Propoganda Warfare Against the Early Church

1 Peter 2:12

Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.

Joan Jett sings a song entitled “I Don’t Give a D**n About My Bad Reputation”.  It is the context and culture of a rock star.  Peter has a similar message, but from a very different point of view.  His audience has been ‘maligned as evildoers’.  In the wider context of the passage, this 'evildoing' seems to have sexual overtones. 

But while Joan Jett is reflecting musically on the context of the rock culture, Peter is trying to address a campaign of misinformation against his audience. 

The “Jesus movement” is splitting from Judaism.  And it is not simply disappearing into the historical vortex of failed religions.  It is causing enough of a stir that it is becoming a threat to the Jewish mainstream, or at least perceived as a threat.  At this point, the followers of Jesus had no political power or influence.  God was their power to be a threat-and God will lead them to dominate the empire.

At work here is a fundamental lesson of propaganda warfare.  If you cannot attack their ideas, attack their character.  If they seem to be doing good things, attack their motives.  Do whatever you can to undercut their ability to function in polite society.  Sounds like politics as usual, doesn't it?

It is not that Peter doesn't give a...hoot...about their bad reputation.  Ultimately, he knows that they are in God's hands, not those of the people. 

Behave Yourselves! Even If You Are Already Behaved... Answering Rumors

1 Peter 2:12

Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.

So we have just come off a verse where Peter tells his readers to abstain from the desires of the flesh.  The reason is developed here.  They are to “conduct themselves honorably”.  There is no declaration that they have been acting dishonorably, but rather it is being implied, they are being accused of acting in a ‘dishonorable’ way. 

Why is there is a need to speak of issues of conduct among the Gentiles?  This is a personal letter that Peter is circulating to these disciples.  He speaks to the issue because it exists among the Christian communities that he helped to establish. 

This seems to be a fascinating moment in the early development of the church.  Beginning in the synagogue, it will eventually be pushed out.  From a new Jewish sect, it will become the dominant faith of the empire.  That will come through Gentiles joining, not Jews.  There just aren’t enough Jews.

It seems that the Jews are pushing out the followers of Jesus and bad mouthing them among the dominant Gentile culture so that they will have no place to go but into trouble.  Peter's words here are an attempt to counteract those attacks, and we will see that developed in this verse.

How Can You Be Christian When Everyone Thinks You Are An Evildoer?

1 Peter 1:12

Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge.

It would appear that the followers of Jesus are experiencing, if not outright persecution, at least deep suspicion from the Gentile community that surrounds them.  Remember that, at this time, the followers of Jesus are Jews, the movement is only slowly making its way into the Gentile community.  In fact, in the book of Acts, Paul is taking the lead in this shift.  Peter, by contrasting the followers of Jesus with the Gentile community, seems to indicate it is not happening as quickly here.

It appears that there is a deliberate distancing going on between the Jewish community and the followers of Jesus.  There seems to be a deliberate campaign to make the followers of Jesus into the bad guys.  Here Peter is advising them on how to act.

Conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles,--This is the wider community among whom the followers of Jesus must live.

so that, though they malign you as evildoers, --Someone is setting them up as the bad guys, probably elements of the Jewish leadership seeking to expel the ‘malignancy’ of Jesus from ‘pure’ Jewish doctrine.

they may see your honorable deeds and –Peter is not advocating a counter-campaign of ‘the goodness of the Jesus followers’, rather, by an exemplary lifestyle, by proper actions, not simply words, he hopes for a different way.

glorify God when he comes to judge. –Notice how Peter is not interested in having the followers of Jesus have a good opinion among their neighbors, but rather in front of God. 

Are We Divided as Humans? Is the Soul Better than the Flesh?

1 Peter 2:11

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.

There is an implied division in the human, between the soul and the flesh.  All have fallen into sin because of Adam.  Jesus’ salvation has begun with the soul.  This is to recognize the fact that people who believe in Jesus, have accepted him as Lord and Savior, they are still sinning.  Belief did not come with automatic perfection.  How does one account for that?

One possible explanation is to divide the human into soul and flesh.  The soul is “Godly”, the flesh is…”fleshly”.  Thus we shed the one to achieve the divine soul.  But that runs into the problem that God created the flesh in the beginning.  Thus, flesh is not inherently bad, because God does not create inherently bad things.  Genesis is clear on this, God looked at His creation, did not pronounce it bad, nor indifferent, but good. 

