Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow [a]thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
4 Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, 5 you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. 6 Therefore it is also contained in the Scripture,
“Behold, I lay in Zion
A chief cornerstone, elect, precious,
And he who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame.”
7 Therefore, to you who believe, He is precious; but to those who [b]are disobedient,
“The stone which the builders rejected
Has become the chief cornerstone,”
8 and
“A stone of stumbling
And a rock of offense.”
They stumble, being disobedient to the word, to which they also were appointed.
9 But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; 10 who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.
11 Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, 12 having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.
Peter uses some specific language here. He’s using two interconnected metaphors at the same time. First he likens Jesus, and then us, to “living stones’. He says we are being built into a spiritual house; a spiritual temple or a house of God. Jesus himself is the cornerstone, according to Peter, or the stone which creates the lines by which other stones are put into place. The cornerstone was the reference point for the building. Once it was put in place, then the rest of the building was determined. The location for each stone was determined by its relationship to the cornerstone.
Further, Peter says that we who have placed our faith in Jesus as the cornerstone of God’s plan, we are now the priests associated with this new spiritual temple. We are to offer up ‘spiritual sacrifices’, which are now acceptable to God because they are offered through the name of Jesus. Peter calls his audience of persecuted Christians, ‘a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people’. The role of this chosen people is to proclaim the praises of God - the one who has called them out of darkness and into light. Peter writes that we are a people who are brought together, not because we share a common ancestry, but because we have obtained the mercy of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
This point in particular is a departure from the way Peter was raised. By all accounts, Peter was a devout Jew before meeting Jesus. This means that family lineage is critically important for him. It was a point he struggled with early in his ministry. There’s a story in the Book of Acts, chapter 10, where, as he was taking a nap, Peter has a dream that a blanket filled with animals descended from the sky. These animals were specifically against the Jewish dietary code he had followed for his whole life. He was told to rise and eat, but he replied that he had never put anything unclean in his mouth. The response was "What God has cleansed you must not call unclean”. This happens three times, and then he is approached by men who had been sent by a Roman centurion named Cornelius. Peter agrees to go with them, even though it was unlawful for him to do so according to Jewish law, and preaches the Gospel to all of Cornelius’ household. So when Peter uses the language about believers ‘being a people’, this is a substantial change in the way Peter thought compared to earlier in his life.
These two metaphors - the temple and the priesthood - are very important and compelling to Peter. It’s worth our time to understand them a little bit. He views them as meaningful and uses them to shed light on what it means to live as a Christian. He believes the images of believers in Jesus as a temple and as priests should change the way people live. He seems to think that as these persecuted christians come to terms with the idea that they are the spiritual temple of God and that they are a new kind of priesthood, these ideas should motivate them to live a certain way. Consider how he starts this passage:
Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow [a]thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
Also consider the end of this passage:
11 Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, 12 having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.
Peter is calling the hearers of his message to fulfill their call, embrace their full identity in Christ, and to live the kind of life that is a testimony to the broader society. The temple and priests metaphors are part of how he is making his case. But why are those two images so compelling to him? To see why, we have to understand the importance of both the temple and the priests to the practice of the faith he was raised in.
As we read through the Gospels, the temple is a regular and recurring setting. Jesus teaches there, performs miracles, and interacts with the teachers of the law and religious leaders. It was the center of Jewish religious life at the time, and a place that Peter would have been very familiar with. But we have to understand that the religious culture around the temple had evolved over time. The temple in the New Testament was Herrod’s temple. The main portion was built around the year 20 BC. This means that by the time Jesus is walking around the Temple, it had been up and used for only about 50 years. In fact, some of the outer parts of the whole temple area were still being finished when the Romans tore the whole thing down in 70 A.D. - not too long after the book of 1 Peter was probably written.
