I PETER 2: "ROCK" IMAGERY

Verse 2-- Unlike the Book of Hebrews which criticized the Christians for not progressing beyond milk to the meat of the spiritual life, Peter is talking to new Christians here who are just starting their spiritual journey. Any other translations for “spiritual” milk? It is not the usual Greek word for spiritual. It is only used one other time in the NT and literally meant reasonable or rational.

Verse 3-- Psalm 34 “taste and see that the LORD is good.”

Verses 4-5 and 9-10-- These are images of the church as a whole, the corporate body of Christ. These bracket the OT quotations involving the image of Christ as the rock.

Here it is is helpful to remind ourselves of the author of the letter: Peter. Jesus renamed Simon as 

“rock” after his great confession. In turn, Peter turns around and states that the only true rock of the 

church is Jesus.

The old quiz show Twenty Questions would always start out by asking if an unknown object was animal, mineral or vegetable. (The second most common question was: Is it bigger than a breadbox? Today that question would be incomprehensible to most people.) Most of the time, the Bible deals with animal (including human) and vegetable matter, but today we will concentrate on the third category.

I Peter 2:4-8 contains several examples of rock or stone being used as an image. That sort of imagery would have made a lot of sense to the Jews since they didn't have to go far to encounter rocks in their environment. But the problem with deciphering what a biblical image or figure of speech means is to determine what specific property of the image is being referred to in each case. And where rocks or stones are involved, a great many properties spring to mind and several different classes of figurative language are employed.

As two examples, consider some cases where stones are used in a hyperbolic (literary exaggeration) sense:

Luke 19:40: Jesus says that if the people had not proclaimed him king, the very rocks would have done so.

Luke 3:8: This verse talks about the possibility of God raising up children of Abraham from stones.

Although we know that nothing is impossible with God, Jesus is more probably using hyperbole in these passages to stress the points he is making. The property of rocks that is of interest in these two cases is the fact that they are inert and lifeless, in order to stress the difficulty of bringing them to life. What about the other properties of rocks that are alluded to in the Bible, many referring to Jesus himself?

Instrument of destruction

Luke 20:18: Here stones are pictured as strong, hard and unyielding. Therefore they would have made readily available instruments of destruction. In this verse, it is probably not obvious to us today, but the reference was probably to the practice of stoning. That form of execution was not carried out in the manner we think but consisted of first pushing a person off a cliff to be dashed to death on the rocks below. Only if they survived the fall would the people then finish the job by throwing stones at them. This was the sort of death the crowd had in mind for Jesus when they drove him to the edge of a cliff.

In this particular passage there is a probable illusion to Daniel 2:34-35,44 – a vision in which a rock rolls downhill and destroys the compound statue made of different materials. The Messiah is predicted to overthrow all earthly kingdoms up to that time and replace them with God's Kingdom. Christ is similarly the rock/mountain mentioned in the Luke passage. This usage is similar to the fact that God the Father is also referred to as the Rock in II Samuel 22:3-4. But in that OT passage, He represents the strength and protection that rock outcroppings and mountains provide to shelter against the elements.

Source of Nourishment

I Corinthians 10:1-4 is a very intriguing, expressing an idea which seems to come out of the clear blue. Actually, Paul's thought pattern here was common to the rabbinical teaching of the time and arose from a consideration of Exodus 17 (the spring of Rephidim) in combination with Numbers 20 (water coming from a rock at Kadesh). The reasoning went that it must have been the same rock that provided the people in the wilderness with needed water at both locations. Therefore that rock must have followed them throughout their journeys. Paul uses this moving rock as a type of Jesus, who provides us with spiritual food and drink. This same generally imagery appears in John 6:53-54 and John 7:37-39 as well as being used by Jesus in talking to the Samaritan woman.

Foundation Rock

Reliability and firmness are the properties of rock in this case. The most prominent example of this imagery is Jesus' parable of the two men who built houses, one on solid rock and the other on sand. This gave rise to the hymn lyric “all else is shifting sand.” Only Jesus is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Thus, we are told explicitly in I Corinthians 2:10-11 that we the believers are God's temple (verse 16) built upon Christ as the foundation of our life.

