'... Spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus
Christ.'--1 Peter ii. 5.
In this verse Peter piles up his metaphors in a fine profusion,
perfectly careless of oratorical elegance or propriety. He gathers
together three symbols, drawn from ancient sacrificial worship, and
applies them all to Christian people. In the one breath they are
'temples,' in the next 'priests,' in the third 'sacrifices.' All the
three are needed to body out the whole truth of the relationship of the
perfect universal religion--which is Christianity--to the fragmentary
and symbolical religion of ancient time.
Christians individually and collectively are temples, inasmuch as they
are 'the habitation of God through the Spirit.' They are priests by
virtue of their consecration, their direct access to God, their function
of representing God to men, and of bringing men to God. They are
sacrifices, inasmuch as one main part of their priestly function is to
offer themselves to God.
Now, it is very difficult for us to realise what an extraordinary
anomaly the Christian faith presented at its origin, surrounded by
religions which had nothing to do with morality, conduct, or spiritual
life, but were purely ritualistic. And here, in the midst of them,
started up a religion bare and bald, and with no appeal to sense, no
temple, no altar, no sacrifice. But the Apostles with one accord declare
that they had all these things in far higher form than those faiths
possessed them, which had only the outward appearance.
Now, this conception of the sacrificial element in the Christian life
runs through the whole New Testament, and is applied there in a very
remarkable variety of forms. I have taken the words of my text, not so
much to discourse upon them especially. My object now is rather to
gather together the various references to the Christian life as
essentially sacrificial, and to trace the various applications which
that idea receives in the New Testament. There are four classes of
these, to which I desire especially to refer.