It needed to score ‘good’ before He took His vacation Sabbath.  The idea seems to be that there is the evolution of goodness within us.  Over time, as we abstain from desires of the flesh, as we ‘put to death the sinful nature’, to borrow from Paul, we gain a more glorified aspect, we move deeper into the glory of God that is extended to us through Jesus.

But in the meantime, until it is all done, we need to be working at and struggling with changing those behaviors that are not conducive to the Christian life.  It is not simply from the point of view of the Gentiles, looking in at the community of believers, that Peter is writing from.  He is also writing to them of the transformative work of Christ in their lives.

Sex-How Does The Bible Inform A Parent's Conversation With Their Child?

1 Peter 2:11

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.

 ‘Abstain’, cannot let that word pass.  What can Christian parents and their children do about sex??? 

This passage is used as one of many to support a 'Christian' point of view that the only valid method of birth control, the only valid personal sexual choice pre-marriage, is abstinence.  Abstain from the desires of the flesh.  Where I have a hard time is when it gets taken out of context.  Interpretation becomes a law unto itself, one that defines and controls behavior, one that causes families to split because of absolutist attitudes.  Peter was never absolute in this application. 

“I urge you…to abstain…”  He knows the struggles, he’s had them himself.  But when a relationship fractures because this verse is used as the defining tone of that relationship, a very serious conversation needs to be had.  The ground rules of the relationship need to be gone over once again, very carefully.  Sacrificing the child to enforce the rule is not Peter’s intent. 

So what is his intention?  Unsafe, random sex?  Certainly not.  It is assumed that adults have the right to make their own choices concerning their behavior.  Peter’s urging is to abstain from select behaviors.  Minors are generally assumed to be property and controlled from above when it comes to questions of sexuality. 

Sexuality should be an open topic of discussion and progression in Christian households today.  The notion that “Christians don’t talk about that” is plain wrong, because Peter is talking about ‘that’.  If we, as Christians, choose not to talk about sex and sexuality, we have fallen down on the vows we took at the baptism of our children to teach them of our faith.  God created people, God created sex, God gave us sex as a gift. 

The joy is that it is never too late to start the conversation.  It may be uncomfortable, sex talk being taboo and forbidden and surrounded by some weird mystical anti-discussion energy field, but it can happen.

And it needs to.  Our children need to know Christ’s message of sex because they are certainly getting the world’s message of sex every day.

Peter's Call To Behave in Public...

1 Peter 2:11

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.

Don’t do fleshly desiring things.  Is this a comment about sexuality or more widely applicable to the ‘flesh’?  That depends on how you interpret the key word 'flesh'..  I am under the impression that it is the human body, fallen after sin, and that this is a call to abstain from any sinful behavior, maybe drinking, maybe things of a sexual nature, whatever.  More detail is not provided.  Some context is provided however.

Peter wants them to act ‘honorably’ among the Gentiles.  Apparently, they are being branded as evildoers, but Peter does not want to provide any ammunition for these charges.  In other words, the followers of Jesus might be branded as one thing, but their behavior is going to provide evidence to the contrary.  They are going to be on their best behavior.

But here is where there is an odd mixing of focal points.  Peter’s context is the wider Gentile community, but his focus is on ‘desires of the flesh’, personal stuff, sinful to be sure, but not widely threatening as individual behaviors.  It would seem that the context of the charges being brought against them is that the followers of Jesus engage in such ‘desires of the flesh’, that this is the basis of the religion of Jesus.

It kind of fits with one set of early charges leveled against Christianity.  The Lord’s Supper was branded as cannibalism, eating flesh, drinking blood.  There was a certain validity to the uninformed assumptions about the Eucharist.

But as he concludes this sentence, a theological focus is also brought into view.

Aliens and Exiles-Christians Were Outsiders in the Culture. Should That Be Us Too?

1 Peter 2:11

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul.

There is a turning in this part of Peter's letter.  It is entitled in one bible version “Live as Servants of God”.  Two levels of existence are being discussed here.  From the grander view of the mercy of the Lord, Peter is speaking now of how to exist as members of God’s Kingdom in the wider world.  As the followers of Christ were beginning to separate from the Synagogue, their place in the world was coming into question. 

Remember that Paul began as a persecutor of the followers of Christ.  It was not organized as the persecutions would become, but already, Peter gives advice on how to life for Christ.

But secondly, Peter is laying out how Jesus has saved us, yet the union with Christ is not complete, our persons are not yet fully perfected in Christ, sinfulness still exists within us.  How must we respond to that?

