1. Living Stones
1. Living Stones(TOC)
Peter says of Christians, that as living stones they are built up into a spiritual house. a stone is a shapeless mass of rock. It is inert—lifeless—it could never free itself from its native quarry—could never fashion itself into classic shape and beauty, and could never set itself up as a lintel or column in any edifice of man. and such by nature is the spiritual state of all men—having no power to move—hear—see—feel—believe, because of the moral inertia which makes them as passive, hard, insensible as the stones of the earth. Hence, when God would express the hardened condition of a person or people, he speaks of such as having "hearts of stone."
But believers having been hewn out from the quarry of humanity by the electing grace of God, are termed living stones; not inert masses of rock, not senseless blocks of marble—but full of life, feeling, action; and they are thus designated because Christ, as the tried corner stone, the sure foundation, is called a living stone, and diffuses his own life through all parts of the spiritual temple which rests on him. So that every stone in it, from the foundation of the apostles and prophets to the topmost coping—is made a precious, a glistening, a living stone, through the preciousness and glory and life of Jesus, the prince of life. So long then as the soul of the believer rests on Jesus Christ alone for salvation, and on nothing else, it has spiritual life—build it upon any other foundation, and it is a senseless stone still—only as laid by the Holy Spirit upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ being the chief corner stone, can it receive in itself the life of Christ, and become through the impartation of his own vitality, a living stone.