The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Peter
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Title: The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Peter
Author: J. Rawson Lumby
Editor: Sir W. Robertson Nicoll
Release date: March 7, 2013 [eBook #42273]
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Language: English
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* * * * *
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE
EDITED BY THE REV.
W. ROBERTSON NICOLL, M.A., LL.D.
_Editor of "The Expositor"_
THE EPISTLES OF ST. PETER
BY
J. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
London
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCIII
THE EXPOSITOR'S BIBLE.
_Crown 8vo, cloth, price 7s. 6d. each vol._
FIRST SERIES, 1887-8.
Colossians.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D.
St. Mark.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
Genesis.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
1 Samuel.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
2 Samuel.
By the same Author.
Hebrews.
By Principal T.C. EDWARDS, D.D.
SECOND SERIES, 1888-9.
Galatians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Pastoral Epistles.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Isaiah I.--XXXIX.
By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. I.
The Book of Revelation.
By Prof. W. MILLIGAN, D.D.
1 Corinthians.
By Prof. MARCUS DODS, D.D.
The Epistles of St. John.
By Rt. Rev. W. ALEXANDER, D.D.
THIRD SERIES, 1889-90.
Judges and Ruth.
By Rev. R. A. WATSON, D.D.
Jeremiah.
By Rev. C. J. BALL, M.A.
Isaiah XL.--LXVI.
By G. A. SMITH, M.A. Vol. II
St. Matthew.
By Rev. J. MONRO GIBSON, D.D.
Exodus.
By Very Rev. the Dean of Armagh.
St. Luke.
By Rev. H. BURTON, M.A.
FOURTH SERIES, 1890-1.
Ecclesiastes.
By Rev. SAMUEL COX, D.D.
St. James and St. Jude.
By Rev. A. PLUMMER, D.D.
Proverbs.
By Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A.
Leviticus.
By Rev. S. H. KELLOGG, D.D.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. I.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. I.
FIFTH SERIES, 1891-2.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. I.
1 and 2 Thessalonians.
By JAMES DENNEY, B.D.
The Book of Job.
By R. A. WATSON, D.D.
Ephesians.
By Prof. G. G. FINDLAY, B.A.
The Gospel of St. John.
By Prof. M. DODS, D.D. Vol. II.
The Acts of the Apostles.
By Prof. STOKES, D.D. Vol. II.
SIXTH SERIES, 1892-3.
1 Kings.
By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR.
Philippians.
By Principal RAINY, D.D.
Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther.
By Prof. W. F. ADENEY, M.A.
Joshua.
By Prof. W. G. BLAIKIE, D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. II.
The Epistles of St. Peter.
By Prof. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
SEVENTH SERIES, 1893-4.
2 Kings.
By Ven. Archdeacon FARRAR.
Romans.
By H. C. G. MOULE, M.A.
1 Chronicles.
By Prof. W. H. BENNETT, M.A.
2 Corinthians.
By JAMES DENNEY, B.D.
Numbers.
By R. A. WATSON, D.D.
The Psalms.
By A. MACLAREN, D.D. Vol. III.
THE
EPISTLES OF ST. PETER
BY
J. RAWSON LUMBY, D.D.
LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
CAMBRIDGE
LONDON
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
27, PATERNOSTER ROW
MDCCCXCIII
_Printed by Hazell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury._
PREFACE
The two letters which bear the name of St. Peter have from the
earliest times met with very different degrees of acceptance. The
genuineness of the First Epistle is attested by the unanimous voice of
primitive Christendom. As it is addressed to Christians dwelling in
different parts of Asia Minor, it is natural to look for a knowledge
of it in those countries. And nowhere is it earlier noticed. Polycarp,
Bishop of Smyrna, a contemporary of the last surviving Apostle, and
whose martyrdom took place about the middle of the second century, has
repeated quotations from this Epistle. It was known also to Papias (+
163), Bishop of Hierapolis, and to Melito (170), Bishop of Sardis.
That it was known to the Greeks is seen from the Epistle to Diognetus,
which for a long time was attributed to Justin Martyr (+ 165), while
the "Shepherd" of Hermas, written at Rome, testifies that it was known
there also at about the same date. The inclusion of it in the
Peschito-Syriac Version bears witness to its early circulation in the
Eastern Church, as also does its quotation in the writings of
Theophilus of Antioch (178). Heretics, no less than the faithful,
regarded it as a portion of authoritative Christian literature.
Basilides in Alexandria and the Marcosians and Theodotus in Syria all
knew of and cited this Epistle. The Latin Church of Africa accepted
it, as we can see from a few quotations in Tertullian (+ 218) and a
greater number in the writings of Cyprian (+ 258). In the Alexandrian
Church it is often quoted by both Clement (+ 218) and Origen (+ 254);
while for Gaul we have the testimony of the Church of Vienne in the
touching letter sent by the Christians there to their "brethren in
Asia and Phrygia" (177), and of Irenæus, who was Bishop of Lyons
shortly afterwards, and who, coming from Asia to fill that see, is a
witness both for the East and the West. From the Christian Church of
the early centuries it is hardly possible to produce stronger
attestation.
But although so abundantly vouched for in ancient days, the Epistle
has not been exempt from the assaults of modern criticism. Primitive
Christendom regarded St. Peter, St. John, and St. Paul as heralds of
one and the same Gospel, founded on the same promises, strengthened by
the same faith. They were at one in what they taught and what they
opposed. But some modern thinkers, taking as a thesis that the Gospel
as set forth by the Apostle of the circumcision differed widely from
the doctrines of St. Paul, have proceeded to make an eclectic
Christian literature, out of which the First Epistle of St. Peter has
been rejected. Its language is too much in harmony with accepted
writings of St. Paul. It can only have been compiled by some later
hand to promote the opinion that there was no discord between the
teachings of the first Christian preachers. Moreover, it is
inconceivable, they consider, that a letter should be addressed by St.
Peter to the Christians in those very lands where the missionary
labours of St. Paul had been specially exerted, where the converts
were in a peculiar sense his "little children."
Now in this first letter of St. Peter there is unquestionably much
that corresponds in tone with the Epistle to the Romans, especially
with the twelfth and thirteenth chapters. In both letters Christians
are exhorted to offer their bodies as spiritual sacrifices, to shun
conformity with the world, to study to be sober in mind, and to use
duly all the gifts which they possess; the same unfeigned love of the
brethren is inculcated, the same patience under suffering. Christians
are not to retaliate, but to overcome evil with good; they are to be
in subjection to all lawful authority, and this for conscience' sake,
to avoid all excesses, rioting, drunkenness, chambering, and
wantonness, and to be ever looking forward to the coming of the Lord.
In like manner there will be found numerous passages in St. Paul's
Epistle to the Ephesians which in spirit and tone greatly resemble the
words of St. Peter. At the very outset St. Paul addresses his converts
as "chosen of God in Christ before the foundation of the world, that
they should be holy and without blemish before Him in love"; tells
them that they were "foreordained unto adoption as sons through Jesus
Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise and
glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on them in the Beloved"
(Eph. i. 3-6). Similarly St. Peter writes to "the elect ... according
to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the
Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,"
and presently he adds that "according to God's great mercy they were
begotten again by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (i.
1-3). In both epistles there is the same teaching, the same election
in love, the same sonship, the same progress in holiness, the same
free gift through Jesus Christ. But in neither is there a word that
can be taken to militate against independent authorship. And the same
remark applies to all the resemblances which exist between the two
epistles in the exhortations to servants, wives, and husbands; in the
commendations of humility, pity, courtesy; in the entreaties to the
believers to gird up the loins of the mind and to lay aside all malice
and hatred; in those passages which speak of them as strangers and
pilgrims, as called from darkness to light, as being a spiritual
house, built upon Christ as the head corner-stone. Of all these
exhortations undoubted parallels are to be found; but they are only
evidence of the common character which would pervade all the teaching
of the apostolic missionaries where the people addressed were the
same, the times not far apart, and the dangers and temptations known
alike to all the writers. Hence parallels to St. Peter may be found in
St. James too, but they are no proof that the one Apostle (or, as some
critics say, some one writing under his name) copied from the other.
Nor is it easy to see reason why St. Peter might not be expected to
write a letter to the congregations formed first by St. Paul. No
Evangelist or Apostle could publish the message of the Gospel--that
is, the life and works--of Christ without telling of His chosen
followers; and amongst them, if our Gospels be a true picture, St.
Peter must ever have filled a prominent place. The Churches in Asia
assuredly had heard much of him, and in a time of persecution or
impending trial nothing could be more fit than that the Apostle who
had been most prominent amid Christ's companions should write from
Babylon or from Rome, it may be, where the signs of the times would
proclaim most clearly the sufferings for which the Christian
inhabitants of the provinces should be prepared, to encourage the
believers in Asia to steadfastness and to remind them that the same
afflictions were being accomplished in their brethren that were
elsewhere in the world.
This was likely enough even had St. Peter never visited the districts
to which his letter was addressed. But we seem to find traces of him
in Corinth (1 Cor. ix. 5; cf. also xv. 5), and he certainly was not
unknown by name to the Christians of that city. And if so, why need we
question his journeying through Asia Minor? And he was aware of the
labours of his fellow-apostle. From personal intercourse and
discussion, especially in connexion with the council at Jerusalem, he
would be sure that they were of one mind. It may be that he had learnt
something of St. Paul's letters to the Churches. Under such
circumstances it is not foreign to St. Peter's character, nay rather
quite in harmony with it, that he should fulfil the Lord's command to
"strengthen the brethren"; that he should send them an earnest
assurance that, spite of sufferings and trials, this was the true
grace of God, in which they should rejoice to stand.
But there are internal tokens in the Epistle which seem more powerful
evidence of its genuineness than anything else. The writer calls
himself "Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ"; and he declares his
personality by touches and allusions which a forger would never have
fabricated. Thus he says, "All of you _gird yourselves_ with humility,
to serve one another" (v. 5). The verb which he employs here indicates
a sort of girding about with some towel or apron, which a slave put
on for doing some menial service. It is almost impossible that the
writer had not in his thoughts the act of Christ when He gave His
great lesson of humility: "If I have washed your feet, ye ought also
to wash one another's feet."
So, too, the Master's exhortation, "Feed My sheep," "Feed My lambs,"
comes to mind as we read, "Tend the flock of God which is among you,
exercising the oversight, not of constraint, but willingly" (v. 2).
And St. Peter's own words spoken in the house of Cornelius are
reproduced when the Father is declared to be One "who, without respect
of persons, judgeth according to each man's work" (i. 17).
But it is in the allusions to Christ's passion and resurrection, those
events which marked the deep fall and the rising again of St. Peter,
that the personality of the Apostle becomes most manifest. He has been
himself "a witness of the sufferings of Christ" (v. 1). He can speak
as an eye-witness of the Lord's death in the flesh (iii. 18; iv. 1)
and His quickening in the spirit; can exhort men to courage because
they are partakers of the sufferings of Christ (iv. 13). Who does not
feel that the writer of the words, "Let them also that suffer
according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing unto a
faithful Creator" (iv. 19), is thinking of the scene on the cross, of
the Saviour's finished work, of the dying cry, "Father, into Thy hands
I commend My spirit"?
Perhaps the most striking instance of this peculiarity, this tendency
to dwell on the events of the Passion, is found in ii. 19-24. Speaking
to servants, he argues, "What glory is it if when ye sin and _are
buffeted_ for it ye shall take it patiently?" And having used the
word by which the Evangelists describe (Matt. xxvi. 67; Mark xiv. 65)
the insults heaped upon the Lord at His trial, the writer is carried
away in mind to the whole scene: "He did no sin, neither was guile
found in His mouth; when He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He
suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth
righteously; in His own self He bare our sins in His own body upon the
tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness,
by whose stripes ye were healed." And in the last clause especially we
see traces of one who had been present through the painful history.
The word rendered "stripes" means "bruises" or "weals," such as come
from savage blows, and is just the word which would occur to one who
had seen the bruised body taken down from the cross, but hardly to any
one else.
Again, the writer makes you feel without quoting that he has the words
of Jesus constantly in his mind. Thus in the exhortation, "Cast all
your anxiety upon God, for He careth for you" (v. 7); when he says,
"If ye are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are ye" (iv.
14), or "Be sober; be vigilant" (v. 8), or "Be sober unto prayer" (iv.
7), or commends "not rendering evil for evil, or reviling for
reviling, but contrariwise blessing" (iii. 9), at each of the
sentences--and the letter abounds with examples--there rise in the
reader's mind some similar words of Christ, making him feel that he is
perusing a writing of one to whom the Lord's language was abundantly
familiar.
With the marks of personal character and associations meeting us
constantly, and with the unbroken consensus of antiquity in favour of
St. Peter's authorship, we shall not lightly allow speculations about
hypothetical differences between the teaching of the Apostles of the
Gentiles and of the circumcision to disturb our acceptance of this
letter for what it proclaims itself to be: the work of the Apostle St.
Peter, of one who was himself a witness of the sufferings of Christ.
* * * * *
Of the Second Epistle the whole history is very different. It appears
to have been little known in the early Church, and is included by
Eusebius (330) among the ἀντιλεγόμενα, "books to which
objection was raised" as late as his day. It is true that in Clement
of Rome there is a sentence (Ep. i., chap. xi.) which many have
accepted as containing a clear allusion to the passage (2 Peter ii. 6,
7) which speaks of Lot and the destruction of Sodom. And if this could
be demonstrated with certainty, it would be most valuable testimony.
