if indeed ye have tasted that the Lord [is] good.
Peter has just told his readers to crave the pure milk of the word. Now he adds a condition: that hunger belongs to people who have already tasted the Lord Himself, and the verse asks whether grace has ever reached your own tongue.
Peter is quoting an older invitation. One writer shows where the words come from, and whom Peter now applies them to.
Verse 3 gives a weighty condition: "if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good." It clearly refers back to Psalm 34:8. There the inspired writer makes a most touching call for others to share his joy in Jehovah. "O taste and see that Jehovah is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him." For the Christian it is sweeter still. The apostle identifies the Lord Jesus with Jehovah, as is the truth.
William Kelly (Kelly renders the divine name "Jehovah"; the ESV reads, "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good! Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!")
Conviction of sin can go deep and still stop short of this taste. One writer shows what is still missing, using Peter's own words.
A man may see sin as a deadly thing, and he may see that nothing which defiles can enter God's presence. His conscience may come to a true conviction of sin. Yet this is not tasting "that the Lord is gracious." It is a very good thing to come even that far. There I am tasting that the Lord is righteous, and I need to know it. But I must not stop there: sin without grace would leave me hopeless. Peter had not "tasted that the Lord was gracious" when he said, "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" He thought his sin made him unfit for the Lord's presence.
J. N. Darby (Where the ESV reads "the Lord is good," older translations read "the Lord is gracious" — the wording several of these writers use.)
Peter learned this himself after failing, and so did David.
Peter surely had tasted that the Lord is gracious. We think of his denial, and how the Lord turned and looked at him, and Peter went out and wept bitterly. He had tasted that the Lord is gracious. He tasted it even more at the meal His blessed hands had prepared for His disciples on the lakeshore (John 21). There the Lord dealt with him so graciously, and His loving voice asked, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" ... David, like Peter, had failed shamefully, and like Peter he had tasted that the Lord is gracious.
The verse explains the hunger of verse 2. Without the taste, the craving never starts.
It assumes that a person has tasted, otherwise he will not desire. Knowing how gracious Christ is makes us want more and more of it.
The same writer traces that appetite back to what the word tells me about God.
Have I tasted and understood that the Lord acts in grace, and that He is love towards me? Have I seen that His word is the expression of that grace, even as it gives life? Then I shall want to feed on this milk of understanding. The believer enjoys it in proportion to his simplicity. It is that good word which announces nothing to me but grace. It announces the God I need as all grace, full of grace, acting in grace, revealing Himself to me in that character. It is a character He can never stop showing towards me, making me a partaker of His holiness.
No preacher can produce this in you. That work belongs to Christ.
Christ gives us a taste of the word. Ministers may set the food of the word before you and carve it out for you, but only Christ can make you taste it. "If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good" (1 Peter 2:3). "Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!" (Ps. 34:8). It is one thing to hear a truth preached, another thing to taste it.
This taste divides churchgoers into two groups. One writer asks who the living stones really are.
Who are these living stones? All true believers in Christ... Are all professing Christians such? Oh no. Profession is one thing; possession is quite another... He gives His own life to all who truly believe in Him and come to Him, tasting that He is gracious — and oh, how gracious He is. So they become living stones, like Peter.
- Taste — the verse quotes Psalm 34's invitation and applies to Jesus what the psalm says of the Lord Himself.
- Grace — conviction of sin only tastes that He is righteous. Tasting that He is gracious goes further, as Peter learned after saying "Depart from me."
- Appetite — the taste is what produces the craving; without it, no one desires the milk of the word.
- Given — others can set the word before you, but only Christ can make you taste it.
- Built — those who have tasted come to Him and receive His life. Profession is one thing, possession another.
To whom coming, a living stone, cast away indeed as worthless by men, but with God chosen, precious,
Peter has just spoken of tasting that the Lord is good. Now he names the One tasted: a stone that lives, and a stone men threw away. The verse gives two verdicts on the same Person — man's and God's. Which one have you come to share?
