"As you come to him, the living Stone - rejected by men but chosen by God and precious to him - you also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For in Scripture it says:
"See, I lay a stone in Zion,
a chosen and precious cornerstone,
and the one who trusts in him
will never be put to shame."
Now to you who believe, this stone is precious. But to those who do not believe,
"The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone,"
and
"A stone that causes men to stumble
and a rock that makes them fall."
They stumble because they disobey the message - which is also what they were destined for.
But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Dear friends, I urge you, as aliens and strangers in the world, to abstain from sinful desires, which war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us."
(1 Peter 2:4-12 NIV)
As we have seen so far, the people Peter was writing to were under a lot of trial. In the last post, we saw that they were tempted to hypocrisy; to live one way, but believe another thing. In this post, we'll see that they were also being tempted to worldliness.
Worldliness is basically the evil desires inside of us warring against our souls and forming a belief system. It is elevating culture over Scripture. In the Church today, we have two directions of worldliness that we are tempted to - progressive (following the culture of today) and traditional (rejecting the culture of today and trying to go back to the 1950s).
Culture in itself is not the problem, but it is what we choose to do with it. We are work in it, but not follow it. The traditionals think that because culture is so against Scripture, we should go back to the 50s when things were a lot more wholesome, but this is also worldliness, as it still elevates culture over Scripture, though a much older one. The progressives think that the views of the Bible are outdated and too strict for today. But whether progressive or traditional, any belief that puts culture over Scripture is wrong. Our goal should not be to say what values in culture are right or wrong, but to point people to Jesus and we will be made holy through faith in him.
Before we can point people to Jesus, we should be clear on the following five things:
1. Our Jesus (1 Peter 2:4-8)
- From the perspective of the world, Jesus is offensive, which is why Peter refers to him as a stone they stumble on.
- Some people will always find Jesus and the Gospel offensive, since he often speaks of hell and therefore people see him as intolerant and exclusive.
- People tend to like some aspects of Christianity like turning the other cheek and helping widows and orphans, but they don't like the fact that we say that Jesus is God and is the only way to heaven.
- We know, as Christians, that Jesus is God, Lord, Saviour, King and Christ and that to God, he is precious and priceless.
- Jesus is our cornerstone.
- In construction, picking a good cornerstone is vital because it determines the durability of the whole building. The builders would choose the best, most dependable stone to rest everything else on.
- Just like builders, we should build our whole lives on Jesus as our cornerstone - not anything else. If we based our lives on anything else - money, status, race, etc. - our lives will crumble because only Jesus and carry the whole load.
- People are happy for us to compromise and have a Jesus merely as one of the 'bricks' that make up the whole structure, but they don't like it when we base our lives on him.
- Everything will collapse if we don't have Jesus as our cornerstone.
- Peter also reminds us that Jesus is a 'living' stone.
- We have to ask ourselves if Jesus really is our cornerstone.
2. Our Identity (1 Peter 2:9)
- If we based our identity on our performance, we will either end up proud or in despair.
- We should instead base our identity on who it is that loves us - namely, God.
- Sometimes we are so focussed on comparing ourselves to others that we forget that God loves us.
- The people Peter wrote to were 'nobodies' who lived in an insignificant part of the world, but Peter calls them a 'chosen people' and a 'royal priesthood'.
- In Jesus, we are all royal priests and since he is our mediator, not one person is closer to God than anyone else because through Jesus, we are all equally God's children and have equal access to him.
- We tend to underestimate our significance and not realise that we are all in ministry. Yes, some people are in vocational ministry, but even if we are just in an 'ordinary' job, we are in ministry when we work as if we are working unto God because in doing that, we have the opportunity to change the world by what we do.
3. Our Worship (1 Peter 2:5; 2:9)
- We worship God in three main ways - with or words, our works and out wealth.
- We worship him in our words when we speak of him, in our works when we serve and help people and in our wealth in our tithes and offerings.
- If Jesus is really everything in our lives, he will show up in it.
- We should make sure that we are in fact regenerate and not just religious.
4. Our Community (1 Peter 2:10)
- You can't love Jesus and hate the church because Jesus loves the church and is building it.
- We were not a people before, but in Jesus we have all been brought together to be a people and that is why it is important to seek out and live in a community of believers.
- We can't 'do' Christianity on our own because we only get information on Sunday, but transformation comes from living that out in community.
5. Our Mission (1 Peter 2:11-12)
- The purpose of community is not only for our individual lives to change, but we are also to be missionaries in the world around us.
- Fundamentalists tend to leave the cities and hide in the suburbs and liberals tend to live in the cities and compromise, but Peter says we are to live counter-cultural lives and so do things like money, sex, gender, food, sex and job differently from how the rest of the world does it.
- We should abstain from worldly passions, but we should do good deeds.
- In living our lives counter-culturally, we will be ridiculed and people will speak evil of us, but we should continue because living in this way brings honour to God.
- Sticking to the Gospel means we will always feel homeless because our home is not on earth, it is in heaven.
- For liberals, the cornerstone is tolerance and diversity. Conservatives have self-righteousness, pride and intolerance as their cornerstone. But we should have Jesus and the Gospel as ours.
Finally, our response to opposition is not to return evil for evil, but to 'out love' those who oppose us. We should call those around us to repentance, but at the same time, we should humble ourselves and also repent. We shouldn't become proud and self-righteous. In living our lives in this way with Jesus as our cornerstone, some people will come to know Christ.
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