It would prove the Epistle to have been accepted at a very early date
and by the important Church in Rome. But we have so far to go before
we come upon any other notice that the silence makes us doubtful of
the evidence from Clement. Moreover, such other witness as we do find
is not of a very direct character. Firmilian, Bishop of Cæsarea, in
Cappadocia, about 256 A.D., in a letter of which a Latin version is
preserved among the writings of Cyprian, uses words which probably
indicate that he knew both the epistles of St. Peter; but he gives no
quotation. The Second Epistle was no doubt meant for the same readers
as the First; and that is addressed, among others, to the Christians
of Cappadocia, so that there is no improbability in supposing the
letter to have been early known there. Theophilus of Antioch (170)
uses the comparison of the word to a lamp shining in a dark place in
such a way as to give the impression that he knew the Epistle, and a
similar possible reference is found in the writings of Ephrem Syrus
(+ 378). Palladius (400), who was a friend of Chrysostom, and wrote at
Rome, makes a clear allusion to 2 Peter; and in the Apology of Melito,
Bishop of Sardis, there is a passage concerning the destruction of the
world by fire at the last day which is strikingly parallel to 2 Peter
iii. 5-7, and can hardly have been written without a knowledge of the
Epistle.
This is a very small amount of early evidence, and among the more
voluminous writers of the first three centuries we find no mention of
the Epistle. We cannot, therefore, be surprised that by Eusebius it is
classed among the works of less acceptance. But the same fate befell
larger and more important writings than this Epistle. The Apocalypse
and the Epistle to the Hebrews stand in the same list in Eusebius. And
St. Peter's second letter has not the same general interest as the
first, and therefore is likely to have been less widely circulated;
and this is all that Eusebius's classification means. The books were
not generally received because there was a less general knowledge of
their existence and history.
But when the Church entered on the settlement of the New Testament
Canon at the Council of Laodicæa (366), the Second Epistle of St.
Peter was accepted; and no doubt there was evidence then before the
assembled Fathers which time has now destroyed. Yet in the letter
itself there are points which no doubt weighed with them, and which
are patent to us as they were then. The writer claims to be St. Peter,
an Apostle and the writer of a previous epistle. He speaks solemnly of
his death as near at hand; and still more solemn, when viewed as
evidence, is the declaration that he had been one of the witnesses of
Christ's transfiguration. It is almost inconceivable that a forger,
writing to warn against false teachers, writing in the interest of
truth, should have thus deliberately assumed a name and experience to
which he had no claim. These statements must have influenced the
opinion of the Laodicæan Council, and we know that they did not act on
light evidence; they did not on the strength of a name accept into
their canon, but excluded, works at the time widely circulated and
passing for histories or letters of some of the Apostles.
Moreover, when we consider the kind of teaching against which St.
Peter's epistle is directed, it is difficult to place it anywhere
except at about the same date as St. Paul's epistles. It speaks of the
"fables" mῦθοι, i. 16), the groundless, baseless fancies,
of the early heretics in the same manner which we find in St. Paul
(cf. 1 Tim. i. 4; iv. 7). The same greed and covetousness (πλεονεξία)
is noted by both the Apostles in the teachers against whom their voice
is raised (cf. 2 Peter ii. 3; 1 Tim. vi. 5; Titus i. 11). There are
the same beguiling promises of liberty (cf. 2 Peter ii. 19; 1 Cor. x.
29; Gal. v. 13), a perversion of the freedom of which St. Paul speaks
so much to the Galatian converts; and just as he warns against "false
brethren unawares brought in, who came in privily to spy out our
liberty" (Gal. ii. 4), so does St. Peter condemn those "who privily
bring in heresies of destruction" (2 Peter ii. 1). With so many common
features in the two pictures, we can scarcely be wrong in referring
them to the same times. No other period in early Church history suits
the language of St. Peter so well as the few years before his
martyrdom. The First Epistle may be dated eight or ten years earlier.
There is another morsel of evidence from the New Testament which is
worth notice. St. Peter describes the heretics against whom he writes
as following the error of Balaam the son of Beor, and notes this among
the tokens of their covetousness. In the Apocalypse (ii. 14, 15) the
same people are described, and in the same terms, but with an
addition. They have received a definite name, and St. John terms them
several times over "the Nicolaitanes." Such a distinctive title marks
a later date than St. Peter's descriptive one, which is drawn from the
Old Testament. The Apocalypse was assuredly written before the
destruction of Jerusalem. If then we may take the mention of the
Nicolaitanes by that designation as an indication of a later date than
2 Peter, we are again brought to the time to which we have already
referred the Epistle: some time between 68 and 70 A.D.
Considerable discussion has arisen about the passages in 2 Peter which
are like the language of St. Jude. There can be no doubt that either
one Apostle copied the words of the other, or that both drew from a
common original. But this point, in whatever way it be settled, need
not militate against St. Peter's authorship. It is nothing unworthy of
the Apostle, if he find to his hand the words of a fellow-teacher
which will serve his need, to use what he finds. Nay, the letter
itself tells us that he was prepared to do this. For he refers his
readers (iii. 15) to the writings of St. Paul for support of his own
exhortations. St. Peter's seems, however, to be the earlier of the two
epistles, if we compare his words, "There _shall be_ false teachers,
who _shall bring_ in heresies of destruction," etc. (ii. 1), with St.
Jude, who speaks of these misleading teachers as already existent and
active: "There _are certain men crept in_ unawares"; "_These are_
spots now existing in the feasts of charity"; "_They are feasting
among the brethren_ without fear." And St. Jude seems clearly to be
alluding to St. Peter's words (2 Peter iii. 3) when he says, "Remember
ye the words which were spoken before of the Apostles of our Lord
Jesus Christ, how that they told you there should be _mockers_"
(ἐμπαῖκται) "in the last time." This word for "mockers" is
found only in St. Peter's epistle. It is nowhere else in the New
Testament; and while St. Peter's words are a direct utterance, St.
Jude's are a quotation.
But there are two or three features of resemblance between the style
of St. Peter's first epistle and the second which support strongly the
genuineness of the latter. The First Epistle has a large proportion of
words found nowhere else in the New Testament. There are a score of
such words in this short composition. Now the Second Epistle presents
us with the same peculiarity in rather larger abundance. There are
twenty-four words there which appear in no other New Testament
writing. It seems to have been a peculiarity of the writer of both
letters to use somewhat uncommon and striking words. Now take the
Second Epistle to have been the work of an imitator. He would be sure
to notice such a characteristic, and sure also to repeat, for the sake
of connexion, some distinctive expressions of the first letter in the
second. But the case is much otherwise. There is the same abundance of
unusual words in both epistles, but not a single repetition; the same
peculiarity is manifest, but displays itself in entirely new material.
This is an index of authorship, not of imitation.
There are one or two differences between the two epistles which in
their way are of equal interest. The first letter was one of
encouragement and consolation; the second is full of warning. Hence,
though the coming of the Lord is dwelt on alike in the two, in the
former it is set forth as a _revelation_ (1 Peter i. 5), as a day for
which believers were looking, and in which their hopes would be
realised, and their afflictions at an end; in the second letter the
same event is called a coming (παρουσία), an appearing, a
presence, but one which will usher in the great and terrible day of
the Lord, and be the prelude of judgement to them that have fallen
away.
Again, the sufferings of Christ are a theme much dwelt on in the First
Epistle, where they are pointed to as the lot which Christians are to
expect, and the Lord is the pattern which they are to imitate; in the
Second they are hardly noticed. But was there not a cause for such
reticence? Was it a time to urge on men the imitation of Christ when
the danger was great that they would deny Him altogether?
No doubt many other points of evidence, which are lost to us, were
presented to the Fathers of the Laodicæan Council, and with the result
that the Second Epistle of St. Peter was received into the Canon side
by side with the first. But the three centuries of want of
acknowledgement have left their mark on its subsequent history, and
many earnest minds have treated it as of less authority than other
more accepted portions of the New Testament. Among these is Luther,
who speaks of the First Epistle as one of the noblest in the New
Testament, but is doubtful about the claims of the Second. Similar was
the judgment of Erasmus and of Calvin.
We cannot, however, go back to the evidence produced at Laodicæa. Time
has swept that away, but, while doing so, has left us the result
thereof; and the acceptance of the Epistle by the Fathers there
assembled will be judged by most men to stand in lieu of the evidence.
No court of law would permit a decision so authenticated and of such
standing to be disturbed or overruled.
And we ourselves can observe some points still which draw to the same
conclusion. The letter harmonises in tone with the other New Testament
writings, and some of its linguistic peculiarities are strikingly in
accord with the universally accepted letter of St. Peter. We are
therefore not unwilling, though we have not the early testimony which
we could desire, and though the primitive Church held its genuineness
for doubtful, to believe that ere this second letter was classed with
the other New Testament writings these doubts were cleared away, and
would be cleared away for us could we hear all the evidence tendered
before those who fixed the contents of the Canon.
The discovery last year in Egypt of some fragments of the Gospel and
Apocalypse once current under the name of St. Peter has drawn
attention once more to the genuineness and authenticity of the Second
Epistle in our canon. But the difference in character between it and
these apocryphal documents is very great. The Gospel ascribed to Peter
seems to have been written by some one who held the opinion, current
among the early heretics, that the Incarnation was unreal, and that
the Divine in Christ Jesus had no participation in the sufferings at
the Crucifixion. Hence our Lord is represented as having no sense of
pain at that time. He is said to have been deserted by His "power" in
the moment of death. The stature of the angels at the Resurrection is
represented as very great, but that of the risen Christ much greater.
To these peculiar features may be added the response made by the
cross to a voice which was heard from heaven, the cross having
followed the risen Christ from the tomb. In the fragments of the
Apocalypse we have a description of the torments of the wicked utterly
foreign to the character of the New Testament writings, in which the
veil of the unseen world is rarely withdrawn. The circumstance and
detail given in the apocryphal fragment to the punishments of sinners
mark it as the parent of those mediæval legends of which the "Visions
of Furseus" and "St. Patrick's Purgatory" afford well-known examples.
The study of these fragments, of which the Gospel may be dated about
170 A.D., sends us back to the contemplation of the Second Epistle of
St. Peter more conscious than before at what a very early date errors,
both of history and doctrine, were promulgated among the Christian
societies, while at the same time we are impressed more strongly with
the sense that the accord of the Second Epistle with Gospel history,
where it is alluded to, as well as the simplicity of Christian
doctrine which it enforces, mark it as not unworthy of that place in
the Canon which was accorded to it in the very earliest councils which
dealt with the contents of New Testament Scripture.
CONTENTS
_THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER_
I
PAGE
THE WORK OF THE TRINITY IN MAN'S ELECTION AND
SALVATION 3
II
THE HEAVENLY INHERITANCE 17
III
THE UNITY AND GLORIOUSNESS OF THE PLAN OF
REDEMPTION 29
IV
THE CHRISTIAN'S IDEAL, AND THE STEPS THEREUNTO 41
V
CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD: ITS CHARACTER AND
DUTIES 55
VI
THE PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS 69
VII
CHRISTIANS AS PILGRIMS IN THE WORLD 83
VIII
CHRISTIAN SERVICE 95
IX
CHRISTIAN WIVES AND HUSBANDS 107
X
THEY WHO BLESS ARE BLESSED 119
XI
THE REWARDS OF SUFFERING FOR WELL-DOING 133
XII
THE LESSONS OF SUFFERING 149
XIII
CHRISTIAN SERVICE FOR GOD'S GLORY 163
XIV
THE BELIEVER'S DOUBLE JOY 177
XV
THE RIGHTEOUS HAVE JUDGEMENT HERE 189
XVI
HOW TO TEND THE FLOCK 201
XVII
BE CLOTHED WITH HUMILITY 213
XVIII
THROUGH PERILS TO VICTORY 223
_THE SECOND EPISTLE OF ST. PETER_
XIX
THE SAVING KNOWLEDGE OF GOD 235
XX
WHO SHALL ASCEND INTO THE HILL OF THE LORD? 245
XXI
THE VOICE HEARD IN THE HOLY MOUNT 257
XXII
THE LAMP SHINING IN A DARK PLACE 271
XXIII
THE LORD KNOWETH HOW TO DELIVER 283
XXIV
"BY THEIR FRUITS YE SHALL KNOW THEM" 297
XXV
ALTOGETHER BECOME ABOMINABLE 313
XXVI
AS WERE THE DAYS OF NOAH 325
XXVII
JUDGEMENT TO COME 335
XXVIII
THE LORD IS NOT SLACK 345
XXIX
"WHAT MANNER OF PERSONS OUGHT YE TO BE?" 355
XXX
BE YE STEDFAST, UNMOVABLE 365
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF ST. PETER
I
_THE WORK OF THE TRINITY IN MAN'S ELECTION AND SALVATION_
"Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to the elect who are
sojourners of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia,
Asia, and Bithynia, according to the foreknowledge of God the
Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and
sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace
be multiplied."--1 PETER i. 1, 2.
"When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke xxii. 32),
was the Lord's injunction to St. Peter, of which this Epistle may be
considered as a part fulfilment. So richly stored is it with counsel,
warning, and consolation that Luther, the conflicts of whose life will
bear some comparison with the trials of these Asian converts, calls it
one of the most precious portions of the New Testament Scriptures. Its
value is further enhanced because in so many places the Apostle
reverts in thought or word to his own life-history, and draws his
teaching from the rich stream of personal experience. Even the name
which he sets at the head of the letter had its lesson in connexion
with Jesus. Most Jews took a second name for profaner use in their
commerce with the heathen; but to Simon, the son of Jonas, Peter must
have been a specially sacred name, must have served as a watchword
both to himself and to all others who had learnt the story of its
bestowal and the meaning which was bound up with it.
That a letter by St. Peter should be, as this is, of a very practical
character is no more than we might expect from what we know of the
Apostle from the Gospels. Prompt in word and action, ever the
spokesman of the twelve, he seems made for a guide and leader of men.
