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1 Peter 2:7
7 Unto you [humin] therefore [oun] which [ho] believe [pisteuo] he is precious [time]: but [de] unto them which be disobedient [apeitheo], the stone [lithos] which [hos] the builders [oikodomeo] disallowed [apodokimazo], the same [houtos] is made [ginomai] [eis] the head [kephale] of the corner [gonia], KJV-Interlinear
7 This precious value, then, is for you who believe. But for those who disbelieve, ‘The stone which the builders rejected, This became the very corner stone,’ NASB
Belief is contrasted with unbelief, and again Peter quotes from Isaiah.
Isa. 8:14-15
14 ‘Then He shall become a sanctuary; But to both the houses of Israel, a stone to strike and a rock to stumble over, And a snare and a trap for the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 15 ‘And many will stumble over them, Then they will fall and be broken; They will even be snared and caught.’ NASB
This time the contrast is not between believers who may or may not be embarrassed when they get to heaven, but between believers and unbelievers, who will have entirely different destinies after their life here on earth is completed.
Those who believe in Christ are typically called Christians in our current day.
Those who do not believe in Christ, especially back in the days of Isaiah and so forth, were called the builders.
Look back even to the Tower of Babel which occurred just a few generations following the Flood of Noah. Noah was still alive, the flood was still fresh in the minds of folks from the stories they heard from Noah, and his three sons.
And yet there grew up a huge population that rejected God, the savior, and everything that was legitimate spiritually. They began construction of a tower. A tower that was to help them to get to God, to heaven, and all on their own terms.
People, who reject truth, will build their own truth, and that is where all religions, philosophies, cults, etc., come from. Christ is rejected and therefore truth, and so people have to use something else (other than truth) to build up their own beliefs. Lies are all that is left to build with, and to build on.
Believers look to Christ and find Him precious. Precious means esteem, honor, respect, reverence, value, price. All of these terms describe the attributes of Christ as God and as man. No other religion has a focal point that possesses integrity, honor, or value.
All other religions focus instead on their sin nature, their desires, their lusts for what they want, and how they want it. Whether seeking seventy virgins, multiple wives, indifference, or a calm and serene setting in ones afterlife, the sin nature is at work cultivating the desires of the sin nature. And they all reject Christ, doctrine, and the principles taught in the scriptures.
So, all unbelievers are builders, of their own destiny, and all of humanity combined, cannot build a tower taller than a very high hill, let alone into the next life. And yet they try.
Rejected, ‘apodokimazo,’ means unbelief, disobedient, unwilling to be persuaded, obstinate, stubborn, stiff necked. People who refuse to believe in Christ are described as unbelievers. They rejected Christ as their foundation of truth and life.
And as a result, God Himself, made Christ the cornerstone of truth, and the basis of a relationship with God. And therein lays the difference between Christianity and all other forms of belief. Christ, or the rejection of Christ, is the single thread that runs through all religions, cults, philosophies, etc. that are not legitimate. This makes it very easy to determine which is the true faith and which is not.
And since Christ is truth, and doctrine is truth, then all of the principles taught in the Bible (legitimately taught), determine the path you can take in life in order to figure out what is right and what is not right in life. Doctrine is the source of discernment between the principles of life as taught by God, and the principles of life taught by this world.
