Additional note: The dwelling place of God (2:5)
Additional note: The dwelling place of God (2:5)
The long history of God’s dwelling place among his people finds New Testament fulfilment in the people of God themselves. The glory of God, the visible evidence of his presence among his people, had led the people out of Egypt as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Exod. 13:21–22). God’s glory had filled the tabernacle under Moses (Exod. 33:8–13; 40:34–38), and had later filled Solomon’s temple (1 Kgs 8:10–11). But it had departed from the temple, in the time of Ezekiel, because of the sins of the people (Ezek. 10:4, 18–19; 11:23). Of the temple built after the return from exile God promised that ‘The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former’ (Hag. 2:9), but his glory had never descended to fill it as it had filled the temple under Solomon. The faithful in Israel then waited over 400 years for the fulfillment of Malachi’s prophecy, ‘The Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple’ (Mal. 3:1).
The fulfillment of this prophecy was witnessed by righteous Simeon and Anna when Mary and Joseph brought to the Jerusalem temple the infant Jesus (Luke 2:22–38), the Saviour who was ‘the Messiah, the Lord’ (Luke 2:11, NASB mg. and NIV mg.). His presence was the greater glory of that temple (Luke 19:47–48), but he also brought its judgment and word of its destruction (John 2:13–17; Luke 21:5–6), for his own body was the greater and more perfect temple of God (John 2:19–21), the one in whom ‘all the fulness of God was pleased to dwell’ (Col. 1:19). Thus, John could say of Jesus’ life, ‘The Word became flesh and dwelt [literally, ‘tented’ or ‘tabernacled’] among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father’ (John 1:14). In the New Testament Jesus himself is the new and better temple of God, the dwelling place of God among men.
However, after Pentecost, the dwelling place of God is not only Jesus himself, but also his people. He promises to be ‘in the midst’ of them (Matt. 18:20), to be with them always (Matt. 28:20), and says that he himself, together with the Father and Holy Spirit, will dwell within his people (John 14:17, 23). So now in the church age the people of God are the true temple of God, the place where God dwells.
When Christ returns and there are new heavens and a new earth, the temple of God will be the whole earth, for, shining forth from the throne of God in the new Jerusalem, the glory of God will fill the whole earth, and all the nations shall walk by the light of God’s glory (Rev. 21:11, 23–25; 22:5; Ps. 72:19). Then God will be King over all the earth (Zech. 14:9) and the whole earth shall come to worship before God (Isa. 66:23). In anticipation of that great culmination of all history, the church even now is given the task of declaring God’s glory among all the nations (1 Pet. 1:9; cf. Ps. 96:13; 108:5; Matt. 5:14–16).
a. Unbelievers reject Christ and stumble (2:7–8)
7. Peter puts his readers in the category of those ‘who believe in him’ (v. 6) and concludes that therefore they ‘will not be put to shame’ but will rather share in the ‘chosen and precious’ status of the cornerstone in whom they trust; in other words to you … who believe is not shame but ‘honour’. This contrast suggests that the first clause of verse 7 is best translated, ‘To you therefore who believe is honour’.
The RSV translation To you therefore who believe, he is precious (based on the AV and followed, surprisingly, by the NIV, and apparently NASB), is an extremely unlikely understanding of the Greek text and is criticized by almost every major commentator. The Greek sentence contains no verb and rather literally says, ‘Therefore the honour to you, the believers.’ It is quite natural to understand the verb ‘to be’ (as commonly in Gk. sentences), so that the sentence reads, ‘Therefore the honour is to you, the believers.’ But the RSV translation depends on taking timē as ‘the thought of honour or preciousness’, giving the sense, ‘Therefore the thought of preciousness (for Christ) is for you, the believers.’ Yet the word timē never takes this sense in any of its forty-one New Testament occurrences (e.g. see John 4:44; Rom. 2:10; 9:21; 13:7; 1 Cor. 12:23; 2 Tim. 2:20; 1 Pet. 3:7; 2 Pet. 1:17; and Bigg, p. 131, says the sense ‘preciousness’ ‘gives to timē a sense which it cannot bear’). On the other hand, the translation, ‘To you who believe is (the) honour’ provides a contrast which might appropriately be expected to follow the fact that believers ‘will not be put to shame’. A possible motivation for the RSV translation might be the supposed inappropriateness of giving honour to Christians rather than to Christ, but such a concept is not foreign to this context (where the honourable status which God gives believers is contrasted with the dishonour and shame meted out to hostile unbelievers, vv. 8–9, 15, 20; cf. the discussion on ‘praise’ at 1 Pet. 1:7; note also 1 Pet. 3:16; 4:5, 13–16, 18; 5:6, 10).
By contrast, for those who do not believe, Christ is, as Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 8:14 predicted, The very stone which the builders rejected, and (v. 8) ‘A stone that will make men stumble, a rock that will make them fall’. In Matthew 21:42 and Acts 4:11 the ‘builders’ were the Jewish leaders who rejected Christ, but now Peter writes more broadly of all who reject Christ.
There is no necessity to see a mixing or changing of metaphors in Peter’s phrase, the head of the corner, for kephalē, ‘head’, can mean ‘end point, furthest extremity’ as well as ‘top’. This fits the context well since it gives it the same sense as ‘cornerstone’ (of the foundation) in the previous quotation from Isaiah 28:16, and it means that the translation ‘capstone’ (NIV) is certainly not required here. Moreover, the stone over which men will ‘stumble’ and ‘fall’ in the next verse cannot be high in the air, but must be a foundation stone on the ground.