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles—they are outsiders, outsiders to the Gentile populations that surround them and outsiders to the Jewish faith from which they have emerged.  The focus of the mission has changed.  Jesus did his work within the Jewish community, but it has been moving beyond that community.  Which is why even the Jewish adherents to Christ are being pushed out.

to abstain from the desires of the flesh—a dichotomy within the human being is being discussed.  “Flesh” is a convenient label for the sinfulness of humanity.  “Desires” provide a convenient description of sinful behaviors, ‘infecting’ the flesh.   

that wage war against the soul.—this is the other side of the dichotomy, the ‘soul’, that which is redeemed within the human.  The bible speaks elsewhere of a renewed fleshly body, we will be created anew.  But in the meantime, how does one speak of the battle that goes on inside each of us?  Trying to live more as Christ, but still subject to the weaknesses of the flesh?

Mercy, not Punishment...Love, not Judgment

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.

“This is that of which I speak”, which is my annoying rendition of “That’s what I’m talking about!”  Mercy, thank you Lord for Your mercy.  It is mercy that is all too often forgotten about in today’s world of the people of God.  Ignorance begets mercy.  Uncertainty begets mercy.  Fence sitting begets mercy.  “Begets”, that is one of those King James words that means ‘give birth to’. 

There is a line in the movie “Casablanca” where Ingrid Bergman is so confuzzled (confused and puzzled) by all that is happening around her that she cannot even think straight any longer.  That is where Humphrey Bogart steps in and says that he will do the thinking for the both of them.  That is the relationship we have with God when we are confuzzled. 

I do not like preachers who claim that if you do not know Jesus well enough-on some subjective scale, your soul is in danger of eternal hell. Those preachers are trespassing on the foundations of judgment and the bible is very clear about judgment.  God handed that over to Jesus to dispense.  It does not come with a Seminary degree, it does not come with ordination, it does not come with the soapbox when someone feels the urge to jump up and talk about Jesus.

The idea is that the human being is responsible for being ‘sure enough’ about their faith in Christ to arrive at a state of grace.  There is a theological expression for that.  It is called “works righteousness”.  That teaches that our salvation comes through the works that we do in our own lives, that we can somehow balance the scales at the end of our existences.  It defies what Paul taught, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” and it cheapens the grace that Jesus bought for us in his death and resurrection.  Why should Jesus be obedient even to death on the cross when salvation depends on our work?  If that were so, we should be the ones called upon to be obedient to death, even on the cross.

The fact is salvation is not like homework.  It would be far quicker for our kids if we, the parents, did their homework for them (that assumes we CAN do their homework).  It is cheating.  Salvation is not like that.  It is a free gift put on the table for everyone to take hold of.  You do not have to understand all the nuances to receive it.  You do not have to earn it.  You do not have to learn lessons to receive the bounty it offers.  God gives it to us.

And for anyone who thinks that God is a fool, because people will take advantage, I can only pause and blink my eyes repeatedly to hold my tongue and keep something from coming out that I will have to confess later.  Because it is GOD and no one puts something over on God.  God made us, God loves us, God saves us, by His mercy, even from our own ignorance.

Thus is the way of God.

God's People: In or Out....How Do We Know Where We Are?

1 Peter 2:10

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.  

There is nuance of meaning in this phrase.  It has a couple of reference points that would be familiar to the audience.  To the New Testament folks, like ourselves, it looks at what we were before and after we came to Christ, before and after we became God’s people.  Humanity loves dualism, white and black, good and bad.  And this is an excellent representation of that.  You have God or you do not have God, it is one or the other.  The question that plagues many people is seeking clarity to know if they have God or not.

People knowing the Old Testament can look back to the time before God chose Abraham, before God’s people came into the world.  But I think Peter is considering something more immediate.

Maybe you remember the time that you were not a member of a ‘people’, when you existed in the world, trying to find your way.  Then along came a Jesus experience and…now what?  Being God’s people, does that demand we belong to a church?  Is that where the people are to be found?  This is the problem of black and white thinking, if you are not convinced you are on the white side, the automatic assumption is that you are on the black side of it.  Thus, if you are not convinced you are of God’s people, you are automatically excluded from God’s people, with all those others who are not a ‘people’ at all.

Dual thinking does little good for humanity.  It is fine for God.  God knows who belongs to God and who does not.  We can become paranoid trying to figure out what God thinks about us.  If we have doubts about God, does God have doubts about us?  Is there no gray area while trying to figure things out?  I believe we have to flip the equation.