What perhaps we should not have expected is the very definite
doctrinal language with which the Epistle opens. Nowhere in the
writings either of St. Paul or St. John do we find more full or more
instructive teaching concerning the Holy Trinity. And herein St. Peter
has been guided to choose the only order which tends to edification.
Sound lessons for Christian life must be grounded upon a right faith,
and a brother can afford no strength to his brethren unless first of
all he point them clearly to the source whence both his strength and
theirs must come.
Of the previous intercourse between St. Peter and those to whom he
writes we can only judge from the Epistle itself. The Apostle's name
disappears from New Testament history after the Council of Jerusalem
(Acts xv.), but we feel sure his labours did not cease then; and
though the first message of Christianity may have been brought to
these Asiatic provinces by St. Paul, the allusions which St. Peter
makes to the trials of the converts are such as seem impossible had he
not himself laboured among them. The frequent reminders, the special
warnings, could come only from one who knew their circumstances very
intimately. Allusions to the former lusts indulged in in their days of
ignorance, to the reproaches which they now have to suffer from their
heathen neighbours, to their going astray like lost sheep, are a few
of the unmistakable evidences of personal knowledge.
He writes to them as _sojourners of the dispersion_. In the minds of
the Jews this name would wake up sad memories of their past history.
It told of that great break in the national unity which was made by
the tarrying in Babylon of so many of the people at the time of the
return, then of those painful periods in later days when their nation,
as the vassal now of Persia, now of Greece, of Egypt, of Syria, and of
Rome, was made the sport of the world-powers as they rose and fell,
times in which Israel could see few tokens of the Divine favour, could
hear no voice of the prophet to encourage or to guide. But now to
those who had accepted the Gospel of Christ those dark years would be
seen to have been in no wise barren of blessing and of profit. The
scattered Jews had carried much of their faith abroad among the
nations; schools of religious teaching had arisen; the chosen people
in their dispersion had adopted the language best known among the
other nations; and thus the outcome of those sorrowful times had been
a preparation for the Gospel. Proselytes had been made in the
countries of their exile, and a wider field opened for the Christian
harvest. The dispersion of Israel had been made, as it were, a bridge
over which the grace of God passed for publishing the glad tidings of
the Gospel, and to gather Jew and Gentile alike into the fold of
Christ.
But it would be a mistake to restrict the word "dispersion" here to
the Jewish converts. The Apostle speaks more than once in his letter
to those who had never been Jews, to men who (i. 14) had been
fashioned according to their former lusts in ignorance; who had in
times past (ii. 10) no share with God's people; who (iv. 13) had
wrought the will of the Gentiles, walking in lasciviousness, lusts,
and abominable idolatries. To these too since their conversion the
name "dispersion" might be fitly applied. They were but a few here
and there among the multitudes of heathendom. And their acceptance of
the faith of Jesus must have given to their lives a different aspect.
It must often be so with the faithful. Their life is from the world
apart. It must have been specially thus with these Christians in Asia.
They could be verily only strangers and sojourners; their true home
could never be made among their heathen surroundings. As the Jew in
old days sighed for Jerusalem, so their hope was centred on a
Jerusalem above.
Yet God had a mission for them in the world. This is a special portion
of St. Peter's message. As the scattered Jews of old had opened a door
for the spreading of the Gospel, so the Christians of the dispersion
were to be its witnesses. Their election had made them a peculiar
people; but it was that they might show forth the praises of Him who
had called them out of darkness into His marvellous light, and that by
their good works the heathen might be won to glorify God when in His
own time He should visit them too with the day-star from on high.
But beside the words which speak of severance and pilgrimage, the
Apostle uses one of a different character. With that large charity and
hope which is stamped upon the whole of the New Testament, he calls
these scattered Christian converts the _elect_ of God. Just as St.
Paul so often includes whole Churches, even though he find in them
many things to blame and to reprove, under the title of "saints" or
"called to be saints," so it is here. And the sense of their election
is intended to be a mighty power. It is to bind them wherever they may
be scattered into one communion in Christ Jesus. Through the world
they are dispersed, but in Christ they constitute a great unity. And
the sense of this is to lift their hearts above any sorrowing for
their isolation in the world. For through Christ they have (i. 4) an
inheritance, a home, a claim of sonship; and their salvation is ready
to be revealed in the last time.
Later generations have witnessed much unprofitable controversy round
this word "election." Some men have seen nothing else in the Bible,
while others have hardly acknowledged it to be there at all. Then some
have laboured to reconcile to their understandings the two truths of
God's sovereignty and the freedom of the human will, not content to
believe that in God's economy there may be things beyond their
measure. St. Peter, like the other New Testament writers, enters on no
such discussions. Whether amid the full assurance of newly quickened
faith the first Christians found no room for intellectual
difficulties, or whether the spirit within them led them to feel that
such questions must ever be insoluble, we cannot know; but it is
instructive to note that the Scripture does not raise them. They are
the growth of later days, of times when Christianity was wide-spread,
when men had lost the feeling that they were strangers and pilgrims of
the dispersion, and were no longer prepared to welcome, with St. Peter
and St. Paul, every Christian brother into the number of God's chosen
ones, counting them as those who had been called to be saints.
Of the election of believers the Apostle here speaks in its origin,
its progress, and its consummation. He views it as a process which
must extend through the whole life, and connects its various stages
with the Three Persons of the Trinity. But, with the same practical
instinct which has already been noticed, he enters on no statements
about the nature of the Godhead in itself; he neither discusses what
may be known of God, nor how the knowledge is to be obtained. He says
no word to intimate that the mention of three Persons may be difficult
to understand in co-relation to the unity of the Godhead. Such
inquiries exercise the mind, but can hardly further, what was St.
Peter's special aim, the edification and comfort of the soul. That
result comes from the inward experience of what each Person of the
Godhead is to us, and on this the Apostle has a lesson. He makes plain
for us the share which Father, Son, and Spirit bear in the work of
human salvation. Christians, he teaches us, are elect, chosen to be
saints, according to the foreknowledge of God the Father; the election
is maintained when their lives are constantly hallowed by the
influence of the Holy Ghost; while in Christ they have not only an
example of perfect obedience after which they must strive, but a
Redeemer whose blood can cleanse them from all the sins from which the
most earnest strivings will not set them free. Of these things the
Christian soul can have experience. It is thus that the life of the
elect believer begins, grows, and is perfected.
It begins _according to the foreknowledge of God the Father_. Here St.
Peter may be his own interpreter. In his sermon on the day of
Pentecost he employs the same word, "foreknowledge," and he is the
only one who uses it in the New Testament. There (Acts ii. 23) he says
that Christ was delivered up to be crucified by the determinate
counsel and foreknowledge of God. And on the same subject in this very
chapter (i. 20) he speaks of Jesus as _foreknown_, as a Lamb without
spot and blemish before the foundation of the world. In these passages
we are carried back beyond the ages into the Divine council-chamber,
and we find the whole course of human history naked and open before
the eyes of the All-seeing. God knew even then what the history of the
human race would be, saw that sin would find an entrance into the
world, and that a sacrifice would be needed, if sinners were to be
redeemed. Yet He called the world and its tenants into being, and
provided the ransom in the person of His only Son. Why this was
well-pleasing unto Him it is not ours to discuss; whether for the
uplifting of humanity by providing an opportunity for moral obedience
or for the greater manifestation of His infinite love. But whatever
else is mysterious, one thing is plain: the counsel of the Holy One is
seen to be a counsel of mercy and of love; and though its operation
may not seldom be perplexing to our finite powers, the Apostle teaches
us that this determination from all eternity was made with infinite
tenderness. He tells us it was the ordinance of our Father. The
beginning and the end thereof are hidden from us. We learn only a
fragment of His dealings during the brief period of a human life. But
men may rest content with the proof of their election in the sound of
the Gospel message which they hear. They who are thus called may count
themselves for chosen. This call is the Divine testimony that God is
choosing them. Concerning His intention towards others who may seem to
have passed away without hearing of His love, or who are living as
though no loving message of glad tidings had ever been proclaimed, we
must rest in ignorance, only assured that the Eternal God is as truly
their Father as we know Him to be ours.
To limited human knowledge the course of the world has ever been, must
ever be, full of darkness and perplexities. Men gaze upon it as they
do upon the wrong side of a piece of tapestry as it is woven. To such
observers the pattern is always obscure, many a time quite
unintelligible. For full knowledge we have to wait to the end. Then
the web will be reversed, God's designs and their working
comprehended; we shall know even as we are known, and, with hearts and
voices tuned to praise, shall cry, "He hath done all things well." Of
such a revelation the poet (Shelley, _Adonais_, Stanza lii.) sings, a
revelation of the all-seeing, unchanging Jehovah and of the glorious
enlightenment that shall be in His presence:--
"The one remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven's light for ever shines, earth's shadows fly:
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity,
Until death tramples it to fragments."
In this wise would St. Peter have us think of the grace of election.
It has its beginning from our Father; its fulfilment will also be with
Him. The measure and the manner of its bestowal are according to His
foreknowledge, according to the same foreknowledge which provided in
Christ an atonement for sin, which appointed Him to die, and that not
for some sinners only, but for the sins of the whole world.
But in the call according to God's foreknowledge the believer is not
perfected. He must live worthily of his calling. And as his election
at the first is of God, so the power to hold it fast is a Divine gift.
He who would rejoice over God's election must feel and constantly
foster within himself _the sanctification of the Spirit_. To be made
holy is his great need. This demands a life of progress, of renewal, a
daily endeavour to restore the image which was lost at the Fall. "Be
ye holy, for I am holy," is a fundamental precept of both Old and New
Testaments; and it is a continual admonition, speaking unto Christians
that they go forward. Under the Law the lesson was enforced by
external symbols. Holy ground, holy days, holy offices, kept men alive
to the need of preparation, of purification, before they could be fit
to draw near unto God or for God to draw near unto them.
For us there is opened a more excellent way: the inward, spiritual
cleansing of the heart. Christ has gone away where He was before, and
sends down to His servants the Holy Ghost, who bestows power that the
election of the Father may be made sure. Hence we can understand those
frequent exhortations in the epistles, "Walk in the Spirit"; "Live in
the Spirit"; "Quench not the Spirit." The Christian life is a
struggle. The flesh is ever striving for the mastery. This enemy the
believer must do to death. And as aforetime, so now, sanctification
begins with purification. Christ sanctifies His Church, those whom He
has called to Him out of the world; and the manner is by cleansing
them through the washing of water with the word. Here we gladly think
of that sacrament which He ordained for admission into the Church as
the beginning of this Divine operation, as the wonted entrance of the
Holy Ghost for His work of purifying. But that work must be continued.
He is called "holy" because He makes men holy by His abode with them.
And Christ has described for us how this is brought to pass. "He shall
take of Mine," says our Lord, "and shall show it unto you. All things
that the Father hath are Mine" (John xvi. 14, 15). Every good gift,
which the Father who calls men hath, the Spirit is sent to impart. The
words speak of the gradual manner of its bestowal; all things may be
given, but they are given little by little, as men can or are fit to
receive them. He shall take a portion of what is Mine, is the literal
meaning of the Evangelist's phrase (John xvi. 15). The plural phrase
πάντα ὅσα ἔχει ὁ πατηρ marks the boundless supply,
the singular ἐκ τῦu ἐμοῦ λήμπσεται the Spirit's choice of such a
portion therefrom as best suits the receiver's needs and powers. In
this wise men may become gradually conformed to the image of Christ,
grow more and more like Him day by day. More and more will they
drink in of the whole truth, and more and more will they be sanctified.
In this daily enlightenment must God's faithful ones live, a life
whose atmosphere is the hallowing influence of the Holy Ghost. But it
is to be no mere life of receptivity, with no effort of their own. The
Apostle makes this clear elsewhere, when he says, "Sanctify the Lord
God in your hearts" (iii. 15)--make them fit abodes for His Spirit to
dwell in; lead your lives in holy conversation, that the house may be
swept and garnished, and you be vessels sanctified and meet for the
Master's use.
Thus chosen by the Father and led onward by the Spirit, the Christian
is brought ever nearer to the full purpose of his calling: _unto
obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ_. The
Christ-pattern which the Spirit sets before men is in no feature more
striking than in its perfect obedience. The prophetic announcement of
this submission sounds down to us from the Psalms: "Lo, I come to do
Thy will, O God"; and the incarnate Son declares of Himself, "My meat
is to do the will of Him that sent Me, and to finish His work": and
even in the hour of His supreme agony His word is still, "Father, not
My will, but Thine, be done." Specially solemn, almost startling, is
the language of the Apostle to the Hebrews when he says of Jesus that
"He learned obedience by the things which He suffered," and that "it
became the Father, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make Christ,
the Captain of their salvation, perfect through suffering." With the
Lord as an example, obedience is made the noblest, the New Testament
form of sacrifice.
But when such obedience was connected with the sprinkling of the blood
of Jesus, the Jews among St. Peter's converts must have been carried
in thought to that scene described in Exod. xxiv. There, through Moses
as a mediator, we read of God's law being made known to Israel, and
the people with one voice promised obedience: "All the words which the
Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient." Then followed a
sacrifice; and Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people,
saying, "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made
with you concerning all these words"; and the Lord drew nigh unto His
people, and the sight of the glory of the Lord on Mount Sinai was like
devouring fire in the eyes of the children of Israel.
For Christians there is a Mediator of a better covenant. We are not
come unto the mount that burned with fire, but unto Mount Zion (Heb.
xii. 18-22). In that other sacrament of His own institution, our Lord
makes us partakers of the benefits of His passion. With His own blood
He constantly maketh His people pure, fitting them to appear in the
presence of the Father. There at length the purpose of their election
shall be complete in fulness of joy in the sight of Him who chose them
before the foundation of the world.
