A Practical Commentary upon the First Epistle of Peter by Robert Leighton

Author:Robert Leighton
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Monergism Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Ver. 4. To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious,

Ver. 5. You also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

The spring of all the dignities of a Christian, and therefore the great motive of all his duties, is his near relation to Jesus Christ. There it is, that the Apostle makes that the great subject of his doctrine, both to represent to his distressed brethren their dignity in that respect, and to press by it the necessary duties he exhorts to. Having spoken of their spiritual life and growth in Him, under the resemblance of natural life, he prosecutes it here by another comparison very frequent in the Scriptures, and therefore makes use in it of some passages of those Scriptures, that were prophetical of Christ and His Church. Though there be here two different similitudes, yet they have so near a relation one to another, and meet so well in the same subject, that he joins them together, and then illustrates them severally in the following verses; a temple, and a priesthood, comparing the Saints to both: the former in these words of this verse.

We have in it, 1. The nature of the building: 2. The materials of it: 3. The structure or way of building it.

1. The nature of it; it is a spiritual building. Time and place, we know, received their being from God, and He was eternally before both; He is therefore styled by the Prophet, The high and lofty One who inhabits eternity.59 But having made the world, He fills it, though not as contained in it, and so the whole frame of it is His palace or temple, but after a more special manner, the higher and statelier part of it, the highest Heaven; therefore it is called His holy place, and the habitation of His holiness and glory.60 And on earth, the houses of His public worship are called His houses; especially the Jewish temple in its time, having in it such a relative typical holiness, which others have not. But besides all these, and beyond them all in excellence, He has a house in which He dwells more peculiarly than in any of the rest, even more than in Heaven, taken for the place only, and that is this spiritual building. And this is most suitable to the nature of God. As our Savior says of the necessary conformity of His worship to Himself, God is a Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth,61 so it holds of His house; He must have a spiritual one, because He is a Spirit; so God’s temple is His people.

And for this purpose chiefly did He make the world, the heaven, and the earth, that in it He might raise this spiritual building for Himself to dwell in forever, to have a number of His reasonable creatures to enjoy Him, and glorify Him in eternity.

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