How is Jesus a rock of offense (1 Peter 2:8)?

Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. (1 Pet 2:7-8).

"A rock of offense" appears twice in the New Testament and is a quotation from Isaiah 8:14. "A rock of offense" is always with "a stone of stumbling"- that we have just mentioned when talking about the Lord Jesus as a stone; it is always "a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense". These references point to Israel 's attitude to the Lord; His own human people found Him a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.

"A rock of offense". An 'offense' is something that is a hindrance to others. We automatically think of hindrance as being something negative, but it doesn't have to be. The hindrance, the offense, may be because we are unwilling to accept the truth. And that's the case here. The Jews would not accept the Lord Jesus for who He was- they expected their Messiah to come with power and majesty, set them free from the Romans and rule, they did not expect Him as the humble lowly man they saw in Jesus. By His ways and words the Lord Jesus condemned the Jews, particularly the Jewish leaders, showing up that they had no real love for God but merely followers of tradition- having a form but no reality. They were offended by Him, so much so that they were utterly determined to get rid of Him. He was a rock of offense, an immovable object- He could not be flattered or bribed or threatened, He was immovable on God's principles; nothing would make Him modify His declaration of the truth and His condemnation of the religious rulers, and they were offended by the truth.

To draw a parallel for today, many people find God's truth and absolute standards a problem, they are offended by them. The truth regarding the person of the Lord Jesus, His divinity, His virgin birth, His bodily resurrection - these are a problem to many people's belief systems. The truth that adultery or homosexuality is wrong offends many. The Lord and His truth are a rock of offense to them.

"Behold I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious," etc. Unto you therefore which believe He is precious [or, is the preciousness]. This is sometimes looked at as an experience of feeling; but what is here meant shews the contrast between a believer and an unbeliever. Though "precious" to the believer, He is a "stone of stumbling" to the "disobedient," appointed not to disobey, but, being disobedient, to stumble at the word.

(Vv. 7, 8). This leads the Apostle to draw a contrast between believers and rejectors of the living Stone. Unto those who believe is the preciousness; all the preciousness of Christ, all the blessing He secures, is made good to the believer. Alas! there are those who are disobedient, and, being such, they cast away as worthless the One who has been exalted by God as the Head of the corner. To such He becomes a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. Men stumbled at His word. They would not believe the truth, and therefore to this end they were appointed. They were not appointed to sin or to disobey, but being rebellious and disobedient they were destined by their unbelief to stumble at the humiliation of Christ.

If to Israel He is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense, yet the fact remains that He is both the Stone and the Rock,--not something that is easily brushed aside and forgotten. His very Name, even after His death and resurrection, was enough to incur the bitterest enmity and persecution of the Jew,. Why? Because the stone was directly in their way, Either they must submit to Him, or else, in plunging on in a headlong course, they would stumble. They stumbled too at the word concerning Him, after He was raised, because of a disobedient heart. They were appointed to this painful stumbling, not arbitrarily but because their wills were set in disobedience.

(1 Peter 2:7 and 8), "Unto you therefore which believe He is precious: but to them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed." This gives us Israel's path, as a nation. Why do they stumble at the Word? Because they will not obey God. "Whereunto also they were appointed." Appointed to what? Appointed as a nation to have this stone put before them. God gave them the most wonderful privilege possible, to have Christ put before them, and they stumbled over Him. Because He came in lowly grace the nation stumbled over Him.

But if there were no escape, except in God's mere mercy, from such an issue as to Israel, a plain reason can be given for the rejection of the many which was now taking place, although it was at that very time that Israel manifested, as we know, their zeal for the law, in a certain sense therefore, for righteousness. How strange a fact that while the Gentiles, largely men who had never followed after righteousness, who were mere sinners of the Gentiles, attained righteousness as believers in Christ, Israel, pursuing after the law of righteousness, did not attain to it; but why? Because it was by law that they sought it, in the way in which there was utter impossibility of ever finding what they sought. This has been shown us already, again and again. They rejected distinctly God's principle of faith, and thus they stumbled at the Stumbling Stone, — Christ in His grace come low enough to be stumbled over, in that humiliation which was the expression of His perfect grace, as well of the need which that grace was to meet. It was the very thing which in their condition became a stumbling block to them, and God had declared that this would be so. He was to place in Zion a "stone of stumbling and rock of offence." The fulness of God's love exhibited in Him could be no other to men filled with the Pharisaic self-righteousness which characterized the nation. They knew not their need and therefore the very goodness which ministered to that need — grace, was rejected because it was grace: the lower it had come to minister to men, the more ground had they in their thought for rejecting it.

