Each time election year rolls around in America, voters can witness debates between candidates for various offices. The goal is for the speakers to interact with one another’s ideas, clarify their views for the voters, and get at the truth. Unfortunately, what the listener often gets instead is a mixture of mud, whitewash, and soft soap!
In 1 Peter, we are introduced to Christ as the living stone. “Come to Him, to that living stone,” Peter writes, “rejected by men but in God’s sight chosen and precious; and like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 2:4-5). As we come to Jesus, we are not joined to Him artificially, but we take on His nature and become living stones as well.
Here in Mark 12, Christ calls Himself the measuring stone, or, as it is translated in our Bibles, the cornerstone. The cornerstone, in the minds of most Americans, is the stone that tells that a building was erected at a certain time, when a certain person was mayor, and so on. It is merely an exaltation of man.
In 1 Corinthians 3 we have the great New Testament illustration of this fact. Paul says, “According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and another man is building upon it. Let each man take care how he builds upon it. For no other foundation can anyone lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:10-11). This is our only foundation. There is no other way to God. There may be a thousand ways to Christ, but there is only one way to God, and that is through Jesus.
In quoting Psalm 118:22-23, Jesus is reminding the leaders of the scriptural greeting given to Him by the crowd at His Triumphal Entry. The Messiah, the one who would replace the evil tenants in the master’s vineyard, was, “the stone which the builders rejected”—and they were in the very act of rejecting Him. The Messiah as the Stone is set before us in two passages in Isaiah, which are then quoted in the New Testament (Isaiah 8:13-15; 28:16). This theme appears in all of the gospels and also in 1 Peter. It is understandable that Peter should have been interested in this subject—Peter means “rock,” and this was the name the Lord had given Simon.
