Guest Post By Pastor Josh Waller
Joshua Waller is the pastor of Christ the King Presbyterian Church (CREC) in Tallahassee, FL. He is married to Rebecca and has four wonderful daughters.
‘During Jesus’ ministry, he was laying the church’s foundation. The apostles are included in this work, as Christ is the chief cornerstone and Peter, James, and John, his inner circle, should be considered the other cornerstones. As with many images, there is more than one way to describe what occurs. For example, Jesus’ body is the temple, but the Spirit also grafts us into Christ as the temple. We should be able to see Jesus himself as the temple and the church, the body of Christ, as the temple at the same time. Ephesians 2:20 refers to the foundation laid as “the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone” and I Peter 2:5 says that “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.”
A word on architecture. A chief cornerstone is the first stone laid and the one around which the rest are laid. The other stones are laid according to the chief cornerstone. You must lay that one stone first and work out from there because otherwise, the structure would not end up straight or sound.
Jesus chose twelve disciples because it represents the new Israel, to be sure, but twelve is a significant number in terms of foundation-building, as well. A twelve-stone foundation would be a 3×4 structure and 3+4=7, which signifies the completed project. Now, this has implications for the miraculous gifts, but that is not the purpose of this article.
One question that arises as we discuss the numbers is how we can build a twelve-stone structure if Jesus Christ himself is the cornerstone. Does that not leave one extra stone? Not in the Bible. The twelve sons of Jacob were the original foundation, but Levi had no inheritance in terms of land, but rather their inheritance was the temple itself. In order to make the number stay the same, when Joseph rose to power in Egypt, he had two sons, Manasseh and Ephraim, who are called “half-tribes”. The structure in Israel, then, had two stones removed–Levi and Joseph–and two stones–Manasseh and Ephraim–took their place.
This same pattern takes place in the New Testament as both Jesus (ascension) and Judas (death) are removed and replaced. Israelite priests had to be Levites, but in the church, Jesus is the High Priest. He also had no inheritance in terms of his own land that he would rule over in the flesh, but was, in effect, ruling over all tribes as he was the central driving force in all twelve tribes as Jesus mediates the proper worship of the church in all twelve tribes. Jesus, like Levi, is the chief cornerstone because, though he ascended–and therefore had no fleshly rule–he reigns over his people as the one mediator between God and man. All of Israel’s tribes were influenced and affected by proper worship and were therefore structured and ruled according to Levi’s role.
Judas removed himself from office by betraying the Lord and then hanging himself. At this time Jesus and Judas were removed, in a sense. There had been twelve stones, but now there was an opening. In Judas’ place, the apostles chose Matthias as an apostle who was appointed after the fact, but that is only one of the “half-tribes” in the New Testament. The other apostle who came later was Paul. The initial apostles were joined later on by Matthias and Paul, who filled out the number of the twelve.
One interesting difference between these two structures, the Old and New Testament, is that Joseph is a clear Christ figure, but Judas was the betrayer. The righteous Joseph’s place was divided in the Old, but treacherous Judas’ was divided in the New. Not all imagery in the scriptures is supposed to be layered over perfectly in the New Testament and we have to use wisdom as we look at which things are to be compared and which contrasted.
In this case, there is a kind of inversion. Jesus, like Joseph, was a dreamer–and interpreter–of dreams, a prophet. He was the favored son of his father before whom not only his family but all nations bowed as he rose to power. For Joseph, all his brothers, except Reuben, the eldest, played the role of Judas, betraying the favored son, the only righteous son, for a few pieces of silver. In the New Testament, all of the twelve disciples abandoned Jesus in the garden, but only Judas sold him over for gain.
In the Old Testament, Joseph’s brothers were all condemned, but they, the rest of Israel, were grafted back in after Joseph had become ruler over the nations. In the New Testament, only Judas is cut off, but he represents the nation of Israel with whom he conspired, who also rejected Jesus. This means that as the nations flock to Christ in history, we should expect the nation of Israel to return to bow the knee to their brother, their savior, the Lord Jesus Christ as the last of all nations. Like Joseph’s brothers, they will find themselves in the midst of a world in which there is no bread, no life, apart from Christ.
All of this is implied by the foundation-laying image. The church is being built on that foundation, even you and I. And so, the work of the Spirit-filled body of Christ is to hold to the Word of God, the scriptures and the church laid down by the apostles and prophets. We must hold to the whole Word of God, Old and New Testaments (apostles and prophets), so that we might be shaped into proper stones to be used by the Spirit as he builds the eschatological temple of God, a people held together in Christ and filled with the Spirit of God to the glory of God the Father. Amen.