Jehovah of hosts was to be a sanctuary for the believing remnant, but He would be "for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel," that is, He would become such through their unbelief in Jehovah's intervention through the virgin's child. Isa. 8:14 (where the word is negeph, 'the act of stumbling'). When the Lord was on earth He became this stone of stumbling to the Jews, and remains the same to them and to the house of Israel where, through disobedient unbelief, He is still rejected. Rom. 9:32-33; 1 Peter 2:8. Any who through grace receive the gospel become Christians and are merged in the church. In connection with the same, the word σκάνδαλον is employed: this is literally 'the catch of a trap,' which being touched ensnares. Rom. 9:33 (offence); Rom. 11:9; 1 Cor. 1:23; 1 Peter 2:8 (offence).

A stumbling stone: a stone over which people trip. This refers to the Jews particularly, they expected their Messiah to come as a liberating king, not a humble servant, and so they stumbled over Him. [Matt 21:44 ]

Now, it was not only in the eyes of God that this Stone was precious, but in the eyes of faith which — feeble as the possessors of it may be — sees as God sees. To unbelievers this stone was a stone of stumbling and of offence. They stumbled at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were appointed. It does not say that they were appointed to sin nor to condemnation, but these unbelieving and disobedient sinners, the Jewish race — long rebellious, and continually exalting themselves against God — were destined to find in the Lord of grace Himself a rock of offence; and to stumble and fall upon that which was to faith the precious stone of salvation. It was to this particular fall that their unbelief was destined.

Now the Jews are profoundly unbelieving, not only as all natural men but judicially blinded, because it was in the face of the fullest evidence and of long-suffering withal to the uttermost. But their self-judgment will come at length in the day of Messiah's power and their national deliverance. Then shall they see and confess it all, as other scriptures attest; and they will understand that Jehovah wrought atonement for all their sins by what was their destructive and inexcusable sin. Into this work, already in itself accomplished, the believing remnant enters now in all its value, like ourselves from among the Gentiles. But as yet the mass are insensible. "To you therefore that believe is the preciousness, but to disobedient a stone which the builders rejected, this became head of corner, and stone of stumbling, and rock of offence." How evident the solution of the riddle! and how could it be otherwise if Jesus be the Christ and Son of God? Ps. 118:22 and Isa. 8:14 are as clearly fulfilled as the fuller prediction. While we have to wait for the earthly triumph when Israel shall own it all, Jesus is made head of the corner in heaven, and those who now believe, Jews or Gentiles, enjoy the blessing by faith. This too has even now more excellence for the heart than the visible glory when it appears as it surely will, to say nothing of the heavenly glory which will also be displayed above the world in that day.

The present state of the Jews exactly answers to the dark background of the picture. And the words which follow are as solemn morally as they are sure in fact: "stumbling as they do at the word, being disobedient, unto which also they were appointed." There is neither here nor anywhere else the dogmatic reprobation of the Calvinistic school; which has no more to justify it from scripture than the opposite error of the power for good of the Pelagians. All the evil is man's; as the good is exclusively of God's grace. He never made man to be a sinner, nor does He take pleasure in a sinner's death, still less in his everlasting destruction. But He is supreme; and, bold as man may be in wilful disobedience, God's will stands. He presents His grace and truth in Christ; and men stumble at the word which reveals Him. To this they were appointed, not to be disobedient, but, being so, to stumble in this way, which God had in His wisdom appointed as their trial. They refuse and contemn the word; which others, by grace self-judging and believing Him, receive to their salvation, peace, and joy. Compare Jude 4.