1 Peter 2:5

1 Peter 2:5. Be ye also as living stones built up. The verb admits of being construed either as indicative or as imperative. The former is preferred by the E. V., in which it follows Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Geneva. The same rendering is adopted by not a few of the best interpreters (Bengel, Wiesinger, Weiss, Hofmann, etc.), specially on the ground that what is stated in this verse and the following is a natural explanation of the practical effect to which that ‘goodness of the Lord' which they had tasted (1 Peter 2:3) had served them for good, namely, in having actually made them, through attachment to Himself, parts of that spiritual edifice of which he is the foundation chosen of God. But the imperative is to be preferred (with Beza, de Wette, Luthardt, Huther, Schott, Alford, etc.), as most consistent with the use of the similar ‘be ye' in 1 Peter 1:15, with the hortatory force which seems inherent in the participle ‘coming' (1 Peter 2:4), and with Peter's practice of introducing charges in the form of imperatives accompanied by participles expressing the conditions of their fulfilment (1 Peter 1:13; 1 Peter 1:17-18; 1 Peter 1:22; 1 Peter 2:1-2). The imperative, too, may be of the middle form = build yourselves up (Luther, Steiger, Plumptre), or better, of the passive form = be ye built up, as the E. V. gives in the margin, here following Wycliffe's ‘be ye above bilded,' and the ‘be ye also yourselves superedified' of the Rheims. So Peter, as his wont is, charges them to do on their side what has been made both possible and a matter of duty by what has been done on God's side. The foundation is laid by God, let them come, therefore, and be built upon it. And the character (such again is the force of the ‘as') in which they are to do this is that of living stones.

a spiritual house. Though the noun means simply ‘house,' and not ‘temple,' and the adjective ‘spiritual' is added simply to distinguish it from a material structure, it is no doubt the temple that Peter has in view. The phrase itself may be in apposition to the subject ‘ye' (Hofmann, etc.), or (as most prefer) it may express the end contemplated in the being built. It may be that they are to be built up on the Foundation in the character of, or because they are, a spiritual house; or it may be rather that they are to be built up in order to make a spiritual house. At this point Peter introduces the idea which was so alien to the Jewish mind (cf. Mark 14:58; John 2:21), but by this time as familiar to him as it was to Paul (Ephesians 2:20-22, etc.), that the real temple of God was not the great House in Jerusalem, and that Christ's flock, without distinction, too, of Jew and Gentile, was the true Israel, temple, and priesthood of God. It is possible, as Dean Plumptre and others believe, that in speaking of the Church in these terms, Peter recalled the great declaration made to him by Christ Himself, the full significance of which he had been slow enough to take in, on the subject of the Church, and the rock on which its Lord was to build it (Matthew 16:18). ‘This thought of a Divine temple consisting of living men, and of a comer-stone by whom and in whom they could alone cohere, may be traced throughout the whole Epistle. From first to last he seems to be telling them of a unity which existed for them, and which they might enjoy in spite of their dispersion, if only they would recognise the living ground of it, if only they would move round the true centre, and not try to exist as separate atoms apart from it' (Maurice, Unity of New Testament, p. 336) .