Those individuals who are ‘not a people’ know they are not.  They have rejected God, they are out for their own desires and fulfillment, they have made a clear and persistent choice about the kind of life they will lead, and God is not a part of the equation, at least not in this lifetime. 

But for the doubter, the questioner, the wonderer, the paranoid, the fearful, the rejected, the broken, the reprobate, everyone who is unsure of or feels they are undeserving of a relationship with God, take a minute to thank God that He is in control.  Because you are in until you choose to deal yourself out.  God does not turn his back on us, we turn our backs on Him.

If you are told that because you are not sure of your relationship with Jesus that your eternal soul is in jeopardy, read on to the next posting about the next piece of this couplet.

You Have Seen Before And After Pictures-Here Is A Bible Version

1 Peter 2:10

Once you were not a people,
   but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
   but now you have received mercy.

Peter is preaching to those who have come to the Lord.  That is the outline that proceeds along Chapter 2 of his letter.  Rid yourselves of the bad stuff, come and get the good stuff, Jesus is the precious stone rejected by the people, but not by God, he calls upon them to become the Royal Priesthood.  Now we have a couple of couplets bound together, the ‘before’ and the ‘after’ of what God has done in their lives.

Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people;-- Such is ‘what’ happened.  They were alone, they were without the Lord, but that has changed.  There was the darkness, but they have come into the light.  There was what came before, but now there is a new creation in Jesus Christ.  There is a declared statement that it is God that binds them together, before they were not a people at all, just a bunch.  There is an implication of unity in God that, looking at the church today, could bring us doubts about what we humans have done with God’s church.

once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.—What happened was that a people was formed in God.  How it happened was through the receipt of mercy.  The mercy comes through the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.  That is the way around the lex talionis, the law of a life for a life which is the judgment of breaking God’s law.  By Jesus taking our place, the cycle is broken and we are in the hands of our Lord through loving mercy, not a relationship of power dictated by God’s perfect justice.

Taken together, the same message is being shared.  There was the before and the after, without God and with God-the implication being that “with God” is the team to be chosen.  Up to know, Peter has been exhorting the believers about their Lord and the establishment of that relationship with the Lord.  Now he takes a moment to remind them of the alternative-which is not pleasing to consider.

There are Dangers of Abusive Scholarship About The BIble

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Peter takes us to a throwback to the first chapter of the gospel of John.  Actually, it may not be a throwback.  One of the great arguments of the New Testament scholarship community is when all the books were written.  They were not arranged in chronological order in the New Testament.  Paul’s letters are probably the earliest pieces written down, followed by the rest. 

In this regard, it is possible that Peter published this activity of Jesus, that He called us out of darkness and into his marvelous light, ahead of the publishing of the gospel of John, where this comes in the first chapter.  Such arguments are the stuff of doctrinal theses and scholarly debates, and they carry with them the risk of putting us to sleep.  

The downside of those arguments, of which was written first, is when a value judgement is attached to the chronology, i.e. the earlier is better or more “original” to Jesus.  That implies that Jesus’ words and deeds were somehow padded by the later authors, maybe ‘edited’ more to make a point, maybe not as ‘original’ as the stuff Jesus really did.  Scholars don’t come out and say that too often, but the implication is there.

The trouble is, there is no way, two thousand years later, to really know for sure.  And the trouble is engaging in this argument in the first place.  What I mean is that the WHOLE bible is useful for teaching, for uplifting, for preparing us for what God wants.  The fact is that Jesus called us out of darkness into His marvelous light.  Don’t dim the light with semantic arguments that chip away at the great truths of thousands of years of our faith.

Besides, we accept Jesus on faith, not "academic certainty".

His Life Was Greater Than The Mighty Acts That Made It Up

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

I am intentionally and artificially dividing up this phrase that hinges on Jesus.  The second part is Jesus’ grand action of our salvation.  The first part is a call to tell the story of Jesus as told in the gospels, to illustrate to us all that the power of Jesus comes through the acts that he has performed in our midst and on our behalf.

These are miracles, teachings, healings, castings out of demons, obedience, arguments, sometimes of a nearly violent nature.  Jesus defied the authorities in charge in the Promised Land.  He did things and said things that no one else was saying or doing at that time.  And perhaps the mightiest act was the love that was shared. 

There were other radical leaders in Jesus’ time.  A few of them are mentioned by the Jewish leadership in the book of Acts.  The referral point was this.  If they were not from God, the leader would rouse the rabble and fade away.  But if they-the disciples-following Jesus, were of God, how could any earthly power stand against the mighty acts performed of him and those who came after?