Thus does the Apostle set forth his practical, profitable lessons on
the work of the Trinity in man's election and salvation; and he
concludes them with a benediction part of which is very frequent in
the letters of St. Paul: _Grace to you and peace_. The early preachers
felt that these two blessings travelled hand in hand, and comprised
everything which a believer could need: God's favour and the happiness
which is its fruit. Grace is the nurture of the Christian life; peace
is its character. These strangers of the dispersion had been made
partakers of the Divine grace. This very letter was one gift more, the
consolation of which we can well conceive. But St. Peter models his
benediction to be a fitting sequel to his previous teaching. _Grace_,
he says, _to you and peace be multiplied_. The verb "be multiplied" is
only used by him here and in the Second Epistle, and by St. Jude,
whose letter has so much in common with St. Peter's.
In this prayer the same thought is with him as when he spake of the
stages of the Christian election. There must ever be growth as the
sign of life. Let them hold fast the grace already received, and more
would be bestowed. Grace for grace is God's rule of giving, new store
for what has been rightly used. This one word of his prayer would say
to them, Seek constantly greater sanctification, more holiness, from
the Spirit; yield your will to God in imitation of Jesus, who
sanctified Himself that His servants might be sanctified. Then, though
you be strangers of the dispersion, though the world will have none of
you, you shall be kept in perfect peace, and feel sure that you can
trust His words who says to His warfaring servants, "Be of good cheer;
I have overcome the world."
II
_THE HEAVENLY INHERITANCE_
"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who
according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, unto an
inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not
away, reserved in heaven for you, who by the power of God are
guarded through faith unto a salvation ready to be revealed in
the last time. Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a
little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold
temptations, that the proof of your faith, being more precious
than gold that perisheth, though it is proved by fire, might be
found unto praise and glory and honour at the revelation of Jesus
Christ: whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see
Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable
and full of glory: receiving the end of your faith, even the
salvation of your souls."--1 PETER i. 3-9.
"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh," words true of
all this letter, but of no part more true than of the thanksgiving
with which it opens. The Apostle recalls those dark three days in
which the life he bore was worse than death. His vaunted fidelity had
been put to the proof, and had failed in the trial; his denial had
barred the approach to the Master whom he had disowned. The
crucifixion of Jesus had followed close upon His arrest, and Peter's
bitter tears of penitence could avail nothing. He to whom they might
have appealed was lying in the grave. The Apostle's repentant weeping
saved him from a Judas-like despair, but dreary must have been the
desolation of his soul until the Easter morning's message told him
that Jesus was alive again.
We can understand the fervency of his thanksgiving: _Blessed be God,
which hath begotten us again by the resurrection of Christ from the
dead_. No better image than the gift of a new life could he find to
describe the restoration that came with the words of the angel from
the empty tomb, "He is risen; go your way: tell His disciples and
Peter that He goeth before you into Galilee." The Lord forgave His
sinning, sorrowing servant, and through this forgiveness he lived
again, and bears printed for ever on his heart the memory of that
life-giving. The very form of his phrase in this verse is an echo from
the resurrection morning: _Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ_.
Only in a few passages resembling this in St. Paul's epistles[1] is
God called "the God of our Lord Jesus Christ." But Peter is mindful of
the Lord's own words to Mary, "Go unto My brethren and say unto them,
I ascend unto My Father and your Father, and My God and your God"
(John xx. 17); and now that he is made one of Christ's heralds, the
feeder of His sheep, he publishes the same message which was the
source of his own highest joy, and which he would make a joy for them
likewise. That God is called theirs, even as He is Christ's, is an
earnest that Jesus has made them His brethren indeed. To the doctrine
of their election according to the foreknowledge of the Father he now
adds the further grace which couples the Fatherhood of God with the
brotherhood of Christ.
[1] 2 Cor. i. 3, xi. 31; Eph. i. 3, with which may be compared Rom.
xvi. 6.
That these gifts are purely of God's grace he also implies: _He begat
us again_. Just as in natural birth the child is utterly of the will
of the parents, so is it in the spiritual new birth. _According to
God's great mercy_ we are born again and made heirs of all the
consequent blessings. This passage from death unto life is rich, in
the first place, in immediate comfort. Witness the rejoicing amidst
his grief which St. Peter experienced when he could cry to the Master,
"Lord, Thou knowest all things: Thou knowest that I love Thee." But
the new life looks for ever onward. It will be unbroken through
eternity. Here we may taste the joy of our calling, may learn
something of the Father's love, of the Saviour's grace, of the
Spirit's help; but our best expectations centre ever in the future.
The Apostle terms these expectations a lively, or rather _a living,
hope_. The Christian's hope is living because Christ is alive again
from the dead. It springs with ever-renewed life from that rent tomb.
The grave is no longer a terminus. Life and hope endure beyond it. And
more than this, there is a fresh principle of vitality infused into
the soul of the new-born child of God. The Spirit, the Life-giver, has
made His abode there; and death is swallowed up of victory.
In continuing his description of the living hope of the believer, the
Apostle keeps in mind his simile of Fatherhood and sonship, and gives
to the hope the further title of _an inheritance_. As sons of Adam,
men are heirs from their birth, but only to the sad consequences of
the primal transgression. Slaves they are, and not free men, as that
other law in their members gives them daily proof. But in the
resurrection of Jesus the agonised cry of St. Paul, "Who shall deliver
me?" (Rom. vii. 24), has found its answer. Christians are begotten
again, not to defeat and despair, but to a hope which is eternal, to
an inheritance which will endure beyond the grave. And as in their
spiritual growth they are ever aspiring to an ideal above and beyond
them, in respect of the saintly inheritance they have a like
experience. They begin to grasp it now in part, and have even here a
precious earnest of the larger blessedness; they are sealed by the
Holy Spirit of promise and marked as the redeemed of God's own
possession (Eph. i. 13, 14). But that which shall be is rich with an
exceeding wealth of glory; Christ keeps the good wine of His grace to
the last.
How beggared earthly speech appears when we essay by it to picture the
glory that shall be revealed for us! The inheritance of the
Christian's hope demands for its description those unspeakable words
which St. Paul heard in paradise, but could not utter. The tongues of
men are constrained to fall back upon negatives. What it will be we
cannot express. We only know some evils from which it will be free. It
shall be _incorruptible_, like the God and Father (Rom. i. 23) who
bestows it. _Eternal_, it shall contain within it no seed of decay,
nothing which can cause it to perish. Neither shall it be subject to
injury from without. It shall be _undefiled_, for we are to share it
with our elder Brother, our High-priest (Heb. vii. 26), who is now
made higher than the heavens. Earthly possessions are often sullied,
now by the way they are attained, now by the way they are used.
Neither spot nor blemish shall tarnish the beauty of the heavenly
inheritance. It shall _never fade away_. It is amaranthine, like the
crown of glory (1 Peter v. 4) which the chief Shepherd shall bestow at
His appearing; it is as the unwithering flowers of paradise.
Nor are these the only things which make the heavenly to differ from
the earthly inheritance. In this life, ere a son can succeed to
heirship, the parent through whom it is derived must have passed away;
while the many heirs to an earthly estate diminish, as their number
increases, the shares of all the rest. From such conditions the
Christian's future is free. His Father is the Eternal God, his
inheritance the inexhaustible bounty of heaven. Each and all who share
therein will find an increase of joy as the number grows of those who
claim this eternal Fatherhood, and with it a place in the Father's
home.
St. Peter adds another feature which gives further assurance to the
believer's hope. The inheritance is reserved. Concerning it there can
be no thought of dwindling or decay. It is where neither rust nor moth
can corrupt, and where not even the archthief Satan himself can break
through to steal. There needs no preservation of the incorruptible and
undefiled, but it is especially kept for those for whom it is
prepared. He who has gone before to make it ready said, "I go to
prepare it for you." The Apostle has made choice of his preposition
advisedly. He says, ἐις ὑμᾶς[2]--on your behalf; for your
own possession. The inheritance is where Christ has gone before us, in
heaven, of which we can best think, as Himself hath taught us, as the
place "where He was before" (John vi. 62), the Father's house, in
which are many mansions. There it is in store, till we are made ready
for it.
[2] The better reading, looking back to the ἡμᾶς of ver. 3,
appears to be ἐις ἡμᾶ, and it is well supported.
For the present life is only a preparation-time. Ere we are ready to
depart we must pass through a probation. God suffers His beloved ones
to be chastened, but He sends with the trial the means of rescue. They
are _guarded_. The word which St. Peter here uses is one applicable to
a military guard, such as would be needed in the country of an enemy.
God sees what we stand in need of. For we are still in the territory
of the prince of this world. But mark the abundant protection: _by the
power of God through faith_. The Apostle's language sets our
guardianship forth under a double aspect. The Christian is "in"
(ἐν) "the power of God." Here is the strength of our
wardship. Under such care the believer is enabled to walk amid the
trials of the world unscathed. Yet the Divine shield around him is not
made effective unless he do his part also. Through faith the shelter
becomes impregnable. The Christian goes forward with full assurance,
his eyes fixed on the goal of duty which his Master has set before
him, and, heedless of assailants, perseveres in the struggles which
beset him. Then, even in the fiercest fires of trial, he beholds by
his side the Son of God, and hears the voice, "It is I; be not
afraid."
Thus to the faithful warfarer the victory is sure. And to this
certainty St. Peter points as he continues, and calls the heavenly
inheritance a _salvation_. This will be the consummation. "Sursum
corda" is the believer's constant watchword. The completed bliss will
not be attained here. But when the veil is lifted which separates this
life from the next, it is ready to be manifested and to ravish the
sight with its glory. The sense of this salvation ready to be revealed
nerves the heart for every conflict. By faith weakness grows mighty.
Thus comes to pass the paradox of the Christian life, which none but
the faithful can comprehend: "When I am weak, then I am strong"; "I
can do all things through Christ, that giveth me power."
Hence comes the wondrous spectacle, which St. Peter was contemplating,
and which amazed the heathen world, exceeding joy in the midst of
sufferings. _Wherein ye greatly rejoice_, he says. Some have thought
him to be referring to a mental realisation of the last time, about
which he has just spoken, a realisation so vivid to the faith of these
converts that they could exult in the prospect as though it had
already arrived. And this exposition is countenanced in some degree by
words which follow (ver. 9), where he describes them as now receiving
the end of their faith, even the salvation of their souls.
But it seems less forced to consider the Apostle as speaking with some
knowledge of the circumstances of these Asian Christians, a knowledge
of the trials they had to undergo, and how hope was animating them to
look onwards towards their inheritance, which was but a little while
in reversion, towards the salvation which was so soon to be revealed.
Full of this hope, he says, ye greatly rejoice, though ye have had
many things to suffer. Then he proceeds to dwell on some of the
grounds for their consolation. Their trials, they knew, were but for a
little while, not a moment longer than the need should be. Their
sorrow would have an end; their joy would last for evermore.
The form of St. Peter's words,[3] it is true, seems to imply that
there must always be the need for our chastening. And what else can
the children of Adam expect? But it is He, the Father in heaven, who
fixes both the nature and the duration of His children's discipline.
Some men have felt within themselves the need of chastisement so
keenly that they have devised systems for themselves whereby they
should mortify the flesh, and prepare themselves for the last time.
But of self-appointed chastenings the Apostle does not speak. Of such
the converts to whom he writes had no need. They _had been put to
grief in manifold temptations_.
[3]Ἐι δέον ἐστί--if need be, as need there is.
We can gather from the Epistle itself some notion of the troublous
life these scattered Christians had amid the crowd of their heathen
neighbours. They were regarded with contempt for refusing to mingle in
the excesses which were so marked a feature of heathen life and
heathen worship. They were railed upon as evil-doers. They suffered
innocently, were constantly assailed with threatenings, and passed
their time oft in such terror that St. Peter describes their life as a
fiery trial.
Yet in the word (ποικίλος) which he here employs to picture
the varied character of their sufferings we seem to have another hint
that these did not fall out without the permission and watchful
control of God Himself. It is a word which, while it tells of a
countless variety, tells at the same time of fitness and order
therein. The trials are meted out fitly, as men need and can profit by
them. The Master's eye and hand are at work through them all; and the
faithful God keeps always ready a way of deliverance. In this wise
does St. Peter proclaim that the putting to grief may be made unto us
a dispensation of mercy. Himself had been so put to grief by the
thrice-repeated question, "Lovest thou Me?" (John xxi. 17). But a way
was opened thereby for repentance of his triple denial, and that he
might thrice over be entrusted with the feeding of Christ's flock.
Such was the putting to grief of the Corinthian Church (2 Cor. vii.
9) by St. Paul's first letter, for it wrought in them repentance, so
that they sorrowed after a godly sort. And such sorrow can exist side
by side with, yea be the source of, exceeding joy. The Apostle of the
Gentiles is a witness when he says that he and his fellow-labourers
are "sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing" (2 Cor. vi. 10).
The Christian does not allow troubles to overwhelm him. The very
comparison which St. Peter here institutes, speaking though it does of
a furnace of trial, bears within it somewhat of consolation. Gold that
is proved by the fire loses all the dross which clung about it and was
mingled with it before the refining. It comes forth in all its purity,
all its worth; and so shall it be with the believer after his
probation. The things of earth will lose their value in his eyes; they
will fall away from him, neither will he load himself with the thick
clay of the world's honours or wealth. The ties of such things have
been sundered by his trials, and his heart is free to rise above the
anxieties of time. And better even than the most refined gold, which,
be it never so excellent, will yet be worn away, the faith of the
believer comes forth stronger for all trial, and he shall hear at the
last the welcome of the Master, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord,"
the joy which He bestows, the joy which He shares with those that
follow Him.
