I want to be so impressed with the virtues and goodness of God that I may myself be out of sight, and that nothing should be seen in me but the reflection of what is of God.
That will be the case in the heavenly city when it comes down from God out of heaven. It has the glory of God and her light is as of a stone most precious, it is all reflected light; so with christians, they are a holy nation, a peculiar people, to show forth the praises of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light.
Now, these are divine thoughts; the thoughts of God with regard to His people. He has called us and redeemed us, and we are born again, and have tasted that the Lord is gracious, and I trust have come to the living Stone. It is a great thing to have come to the living Stone; man has refused the living Stone, and you have then come away from man. You have come to Him who is not ashamed to be identified with man, not ashamed to call us brethren. When you have come to Him as the living Stone then it is you begin to realise what the privileges of the christian really are.
Is it not a wonderful thing that we can be here [p. 463] having access to God, and at the same time discernment as to everything around? We are not taken in by things here, but have discernment, because we have access to God; and, in regard to man, we are in the light of God. We have not to seek to shine; a christian shines, in that sense, by reflected light. People may say you set up to be better than other people. I have not the least thought of it; I have not to show forth my own virtues, but the virtues of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvellous light. You are in the light of God, and yourselves transparent, so that men may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.