Lord looked upon Simon, He changed his name
Lord looked upon Simon, He changed his name to Cephas, or Peter, which means a stone. The Lord referred to this word of His when He spoke to Peter in Matthew 16:18 about the building of the church. It must have been from this that Peter had obtained the concept of the living stones for the building of the spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5), which is the church. The significance of a stone is that it denotes a work of transformation to bring forth material for God's building (1 Cor. 3:12). In one chapter we have a Lamb, a dove, and the stone, all of which are figures. What is the meaning of these figures? The meaning is that the Lamb plus the dove produces stones. Redemp tion plus regeneration and transformation pro duces stones. We should not try to understand the Gospel of John merely according to the black and white letters. We must probe into the real significance of the allegories. What is a lamb? According to Exodus 12, the Passover lamb was slain for the people's sins and eaten for their satisfaction. What is a dove? From the Old Tes tament we have seen that a dove is a creature full of the beauty of life. Thus, it represents the third Person of the Godhead reaching humanity and imparting life to man. This dove which descends