Nov. 8, 2009
Background Scripture: 1 Peter 2:1-17
Devotional Reading: Deuteronomy 10:10-15

Our passage this week has more concerns than I can cover in one column, or than you are likely to comprehend in one reading or class session.

Perhaps a series of questions can help us plumb the depths of these passages. Each of you must supply your own answers.
1: “So put away all malice and all guile and insincerity and envy and all slander” (1 Peter 2:1). In your church life, how much malice, guile, insincerity, envy and slander have you experienced?

This may come as a surprise to those who assume that congregational life in the early churches was ideal. It is sometimes said that involvement in the leadership of a church tends to rid us of excess idealism. Why is this often so true?

2: “Like newborn babes, long for the pure spiritual milk …” (2:2a). In other words, our thirst for the spiritual should be as ardent as a baby thirsting for its mother’s breast.

Is that descriptive of you? What if the majority of Christians were that ardent?

Once-and-done?

3: “… That by it you may grow up to salvation …” (2:2b). We may think of salvation as a dated transaction. But for many of us, salvation is a process of growth. We are assured of God’s salvation every step along the way, but if we have received that salvation, we must continue to grow in the process we call sanctification, holiness.
Elmer G. Homrighausen says that “a self-satisfied church is no longer Christian. A Christian who no longer aspires to perfection is a fraud.” So, at what stage are you?

4: “Come to him, to that living stone, rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (2:4,5). This verse alone could occupy a whole class session or individual study.

First, we are also concerned here with the “stoneship” of Jesus Christ. Christians apply many analogies to the person and role of Christ, but “stoneship” may be new to you. The analogy is that of building a structure, a place of worship.

Time and again, those who set out to build a congregation or church building may reject Christ as the cornerstone. Some churches are not so much tributes to God, as to the egos of pastors and/or laity. Is Christ the cornerstone in your church? (No quick answers, please!)

Second, “stoneship” is the call all followers of Jesus receive. We are to be building blocks together in constructing the visible Body of Christ in our community. Christian discipleship is not depicted as an individual enterprise, but one that is corporate.

It may be a bit overstated to say, “One Christian is no Christian,” but we are called to be the people of God. We are called to be the church, not individual wayside chapels.

Your priesthood?

5: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light” (2:9,10).

If you follow Christ, you are more than a member of a particular congregation, more than part of a specific denomination or branch of Christianity. How widely do you spread your arms in embracing other Christians?

The Protestant doctrine of the Priesthood of All Believers does not mean that we need no one else to be our priest. Rather, all Christians are to be priests to one another.

Paul Althaus says that we “have mutual responsibility for the Christian condition of others. None is to stand before God only as an individual concerned with his own petitions … each one in his own Christian life has responsibility for the others ... ‘Universal priesthood’ definitely does not mean an individualistic dissolution of the church as a fellowship. It is just the opposite; it is the binding of every member to every other member …”*

How is your ‘priesthood’ coming?

*Quoted in Minister’s Prayer Book by John W. Doberstein, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, p. 372.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Rev. Althouse may write to him in care of this publication.