Even in a relatively short amount of time, though, Herrod’s temple had become a key component in the religious lives, and even economics lives, of the Jews. Thousands of priests, Levites, scribes, and devout Jews worked in and around the Temple area. It had been designed to serve thousands of people at a time, with expansive courts and walkways surrounding the central court and sanctuary. Even the platform where sacrifices were done was built with incredible care. It was hollow underneath and had a vast network of pipes and cisterns allowing for relatively easy cleaning. The Temple even consumed 600 pounds of costly incense per year. It was also ‘prodigiously wealthy’, as one historian put it, and the ancient Jewish historian Josephus called it the ‘general treasury of all Jewish wealth’. These were religious practices on an enormous scale.
The priests, too, had also changed over time. By the time of Peter, the priests had sorted themselves into three main groups: Pharisees, Sadducees, and the Essenes (who we don’t hear much about in the Gospels). These groups disagreed on some key points, the biggest point being about the holy text. The Sadducees regarded only the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, as sacred. The Pharisees, on the other hand, also used and continued to develop what was called the “Oral Tradition”. These were teachings, which were eventually written down, that tried to connect their current lives with the ancient teachings of the Torah. Remember, even though the story of Jesus’s death and resurrection is now 2000 years ago for us, at the time of Jesus, the faith of the Hebrews was already over 1500 years old.
Herrod’s temple, though, was the third temple we read about in Scripture. The temple prior to Herrod’s temple, the second temple, is one of the main subjects of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. This had been a smaller and much less ornate temple than Herrod’s, Herrod’s temple being world renowned as a beautiful piece of architecture. That was not the case for this second temple. The temple of Ezra and Nehemiah was made of cedar logs and was built by an impoverished people returning from their exile in the ancient kingdom of Babylon. When it was built, many rejoiced but a few were deeply saddened that it didn’t truly compare to the temple which had come before it.
That temple, the first temple, was Solomon’s Temple. This was said to be an absolutely beautiful temple, and, in many ways, Herrod had built his temple the way he had in order to compete with the prestige of Solomon’s Temple. Solomon’s temple was decorated with professionally hammered bronze and gold. Foreign experts and craftsmen were brought in for many of the more intricate jobs. It was a massive undertaking.
But there is a problem with all of the attention these various temples and priestly orders demanded. It’s a problem that Peter identifies in the second chapter of his letter. Temples made with stone and wood, with bronze and gold, with incredible care and skill, simply do not last. They are not eternal.
This can present a real challenge for us because place is very important to us. We want to feel that we belong somewhere - that we are from somewhere. Physical places can have so much meaning for us. Maybe we remember a special restaurant or park our parents used to take us to. Maybe we remember our grandparents’ house or the place of a special vacation. Places can seem to be where we can go to find wisdom or healing or direction - until they aren’t. None of the three temples we just talked about exist anymore.
God understands this, of course, this balance between needing to feel grounded but also needing to move forward with our lives. After all, what preceded all of this work and worry about a temple was a tent. From the time of the Exodus, the Israelites had an elaborate tent which could be packed up and moved around. No matter when they went, God could go with them. Before Solomon built the first temple, we find an interesting interaction between Solomon’s father, David, and God specifically about the tent and the temple. 1 Chronicles 17: 1- 6 says this:
When David was settled in his palace, he summoned Nathan the prophet. “Look,” David said, “I am living in a beautiful cedar palace,[a] but the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant is out there under a tent!”2 Nathan replied to David, “Do whatever you have in mind, for God is with you.”
3 But that same night God said to Nathan,4 “Go and tell my servant David, ‘This is what the Lord has declared: You are not the one to build a house for me to live in. 5 I have never lived in a house, from the day I brought the Israelites out of Egypt until this very day. My home has always been a tent, moving from one place to another in a Tabernacle. 6 Yet no matter where I have gone with the Israelites, I have never once complained to Israel’s leaders, the shepherds of my people. I have never asked them, “Why haven’t you built me a beautiful cedar house?”’