This is the revelation of Jesus Christ of which St. Peter speaks. This
is the praise which through His atonement His servants shall find, and
shall become sharers of the glory and honour which the Father has
bestowed upon Him. To Christ then turns every affection. _Whom not
having seen ye love._ This is the test since Christ's ascension, and
has the promise of special blessing. To His doubting Apostle Christ
vouchsafed the evidence he desired, for our teaching as well as for
his; but He added therewith, "Blessed are they which have not seen and
yet have believed." And their joy is such as no tongue can tell. Not
for that are they silent in their rejoicing; their hearts overflow,
and their voices go forth in constant songs of praise. But ever there
remains with them the sense, "The half has not been told."
For faith anticipates the bliss which God hath prepared for them that
love Him, and enters into the unseen. The Holy Spirit within the soul
is ever making fuller revelation of the deep things of God. The
believer's knowledge is ever increasing; the eye-salve of faith clears
his spiritual vision. The thanksgivings of yesterday are poor when
considered in the illumination of to-day. His joy also is glorified.
As his aspirations soar heavenward, the glory from on high comes
forth, as it were, to meet him. By gazing in faith on the coming Lord,
the Christian progresses, through the power of the Spirit, from glory
to glory; and the ever-growing radiance is a part of that grace which
no words can tell. But so true, so real, is the sense of Christ's
presence that the Apostle describes it as full fruition. Believers
_receive even now the end of their faith, the salvation of their
souls_. So assured does He make them of all which they have hoped for
that they behold already the termination of their journey, the close
of all trial, and are filled with the bliss which shall be fully
theirs when Christ shall come to call His approved servants to their
inheritance of salvation.
III
_THE UNITY AND GLORIOUSNESS OF THE PLAN OF REDEMPTION_
"Concerning which salvation the prophets sought and searched
diligently, who prophesied of the grace that _should come_ unto
you: searching what _time_ or what manner of time the Spirit of
Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified
beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should
follow them. To whom it was revealed, that not unto themselves,
but unto you, did they minister these things, which now have been
announced unto you through them that preached the Gospel unto you
by the Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven; which things angels
desire to look into."--1 PETER i. 10-12.
The message of the Gospel unlocks the treasures of Old Testament
revelation. Evangelists and Apostles are the exponents of the
prophets. The continuity of Divine revelation has never been broken.
The Spirit which spake through Joel of the pentecostal outpouring had
spoken to men in the earlier days, to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, and
David, and was now shed forth upon the first preachers of the Gospel,
and bestowed abundantly for the work of the newly founded Church of
Christ. St. Peter, himself a chief recipient of the gift, here
proclaims the oneness of the whole of revelation; and more than this,
he bears witness to the oneness of the teaching of the whole body of
Christian missionaries. St. Paul and his fellow-labourers had spread
the glad tidings first of all among these Asian converts; but there
is no thought in St. Peter's mind of a different gospel from his own.
Those who preached the Gospel to them in the first instance were, even
as himself, working in and by the same Holy Spirit.
In the preceding verses of the chapter the thoughts of the Apostle
have been dwelling on the future, on the time when the hope of the
believer shall attain its fruition, and faith shall be lost in sight.
He now turns his glance backward to notice how the promise of
salvation has been the subject of revelation through all time. To
those among the converts who had studied the Jewish Scriptures such a
retrospect would be fruitful in instruction. They would comprehend
with him how the truths which they now heard preached had been
gradually shadowed forth in the Divine economy. That first
proclamation of the seed of the woman to be born for the overthrow of
the tempter, but who yet must Himself be a Sufferer in the conflict,
was now become luminous, and in outline presented the whole scheme of
redemption. The study of the development of that scheme would beget a
full trust in their hearts for the future as they contemplated the
stages of its foreshadowing in the past.
_Concerning which salvation_, he says, _the prophets sought and
searched diligently_. The Divine revelation could only be made as men
were able to bear it, and the sentences of old must needs be dark. At
first God's love was set forth by His covenants with the patriarchs.
Then the wider scope of mercy was proclaimed in the promises given to
Abraham and repeated to his posterity. In their seed, it was declared,
not the chosen race alone, but all the nations of the earth, should be
blessed. Here all through the history was ground enough for diligent
searching among the faithful. How could these things be, Abraham
solitary and aged, Isaac's sons at feud with each other, Jacob and his
posterity in captivity? Even at their best estate these seemed little
fitted for the destiny which had been foretold to them. But throughout
the Mosaic history some clung to their faith, and their great leader
foresaw that the promise would be fulfilled in its time through One of
whom he was but a feeble representative. But to so wide a vision only
a few attained.
In the evil days which followed, the hope of the people must often
have dwindled down; but yet at times, as to Gideon's diminished army,
it was made manifest that the Lord could do great things for His
people: and the thought of the seed of the woman promised as a
Deliverer lingered in many hearts, and enabled them to sing in
thankfulness how the adversaries of the Lord should be broken in
pieces, how out of heaven the Lord should thunder upon them, and prove
Himself the Judge of all the ends of the earth, giving strength unto
His king and exalting the horn of His anointed. In such wise the
prophetic teaching, which had advanced from the blessing of an
individual to the choice and exaltation of a chosen family, was
expanded in the noblest spirits to the conception of a kingdom of God
among all mankind, and assumed a more definite form when the promise
was made to the Son of David that His throne should be established for
ever.
But how imperfectly God's design was comprehended by the best among
them we can see from the last words of David himself (2 Sam. xxiii.
1-7). In them we have an instance of the searching which must have
occupied other hearts beside that of the king of Israel. The Spirit of
the Lord had spoken by him, and a promise of future glory had been
made, when all should be brightness, every cloud dispersed. But the
vision tarried. The house of David was not so with God. Yet he still
held firmly to the everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and
sure, a covenant of salvation, though as yet God made it not to grow.
David may be numbered among those _who prophesied of the grace that
should come_ hereafter; and his words are shaped by a power above his
own, to suggest the advent of Him who was to be the "dayspring from on
high."
He and the other enlightened Israelites who have left us their
thoughts and aspirations in the Psalter felt that the history of the
chosen people was from first to last a grand parable (Psalm lxxviii.
2), and that the present could always be learning from the leading and
discipline of the past. The miracles and the chastisements which they
recite were all tokens of the sure promise, tokens that the people
were not forgotten, but constantly aided by instruction, warning, and
reproof. So that another psalmist, though still searching for the
fuller meaning of the parables and dark sayings through which he was
conducted, could sing, "God shall redeem my soul from the hand of the
grave, for He shall take me" (Psalm xlix. 15). There is a confidence
in the words, a confidence enough to sustain amid many trials. To such
a man the present was not all. There was a life to come where God
should be and rule, and his heart had not seldom gone forth to the
questioning _at what time and in what form_ the promises should be
fulfilled. Like Abraham, such men had seen the day of Christ in vision
and rejoiced over it, and the _Spirit of Christ was within them_ to
sustain them. But the things which they had heard and known, and of
which their fathers had told them, supplied cause for deep searchings
as _to the time and the manner of time unto which the Spirit
pointed_. The strength of the Lord and His wondrous works were to be
rehearsed to the coming generations, that among them the hope might
live, by them the searching be continued. And as time went on the
vision was widened, for in no small number of the Psalms we find the
promised blessedness described as the portion not of Israel only, but
through Israel grace was to be extended to the ends of the earth.
"Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands," is no solitary
invocation.
And when we turn to those prophets whose writings we possess, we
recognise that in them the Spirit of Christ was working and pointing
forward to the coming redemption. But long before the days of Isaiah
and Micah the Spirit of the Lord had come mightily upon His servants,
and that picture of a glorious future which both those seers have
given to us was not improbably the utterance of some earlier servant
of the Lord: "It shall come to pass in the last days that the mountain
of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains
and shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall flow unto
it" (Isa. ii. 2; Micah iv. 1). Thus far had they attained, but the
search was not ended. "The last days"! When these should come was
known to God alone; and they spake only as they were moved by Him,
standing on their towers of spiritual elevation, hearkening what the
Lord would say to them, and delivering His message with all the
fulness they could command. But they were sure of the final bliss.
Of the same character are those words of Joel, which St. Peter quoted
in his sermon on the day of Pentecost, "It shall come to pass
_afterward_" (ii. 28). Beyond this was not yet revealed. But it was
the voice of God which spake through the prophet: "In those days I
will pour out My Spirit." And the Divine voice spake of visitations of
another kind. It _testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ and
the glories that should follow them_. We feel sure that here St. Peter
had in mind Isa. liii., which the New Testament has taught us to apply
in its fullest sense to our blessed Lord.
But the language of St. Peter in this clause deserves special notice.
He does not use the ordinary words by which the personal sufferings of
Christ would generally be expressed, but he says rather, "the
sufferings which pertain unto Christ." And here we may well consider
whether the variation of phrase be not designed. St. Paul uses the
simple direct expression (2 Cor. i. 5), and so does St. Peter himself
(1 Peter iv. 13); and in those passages the Apostles are speaking of
the sufferings of Christ as shared by His people. It would almost seem
as if St. Peter's phrase in the verse before us were intended to
convey this sense more fully. The sufferings pertain unto Christ, were
specially borne by Him; but they fall also upon those who are, and
have been, His people, both before and after the Incarnation.
Those prophecies of Isaiah which speak of the sufferings of the
servant of the Lord had long been expounded as meant of the Jewish
nation, and with such interpretation St. Peter was doubtless familiar.
Hence may have come his altered phrase, capable of being interpreted,
not only of Christ Himself, but of the sufferings of those who, like
these Asiatic converts, were for the Lord's sake exposed to manifold
trials. This double application of the words, to Christ and to His
servants also, explains, it may be, the unique use of the word
"glories" in the clause which follows: the sufferings of Christ and
the _glories_ that should follow them. For the glories may be taken to
signify not only that honour and glory which the Father has given unto
Christ, but also the glory in which they shall share who have taken up
their cross to follow Him. Nowhere else in the New Testament does this
plural word occur. To draw a sense like this from it would minister no
small comfort to the Christians in their trials; and just before St.
Peter has described the joy which they should experience as
"glorified," or "full of glory" (ver. 8). In like manner St. Paul
speaks (Rom. viii. 18) of the sufferings of this present time as not
worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us in
the resurrection.
It would also serve as consolation to the sufferers, who were thus
pointed on to the future for Christ's best gifts, to know that a
similar forward glance had been the lot of the prophets under the
ancient dispensation. One here and there had felt, as Malachi (iii.
1), that the Lord whom they were seeking was soon to come; but we know
of none before the aged Simeon to whom it had been made known that
they should not die till they had seen the Lord's Christ. To the
former generations _it was revealed_, says the Apostle, _that not unto
themselves, but unto you, did they minister these things_. They beheld
them, and greeted them, but it was afar off. They spake often one to
another of a bliss that was to come; yet though praying, longing, and
hoping for it, they saw it only with the eye of faith. The psalmists
supply many illustrations of this forward projection of the thoughts
which dwelt on the Messianic hope. Thus in Psalm xxii. 30, 31, while
rejoicing over his own rescue from suffering, the speaker recognises
that this is but a foreshadowing of another suffering and another
deliverance, even the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should
follow. "It shall be told of the Lord unto the next generation. They
shall come; they shall declare His righteousness to a people that
shall be born, that He hath done it," and again in another place,
"This shall be written for the generation to come, and a people which
shall be created shall praise the Lord" (Psalm cii. 18). And these
anticipations are ever coupled with the thought of the wider extension
of the kingdom of God, with the time when "all the ends of the world
shall remember and turn unto the Lord," "when the nations shall fear
the name of the Lord, and all the kings of the earth His glory."
But the things which prophets and psalmists ministered _have now been
announced unto you through them that preached the Gospel unto you_.
You, St. Peter would say, are now not heirs expectant, but possessors
of the blessings which former ages of believers foresaw and foretold,
just as in his pentecostal address he testifies, "This is that which
was spoken by the prophet Joel." And those who have preached these
glad tidings unto you, he continues, have not done so without warrant.
They are joined by an unbroken link to the prophets who went before
them. In those the Spirit of Christ wrought at such times as He found
fit instruments for raising a little the veil that lay over the
purposes of God. The preachers of the Gospel have the same Spirit, and
speak unto you _by the Holy Ghost sent forth from heaven_. These (and
of St. Peter is this specially true) had witnessed the sufferings of
Christ, and been made partakers of the glories of the outpoured
Spirit. The promise of the Father had been fulfilled to them, and they
had received a mouth and wisdom which their adversaries were not able
to resist. The risen Lord, the assurance of a life to come, the
guidance by the Spirit into all truth--these were now realities for
them, and were to be made real for the rest of the world by their
testimony.
And that he may further magnify that salvation which he has been
describing as published in part under the Law and now assured by the
message of the Gospel, he adds, _which things angels desire to look
into_. Of the whole Divine plan for man's redemption the angels could
hardly be cognisant. Of God's love for man they had been made
conscious, had been employed as His agents in the exhibition of that
love, both under the old and under the new covenant. Their ministry,
we know, was exercised in the lives of Abraham and Lot; they watched
over Jacob and over Elijah in their solitude and weariness. One of
their host was sent to deliver Daniel and to instruct the prophet
Zechariah. At a later day they, who stand above mankind in the order
of creation, and are pure enough to behold the presence of the Most
High, were made messengers to announce how the Son of God had deigned
to assume, not their nature, but the nature of humanity, and would by
His suffering lift up the race from its slavery to sin. They
proclaimed the birth of the Baptist, and brought the message of the
Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin. They heralded the birth of Christ
to the shepherds of Bethlehem, and a multitude of their glorious
company sang the song of glory to God in the highest. They tended the
God-Man at His temptation, strengthened Him in His agony, were present
at His sepulchre, and gave the news of the Resurrection to the early
visitants. Nor were their services at an end with Christ's ascension,
though they were present on that occasion also. To Cornelius and to
Peter angels were made messengers, and our Lord has told us that
their rejoicing is great over even one sinner that repenteth.
