Walk through the old centre of almost any town in northern Italy and you will pass walls that have stood for centuries, built not from identical factory bricks but from stones of every shape and size. Look closely at a corner and you will often find one stone larger and squarer than the rest. Builders in the ancient world began there. Before a single wall went up, the master builder chose the cornerstone and set it carefully, true and level, because everything else would take its measure from that one stone. Every wall ran out from it. Every row was laid in line with it. If the cornerstone was off, the whole house would be off.

Then came the other stones, gathered from fields and riverbeds, rough and uneven. On their own, none of them looked like much. But one by one the builder turned each in his hands, found where it fit, and set it into place against the others, so that the weight of each was carried by its neighbours and, in the end, by the cornerstone. A stone by itself is just a stone. Set into the wall, it becomes part of a house.

That is the picture Peter has in mind:

As you come to him, the living Stone—rejected by humans 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 cornerstone,”

and,

“A stone that causes people 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, God’s special possession, 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.

1 Peter 2:4–10

The living Stone

Everything Peter says about who we are begins with Jesus. Before we are anything, we come to him, the living Stone. He is the cornerstone God himself laid in Zion, the one from which everything else takes its measure. Our lives are straight or crooked depending on how they are aligned to him.

Peter is honest that not everyone sees this stone the same way. To those who believe, he is precious. To those who do not, he is a stone that causes people to stumble. The builders, the religious leaders who should have recognised him, examined Jesus and threw him aside. Jesus himself quoted Psalm 118 to them, warning that the stone they rejected was the very one God had chosen (Matthew 21:42). The same stone is either the foundation we build on or the obstacle we trip over. There is no third option. Coming to him in trust is where everything starts.

Living stones, built together

But having come to him, something happens to us. We also become living stones. We are not left lying in a pile in a field, each on our own. The builder picks us up, turns us in his hands, and sets us into place. We are built together into a spiritual house, each of us a piece of God’s overall plan.

No single stone is the whole building, and no stone holds itself up. Each one carries some of the weight of the others and is carried by them in turn. And every one of us rests on the same foundation, Christ. That means none of us can say we don’t need the others, and none of us can say we have no place in the wall.

A royal priesthood

Then Peter changes the picture. This house is also “a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices.” Each of us is made to be a priest. In verse 9 he says it again: we are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation.

We are royal because we belong to the King. Our dignity does not come from ourselves; it comes entirely from our association with Jesus. We are a priesthood because we serve him, bearing fruit and offering ourselves to God in love, because he first loved us. And we are a holy nation in two senses. Christ has made us holy by removing our sin, and we belong to his kingdom. We are not building a nation on the earth. We have been brought into the kingdom he has already established.

None of this is a new idea. It wasn’t invented during the Reformation, nor even in the New Testament. At Sinai, before God gave the law, he told Israel who they were to be: “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The Levites served at the tabernacle and later the temple, but the identity of the whole people was priestly. They were all meant to represent God before the nations. And at the end of the story, the Lamb is praised because with his blood he purchased people from every tribe and nation and made them “a kingdom and priests to serve our God” (Revelation 5:10). From the beginning to the end, God’s intention has not changed.

Priests in every place and every moment

What has changed is where and when we serve. Paul told the Athenians that God does not live in temples built by human hands (Acts 17:24). He lives in us. “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in your midst?” (1 Corinthians 3:16). Because we are his temple, our priestly service is not confined to a building or to a Sunday morning. We serve him at the kitchen table, at work, in the neighbourhood, in every moment, because he is with us in every moment.

This also means there is no special class of person in the church. There are elders and deacons. There is real authority and there are real gifts. But none of these cancels anyone’s calling as a priest. Jesus told us to make disciples, baptizing them and teaching them to obey everything he commanded (Matthew 28:19–20). That is not a job description for a few professionals. It is the calling of every disciple. We want to be “100% disciples,” obeying all of Jesus’ commands, not some of them while leaving the rest to the leaders.

The role of leaders, then, is not to do the priestly work on behalf of everyone else. It is “to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up” (Ephesians 4:12). A healthy church is not measured by how many people sit and watch, but by how many are living as priests. We were never meant to be spectators or consumers in the Body of Christ.

What are the spiritual sacrifices?

If we are priests, what do we offer? First, what we do not offer: sacrifices for sin. “By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Hebrews 10:14). That work is finished. Our sacrifices are responses of gratitude, which is why Peter says they are acceptable only “through Jesus Christ.” They are welcome because the atoning work is already done.

The New Testament names several of them. The first is ourselves. Paul urges us to “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship” (Romans 12:1). Not just our religious activity, but our whole embodied life.

Then there is praise. “Through Jesus, therefore, let us continually offer to God a sacrifice of praise—the fruit of lips that openly profess his name” (Hebrews 13:15). The very next verse adds generosity: “do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased.” Paul called the Philippians’ financial gift “a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God” (Philippians 4:18).

There is prayer. In Revelation, the elders hold “golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people” (Revelation 5:8). Every prayer we pray rises before God like the incense in the temple.

There is costly service. Paul described himself as being “poured out like a drink offering” for the sake of the believers he served (Philippians 2:17).

And there is mission itself. Paul said God gave him “the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God” (Romans 15:16). The people who come to faith through our witness are themselves an offering to God. Making disciples is priestly work. When we go to the nations, when we share the gospel with a neighbour, when we teach a new believer to obey Jesus and to teach others, we are serving as priests.

Bearing fruit

What is the point of all of this? Fruit. In the parable of the sower, the good soil is not simply the soil where the seed sprouts. It is the soil that produces a crop, thirty, sixty, or a hundred times what was sown. Our sacrifices bear fruit for the Lord and bring glory to him, as we “declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”

Peter ends with a reminder of where we started. “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.” We were rough stones lying in a field. God picked us up, shaped us, and set us into his house on the foundation of his Son. The only fitting response is to live as the priests he has made us to be.

Photo by Claudio Carrozzo on Unsplash