What Does One Call A Bunch of Christians? A Gaggle? A Flock? Something else?

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Today, the church understands that the power of God, given through Jesus Christ, is a light to the world, extended to all corners of the globe, drawing together all people regardless of color, ethnicity, race, or gender.  But if we read back that attitude onto the Bible, we could be left wanting.  While there are promises from Abraham forward that the worship of God is for all people, the reality is that, up until the time of the Romans, the worship of God was a provincial thing.  One people, the Jews, in one small part of the world, a strip of land along the Eastern shore of the Mediterranean, that was the center of the Godly world as we know it.  Other places had their own gods and goddesses, not real, but idols of wood and stone from our point of view, but real enough from their points of view. 

We are a “chosen race”.  God did this a few times.  He picked Adam and Eve, which fizzled, Seth after Abel was murdered by Cain, Noah and Mrs. Noah (not named in Genesis) after the flood, but finally settled on one couple, Abram and Sarai.  He called them out of a foreign land, marched them off to Israel as we know it today, changed their names to Abraham and Sarah, and made big promises of lots of descendants.  This was the Race that God Chose for Himself.  Jews claim descent through the line of Isaac, Muslims through the line of Ishmael, Christians through the Jewish tradition.

We are a “royal priesthood”.  God divided the human power running the land of Israel.  There was the high priest, a direct intermediary with God, and later, at the insistence of the people, a King, the ‘civil’ authority.  The original conception of the Promised Land was that God was in charge, that, through Jesus, the priesthood has been extended to all believers.

We are a “holy nation”.  In the Old Testament, the Promised Land was given to the people by God, a gift from the Almighty, thus Holy in its inception.  Through Jesus, this idea has been extended from the Promised Land to Creation itself, that all may come under the holiness and glory of God.

We are “God’s own people”.  God chose Abraham and his descendants to be God’s own people.  But that was one people among many, at first.  At first, it was just a barren couple who did not have their first child until they were both the ages of grandparents-maybe even great grandparents.  But God’s own people predates the choosing of Abraham.  It returns to the first Adam, whom God created, and was renewed in the Second Adam, our Lord Jesus, who brought us all back to Him.

Who Are The Believers? It Is An Impressive Resume

1 Peter 2:9

⁹But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Peter switches perspectives once again.  From the stumbling block that Jesus presents to the unbeliever, we come now to the place and purpose of the believer once more.  Peter indeed wants us to understand that we are set apart in our roles as believers, drawing together entitlements named and developed out of the Old Testament as they are fulfilled in the New through the work and power of Jesus Christ.  We are then reminded who we work for and why we work for him!

But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people,--four ways to refer to the believers, each one complementary to the rest, but also carrying a distinctiveness that we shall explore more.

in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him—there is a reason why exist, a job that we are called to do, a mission we are called to achieve.   

who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.—and a reminder of what it is that Jesus did for us in the first place.

Faith is not a static thing, neither is the work of Jesus.  It is ongoing in us and it is called to be ongoing out from who we are.  In Jesus, we have achieved something remarkable, but not something that is for us, but for the world.  And Jesus has chosen us to share it with them.

Destiny is a fickle Mistress...No Destiny is a freaking IDOL!

1 Peter 2: 8b

They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do.

“They” are the unbelievers.  They were destined to stumble for their disobedience to God’s work by the passages that Peter has related from the Old Testament.  This sentence is of a single piece, to be dealt with as a whole, as far as I am concerned.

They disobey the word, because they are unbelievers.  Perhaps they have heard the word as shared about Jesus, but they have not fallen under its power, or perhaps they have not yet heard the word as Peter has shared it to those to whom he is writing the letter.  The result is the same.  Unbelievers stumble because of it. 

What did he say before?  That Jesus is the stone they rejected, the stone that they have stumbled over.  Such is their destiny.  But destiny is a funny word that we have to take with a grain of salt in this context.  Destiny is a word that, in the modern culture, can easily be fixated upon with almost magical powers.  Somebody ends up badly, they did something bad, it caught up with them.  It was their destiny.  Some say it was karma coming around to get them.

But we know better.  Destiny is not some kind of Godly power that creeps up on people and drags them off to heaven or hell because of some fore ordained series of unfortunate events.  There are far too many bad people who get off well in life and too many good people who burn out in poverty or brokenness or whatever to play with some kind of ‘destiny’ based on our lives spent.