These immortal spirits whose home is before God's throne, and whose
great office is to sing His praise, yet find in those ministrations to
mankind in which they have been employed matter for admiration, matter
which kindles in them fervent desire. They long to comprehend in all
its fulness that grace which they are conscious God is shedding forth
upon mankind. They would scan[4] all the workings of His love and His
forbearance towards sinners. These things are to them a subject of
admiration, even as was the empty tomb of Jesus to the disciples after
the Resurrection; and from their high estate the angelic host would
fain stoop down to gaze their fill upon what God's goodness has
wrought and is working out for mankind. They feel that this knowledge
would add a new theme to the songs around the throne, would give them
still greater cause to extol that grace which manifests its noblest
features in showing mercy and pity.
[4] παρακύψαι is the word employed to describe the stooping
of the disciples and Mary that they might look into the grave of Jesus
(Luke xxiv. 12; John xx. 5, 11).
And if such be the aspiration of angels, sinless beings who feel not
the need of rescue, shall the tongues of men be dumb, men who know,
each from the experience of his own heart, how great is the evil of
sin in which they are entangled, how hopeless without Christ's death
was their deliverance from its thraldom; who know how constant and how
undeserved is the mercy of which they are partakers, how true to
Himself God has been in their case? "I am Jehovah; I change not:
therefore ye children of men are not destroyed."
IV
_THE CHRISTIAN'S IDEAL, AND THE STEPS THEREUNTO_
"Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, be sober and set
your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you
at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as children of obedience, not
fashioning yourselves according to your former lusts _in the time
of_ your ignorance: but like as He which called you is holy, be
ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living; because it is
written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy. And if ye call on Him
as Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to
each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear:
knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with
silver or gold, from your vain manner of life handed down from
your fathers; but with precious blood, as of a lamb without
blemish and without spot, _even the blood_ of Christ: who was
foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was
manifested at the end of the times for your sake, who through Him
are believers in God, which raised Him from the dead, and gave
Him glory; so that your faith and hope might be in God."--1 PETER
i. 13-21.
The Apostle, who has set forth the character of the Christian's
election, who has given to the converts large assurance for the hope
which he exhorts them to hold, who has proclaimed the exceeding glory
of their inheritance in the future and how its nature had been
foreshadowed in type and prophecy, now turns to those practical
lessons which he would enforce from the doctrines of election and of
the future glory in heaven. Such glorious privileges cannot be looked
forward to without awakening a sense of corresponding duties, and for
these he would not have them unprepared. _Wherefore_, he says, because
you have the assurance of what the best men of old only dimly foresaw,
_girding up the loins of your mind, be sober_. The Apostle has in mind
the words of his Master, "Let your loins be girded about, and your
lamps burning; and be ye yourselves like unto men looking for their
lord" (Luke xii. 35, 36). The advent of the bridegroom may be sudden;
those who would be of his train must be prepared for their summons. To
be girt in body is a token of readiness for coming duty. And St.
Peter's figure would speak more forcibly to Eastern ears than it does
to ours. Without such girding the Oriental is helpless for active
work, the encumbrance of his flowing robes being fatal to exertion.
The heart of the Christian must be untrammelled with the cares, the
affections, the pleasures of the world. He must be free to run the
race which lies before him, as was the well-girt prophet who ran
before the royal chariot to the entrance of Jezreel.
And the Christian life is no light care, as St. Peter pictures it.
First, he says, _Be sober_. To train the mind to exercise
self-restraint is no easy duty at any time, but specially in a season
of religious excitement. We know how converts in the very earliest
days of Christianity were carried into excesses both in action and in
word; and in every age of quickened activity some have been found with
whom freedom degenerated into licence, and emotion took the place of
true religious feeling. The Jewish converts in the provinces of Asia
might be tempted to despise those who still clung to the ancient
faith, while some of those who had been won from heathenism might by
their conduct alienate rather than win their brethren in Christ. We
gather what was the nature of the peril when we find the Apostle (iv.
7) urging this sobriety as a frame of mind to be cultivated even in
their prayers, and St. Paul in his advice to Timothy combining the
exhortation to sobriety with "Suffer hardship; do the work of an
evangelist" (2 Tim. iv. 5). It is the frame of mind meet for the
maintenance of sound doctrine, utterly opposed to those itching ears
which are only satisfied with teaching according to their own lusts.
Fitly therefore does our Apostle add to his first exhortation a second
which will make the believers steadfast: _Set your hope perfectly on
the grace that is to be brought unto you_. In those early days this
counsel was not always easy to follow. There were many enticements to
wavering, many trials which made the firm hold on strong faith
difficult to maintain. And with the "perfectly" must be combined that
other sense of the word "to the end." The hope must be perfect in its
nature, unshaken in its firmness, persuaded of the certainty of the
future grace, and strengthened in that persuasion by the experience of
the present working of the Spirit. But the language of the Apostle
almost anticipates the future. He says not so much that the grace is
"to be brought," but rather that it is even now "being brought" near
and coming ever nearer; for the revelation of Jesus Christ is
progressive. Though we learn something, it is only so much as teaches
us that there is more still to learn of the boundless stores of grace.
But as in a former verse he spake of believers as having already by
faith their salvation in possession, even such is his language here.
And mark his lesson on the free gift of God s grace. It is not a
blessing to which the believer can attain of his own power. He can
hope for it; he can feel assured that God in His own time will bestow
it. But whenever it comes, either as present grace to help in trial,
or future grace which shall be revealed, it is given, brought,
bestowed; and its full fruition will only be reached _at the
revelation of Jesus Christ_. But assuredly these words may be applied
to this life as well as to the next. He who said, "The Holy Spirit
shall take of Mine and declare it unto you," designs to be ever more
and more revealed in the hearts of His followers. His grace is being
brought to them day by day, and trains continually unto obedience
those who have been sprinkled with His blood.
And this obedience is the next precept for which they are to be made
ready by the girding up of the loins of their minds, _as children of
obedience_, the obedience not of slaves, but of sons. Children they
are become by virtue of the new birth, and obedience it is which gives
them a claim upon God's Fatherhood. They must seek for the docility
and trustfulness of the childlike character; they must accept a law
other than their own wills, having taken upon them the yoke of Christ
and aiming, in the light of His example, to become worthy of being
reckoned among His true followers.
When they contemplate their own lives, they must feel that a mighty
change is needed from what they were aforetime. St. Peter's words mark
the completeness of the needed change: _not fashioning yourselves
according to your former lusts_. In time past they had sought no
further for a guide and pattern than their own perverted desires; now
they must school themselves to say, "Do with me as Thou wilt, for I am
Thine." And He whose grace has begotten them again will help them to
frame their lives by His rule, will have them learn of Him. But while
the Apostle dwells on the difference which must come over the lives of
these converts, mark the wondrous charity with which he alludes to
their former life in error. _In the time of your ignorance_, he says.
Even here he follows the example of the Lord, who prayed in His agony,
"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Sin blinds the
moral and the mental vision too, and men so blinded sink deeper and
deeper into the slough, while he who has learnt Christ has gained
another source of light. But, to raise the ignorant, they must be
taught; and tenderness makes teaching most effective, and charity
dictates the apostolic words. So St. Paul at Athens to those who
worshipped an unknown God offered instruction to win them from their
ignorance, and pointed them to a God whose offspring they were, and to
whose likeness they might be conformed.
Just so does St. Peter; _Like as He who called you is holy, be ye
yourselves also holy in all manner of living_. This has been God's
call from the first day until now, but what a hopeless height is this
for the sinner to aim after, holy as God is holy! Yet it is the
standard which Christ sets before us in the Sermon on the Mount: "Be
ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." And
why does He propose to us that which is impossible? Because with the
command He is ready to supply the power. He knows our frailty; knows
what is in man both of strength and weakness. At the same time He
proclaims to us by this command what God intends to make of us. He
will restore us again to His own likeness. That which was God's at
first shall be made God's once more. The marred image, on which not
even the superscription can be traced, shall again be revealed in
full clearness, and the believer purged from all the defilements of
sin by the grace and help of Him who says, "Be ye perfect," because He
loves to make us so.
_Because it is written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy._ This command
comes down to us from the earliest days of the Law. But in those old
times it could not be said, _in all manner of living_. These words
betoken the loftier standard of the New Testament. The patriarchs and
prophets and the people among whom they lived were trained, and could
only be trained, little by little. Even in the best among them we
cannot hope for holiness in all manner of living. It was only by the
types and figures of external purification that their thoughts were
directed to the inner cleansing of the heart, and long generations
passed before the lessons were learnt. The full sense of the
Fatherhood of God was not attained under the Law, nor did men under it
learn fully to live as children of obedience, children of a Father who
loves and will succour every effort which they make to walk according
to His law. The Incarnation has brought God nearer to man, and on this
relationship of love the Apostle grounds his further exhortation.
_And if ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons
judgeth according to each man's work, pass the time of your sojourning
in fear._ But the fear which St. Peter means is a fear which grows out
of love, a fear to grieve One who is so abundant in mercy. Who can
call on God as Father but the children of obedience? About the
Father's will and His power to make you holy there need be no fear. He
has called men and bidden them strive after holiness. The way is
steep, but they will not be unattended. What fear then of failing to
attain the goal? For the Father will also be the Judge. And here is
the ground for eternal hope and thankfulness, which the Apostle
expresses in words akin to those which he used in the house of
Cornelius: "Now I see that God is no respecter of persons, but in
every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted
with Him." Yes, this is the fear which God looks for, not a paralysing
dread which checks all effort and kills out all hope. Our Judge knows
that our work will be full of faults, but fear of Him must nerve us to
make the endeavour. It is not what men do, the feeble sum of their
performance, that He regards. The way, the spirit, the motive, from
which it is wrought--these will be the ground of our Father's
judgement. Hence the Gospel is a message for all the world alike. The
poor and lowly, to whom no great deeds are possible, may through it
live a life of hope. It is not great gifts poured into the treasury
from an abundant store that have value in His eyes, but the gifts
which come with a heart's sacrifice--these are precious indications,
and receive the blessing, "They have done what they could." And God's
children are to look on their life as no more than a brief pilgrimage.
It is a time of sojourning, in which the small occurrences are of
little account.[5] Earth is to the Christian, what Egypt was of old to
the Hebrews, no home, but a place of trial and oppression of the
enemy. God will bring His children forth, even as He did of old. But
the dread to be most entertained is lest the many attractions should,
like the flesh-pots of the history, win the affection of the pilgrims,
and make them not unwilling to linger in the house of bondage and to
think lightly of peril which surrounds them there. The great
preservative from this danger is to revive constantly the thought of
the great things which have been done for us. Be in fear of the world
and its beguilements, says St. Peter, _knowing that ye were redeemed,
not with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain manner
of life handed down from your fathers_. The redemption price is paid,
has been paid for all men. Shall any then be willing to tarry in their
slavery? Ye were redeemed. The work is complete. "It is finished," was
the last sigh of the dying Lord, who before had testified that His
true disciples might be of good cheer, because He had overcome the
world.
[5] This would appeal with force to the hearts of those who were of
the dispersion. Therein they would behold a picture of what all
earthly life is as compared with the home to come.
But in the hearts of men the world and its allurements die very hard.
The men for whom St. Peter wrote would surely find this so. They had
many of them lived long either under Judaism or in heathendom, and
would be surrounded still by friends and kinsmen who clung to the
ancient teaching and customs. Prejudices were sure to abound, and the
ties of blood in such cases are very strong, as we know ourselves from
mission experience in India. The Apostle speaks of their manner of
life as handed down from their fathers. He may have had in his thought
the corruption of the human race from the sin of our first parents.
Generation after generation has been involved in the consequences of
that primal transgression. But he probably thought rather of the
converts from idolatry and the life which they had led in their days
of ignorance. Of God's covenant with the chosen people, though now it
was abolished, St. Peter would hardly speak as a _vain_ manner of
life. But to the worship of the heathen the word might fitly be
applied. Paul and Barnabas entreat the crowd at Lystra, who would have
done sacrifice to them as to their gods, to turn from these
_vanities_ to serve the living God (Acts xiv. 15); and to the
Ephesians St. Paul writes that they should no longer walk, as the
other Gentiles walk, in the _vanity_ of their mind (Eph. iv. 17). The
parents of such men, having themselves no knowledge, could impart none
to their children, could not lift them higher, could not make them
purer; and yet the ties of natural affection would plead strongly for
what had been held right by their fathers for generations.
But the price which has been paid for their ransom may convince them
how precious they are in the eyes of a Father in heaven. They are
redeemed _with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot_, even the blood _of Christ_. For ages the offering of
sacrifices had kept before the minds of Israel the need of a
redemption, but they could do no more. The blood of bulls and goats
and the ashes of a heifer suffice only to the purifying of the flesh,
and can never take away sin. But now the true fountain is opened, and
St. Peter has learnt, and bears witness, what was the meaning of the
words of Jesus, "If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me" (John
xiii. 8). The door of mercy is opened, that by the knowledge of such
wondrous love the hearts of men may be opened also.
