cornerstone

In “olden days” the corner stone was the principal stone placed at the corner of a structure. There would need to be one at each corner of the building to provide a firm support, but usually one was larger and more carefully made than the others. The corner stone or corner foundation stone was not the top stone of the building; it was laid at the foundation as a strong angle stone, and not only occupied an honourable position but gave strength to the building (see also 1 Pet 2:6).

This verse, Psa 118:22, is quoted five times in the New Testament, and all the references make it clear that the “stone” is the Lord Jesus.

In the gospels, e.g. Mat 21:42, the Lord quotes Psa 118:22 after His parable of the vineyard. The parable left the son dead and the husbandmen destroyed. Psa 118:22 visualises a building site on which lay an unused stone, and the builders did not know where it was to go, so they threw it on one side not realising that it was the final top-most stone to crown the building. They did not recognise its significance.

When the Lord came the Pharisees cast Him away as One that was unwanted. They expected Jehovah’s intervention in quite another way, and were looking for Him high up among the great ones of earth. They refused to lay this Stone, which God had appointed, as the foundation of their hopes, preferring some other foundation, but they reckoned without His resurrection. They did not know that the Lord would do a marvellous thing, and that He whom they despised and rejected would yet be exalted to become the chief corner-stone in a glorious “ecclesia”, the church and temple of a new dispensation.

The stone rejected by Israel seemed to be so unimportant before them that they tripped over it, and fell. As a result it was embraced by another, a holy nation, 1 Pet 2:9. It is in the church that the Lord Jesus is pre-eminent being the foundation, the head and the cornerstone. He occupies the same place in the church as the foundation and corner stones do in a building. All the living stones in this spiritual building are built in relation to Jesus Christ the corner stone. One day Israel will receive Him; they will see the error of their ways and say in the words of Psa 118:22, “the stone which the builders refused is become the head of the corner”.

To the unbeliever today our Lord is a “stone of stumbling and a rock of offence” (1 Pet 2:8). This stone will one day “grind to powder” when the day of grace ends.