The word translated "coming" is not the language of a single decision at the start. Commentators note it belongs to a family of words used elsewhere for drawing near, and that the context assumes readers who already know the Lord.
The question of whether "coming" to Christ in verse 4 refers to our first coming to Him as Saviour is best answered by looking at the context... The words "to whom coming" follow "if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good," and this connection assumes, we judge, that those who "come" already know the Lord. And notice that the "coming" is not to Him as Saviour, or as Lord, but to Him as a foundation, a Living Stone... Notice the meaning of the word "coming." It is the word often used in Hebrews, and it means "approach."
Yet the approach is not to a doctrine or a system. It is contact with someone alive.
It is "to whom coming" — that is, you are brought to have dealings with a Person. Do you know what this is? Have you had dealings, in the history of your soul, with the Son of God as a living Person? If you have, what is the result? "You yourselves also, as living stones, are built up."
Kelly traces the word "living" back to Peter's own confession, and to the death Christ has conquered.
"Living" is a word close to Peter's heart. That is how he was able to confess Christ as "the Son of the living God," and his Master called him "blessed" for it... "the Son of the living God" puts strong emphasis on our Lord as the conqueror of the one who has the power of death. So the person of the Lord, revealed in this way, is the rock on which He would build His church.
That word also marks this house off from any temple of quarried rock.
It is being built of living stones. The temple Solomon built was not like this. It was the wonder of the world, but men cut its stones out of natural rock — all lifeless material. This house is alive with the life of the Son of the living God.
Why was He refused? The shape of the Stone itself explains it.
When the Lord Jesus appeared, men tried to work Him into their building and failed. Had He agreed to fall in with man's ideas it would have been otherwise. It would have delighted them if someone so great had supported, or even developed, Roman government, Greek philosophy, or Jewish religion. Coming as He did on God's behalf, He exposed their folly and fitted none of their notions. He was, so to speak, a stone of such odd shape that there was not one niche in the imposing temple of man's fame where He fitted.
If that is the Christ we come to, the coming has a cost and a direction.
It is true that the Christ we come to is the living Stone, rejected by men. But we may ask: how many have come to Christ realising that He is rejected by man and living in reproach? If we come to Him knowing He is rejected, we must leave the corrupt religious world behind. That world denies His rejection in practice. We go out to Him, bearing His reproach.
Against man's verdict stands God's, and God's reverses it point for point.
God reversed everything man handed out to the Lord Jesus. If they killed Him, God raised Him from the dead. If they heaped shame on Him, God highly exalted Him. He is the head stone of the corner. He is the foundation. He is what holds the whole building together, and He is the glory of it too.
His preciousness to God is not a distant fact. It is the believer's portion now.
Drawn to Him, we know Him as the One refused by men, but "in the sight of God chosen and precious"... He has become the very strength and beauty of everything God is shaping for His own praise and glory, and this unique preciousness is our present enjoyed portion. "So the honour is for you who believe."
Coming to this Stone puts you into a building where no human hand is at work.
They come and are built up, as living stones are built up. They are built on the Lord; as living stones they come. There is no human builder, and Christ is what they are built on.
It also explains how a believer becomes a priest.
We have come to Christ (1 Peter 2:4), and so we are priests. Aaron's sons were priests in the same way. They had come to Aaron, and that joined them with him in the priest's office.
- Come — the word means "approach": not a first meeting with a Saviour, but a foundation you keep drawing near to.
- Living — He is the Son of the living God, the conqueror of death. So His house is alive, unlike Solomon's temple of lifeless rock.
- Rejected — He fitted no niche in man's building. He exposed men's folly instead of backing their systems.
- Precious — God reversed every verdict men passed on Him. That preciousness is now the portion of everyone who believes.