And this counsel of God has been from all eternity. Christ _was
foreknown before the foundation of the world_ as the Lamb to be
offered for human redemption. The world and its history form but a
tiny fragment of God's mighty works, and yet for mankind a plan so
overflowing with love was included in the vision of Jehovah before man
or his home had existence except in the Divine mind. Now by the
Incarnation the secret counsel is brought to light, and the
foretokenings of type and prophecy receive their interpretation. _He
was manifested at the end of the times for your sake._ He was made
flesh, and tabernacled among men; He showed by the signs which He
wrought that He was the Saviour drawing near to them that they might
draw near unto Him. His lifting up on the cross spake of the true
healing of the souls of all who would look unto Him. And when death
had done its work upon the human body, He was manifested more
thoroughly as the beloved Son of God by His resurrection from the
grave. The first Christians felt that God's work was now complete,
salvation secured. It is not unnatural therefore that they should
expect the drama of the world's history soon to be closed. For the
Master had not seldom spoken of the coming of a speedy judgement.
Hence the age in which they lived seemed to merit the name of "the end
of the times." We now can see that the judgement of which Christ spake
was wrought in great part by the overthrow of Jerusalem, though His
words are still prospective, and will not find their entire fulfilment
till the close of human history; and the whole Christian era may be
intended and included in "the end of the times." This was the goal
towards which God's counsel had been moving since the world was made.
No new revelation is to be looked for, and we who live in the light of
Christ's religion are those upon whom the ends of the world are come.
In this sense the words may be applied in every age and to every
generation of Christians. To them, as to St. Peter's converts, the
preacher may testify, "For your sakes" all this was planned and
wrought, and may offer the ransom of the Saviour to His people,
assured that in this speck of time Christ is being manifested for
their sake also. For _they through Him are believers in God_, as the
Lord Himself hath testified. "No man cometh unto the Father but by
Me"; "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." The words are as true
to-day as when Christ was upon earth. Since the Fall the glory and
majesty of Jehovah have been unapproachable. Sin rendered man both
unfit and unable to have the pure communion of the days of innocence.
It was the vision of Jesus by faith which brought Abraham near to God
and filled him with joy. And so with all the saints and prophets of
the first covenant. They beheld Him, but it was afar off. They greeted
the maturing promises, but only as strangers and pilgrims upon earth.
To the Asian converts and to us also the testimony of St. Peter and
his fellows is from those who beheld the glory of God as it was
manifested in Christ, who saw Him when raised from the dead, and
watched His ascent into the glory of heaven. And by such witness faith
in what God has wrought is confirmed. We are sure that He raised
Christ from the dead; we are sure that He has received Him into glory:
and thus through all generations the faith and hope of Christians are
sustained and rest unshaken upon God.
V
_CHRISTIAN BROTHERHOOD: ITS CHARACTER AND DUTIES_
"Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the
truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from
the heart fervently: having been begotten again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God,
which liveth and abideth. For all flesh is as grass, and all the
glory thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and
the flower falleth: but the word of the Lord abideth for ever.
And this is the word of good tidings which was preached unto you.
Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and
hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, as new-born
babes long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye
may grow thereby unto salvation; if ye have tasted that the Lord
is gracious."--1 PETER i. 22-ii. 3.
That holy lives have been lived in solitude none would venture to
dispute, and that devout Christians have found strength for themselves
and given examples to the world by withdrawal from the society of
their fellows is attested more than once in the history of
Christendom. But with lives of such isolation and seclusion the New
Testament exhibits little sympathy. To whatever preparation the
Christian is exhorted, it is never with a view to himself. Though not
of the world, he is to be in the world, that men may profit by his
example. The prayer of the Lord for His disciples ere He left them
was, not that they might be taken out of the world, but protected from
its evils.
Christ's intention was to found a Church, a communion, a brotherhood,
and all His language looks that way: "One is your Master, and all ye
are brethren"; "So let your light shine before men that they may see
your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven." And of
like character is the teaching of the Epistles: "Be kindly affectioned
in love of the brethren" (Rom. xii. 10); "Let brotherly love continue"
(Heb. xiii. 1). We are in no way surprised therefore when St. Peter
turns from his exhortations to personal sobriety, obedience, and
holiness, and addresses the converts on the application of these
virtues, that through them they may bind in closer bonds the
brotherhood of Christ: _Seeing ye have purified your souls in your
obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one
another from the heart fervently_. Obedience is the sole evidence by
which the believer can show that God's call has wrought in him
effectually. His election is of the Father's foreknowledge, his
sanctification is the gift of the Holy Spirit, and it is the
sprinkling of the blood of Christ which makes him fit for entry into
the house of the Father. In the Christian, so called and so aided,
there must be a surrender of himself to the guidance of that Spirit
which deigns to guide him. The law in his members must be mortified,
and another and purer law accepted as the rule of his life. This law
St. Peter calls "the truth" because it has been made manifest in its
perfection in the life of Jesus, who is the Way, the Truth, and the
Life. Of this example St. Paul testifies as "the truth which is in
Jesus." He therefore who would cherish the Christian hope will purify
himself even as Christ is pure. The way and means unto such
purification is obedience.
This first and most needful step the Apostle believes, from his
knowledge of their lives, that these Asian converts have taken in
earnest, and thus have attained to a love of their brethren which
differs utterly from the love which the world exhibits, which is true,
sincere, unfeigned. But the believer's life is a life of constant
progress. Daily advance is the evidence of vitality. All the language
which Scripture applies to it proclaims this to be its character. It
is called a walk, a race, a pilgrimage, a warfare. The Christian all
his life through will find himself so far from what Christ intends to
make him that he must ever be pressing forward. Hence, though they
have attained to a stage of purification, have put off in some degree
the old man, the Apostle's exhortation is, "Press forward"; "Love one
another from the heart fervently." The English word describes a warmth
and earnestness of love which is deep-seated and true, but the
original expresses more than this, more of the sustained effort to
which St. Peter is urging them. It points to incessant striving, to a
constancy like that of the prayers of the Church for the Apostle
himself when he was in prison, a prayer made unto God without ceasing.
So steadfast must be the Christian love; and such love the purified,
undistracted heart alone can manifest, a heart which has been released
from the entanglements of earthly ambitions and strivings, whose
affections are fully set on the things above.
Such souls must be filled with the Spirit; a steadfastness like this
comes only of the new birth. And of this the converts are reminded in
the words which follow: _having been begotten again, not of
corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God_. It
is true they are but at the outset of their Christian course; but if
any man be in Christ, he is made a new creature. And in this
connexion the word of God might be taken in a twofold sense. First,
the Word who was made flesh, in whom was light; and the light was the
life of men. Through His resurrection God has begotten men again to a
life which shall know no corruption. But the figure which the Apostle
presently employs of the withering grass and the falling flower
carries our mind rather to Christ's explanation of His own parable.
The seed is the word of God, _which liveth and abideth_. And
throughout the New Testament the life-possessing and life-giving power
of the Gospel is made everywhere conspicuous. When it was first
proclaimed, we read again and again, "The word of God grew mightily
and prevailed" (Acts xii. 24, xix. 20); and the figurative language
used to describe its character shows how potent is its might. It is
the sword of the Spirit (Eph. vi. 16); "It is quick and powerful"
(Heb. iv. 12). By it Christ foiled the tempter. It makes those strong
in whom it abides (1 John ii. 14). It is free, and not bound (2 Tim.
ii. 9). St. Paul calls it "the power of God unto salvation" (Rom. i.
16), "the word of truth, the gospel of salvation" (Eph. i. 13), and
says, "It comes, not in word only, but in power" (1 Thess. i. 5). This
is the incorruptible seed of which St. Peter speaks. And his words
force on our thoughts that for such a seed a fitting ground must be
prepared, if the new life of which it is the source is to bear its due
fruit. This preparation it is which the Apostle is anxious to enforce,
the purifying and cleansing of the seed-plot of men's hearts. They
must not be hardened so as to forbid it access, and leave it for every
chance enemy to trample on or carry away; they must not be choked with
alien thoughts and purposes: the cares of life, the pleasures of the
world. Such things perish in the using, and can have no affinity with
the living and abiding word of God, which, even as He, is eternal and
unchanging.
And herewith is bound up a very solemn thought. The word may be
neglected, may be choked, in individual hearts; but still it liveth
and abideth, and will appear to testify against the scorners: "He that
rejecteth Me and receiveth not My words hath one that judgeth him; the
word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For
I have not spoken of Myself" (John xii. 48). But for those who accept
the message of the word and live thereby St. Peter's language is full
of comfort, especially to those who are in like affliction with these
Asian Christians. For them the acceptance of the faith of Jesus must
have meant the rending asunder of earthly ties; the natural
brotherhood would be theirs no longer. But they are enrolled in a new
family, a family which cannot perish, whose seed is incorruptible,
whose kinship shall stretch forward and be ever enlarging through all
time and into eternity. For they, like the word by which they are
begotten again, will live and abide for evermore.
And confirming this lesson by the prophecy of Isaiah (xl. 6-8), the
Apostle thus links together the ancient Scriptures and the New
Testament. But in so doing he shows by his language how he regards the
latter as more excellent and a mighty advance upon the former. The
margin of the Revised Version helpfully indicates the difference of
the words. In Isaiah the teaching is styled a _saying_. It was the
word whereby God, through some intermediary, made known His will to
the children of men. But under the Gospel the word is that living,
spiritual power which is used as synonymous with the Lord Himself.
The word of good tidings has now been spoken unto men by a Son, the
very image of the Divine substance, the effulgence of God's glory, and
now possesses a might quick even to discern the thoughts and intents
of the heart. This is verily the living word of God (Heb. iv. 12).
And we of to-day can see what ground there was for the Apostle's faith
and for his teaching, how true the prophetic word has been found in
the events of history. "All flesh is as grass, and all the glory
thereof as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower
falleth: but the word of the Lord abideth for ever." When we cast our
thoughts back to the time when St. Peter wrote, we see the converts
who had accepted the word of God a mere handful of people amid the
throngs of heathendom, the religion which they professed the scorn of
all about them, to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks
foolishness, and its preachers in the main a few poor, untrained,
uninfluential men, of no rank or conspicuous ability. On the other
hand, worshipping crowds proclaimed the greatness of Diana of the
Ephesians; and the power of the Roman empire was at its height, or
seemed so, with the whole of the civilised world owning its sway. And
now that world's wonder, the temple at Ephesus, is a pile of ruins,
and over the Roman power such changes have passed that it has utterly
faded out of existence; but the doctrines of the Galilean, who claimed
to be the Incarnate Word of God, are daily extending their influence,
proving their vitality to be Divine.
But though in his language he has seemed to mark the superiority of
the Gospel message, the Apostle is deeply conscious that the office of
the preacher has much, nay its chief character, in common with that
of the prophet. Hence he proceeds to call the Gospel message, now
that it is left to lips of Evangelists and Apostles to proclaim, a
_saying_ like that of Isaiah. In this way he links the New Testament
to the Old, the prophet to the preacher. Both spake the same word of
God; both were moved by the same spirit; both proclaimed the same
deliverance, the one looking onward in hope to the coming Redeemer,
the other proclaiming that the redemption had been accomplished. "This
is the telling" (the saying) "of good tidings which was preached unto
you."
Here St. Peter seems to allude to a preaching earlier than his own,
and to none can we attribute the evangelisation of these parts of Asia
with more probability than to St. Paul and his missionary colleagues.
But there was no note of disagreement between these early ambassadors
of Christ. They could all say of their work, "Whether it were I or
they, so we preached, and so ye believed."
Having spoken of the seed, the Apostle now turns to the seed-plot
which needs its special preparation. It must be cleared and broken up,
or the seed, though scattered, will have small chance of roothold.
But here St. Peter recurs to his former metaphor. He has spoken (i.
13) of the Christian's equipment, how with girded loins he should
prepare himself for the coming struggle. He now speaks of what he must
lay aside. He has been purified, or made to long after purification,
through his obedience to the truth, so that he can with earnest desire
seek to make known his love to the brethren; and the word of God is
powerful to overcome such dispositions as are destructive of brotherly
love. Hence it is to no hopeless, unaided conflict that the Apostle
urges his converts when he writes of their _putting away therefore
all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all
evil speakings_. It is a formidable list of evils, but St. Peter's
words treat them as forming no part of the true man. These are
overgrowths, which can be stripped away, though the operation will
many a time be painful enough; they have enveloped and enclosed the
sinner, and cling close about him, but the sanctification of the
Spirit can help him to be unclothed of them all. They are the forces
which make for discord. The word of good tidings began with "peace on
earth, goodwill towards men." Hence those who hearken to the message
must put away everything contrary thereto. First in the Apostle's
enumeration stands a general term, _wickedness_, those which follow it
being various forms of its development. We learn how utterly alien
this _wickedness_ is to the spirit of Christ when we notice the
employment of the word to describe the sin of Simon: "Thou hast
neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right before
God" (Acts viii. 22). Such a man had no comprehension of the source of
the apostolic powers; the sacred things of God were unknown to one who
could treat such gifts as merchandise. And it is full of interest in
the present connexion to observe that what our English version there
renders "matter" is really, as the margin (R.V.) shows, "word." It was
the word of God which was mighty in the first preachers, which was
growing and prevailing as they testified unto Christ, and in this
"word" a heart like Simon's could have no share. He was no fit member
of the fellowship of Christ.
_Guile_ was the sin of Jacob, a sin which brake the bond of
brotherhood between him and Esau, and wrought so much misery in the
whole of Jacob's family history. Guile was not found in Nathanael. The
searching eye of Jesus saw that the sin of the "supplanter" was not in
him. Hence he is pointed out as an example of the true Israel, that
which the race of Jacob was intended to become.