We have another word for that in the Christian faith.  We call it idolatry, worshiping another god before God, calling that god ‘destiny’.  It’s in the top ten laws, see Exodus 20 for more details.

Besides which, Peter writes for a greater reason.  They were destined, the unbelievers, to stumble because they disobey the word, not for punishment, but for possibility.

They stumble over the words because they have not yet found the one who will guide them safely through the words, and in the words, someone who will show them the way, the truth, and the life.  (Hint hint…Jesus).  That is what Peter is taking us through in his argument, step by step, that which is precious to God, precious to the believer, a stumbling block to the unbeliever, is ultimately the cornerstone on which their faith shall be built.

So is the hope for all who do not believe…yet.

Unbelievers, Tripping Over the Jesus-Stone...

1 Peter 2: 7-8a

⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’, and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’

Again, this is for the unbeliever, Jesus, the stone, makes them stumble and is a rock that makes them fall.  This piece is quoted from the prophet Isaiah, 8:14.  The context is that Israel and Judah are both about to assaulted and overrun by Assyria.  The result is the loss of Israel, the Northern Kingdom, to history, and the near conquest of Judah, the Southern Kingdom.  In this passage in Isaiah, the idea that God is actually behind the invasion and conquest, that is the stone that makes the Jews stumble and the rock that makes them fall.  How are they to understand the presence of God in their conquest?

Does this tie directly into the lives of the unbelievers?  That they will stumble and fall because of Jesus, that is pretty clear.  Jesus has a pretty amazing way of invading life and turning it on its ear. 

I think Peter chose this passage because it would have been known to his readers.  God’s claiming to use the Assyrians as His instrument in the conquest of Israel and Judah?  Imagine if there was a writing in the Christian faith that claimed God used the Nazis to conquer Europe as part of His greater plan?  It would be one of those passages that stuck in our heads, as I believe this one was.

That may help us in our understanding.  Understand what Peter's audience was going through.  Their land was overrun, not by the Assyrians, but by the Romans.  Peter is telling them that the presence of Jesus is as radical in the lives of unbelievers as the presence of Roman soldiers is in the lives of the people living in Judea.

It is NOT what one might call politically correct by any stretch of the imagination.  But it is radical...

The design is intentional, Jesus causes radical things to change in the lives of people, for believers, as we have already read, Jesus becomes precious in their sight, as Jesus is precious in the sight of God.

For unbelievers, Jesus can take everything they think they know and flip it on its head.

Rejected By Mortals...Only To Save The Mortals...That Is What I Call Ironic!

1 Peter 2: 7-8a

⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’, and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’

The architectural metaphor has been built, Jesus is the rock (and he rolls my blues away, shebop, shebop-fun song).  But that stone, that living stone, rejected by mortals but accepted by God, is coming around again, this time into the realm of the unbeliever. 

This quote comes from the Psalms, 118:22, another descriptor of God’s power.  Here, Peter integrates it into his sentence.  It does not seem to be an illustration of his point, but rather to be read directly,

‘for those who do not believe, the stone that the builders rejected (Jesus-just referenced in the last sentence); the stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner.  I think it is safe to assume that Peter would agree that the unbelievers and the builders have both rejected the stone (Jesus).  Jesus, the stone, comes right into the paths of the unbeliever. That which was rejected is now something that gets in the way of those who do not believe.

Peter is not speculating that Jesus simply converts people in this description.  Rather, for those who do not believe, Jesus is not someone they can simply dismiss out of hand.  Jesus stands in their way.  Mahatma Gandhi was a great proponent of Jesus, knew his life and his process very well.  It was integral to the campaign of non-violence he waged against the British. 

Yet he never came into the Christian faith in a formal way because of his experiences with the White South African churches under apartheid. 

Jesus gets in the way.  His unconditional love, his total sacrifice, his giving all, yet his ability to stand up to the leaders of the day, even to the point of anger and violence in defending his Father’s house, that is hard to reject.  I remember an interview with, of all people, John Cleese of Monty Python fame, condemnatory and rejecting of the Church of England, but Jesus was another matter.

To Cheer and To Teach-Jesus is Precious!

 1 Peter 2: 7-8a

⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’, and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’

Peter began in verse 4, calling on his readers to come to Jesus, ‘precious in God’s sight’.  That feeling, that emotion, that reaction to Jesus is now passed along to the believer as Peter changes direction once again.  God did what God did with Jesus.  The first call was for those who believe to commit themselves afresh to the process, to understand more fully how it is that God has worked Jesus into the history of salvation.