The point of the quotation is to show that those who rejected Christ have been proved exactly wrong by God’s exaltation of him to the place of greatest prominence, the head of the corner.
8. Peter now quotes Isaiah 8:14, which says not only that the Lord himself will become ‘a sanctuary’ for those who follow him, but also that he will prove to be ‘a stone of offence, and a rock of stumbling’ to the disobedient of ‘both houses of Israel’. Since the Lord himself is said to be the stone in Isaiah 8, this verse is another instance of how readily the early Christians applied to Christ many Old Testament passages which spoke of ‘the Lord’ (Yahweh or Jehovah).
Peter then adds, they stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. Peter’s purpose in making this comment is to comfort his readers. He has shown that the rejection of Christ and even the hostile unbelief which confronted these Christians on every side were predicted by God long ago in the Old Testament (vv. 7–8a). Now he says that they were not only predicted but also planned by God (v. 8b) and are therefore within the scope of his sovereign and wise plan for the world. Hostile unbelief should not terrify Christians against whom it is directed, for God their Father holds it all under his control, and will bring it to an end when he deems it best. Amazing as it may seem, even the stumbling and disobedience of unbelievers have been destined by God.
Stumble can mean literally tripping over something and falling (John 11:9–10), but here it has a more figurative sense, ‘take offence at and reject’ (BAGD, p. 716), or perhaps ‘fall and miss God’s way’ (cf. the same word in Rom. 9:32; 14:21; and the related noun in Rom. 14:13; 1 Cor. 8:9).
Though disobey (apeitheō) often means simply ‘not obey’, it sometimes has the connotation of active or entrenched opposition to God’s word (cf. Acts 14:2; 19:9; Rom. 2:8; 10:21; 11:30–31; 15:31; Heb. 3:18; 1 Pet. 3:20; 4:17; also Hort, p. 122, who says, ‘On the whole … the biblical use is best expressed by “rebel” or “be rebellious” ’). Although some have argued that this term can mean simply ‘disbelieve, be an unbeliever’ (especially in John 3:36), such a sense is not required in any of the word’s occurrences. Thus, because they disobey the word means not just that they refuse to believe the gospel—though it certainly includes that—but that they are living lives of disobedience and rebellion against God generally. (This wider sense of ‘disobey the word’ fits the context of the Old Testament quotations best as well.)
The relationship between ‘stumbling’ and ‘disobeying the word’ must be gathered from the sense of the passage, for disobey is a present participle, which allows for several possible logical relationships. The translation which simply states the two events as going on at the same time (‘they stumble while they are disobeying the word’) is not wrong, and it no doubt gives part of the sense (it is common for present participles to speak of action which occurs at the same time as the verb they modify). Yet since Peter is probably affirming more here than just the two facts, the RSV translation, they stumble because they disobey the word, seems best (so also NIV, NASB). It indicates that many who reject Christ do so because of moral disobedience to God in their lives.
The phrase as they were destined to do is more literally rendered, ‘unto which also they were destined’. The word ‘which’ (ho) could refer to the stumbling, the disobedience, or both. Since the actions are interconnected, and since it is not an action but the people (‘they’) who were ‘destined’, it makes little difference to the force of the passage which one of these we choose. Nevertheless, this neuter singular relative pronoun (ho), without further qualification and without any specific neuter noun which it could claim as an antecedent, is most naturally taken as referring to the whole preceding idea—stumbling because of disobeying the word. (Several commentators assume that ‘which’ must refer to the main verb, ‘stumble’, rather than the modifying participle, ‘disobeying’, but nothing in Gk. grammar requires this.)
The word destined is tithēmi, a term which elsewhere is also used to speak of God’s appointing or predestining a particular event or situation long before it happens (Acts 1:7; Rom. 4:17; 1 Thess. 5:9; Heb. 1:2; probably also John 15:16; Acts 13:47), or of God’s establishing someone in a certain situation not long beforehand but at a certain point in time (cf. Matt. 22:44; 20:28; Rom. 9:33; 1 Cor. 12:18, 28). It is used in a passive form here (‘were destined’) without mentioning God specifically, but it clearly speaks of God’s activity (as it does similarly in 1 Tim. 2:7; 2 Tim. 1:11; and Heb. 10:13). Here Peter uses it in direct contrast to its use in verse 6: there, God established (RSV: ‘I am laying’) Christ as a chosen cornerstone in Zion, but here, by contrast, God has established (or ‘destined’) the rebellious to stumbling and disobedience.
The RSV (with all major Eng. translations) correctly represents this appointment to disobedience as a completed event in the past (they were destined), for that is the force of the aorist indicative here. It is impossible exegetically to say that God appointed not persons but the fact of stumbling as the penalty for disobedience (so Bigg, p. 133) for the verb is plural (‘they were appointed’), and the subject must be the persons who are disbelieving (v. 7) and stumbling and disobeying (v. 8). The time of such destining is not specified, but elsewhere in Scripture related passages about predestination view it as occurring before creation, or ‘before the foundation of the world’ (Eph. 1:4; cf. 2 Pet. 2:3; Jude 4; Acts 13:48; Rom. 8:29–30; 9:14–24).
The force of the text then is to say that those who are rejecting Christ and disobeying God’s word were also destined by God to such action. It is never easy for us to hear this taught in Scripture, but the following note may help somewhat in understanding the issue.