1 Peter 2:8

2:1-10 Evil-speaking is a sign of malice and guile in the heart; and hinders our profiting by the word of God. A new life needs suitable food. Infants desire milk, and make the best endeavours for it which they are able to do; such must be a Christian's desires after the word of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ is very merciful to us miserable sinners; and he has a fulness of grace. But even the best of God's servants, in this life, have only a taste of the consolations of God. Christ is called a Stone, to teach his servants that he is their protection and security, the foundation on which they are built. He is precious in the excellence of his nature, the dignity of his office, and the glory of his services. All true believers are a holy priesthood; sacred to God, serviceable to others, endowed with heavenly gifts and graces. But the most spiritual sacrifices of the best in prayer and praise are not acceptable, except through Jesus Christ. Christ is the chief Corner-stone, that unites the whole number of believers into one everlasting temple, and bears the weight of the whole fabric. Elected, or chosen, for a foundation that is everlasting. Precious beyond compare, by all that can give worth. To be built on Christ means, to believe in him; but in this many deceive themselves, they consider not what it is, nor the necessity of it, to partake of the salvation he has wrought.

Though the frame of the world were falling to pieces, that man who is built on this foundation may hear it without fear. He shall not be confounded. The believing soul makes haste to Christ, but it never finds cause to hasten from him. All true Christians are a chosen generation; they make one family, a people distinct from the world: of another spirit, principle, and practice; which they could never be, if they were not chosen in Christ to be such, and sanctified by his Spirit. Their first state is a state of gross darkness, but they are called out of darkness into a state of joy, pleasure, and prosperity; that they should show forth the praises of the Lord by their profession of his truth, and their good conduct. How vast their obligations to Him who has made them his people, and has shown mercy to them! To be without this mercy is a woful state, though a man have all worldly enjoyments. And there is nothing that so kindly works repentance, as right thoughts of the mercy and love of God. Let us not dare to abuse and affront the free grace of God, if we mean to be saved by it; but let all who would be found among those who obtain mercy, walk as his people.

1 Peter 2:8 . Οἱ προσκόπτουσι , τῷ λόγῷ ἀπειθοῦντες , who stumble, not believing the word ) In 1 Peter 2:7 , he expressed the different judgments of believers and unbelievers respecting Christ; now he sets forth the difference itself between believers and unbelievers. Many construct προσκόπτουσι τῷ λόγῳ , stumble at the word . But προσκόπτουσι , put absolutely (as in John 11:9 ), is derived from προσκόμματος , the word quoted from Isaiah; and the declaration follows, τῷ λόγῳ ἀπειθοῦντες , not believing the word , as ch. 1 Peter 4:17 , Τὶ τὸ τέλος τῶν ἀπειθούντων τῷ τοῦ Θεοῦ εὐαγγελίῳ ; What shall be the end of those who obey not the Gospel of God? and certainly ch. 1 Peter 3:1 , εἴ τινες ἀπειθοῦσι τῷ λόγῳ : If any obey not the word . It is in the Gospel-word that the preciousness of Christ is set forth: they who do not believe the word, despise Christ, and stumble at Him.— εἰς ὃ καὶ ἐτέθησαν , to which also they were appointed ) Which refers to stumble : they who do not believe, stumble; they who stumble are also appointed for stumbling. This appointment follows unbelief and stumbling, as even the intensive particle, also , and the order of this clause which is placed last, signify. And yet stumble is present. They were appointed has the force of a past tense; by which it is implied, that by a most just judgment of God, unbelievers stumble more and more from day to day.

And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; i.e. a stone at which they stumble, a rock at which they are offended; and so it implies Christ not to be the cause of their stumbling, but the object of it; they of their own accord, and through the pravity of their nature, without any just occasion given by him, being offended, either because cause they find not that in him which they expected, viz. outward encouragements; or find that in him which they do not like, the holiness of his law, and purity of his doctrine, contrary to their corruptions and lusts, and especially his requiring of them faith in him for the justification of their persons, which was so contrary to the pride of their hearts, and which was one great reason of the Jews stumbling at him, as seeking to establish their own righteousness, and therefore not submitting to the righteousness of God, Romans 9:32,33 , compared with Romans 10:3 . This stumbling includes not only their falling into sin, but into destruction too, the punishment of sin, Isaiah 8:14,15 ; whereof Christ can be no more than the inculpable occasion, but their own unbelief the proper cause.

