An image of the church
Living Stones
Peter takes something cold and immovable, a stone, and makes it alive. You also, he says, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house. It is a strange and beautiful pairing. Stones do not breathe, yet these do, because they draw their life from the living Stone. And no stone is laid alone. Each is set into a house being built of the rest.
“Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”1 Peter 2:5
The image
Consider how a stone house is made. Each stone is shaped and set in its particular place, fitted against the stones around it, bearing weight and passing it on. No stone is chosen for display, and none stands by itself, its whole usefulness is in being joined to the others. Peter calls us living stones, which means we are not inert material but people with breath, yet the building word still holds. We are being built up, set into place, made to bear and share the load together. And the house is spiritual, a temple where priests serve, so Peter joins two pictures at once, we are the stones of the house and the priests who worship within it. The stone set apart from the wall is not a house, it is only rubble until it is laid.
What it teaches us
This picture teaches that we are shaped for a place, not for display. A stone is dressed and cut to fit where it is set, so we should expect the Builder to shape us for the particular spot and the particular people he joins us to. It teaches interdependence in a structural way, since each stone bears weight and gives support, and the wall stands because the stones lean on one another. It teaches that isolation is not humility but uselessness, for a stone off the wall builds nothing. And because the stones are living, the house is warm, not cold, made of people who breathe and pray and hold each other up. To be a living stone is to be permanently set among others, load-bearing and held.
How it centers on Christ
Peter has just called Christ the living Stone, and everything about our stone-nature comes from his. He is the stone the builders rejected, which God made the chief cornerstone, precious and chosen and alive. We are living stones only because we have come to him and receive our life from his. The house is built on him and holds together because of him, and a stone not joined to him is not part of the building at all. To the men who rejected him he becomes a stone they stumble over, but to those who believe he is precious and sure. So the church is not self-quarried. Every stone in it was made alive by contact with the one living Stone, and the whole house rises on him and for him, a place where God is worshiped.
Questions people ask
What does it mean that Christians are living stones?
It means believers are being built together into God's house, each set in place and joined to the others. Peter calls them living because they draw life from Christ, the living Stone, not because a stone naturally breathes. The image stresses that no Christian stands alone, every one is shaped for a place in the wall and bears weight alongside the rest.
What is the spiritual house Peter describes?
It is the church, pictured as a temple built of living stones. Peter says believers are built up into a spiritual house and also serve in it as a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices to God. So the same people are both the building and the worshipers within it. The house rests on Christ, the cornerstone, and rises as a dwelling for God.