It seems that this discussion has two purposes, instruction and exhortation.  On the one hand, Peter is teaching them how to understand Jesus, and themselves, in the metaphor of the priesthood of all believers.  These are Jews he is writing to, they will understand the priestly caste of the House of Levi, of their devoted service to God.  The comparison to themselves will not be lost.

That is the instructive portion.  The exhortation, the praising, the uplifting, is the shorter, choppier style, piece by piece, building the picture for them.  But ultimately, the believers finding Jesus to be precious is not the climax of the piece.  That comes in the next turn, toward the unbeliever.

So Jesus Is Intended to Mess With The Unbelievers...

1 Peter 2: 7-8a

⁷To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’, and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’

So Peter opened with a call to understand Jesus as the cornerstone, that Jesus is precious in the sight of God.  Now Jesus connects that to those who believe, and then makes the case for what happens with those do not believe.

⁷To you then who believe, he is precious;-- Peter here echoes the sentiment just expressed.

but for those who do not believe, ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner’,-- Reference #1 for the unbeliever is offered here, what has happened to that which they have rejected.

and ‘A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall.’—Reference #2 for the unbeliever now leads to what happens to them in the process of Jesus.

There is a deliberate arc to this story, believer to unbeliever.  The ultimate object for Peter is not to stump the unbeliever.  Rather, he is seeking to impart his wisdom of understanding their plight and place, with an eye to what can be done to seek their conversion.

Does God Have the Power to Move Empires? (Yes!)

1 Peter 2:6

‘For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”

God is speaking to Cyrus, the king of the Persians.  Cyrus is going to serve a special purpose in God’s plan.  The people of the Southern Kingdom, the people of Judah, had been conquered by the Babylonians.  The Babylonians were, in turn, conquered by the Persians. 

The Persians were then going to send the people of Judah back, to reconstruct Jerusalem.  The Books of Nehemiah and Ezra tell this tale.

God is putting himself in front of Cyrus, in front of Persia, claiming that God, the God of Israel, who is the only real God, is going to empower Persia, under Cyrus to do His bidding. 

Now, this is a bit of an aside, but there are two interpretations of this passage in Isaiah. 

The first is that this is truly prophetic, written before these events ever happened.  It was the power of God that revealed the name that Isaiah wrote down.

The second is the party-pooper version, that this was written after the events of Cyrus restoring the people of Israel to their homeland.  It was then branded as coming as prophecy, thus reading in the power of God to explain political events that had already come to pass.

I do not care for the party-pooper version.  How can one truly critique the power of the living God?  Peter is certainly not quoting a party pooper version of Isaiah.  He is pulling down on the power of the Living God, the one who manipulates Empires to free His people.

That is my favorite part of the Christmas story, God manipulating empires to make things happen.  He manipulates the Romans to move Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem.  This is the precedent, God’s maneuvering of the Persian Empire.

“And whoever believes in Him will not be put to shame.”  Whoever believes in the God that made Cyrus restore His people to their homeland, after seventy years in the Babylonian Captivity, they will not be put to shame.  That is the power that Peter is referencing as he brings this quote into his letter.

What Shall We Do With Those Weird, Incomprehensible Passages in the Old Testament?

1 Peter 2:6

‘For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”’

In the prophet Isaiah, it seems that the Northern Kingdom, which was taken into permanent captivity by Assyria, to disappear off the historic scene, is the subject of the prophet’s words.  There are talks about covenants with Sheol, what, in the Old Testament, is the realm of the dead. 

Against this captivity, this giving up of hope, enters the word of the Lord.  This is the cornerstone God is laying in Zion, a structure to stand against the destruction that the people of Ephraim, the leading tribe of the Northern Kingdom.  The prophet is proclaiming God’s hope against the condemnation.

So what does that have to do with the people to whom Peter is writing?  Not a blessed thing, directly.  Like many of the lessons of history, if you apply them too directly, you are going to run into trouble.  Rather, there is a principle to be drawn here.

The passage in Isaiah proclaims God standing against a feeling among the people of hopelessness, hopelessness even unto death.  It is centuries later and the same kind of hopelessness, the apparently eternal dominance of the Romans, is in place.

But the power of God, his laying a cornerstone in Zion, that cornerstone finding its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus Christ, it is the fulfillment of that prophecy in the current age of Peter.

Can Christians and Jews Share A Bible?