- Built — coming to Him makes you a living stone with no human builder over you, and a priest by association with Him.
yourselves also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
Peter tells scattered believers what they already are: stones in a building God is raising, and priests inside it. The old temple kept those two things apart — the structure, and the men who served in it. So what does a priest without an altar offer?
The word "living" is not decoration. It reaches back to the day Peter first confessed Jesus.
The apostle delights in this word "living." It was to him the Father had revealed that Jesus was the Son of the living God. No one else had then confessed Him as such. The Lord told him that on this rock He would build His assembly. That rock is the Person of the Son of God in power of life, shown in the resurrection, which declared Him to be such. Peter, by his faith, shared in the nature of this living rock. Here then (1 Peter 2:5) he extends this character to all believers.
Being "built up" is passive. The stone does not decide where it sits, and it cannot be a building on its own.
The apostle Peter runs parallel with this when he writes: "you also, like living stones, are being built up a spiritual house" (1 Peter 2:5). One stone cannot make a building, and stones do not choose their own place. Each stone in this spiritual house finds its place according to the mind of the Divine Architect.
The old temple was one thing. The priests who served in it were another. Here the two become one.
The stones of the temple in the past age were cut from the quarry and shaped there. Then they were set in place, and the building grew into a holy temple. But it was a material structure, and in it were the sons of Aaron, who served as priests. Now come to the present house of God, the present temple. It is the spiritual house, and the stones and the priests are the same thing — the stones are the priests, and the priests are the stones. They are all who have tasted that the Lord is gracious and have come to Him, the Living Stone… Is there not a distinction between clergy and laity? But who has separated them in that way?
Priesthood here is a position, not an achievement.
All true believers are holy priests. Spiritual birth makes them so, just as natural birth made Aaron's sons priests… We do not become priests by offering priestly sacrifices. But being, through grace, made priests, we are called upon to present the sacrifice. If we were to live a thousand years twice over, and spend all that time working, we could not work ourselves into the position of holy priests. But the moment we believe in Jesus… we are born anew into the position of holy priests.
The offering itself is Christ — what the worshipper has learned of Him, given back to God.
Those who make up the spiritual house and offer the spiritual sacrifices have come to Christ, the Living Stone, the One who is "chosen and precious". Those who have believed in Him have learned the preciousness that is in Christ, and their spiritual sacrifices are what they present of Christ to God. Long ago, the priests presented the blood, the wave breast, the heave shoulder, and all that was "the food of the offering" to the Lord. In worshipping God, we are able to speak to Him of the preciousness of the blood, and of the wonderful love of Christ which surpasses knowledge. We can speak of the strength of Christ that sustained Him while He bore the divine judgment, to do the will of God in His death.
Praise is not the only Christian sacrifice.
We have read of the one perfect sacrifice offered once for all, so never to be repeated. No more sacrifice for sins can there be… We have no altar on which to kill a victim. Yet have Christians no sacrifices to offer? Certainly they have… "Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God." To care for others in their need is a feature of Christian sacrifice, and an acceptable one.
The verse ends "through Jesus Christ." That phrase carries the whole acceptance.
We are to offer our sacrifice of praise by the hand of our Great High Priest, who is always in the presence of God for us… Suppose we could see our own sacrifice laid on the altar by the priestly hand of the Great Minister of the sanctuary. We may be sure we would not recognise it. It goes up to God, not as it comes from us, but as He presents it. Stripped of all the imperfection and failure that belongs to us, it rises to God in all the fragrance and acceptance that belongs to Him. The faintest note of praise, the simple "Thank God," is perfumed with the incense of Christ's infinite preciousness.
- Living — each stone takes its life from the Living Stone; Peter extends that character to every believer.
- Built — the Architect sets each stone. No one is a house alone, and no one picks his own place.
- Same — the stones are the priests. There is no priestly class above ordinary believers.
- Born — new birth makes a priest; work never can. The offering follows the position and never buys it.
- Accepted — we offer Christ back to God, and good done to others. It reaches God as Christ presents it.