Which stumble at the word, being disobedient; these words may have a double reading: one according to our translation; and then the sense is, that stumble at the word of the gospel, i.e. are disobedient to it, in rejecting Christ therein offered to them: or, that stumble, being disobedient to the word; i.e. stumble at Christ preached to them in the word, and therefore will not obey it; they show that they are offended at Christ, by their not receiving his doctrine, nor accepting his offers. Whereunto also they were appointed; either this may refer: 1. To 1 Peter 2:6 , where Christ is said to be laid (the same word in the (greek with that which is here translated by appointed ) in Sion, as a chief corner-stone, elect and precious, on whom whosoever believeth, shall not be confounded. The apostle then adds, that even these unbelievers were appointed (viz. in their external vocation, as being taken into covenant with God) to be built on Christ by faith but they stumbled, by their unbelief, at the word of the gospel, and consequently at this stumbling-stone. And then it is a high aggravating the unbelief of the Jews, that they, being God’s peculiar people, should reject that salvation which was sent to them, and to the first offer of which they were designed, Acts 13:26,46,47 . Or: 2.

8. stone of stumbling, &c.—quoted from Isa 8:14. Not merely they stumbled, in that their prejudices were offended; but their stumbling implies the judicial punishment of their reception of Messiah; they hurt themselves in stumbling over the corner-stone, as "stumble" means in Jer 13:16; Da 11:19. at the word—rather, join "being disobedient to the word"; so 1Pe 3:1; 4:17. whereunto—to penal stumbling; to the judicial punishment of their unbelief. See above. also—an additional thought; God's ordination; not that God ordains or appoints them to sin, but they are given up to "the fruit of their own ways" according to the eternal counsel of God. The moral ordering of the world is altogether of God. God appoints the ungodly to be given up unto sin, and a reprobate mind, and its necessary penalty. "Were appointed," Greek, "set," answers to "I lay," Greek, "set," 1Pe 2:6. God, in the active, is said to appoint Christ and the elect (directly). Unbelievers, in the passive, are said to be appointed (God acting less directly in the appointment of the sinner's awful course) [Bengel]. God ordains the wicked to punishment, not to crime [J. Cappel]. "Appointed" or "set" (not here "FORE-ordained") refers, not to the eternal counsel so directly, as to the penal justice of God. Through the same Christ whom sinners rejected, they shall be rejected; unlike believers, they are by God appointed unto wrath as FITTED for it.

8 . which stumble at the word ] The “word,” as before, is the sum and substance of the Gospel. Men opposing themselves to that word, looking on it as an obstacle to be got rid of, were as those who rush upon a firm-fixed stone, and who falling over it are sorely bruised. whereunto also they were appointed ] Attempts have been made to soften the apparent fatalism of the words by carrying the antecedent of the “whereunto” as far back as 1 Peter 2:5 , and seeing in the words the statement that even those who stumbled were appointed, as far as God’s purpose was concerned, to be built up on Christ. It is, however, all but obvious that this puts a forced and artificial meaning on the Apostle’s words. What he really affirms is that it is part of God’s appointed order that the disobedient should stumble and be put to shame. And it may be noted that this way of looking on things is eminently characteristic of him. In the treachery of Judas he read the lesson that “the Scripture must needs have been fulfilled” ( Acts 1:16 ). Stumbling, however, was not necessarily identical with falling irretrievably ( Romans 11:11 ).

Verse 8. - And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense . St. Peter combines Isaiah 8:14 with his first quotations, as St. Paul also does (Ram. 9:33), both apostles quoting from the Hebrew, not from the Septuagint, which is quite different, inserting two negatives. The living Stone is not only made the Head of the corner to the confusion of the disobedient, but becomes also to their destruction a Stone of stumbling; they fall on that Stone, and are broken ( Matthew 21:44 ). That Stone is a Rock ( πέτρα ), the Rock of Ages, the Rock on which the Church is built; but to the disobedient it is a Rock of offense ( πέτρα σκανδάλου ). Σκάνδαλον ( in Attic Greek σκανδάληθρον ) is properly the catch or spring of a trap, which makes animals fall into the trap; then a stumbling-block - anything which causes men to fall. We cannot fail to notice how St. Peter echoes the well-remembered words of our Lord, recorded in Matthew 16:18, 23 . Peter was himself then a πέτρα σκανδάλου , a rock of offense. Even to them which stumble at the Word, being disobedient ; literally, who being disobedient stumble at the Word - the relative referring back to "them which be disobedient" in ver. 7. This seems better than (with Huther and others) to take τῷ λόγῳ with ἀπειθοῦντες , "who stumble, being disobedient to the Word." Ἀπειθοῦντες , literally," unbelieving," contains here, as frequently, the idea of disobedience, willful opposition. St. Peter seems to come very near to St.