They who become like Christ because they are near Him, thereby grow
together.
'To whom coming, as unto a living stone, ye also, as living stones, are
built up.' That building up means not only the growth of individual
graces in the Christian character, the building up in each single soul
of more and more perfect resemblance to the Saviour, but from the
context it rather refers to the welding together, into a true and
blessed unity, of all those that partake of that common life. Now, it is
very beautiful to remember, in this connection, to whom this letter was
written. The first words of it are: 'To the strangers _scattered abroad_
throughout,' etc. etc. All over Asia Minor, hundreds of miles apart,
here one there another little group, were these isolated believers, the
scattered stones of a great building. But Peter shows them the way to a
true unity, notwithstanding their separation. He says to them in effect:
'You up in Bithynia, and you others away down there on the southern
coast, though you never saw one another, though you are separated by
mountain ranges and weary leagues; though you, if you met one another,
perhaps could not understand what you each were saying, if you "come
unto the living Stone, ye as living stones are built up" into one.'
There is a great unity into which all they are gathered who, separated
by whatever surface distinctions, yet, deep down at the bottom of their
better lives, are united to Jesus Christ.
But there may be another lesson here for us, and that is, that the true
and only secret of the prosperity and blessedness and growth of a
so-called Christian congregation is the individual faithfulness of its
members, and their personal approximation of Jesus Christ. If we here,
knit together as we are nominally for Christian worship, and by faith in
that dear Lord, are true to our profession and our vocation, and keep
ourselves near our Master, then we shall be built up; and if we do not,
we shall not.
So, dear friends, all comes to this: _There_ is the Stone laid; it does
not matter how _close_ we are lying to it, it will be nothing to us
unless we are _on_ it. And I put it to each of you. Are you built on the
Foundation, and from the Foundation do you derive a life which is daily
bringing you nearer to Him, and making you liker Him? All blessedness
depends, for time and for eternity, on the answer to that question. For
remember that, since that living Stone is laid, it is _something_ to
you. Either it is the Rock on which you build, or the Stone against
which you stumble and are broken. No man, in a country evangelised like
England--I do not say Christian, but evangelised--can say that Jesus
Christ has no relation to, or effect upon, him. And certainly no people
that listen to Christian preaching, and know Christian truth as fully
and as much as you do, can say it. He is the Foundation on which we can
rear a noble, stable life, if we build upon Him. If He is not the
Foundation on which I build, He is the Stone on which I shall be broken.