unto (or, with a view to) a holy priesthood. The evidence of the best authorities makes it necessary to insert the preposition ‘unto,' which at first sight creates an awkward connection. The awkwardness, however, is only in appearance. It is the new reading that gives by far the deepest and most apposite sense here. It indicates a further end contemplated by the being built up in Christ. They are to be so built in order to make not only a spiritual house, but also a holy priesthood, and the spiritual house itself is to rise with a view to, or, so as also to become, the holy priesthood. As God's people once were, the house and the priesthood were distinct; now they are one. ‘Under the Old Covenant Jehovah had His House, and His priests who served Him in His House; the Church fulfils both purposes under the New, being both His House and His holy priesthood' (see Wiesinger and Fronmüller). The epithet ‘holy' simply marks off the priesthood as consecrated according to the idea of a priesthood. The noun expressing the priesthood itself is one entirely strange to profane Greek, but found in the LXX., and once again in the N. T. (1 Peter 2:9 of this chapter). It denotes priests not in their individual capacity, but as a collective body or college. It by no means follows, however, that it implies the existence of different degrees of priesthood among Christians (Canon Mason), or that it bears upon ‘the office of a vicarious priesthood, representing and acting on behalf of the body corporate' (Canon Cook). The one thing it affirms is that all Christians as such, and without distinction, constitute a priestly fraternity corresponding to the community of priests established under the Law, and realizing the complete idea of a priesthood which the former college, with its limitation in numbers, and its sharp separation from the people, and its ritual service, imperfectly and distantly exhibited. ‘The name priest,' says John Owen, ‘is nowhere in Scripture attributed peculiarly and distinctly to the ministers of the Gospel as such; that which puts a difference between them and the rest of the people of God's holiness seems to be a more direct participation of Christ's prophetical, not sacerdotal, office. When Christ ascended on high, He gave some to be prophets, Ephesians 4:11; none, as we find, to be priests. Priests are a sort of church-officers whom Christ never appointed' (see Dr. John Brown in loc.). In the next few verses, Peter lingers lovingly over this great principle of grace, the priesthood of all believers, the right of every soul to go direct to God with its sins, and receive for itself His forgiveness through Christ, the principle which the early Church proclaimed (‘are not we who are laics also priests?' Tertullian, de Exhort. Castitatis, chap, 7), which was lost in the theology and ecclesiasticism of the Mediaeval Church, although it lived in its hymnology, which finally revived in the Theses of Luther, and became the keynote of the Reformation.

to offer up spiritual sacrifices. If Christians are the spiritual house and the holy priesthood which make all necessity for a separate temple and a limited priesthood vanish, they must serve in priestly fashion Him whose house they make. Their service is to offer ‘sacrifices,' and these, in conformity with the service itself, must be not material but ‘spiritual.' In the O. T., sin and trespass offerings had to be offered first in order that access might be secured, and only after these, and in their train, came the sacrifices of consecration, praise, and thanksgiving. Under the N. T., access has been opened once for all by Christ's sacrifice for sin, and the only sacrifices which this priesthood is called to offer, or is capable of offering, are of the latter order. They embrace first the consecration of our living, active selves, which is described as the presenting of ‘our bodies a living sacrifice' (Romans 12:1); and then those offerings which are the expression of that consecrated life, the sacrifices of our praise and thanksgiving (which are compared to the fruit of our lips, Hebrews 13:15; cf. also Psalms 50:23; Psalms 116:17; Hosea 14:3), of our prayers (which are likened to incense, Psalms 141:2), of beneficent deeds and charitable givings (Hebrews 13:16), of broken spirits and contrite hearts (Psalms 51:17), of obedience, the superiority of which to the sacrifices of the Law was declared so early as by Samuel to Agag (1 Samuel 15:22), and finally, if need be, of a spent life or martyr's death, which Paul speaks of under the figure of the pouring out of the heathen libation, or the Jewish drink-offering, which accompanied the sacrifice (Philippians 2:17). The verb used here in the sense of ‘to offer,' is the usual LXX. term for the offering of sacrifice, and means properly to ‘bring up to the altar.' It occurs thrice in the N. T. with the literal sense of ‘carrying up,' or ‘leading up' (Matthew 18:1; Mark 9:2; and, in reference to the Ascension, Luke 24:51. It is never found in the sacrificial application either in the Pauline writings or in the Classics, but has that sense again in 1 Peter 2:24 of the present chapter, once in James (James 2:21), and thrice in Hebrews (Hebrews 7:27; Hebrews 9:28; Hebrews 13:15).

acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. This clause may be attached to the verb, so that the sense will be=to offer up through Jesus Christ acceptable sacrifices to God. This connection has in its favour the analogy of Hebrews 13:15, and is urged on the ground that not only the acceptance of what is offered, but the very possibility of offering, is dependent on Christ; so Alford, de Wette, Weiss, etc. It is better, however, on the whole, to connect it closely with the noun, both on account of the immediate vicinity of the noun, and because without such an addition the acceptance of the N. T. sacrifices (as due directly and simply to Christ) is not distinguished from the acceptance of the O. T. sacrifices (as dependent on certain ritual observances). The meaning, therefore, seems to be (as Luther, Bengel, Wiesinger, Hofmann, Huther, etc., read it) = to offer up spiritual sacrifices which through Jesus Christ are acceptable to God. To Him to whom we owe our first consecration as priests to God, we owe also the continued acceptance of all that we offer in our priestly ministry.