For the next example of this type of usage, we must first look at some definitions. After Peter's great confession in Matthew 16, Jesus utilizes a pun on his name. He says, “You are Petros (name given to him earlier by Jesus himself according to Mark and John), and upon this Petra I will build my church. There are two usual interpretations of this statement:

1. Peter is the rock upon which the church is built. Since the conversation took place in Aramaic originally, Cephas was the word used in both instances. The first time it was translated into Greek as Petros since that is a masculine noun. However, the second occurrences was translated Petra (feminine) since that is the more common word for rock.

Even if that were true, keep in mind that Peter is referred to in each case but (a) there is no mention of his successors and (b) it may only be true in the limited sense that Peter is the first confessing Christian. See what Peter himself says in I Peter 2:4-5. Christians, like himself, are only following the example of Christ, who is The Rock.

2. Because of the above, Protestants generally feel that Christ, or faith in Christ as the Son of God, is the rock. Petros is merely a piece of the Petra. Even St. Augustine held to this view.

Cornerstone or Keystone

It is not clear which of the two translations is best for the Greek word involved. However, in each case the ultimate image is the same – a stone that is placed in a vital spot of a building. That could be either the large cornerstone that is part of the foundation and binds together two rows of the building or it could mean the capstone, or keystone, of an arch.

One OT reference in which a keystone is mentioned is Zechariah 4:7-10, a passage which was interpreted later by the Jews in a messianic sense. However, most NT references refer back to one of two additional OT texts:

1. Psalm 118:21-22: In this case the Psalmist was probably utilizing a proverb meaning that what was once considered useless and rejected has now become important. He may have been referring to himself in this psalm. The most famous historical illustration of this principle is the story of Michelangelo choosing a piece of marble so flawed that no other sculptor wanted to use it. From it he carved “David.”

This psalm figures in two NT passages, both of which refer to the stone as Jesus and cite His death on the cross as an example of His rejection by the people: Matthew 21:42 and Acts 4:10-12.

2. Isaiah 28:16: This passage, in its historical context, refers to the fact that Jewish leaders had made an alliance with Egypt hoping to be protected against the Assyrians. Isaiah tells them that their true strength and foundation is faith in God.

The NT allusions to this verse appear in two places. In Ephesians 2:19-22, Jesus is pictured as the cornerstone of the household of God, the church. In our subject passage, I Peter 2:4-6, there is an interesting addition in that the cornerstone is living, unlike other stones. And if we are in Him, we will also live.

Unproductive Ground

Rocky soil is not able to support life, as Jesus taught in his parable of the soils. The same is true for those who have turned their hearts to stone and rejected God's word.

Stone of Stumbling

I have had my fair share of tripping over something on the ground that I didn't see, and this happening must have been much more frequent in the days when paved streets and walkways were few and far between. Isaiah 8:11-15 utilized this image to convey the fact that God was a sanctuary to him, but to the rest of Israel He was a snare, a trap, and a rock of stumbling (or offense). The Greek word translated in these various ways is skandalon, from which we get the word “scandal.” Christ is the scandalous fact of history.

This idea is developed by NT writers in two passages:

1. I Peter 2:8-10: Peter concludes his “rock” passage that began in verse 4 by showing the contrast between the disobedient, ethnic Israel who rejected Jesus and the new, spiritual Israel who accepted him.

2. Similarly, Paul in Romans 9:30-33 refers to the Isaiah passage as predicting the fact that the Jews would, on a whole, reject Jesus as their Christ. And in particular the fact that they rejected righteousness based on faith in favor of the law and works.

Conclusion

Christ polarizes opinions, and by using the image of a rock both possibilities are illustrated. John Oswalt (The Book of Isaiah:1-39, p. 234) has perhaps expressed it best:

“The attitude we take toward God will determine what aspect of him we will experience. To those who sanctify him, who give him a place of importance in their lives...he becomes a sanctuary, a place of refuge and peace. But to those who will not give him such a place in their lives, he becomes a stone to trip over. He does not change; only our attitude determines how we experience him...Those who will not make a place for him will keep colliding with him and tripping over him, for he is there, whether they acknowledge him or not. Because this is fact of which their hypothesis does not take account, their experiment will keep failing and he will be the cause of it, not because of some vindictive streak in him, but simply because he is and they are trying to live as if he were not.”

I Peter 2:21 This is not the same as asking ourselves “What would Jesus do?” We are to imitate him in suffering and dying to ourselves.

 I Peter 2:25 Whereas Jesus calls Peter the shepherd, Peter calls Jesus the only shepherd (Just like his calling Christ the rock earlier on).