'To Whom coming, as unto a living stone ... ye also, as living
stones, are built up.'--1 Peter ii. 4, 5.
I wonder whether Peter, when he wrote these words, was thinking about
what Jesus Christ said to him long ago, up there at Cæsarea Philippi. He
had heard from Christ's lips, 'Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will
build My Church.' He had understood very little of what it meant then.
He is an old man now, years of experience and sorrow and work have
taught him the meaning of the words, and he understands them a great
deal better than his so-called successors have done. For we may surely
take the text as the Apostle's own disclaimer of that which the Roman
Catholic Church has founded on it, and has blazoned it, in gigantic
letters round the dome of St. Peter's, as meaning. It is surely
legitimate to hear him saying in these words: 'Make no mistake, it is
Jesus Himself on whom the Church is built. The confession of Him which
the Father in heaven revealed to me, not I, the poor sinner who
confessed it--the Christ whom that confession set forth, He is the
foundation stone, and all of you are called and honoured to ring out the
same confession. Jesus is the one Foundation, and we all, apostles and
humble believers, are but stones builded on Him.' Peter's relation to
Jesus is fundamentally the same as that of every poor soul that 'comes
to' Him.
Now, there are two or three thoughts that may very well be suggested
from these words, and the first of them is this:--
I. Those that are in Christ have perpetually to make the effort to come
nearer Christ.
Remember that the persons to whom the Apostle is speaking are no
strangers to the Saviour. They have been professing Christians from of
old. They have made very considerable progress in the Divine life; they
are near Jesus Christ; and yet Peter says to them, 'You can get nearer
if you try,' and it is your one task and one hope, the condition of all
blessedness, peace, and joy in your religious life that you should
perpetually be making the effort to come closer, and to keep closer, to
the Lord, by whom you say that you live.
What is it to come to Him? The context explains the figurative
expression, in the very next verse or two, by another and simpler word,
which strips away the figure and gives us the plain fact--'in Whom
believing.' The act of the soul by which I, with all my weakness and
sin, cast myself on Jesus Christ, and grapple Him to my heart, and bind
myself with His strength and righteousness--that is what the Apostle
means here. Or, to put it into other words, this 'coming,' which is here
laid as the basis of everything, of all Christian prosperity and
progress for the individual and for the community, is the movement
towards Christ of the whole spiritual nature of a man--thoughts, loves,
wishes, purposes, desires, hopes, will. And we come near to Him when day
by day we realise His nearness to us, when our thoughts are often
occupied with Him, bring His peace and Himself to bear as a motive upon
our conduct, let our love reach out its tendrils towards, and grasp, and
twine round Him, bow our wills to His commandment, and in everything
obey Him. The distance between heaven and earth does part us, but the
distance between a thoughtless mind, an unrenewed heart, a rebellious
will, and Him, sets between Him and us a greater gulf, and we have to
bridge that by continual honest efforts to keep our wayward thoughts
true to Him and near Him, and to regulate our affections that they may
not, like runaway stars, carry us far from the path, and to bow our
stubborn and self-regulating wills beneath His supreme commandment, and
so to make all things a means of coming nearer the Lord with whom is our
true home.
Christian men, there are none of us so close to Him but that we may be
nearer, and the secret of our daily Christian life is all wrapped up in
that one word which is scarcely to be called a figure, 'coming' unto
Him. That nearness is what we are to make daily efforts after, and that
nearness is capable of indefinite increase. We know not how close to His
heart we can lay our aching heads. We know not how near to His fulness
we may bring our emptiness. We have never yet reached the point beyond
which no closer union is possible. There has always been a film--and,
alas! sometimes a gulf--between Him and us, His professing servants. Let
us see to it that the conscious distance diminishes every day, and that
we feel ourselves more and more constantly near the Lord and intertwined
with Him.