1 Peter 2:6

‘For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”’

There are two scriptures that speak to our faith.  The first is what we have in the pew bibles of our churches, Genesis to Revelation, the Old Testament and the New Testament, sixty six books written over thousands of years by dozens of authors, covering a multitude of literary types, a grand mishmash.

Then there is the scripture in which Peter is standing.  It runs Genesis to Malachi, what we call the Old Testament, or, when we do not want to offend our Jewish brothers and sisters by implying they use something outdated, we call it the ‘Hebrew Bible’.  From what I have been told, Judaism refers to it as the Tanahk. 

Peter is reaching into the book of the prophet Isaiah, drawing together a couple of passages to connect to Jesus, building on the argument that has come before. 

This is a level of authority above and beyond the authority that Peter received from Jesus directly as his head disciple (look for ‘keys of the kingdom’ as a Google word search for more).  Peter is talking to other Jews and seeking to convince them of the reality of the authority of Jesus. 

So he goes where he knows they will go, into the Tanakh.  Now, we Christians can look at those passages and smile while we declare that we have found Jesus in the Old Testament.  A number of Jews who have come to the same conclusion (the largest group call themselves “Messianic Jews”, not adopting the title of ‘Christian’-which I cannot blame them for considering our bloody history), well, these Jews, I believe, will find Jesus in the pages of the Old Testament.  But the mainline Jews of Judaism, who have a very different relationship with Jesus, well, they are not so convinced.

What Peter has done is coopted ‘their’ Holy Book, although it was technically his as well, and overlaid Jesus in its interpretation.  And that is okay because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, so there, want to argue with the Son of God?

What I have found is that a healthy respect for the preservation of the text of the Tanakh as a Jewish Holy Book, and not the Christian ‘prequel’ to the coming of Jesus, has a whole lot to teach us.  Theirs is the complexity of the religion of Jesus, lived through the eyes of countless generations before Jesus ever came on the scene.

What I have come to realize is that our faith can be ever more deepened if we take the theology of the Jewish faith, even when it is separate from our own, when we take it seriously, we cannot help but learn even more about the God who gave us both.

 

1 Peter 2:6

‘For it stands in scripture: “See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.”’

Peter is quoting from the Old Testament, Isaiah 28:16: ^“therefore thus says the Lord God, See, I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation: “One who trusts will not panic.” and also from Isaiah 45:17, ^“But Israel is saved by the Lord with everlasting salvation; you shall not be put to shame or confounded to all eternity.”

There is a conflation of the verses going on, and Peter is adding a new dimension to their interpretation, that of Jesus as the fulfillment of their meanings.  We will look at the context of the two verses as we explore this sentence.

For it stand in scripture-Peter is looking to the authority of the bible that they had, what we call our Old Testament.

See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious…this is the passage from Isaiah 28, in brief.

And whoever believes in him will not be put to shame.  This concludes the sentence, coming from Isaiah 45.

How Peter puts them together in this ‘modern’ (for him) formulation we can contrast against the original prophecies in Isaiah.

Who Decides What Is Acceptable To God?

1 Peter 2: 4-5

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built^* into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Isn’t that the whole reason for Jesus?  He’s offered himself as a sacrifice to make us acceptable to our God once again.  Jesus did it in the middle of history so that all who came before could look forward to the event, and all those who came after could look back on the event.

But in this case, we are not talking about the sacrifice of Jesus Christ in and of itself, but rather in an applied fashion.  Through Jesus Christ, not only are we made acceptable to God, but our spiritual sacrifices are also made acceptable.

But if we are going to talk about acceptable, it is inevitable that we are also going to talk about unacceptable.  If we are the living stones, building spiritual houses, following in the path of Jesus as the original living stone rejected by the builders, then there should be no issues, should there?  The things we do in the name of Jesus are cool and acceptable with God.

Who gets to decide what is unacceptable to God?  There are a lot of church leaders who think they have the spiritual ****s to make that call.  Arrogant, the lot of them.  I have been that kind of arrogant one.  And I have come to a place in my life where I am comfortable releasing that decision to God.  I do not need the responsibility. 

Do something for someone with a motivation of love, a desire for change, a movement to bring in the peace, because it is the proper thing to do under your code of conduct, because it is simply the right thing to do, I think that rises to the level of acceptance by God.  Because it comes through Jesus Christ, who sacrificed himself for everyone, not simply the elect or the chosen by God.

If you are worried that what you are doing is a spiritual sacrifice to God, ask yourself this question, “Does it demonstrate my love for God and/or for neighbor?”  If yes, I think acceptance is yours.