The Living Stone.
I. Note the Church, or spiritual temple, in its foundation: Christ.
II. The Church, or spiritual temple, in its superstructure.
III. The Church, or spiritual temple, in its service: "a holy priesthood."
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter,p. 233.
The Spiritual Church.
Believers in Jesus are here presented in two aspects: they are called a "spiritual house" and "a holy priesthood," two phrases which, if you translate the word here rendered "house" into the more sacred word "temple," will be found to have a very religious significance and a very close connection with each other. "Coming to Christ as a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious," believers rise into a spiritual house from Christ, the great High-priest, consecrated after no carnal commandment; believers rise into a holy priesthood by a majestic investiture that is higher than the ordination of Aaron. There are two points especially presented to us here: spirituality and holiness. Let us take those and dwell upon them for a moment.
I. Any thoughtful observer of the successive ages of the world's history will discover that each generation has in some remarkable particulars progressed upon its predecessor. This progress is inseparable from the creation of God; is present everywhere, from the formation of a crystal to the establishment of an economy; is seen in the successive dispensations in which God has manifested His will to man. You can trace through all these dispensations the essential unity of revealed religion. Believers are the stones in the spiritual temple, broken, it may be, into conformity or chiselled into beauty by successive strokes of trial; and wherever you find them, in the hut or the ancestral hall, in the climate of the snow or the climate of the sun, whether society hoot them or whether society honour them, whether they robe themselves in delicate apparel or rugged home-spun, they are parts of the grand temple which God esteems higher than cloister, crypt, or stately fane, and of which the top stone is to be brought on with shouting of "Grace, grace, unto it!" That is the first thought: a "spiritual house," and also of these lively stones is built up a "spiritual house."
II. Then take the second thought: holiness: "a holy priesthood." In the Jewish dispensation these words often meant nothing more than an outward separation of the services of God. Thus the priests of the Temple and the vestments of their ministry were said to be ceremonially holy; but there is more in that word, surely, than this ritual of external sanctity. There is the possession of that mind which was in Christ Jesus the Lord; there is the reinstatement in us of that image of God which was lost by the foulness of the Fall. Many are the passages of Scripture in which holiness is considered as the supreme devotion of the heart to the service of God, and is represented as the requirement and the characteristic of Christianity. "What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?" "Be ye holy, as I am holy"; "As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation"; "For God hath not called us to uncleanness, but unto holiness"; "Having, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
W. M. Punshon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. vi., p. 161.
References: 1 Peter 2:4; 1 Peter 2:5. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxiii., No. 1376. 1 Peter 2:4-6. W. Spensley, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xx., p. 268.