In God’s building there is the need for a rock, and this rock is Christ (Matt. 16:18). According to the New Testament, God’s building is built absolutely on this rock, which is the Rock of Ages. This rock is Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God (Col. 2:9) and as the consummation of the Triune God after the steps of His process. Therefore, the rock for the building of God’s house is the consummated Triune God.
Christ is also the stone, the living stone, for God’s building. First Peter 2:4 speaks of Christ as a living stone: “To whom coming, a living stone, having been rejected by men, but with God chosen, held in honor.” A living stone is one that not only possesses life but also grows in life. This is Christ for God’s building. As life to us, Christ is the seed. For God’s building, He is the stone. After receiving Him as the seed of life, we need to grow that we may experience Him as the stone living in us. In this way He makes us also living stones, transformed with His stone nature so that we may be built together with others a spiritual house upon Him as both the foundation and the cornerstone (Isa. 28:16).
In Christ and through Christ we also become living stones to be built up a spiritual house (1 Pet. 2:5). We, the believers in Christ, are living stones, like Christ, through regeneration and transformation. We were created of clay (Rom. 9:21). But at regeneration we received the seed of the divine life, which by its growth in us transforms us into living stones. At Peter’s conversion the Lord gave him a new name-Peter, a stone (John 1:42). When Peter received the revelation concerning Christ, the Lord revealed further that He was also the rock (Matt. 16:16-18). Peter realized by these two incidents that both Christ and His believers are stones for God’s building. In actuality we become stones through the process of transformation. In this process our natural life is replaced by Christ, and Christ becomes us, thereby making us the precious materials for God’s building. Today we are undergoing the process of transformation so that Christ, the living stone, may be constituted into us to make us living stones for God’s building.
The spiritual house into which we are being built is God’s building. Eventually this building will consummate in the New Jerusalem. In the New Jerusalem there will not be any clay, for all the clay will have been transformed into precious stone. This indicates that the New Jerusalem is built with precious stones. We are becoming the precious stones that will be built up into the New Jerusalem. This process takes place as we daily contact Christ, the living stone for God’s building, and are transformed.
In God’s building Christ is the unique foundation. “Other foundation no one is able to lay besides that which is being laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 3:11). As the Christ and the Son of the living God, the Lord Jesus Christ is the unique foundation laid by God for His building. No one can lay any other foundation. Christ is the all-inclusive One. Nothing and no one can compare with Him. Nothing and no one, other than He, are qualified to be the foundation of the divine building in the universe according to God’s eternal economy. He is the unique One to be the unique foundation of this divine building.
Ephesians 2:20 says that in God’s building Christ is the cornerstone. In this verse Christ is referred to as the cornerstone, not as the foundation, because the main concern here is the cornerstone that joins the two main walls: the wall of the Jewish believers and the wall of the Gentile believers. When the Jewish builders rejected Christ, they rejected Him as the cornerstone (Acts 4:11; 1 Pet. 2:7), which joins the Gentiles to them for the building of God’s house.
God’s intention in saving us is not to bring us into the heavens; rather, it is to join us to the Jews so that He may have His building. Many unbelieving Jews reject the Lord Jesus because they do not want to be joined to the Gentiles. As long as a Jew does not believe in Christ, he may be separated from the Gentiles. But as soon as a Jew believes in Him, he is joined by Christ, the cornerstone, to the Gentile believers. Whether we are Jews or Gentiles, we have been saved in order to be joined in Christ for God’s building.
It is crucial for us to see that God’s building in the New Testament age is altogether with Christ. In this building Christ is everything. This is why we should learn to minister nothing other than Christ to the believers. For God’s building we need Christ as everything to us.
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