God’s direction goes on in verse 10:
“‘Furthermore, I declare that the Lord will build a house for you—a dynasty of kings! 11 For when you die and join your ancestors, I will raise up one of your descendants, one of your sons, and I will make his kingdom strong. 12 He is the one who will build a house—a temple—for me. And I will secure his throne forever. 13 I will be his father, and he will be my son. I will never take my favor from him as I took it from the one who ruled before you. 14 I will confirm him as king over my house and my kingdom for all time, and his throne will be secure forever.’”
So God did not need a temple to dwell among his people. He would take care of that himself. Additionally, in our text, 1 Peter chapter 2, Peter quotes the prophet Isaiah. After the episode we just read in 1 Chronicles, the kingdom of Israel is established, Solomon builds his temple, and the kingdom splits into two halves: the northern kingdom still called Israel and the southern kingdom called Judah. Isaiah was prophesying before the kingdoms of Israel and Judah fell to the Babalonians. He was saying that Jerusalem, including Solomon’s beautiful temple, was going to be destroyed. But there was also hope in Isaiah’s message. In the Isaiah 28 we find the passage that Peter quotes:
16 Therefore, this is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“Look! I am placing a foundation stone in Jerusalem,[a]
a firm and tested stone.
It is a precious cornerstone that is safe to build on.
Whoever believes need never be shaken.[b]
17 I will test you with the measuring line of justice
and the plumb line of righteousness.
Since your refuge is made of lies,
a hailstorm will knock it down.
Since it is made of deception,
a flood will sweep it away.
Isaiah is envisioning a way of interacting with God which does not rely on a physical temple, but is still just as reliable and trustworthy. After all, the point of the temple is to facilitate actually interacting with the God of the universe.The point of the priesthood is to bring the people to God. And that is why Peter finds this imagery so important and compelling.
Jesus prayed that the kingdom of God would come to Earth and that God’s will would be done here just as it is done in heaven. How does that get accomplished? Through us! We are now how the presence of God interacts with the world. We are now the people who bring others to him so that they may know God and be known by him. Where can people go to find a place to belong? They can find it here among the people of God.
This is why Peter cares so much about how we live. This is why he encourages us to put aside malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy and evil speaking. This is why he says to abstain from sinful desires which war against our soul. This is why he calls on believers, even to this day, to live honorably among the broader society. The way we live matters, and it’s how others can come to know God and be part of the kingdom of God.
Jesus not only brings eternal life, but he brings the kind of life worth living for an eternity. It’s a life full of good works which glorify God. It’s a life which is both built on a sure foundation and one where we also grow and mature. Remember that Peter uses the ‘living stones’ metaphor in chapter 2. Both things are true: the foundation of our lives in Christ is eternal and we are called to grow, change, and mature. It’s one of the things I like most about 1 Peter. When we compare the Peter we find in this book to the impetuous and hard-headed Peter of 30 years prior in the Gospels, we see maturity, growth, and humility.
This kind of life requires that we live differently from the world around us, which necessarily brings along challenges. It can be hard to live one way while the world around us lives another. This is exactly what Peter is writing about. It’s not always easy to put aside our envy or our deceit. It’s not easy to face our hypocrisy or to own up to our times of malice. In a world which covets positive affirmations, the idea of valuing change and dealing truthfully with ourselves can be counter-cultural. But this is the way of Jesus. Peter not only wrote about it; he lived it.
The point of facing these things is not to just make you feel guilty and then to move on - it’s so you can find healing and transformation. You and I were once a people who had not obtained mercy, as Peter writes, but now, through Jesus, we have obtained mercy. We don’t have to fear confronting our past, and we don’t have to fear looking forward. We are now part of God’s kingdom, and his Spirit is working in us to transform us into kingdom people. As Peter says, we once were not a people but now we are. You and I are part of this larger, on-going story where God is drawing people close to himself.
We are the people of God. We should live like it.
