What is the context?
As believers come to Christ, the picture changes from a newborn receiving milk to living stones being built together. Jesus is the living stone: rejected by people, yet chosen and precious to God.
The readers are being formed into a spiritual house and a holy priesthood, offering sacrifices acceptable through Jesus Christ. The image concerns their joined life before God; they receive their place and service in relation to Him.
The quotations bring together Isaiah 28:16, Psalm 118:22 and Isaiah 8:14. Christ is the cornerstone for those who believe and the stone over which the disobedient stumble. Human rejection does not overturn God’s choice of Him.
How is this passage commonly understood?
Calvin and Wesley understand the spiritual house as believers joined together in Christ and the sacrifices as lives offered in service, including prayer and grateful obedience.
Christians differ over the relation between this shared priesthood and ordained ministry. The Catholic Catechism, 1546–1547, affirms that the whole community is priestly, while distinguishing the ordained priesthood as a distinct participation in Christ’s one priesthood, serving the faithful. Reformed churches also recognize particular ministerial duties: the Westminster Confession, 27.4, reserves administering baptism and the Lord’s Supper to lawfully ordained ministers. A shared priesthood is therefore not read by every tradition as the removal of all distinct ministry roles.
The last sentence raises a further difference. Calvin prefers to understand the appointment as extending to unbelief itself, while Wesley understands it as God’s appointed judgment on those who do not believe. The Reformed Westminster Confession, 3.1, 3.7, relates judgment to God’s purpose while explicitly denying that God is the author of sin.
Where does this fit in God's plan?
Ephesians 2:19–22 gives a closely related picture: Christ as cornerstone, believers joined into one holy temple and God dwelling among them by His Spirit. The building image brings identity and service together. God is forming a people whose shared life has its foundation in Christ.
The spiritual offerings also fit Hebrews 13:15–16, which connects praise, doing good and sharing with sacrifices pleasing to God through Jesus. The people built around Christ have a life to offer.
What is our position?
Our study Returning to the Word identifies the church as the people in whom God’s Spirit dwells and the priesthood as a calling shared by every believer. Who Shepherds the Church? connects that shared life with direct access to God through Christ, without a necessary human mediating class between Him and His people.