coming to him, a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God, precious.
The great prophecies of Isaiah which formed the background of the apostle's thought here, and which he would immediately quote, foretold, "The formation of the Christian church, for the spiritual worship of God, under the image of a temple, which God would build on Messiah as a foundation-stone thereof."[14] Both the foundation stone of  Isaiah 28:16 and the rejected keystone of  Psalms 118:22 are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. "He is both the Foundation on which the church is built and the Keystone into whom it grows up."[15]