That _hypocrisy_ is a foe to brotherhood our Lord makes evident as he
reproaches the Pharisees for this sin. "I thank Thee that I am not as
other men are, nor even as this publican," are words which could never
rise to the lips of him whose heart was purified by the Spirit of God;
and envy brings hatred in its train. It was by envy that Saul was
incited to seek the death of David; it was from envy that Joseph's
brethren sold him into Egypt; through envy a greater than Joseph was
sold to be crucified (Matt. xxvii. 18), and this sin led to war in
heaven itself.
From _evil-speaking_ these Asian converts themselves had to suffer,
and would know by experience its mischievous effects. They were spoken
against as evil-doers, as the Apostle notes twice over (1 Peter ii.
12, iii. 15). This evil adds cowardice to its other baneful qualities,
for it takes advantage of the absence of him against whom it is
directed, and is that vice which in 2 Cor. xii. 20 is described as
_backbiting_, a rendering which the Revised Version leaves
undisturbed, while those who indulge in it are called _backbiters_
(Rom. i. 30). St. James has much to say in its dispraise: "Speak not
one against another, brethren. He that speaketh against a brother or
judgeth his brother speaketh against the law, and judgeth the law"
(James iv. 11). Such a one is intruding into the prerogative of God
Himself, and passing sentence where he can have no sure knowledge of
the acts which he judges. "Evil-speaking," says one of the Apostolic
Fathers,[6] "is a restless demon, never at peace. So speak no evil of
any, nor take pleasure in listening thereto." By good works St. Peter
instructs his converts to live down such cowardly slanders, that those
who revile their good manner of life in Christ may be put to shame
thereby. Purity will overcome iniquity, innocence gain the day against
deceit.
[6] Hermas, Mand. ii. 2.
But the transformation to which the Apostle exhorts them must be
verily to become a new creation, and so he goes on to speak of their
condition as one akin to that of new-born babes. These by natural
instincts turn away from all that will hurt them, and seek only what
can nourish and support. To such right inclinations, to such
simplicity of desire, must the Christian be brought. He has been born
again of the word of God. From this he is to seek his constant
nurture, as instinctively as the babe turns to its mother's breast.
This is able to save the soul (James i. 21), but it cannot be received
unless the vices which war against it be put away, and a spirit of
meekness take their place. They seek other and less pure food for
their support.
Christians are to _long for the spiritual milk which is without
guile_. This food for babes in Christ is the word, which is taken by
the Spirit and offered a nurture for the soul. But there must be a
longing for, a readiness to accept, what is offered. For the spiritual
appeals to the reason of man, and though offered, is not forced on
him. The Spirit takes of the things of Christ and shows them unto us.
And the purification, the clearing off and putting away corrupt
dispositions, about which the Apostle speaks so earnestly, applies an
eye-salve to the inward vision which helps us to see things in their
true light, and so to long for what is really profitable food without
guile, which does not disappoint the hope of those that seek it. _That
ye may grow thereby unto salvation._ It is called the word of
salvation. "To you," says St. Paul to the men of Antioch (Acts xiii.
26), is the word of this salvation sent forth; and through it is
proclaimed the remission of sins. The healthy condition of the life of
the soul is evidenced by these two signs: longing for proper food and
growth by partaking thereof. For there is no standing still in
spiritual life, any more than in the natural life. Where there is no
growth, decay has already set in; if there be no waxing of the powers,
they have already begun to wane. To the natural human growth there
must needs come this waning; the body will decay: but the spiritual
increase can continue, must continue, until the stature of the fulness
of Christ be attained, till we come to be made like unto Him when we
see Him as He is. Watch, then, strive and pray for growth, _if ye have
tasted that the Lord is gracious_. The true food once found and
appreciated, the joy of this support will be such that no other will
ever be desired. Hence St. Peter adopts, or rather adapts, the words
of the Psalmist (xxxiv. 9) who tells of the blessedness of trusting in
the Lord. The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear
Him, and setteth them free. This is the initial stage: the deliverance
from the power of evil. Then come the desire and longing for the true
strength. "O taste and see that the Lord is gracious; blessed is the
man that findeth refuge in Him." The joy of such a refuge can come
even to those who are suffering after the fashion of the Asian
converts. But the Psalmist's words are full of teaching. God's
training is empirical. Spiritual experience comes before spiritual
knowledge. Well does St. Bernard say of this lesson, though his words
pass the power of translation, "Unless you have tasted you will not
see. The food is the hidden manna; it is the new name which no one
knows but he who receives it. It is not external training, but the
unction of the Spirit, which teaches; it is not knowledge (_scientia_)
which grasps the truth, but the conscience (_conscientia_) which
attests it."
VI
_THE PRIESTHOOD OF BELIEVERS_
"Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but
with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up
a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is
contained in Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief
corner-stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on Him shall
not be put to shame. For you therefore which believe is the
preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, the stone which the
builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner, and
a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence; for they stumble at
the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.
But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a
people for _God's_ own possession, that ye may show forth the
excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness into His
marvellous light: which in time past were no people, but now are
the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have
obtained mercy."--1 PETER ii. 4-10.
Leaving the exhortation to individual duties, the Apostle turns now to
describe the Christian society in relation to its Divine Founder, and
tells both of the privileges possessed by believers, and of the
services which they ought to render. He employs for illustration a
figure very common in Holy Scripture, and compares the faithful to
stones in the structure of some noble edifice, built upon a sure
foundation. Such language on his lips must have had a deep
significance. He was the rock-man; his name Peter was bestowed by
Christ in recognition of his grand confession: and Jesus had
consecrated the simile which the Apostle uses by His own words, "Upon
this rock I will build My Church" (Matt. xvi. 18), words which were
daily finding a blessed fulfilment in the growth of these Asian
Churches.
A rock is no unusual figure in the Old Testament to represent God's
faithfulness, and its use is specially frequent in Isaiah and the
Psalms. "In the Lord Jehovah is an everlasting rock" (Isa. xxvi. 4),
says the prophet; again he calls God "the rock of Israel" (xxx. 29);
while the prayers of the Psalmist are full of the same thought
concerning the Divine might and protection: "Be Thou my strong rock
and my fortress" (Psalm xxxi. 2); "Lead me to the rock that is higher
than I" (lxi. 2); "O God, my rock and my Redeemer" (xix. 14).
But the language of the New Testament goes farther than that of the
Old. Strength, protection, permanence--these were attributes of the
rock of which Isaiah spake and David sang. The life-possessing and
life-imparting virtue of the Spirit of Christ is a part of the glad
tidings of the Gospel. Through Him were light and immortality brought
to light. The rock which lives is found in Jesus Christ. In Him is
life without measure, ready to be imparted to all who seek to be built
up in Him.
_Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with
God elect, precious._ By purification of thought, and act, and word,
that childlike frame has been sought after which fits them to draw
near; and they come with full assurance. Jesus they know as the
Crucified, as the Lord who came to His own, and they received Him not.
Generations of preparation had not made Jewry ready for her King's
coming, had failed to impress the people with the signs of His
advent; and so they disowned Him, and cried, "We have no king but
Cæsar." But the converts know Jesus also as Him who was raised from
the dead and exalted to glory. This honour He hath "with God." No
other than He could bring salvation. Therefore has He received a name
that is above every name. And "with God" here signifies that heavenly
exaltation and glory. The sense is[7] as when Jesus testifies, "I
speak what I have seen _with My Father_" (John viii. 38)--that is, in
heaven--or when He prays, "Glorify me, O Father, _with Thine own
self_" (xvii. 5). From this excellent glory He sends down His Spirit,
and gives to His people a share of that life which has been made
manifest in Him. Their part is but to come, to seek; and every one
that seeketh is sure to find.
[7] Παρὰ θεῷ ἐκλεκτόν speaks of Christ in His glory, in that
place where the reward of the faithful is kept in store. Cf. the words
of Matt. vi. 1.
_Ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house._ Not
because they are living men does the Apostle speak of them as living
stones. They may be full of the vigour of natural life, yet have no
part in Christ. The life which joins men to Him comes by the new
birth. And the union of believers with Christ makes itself patent by a
daily progress. He is a living stone; they are to be made more and
more like Him by a constant drawing near, a constant drinking in from
His fulness of the life which is the light of men. In this light new
graces grow within them; old sins are cast aside. By this preparation,
this shaping of the living stones, the Spirit fits Christians for
their place in the spiritual building, unites them with one another
and with Christ, fashions out of them a true communion of
saints--saints, who, that they may advance in saintliness, have
duties to perform both directly to God and for His sake to the world
around. By diligence therein the upbuilding goes daily forward.
First, they are _to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual
sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ_. From the day when
God revealed His will on Sinai, such has been the ideal set before His
chosen servants. "Ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and a holy
nation" (Exod. xix. 6) stands in the preface of the Divinely given
law. And God changes not. Hence the praise of the Lamb's finished work
when He has purchased unto God men of every tribe, and tongue, and
people, and nation is sung before the throne in the self-same strain:
"Thou madest them to be unto God a kingdom and priests" (Rev. v. 10).
Under the early dispensation God was leading men up from material
sacrifices to pay unto Him true spiritual worship. The Psalmist has
learnt the lesson when he pleads, "Offer the sacrifices of
righteousness, and put your trust in the Lord" (Psalm iv. 6); and
Hosea's sense of what was well-pleasing to God is made clear in his
exhortation, "Take with you words and return unto the Lord; say unto
Him, Take away all iniquity, and accept that which is good, so will we
render as bullocks the offering of our lips" (xiv. 3). The Apostle to
the Romans is hardly more explicit than this when he urges, "Present
your bodies a living sacrifice" (xii. 1), or to the Hebrews, "Let us
offer up a sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit
of lips which make confession to His name" (xiii. 15).
But the Apostles could add to the exhortations of the prophets and
psalmists a ground of blessed assurance, could promise how these
living sacrifices, these offerings of praise, had gained a certainty
of acceptance through Jesus Christ: "Through Him we have boldness and
access in confidence through our faith in Him" (Eph. iii. 12); and in
another place, "Having Him as a great Priest over the house of God,"
that spiritual house into which believers are builded, "let us draw
near with a true heart, in fulness of faith, having our hearts
sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure
water" (Heb. x. 22). Thus do believers become priests unto God, in
every place lifting up holy hands in prayer, prayer which is made
acceptable through their great High-priest.
It was only from oral teaching that these Asian Christians knew of
those lessons which we now can quote as the earliest messages to the
Church of Christ. The Scripture was to them as yet the Scripture of
the Old Testament, and to this St. Peter points them for the
confirmation which it supplies. And his quotation is worthy of notice
both for its manner and its matter: _Because it is contained in
Scripture, Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner-stone, elect,
precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be put to shame._ The
passage is from Isaiah (xxviii. 16); but a comparison with that verse
shows us that the Apostle has not quoted all the words of the prophet,
and that what he has given corresponds much more closely with the
Greek of the Septuagint than with the Hebrew. The latter concludes,
"He that believeth shall not make haste," and contains some words not
represented in the version of the Seventy. The variations which St.
Peter accepts are such as to assure us that for him (and the same is
true for the rest of the Apostles) the purport, the spiritual
lessons, of the word were all which he counted essential. Neither
Christ Himself nor His Apostles adhere in quotation to precise verbal
exactness.[8] They felt that there lay behind the older record so many
deep meanings for which the fathers of old were not prepared, but
which Gospel light made clear. To somewhat of this fuller sense the
translators of the Septuagint seem to have been guided.[9] They lived
nearer to the rising of the day-star. Through their labours God was in
part preparing the world for the message of Christ. The words which
Isaiah was guided to use express the confidence of a believer who was
looking onward to God's promise as in the future: "He shall not make
haste." He knows that the purpose of God will be brought to pass;
that, as the prophet elsewhere says, "the Lord will hasten it in its
time" (lx. 22). Man is not to step in, Jacob-like, to anticipate the
Divine working.
[8] For illustration of what is here said, Matt. xxi. 16 may be
compared with Psalm viii. 2, Acts xv. 15-17 with Amos ix. 11, 12, and
Eph. iv. 8 with Psalm lxviii. 18; and the list might be largely
increased.
[9] Hence the New Testament writers quote from the LXX. in a very
large proportion. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews quotes
nothing else.
But "shall not be ashamed" was a form of the promise more suited to
the days of St. Peter and these infant Churches. For the name of
Christ was in many ways made a reproach; and only men of faith, like
Moses and the heroes celebrated with him in Heb. xi., could count that
reproach greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Other and weaker
hearts needed encouragement, needed to be pointed to the privileges
and glories which are the inheritance of the followers of Jesus. And
in this spirit he applies the prophetic words, _For you therefore
which believe is the preciousness_. Faith makes real all the offers of
the Gospel. It opens heaven, as to the vision of St. Stephen, so that
while they are still here believers behold the glory of God to which
Christ has been exalted, are assured of the victory which has been won
for them, and that in His strength they may conquer also. Thus they
receive continually the earnest of those precious and exceeding great
promises (2 Peter i. 4) whereby they become partakers of the Divine
nature.
But all men have not faith. The Bible tells us this on every page. God
knows what is in man, and in His revelation He has set forth not only
invitations and blessings, but warnings and penalties. Life and good,
death and evil--these have been continually proclaimed as linked
together by God's law, but ever with the exhortation, "Choose life."
Of such warning messages St. Peter gives examples from prophecy and
psalm: _But for such as disbelieve, the stone which the builders
rejected, the same was made the head of the corner_ (Psalm cxviii.
22), _and a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence_ (Isa. viii. 14);
_for they stumble at the word, being disobedient_. Here the Apostle
touches the root of the evil. The test of faith is obedience. It was
so in Eden; it must be ever so. But now, as then, the tempter comes
with his insidious questionings, "Hath God said?" and sowing doubts,
he goes his way, leaving them to work; and work they do. Now it is the
truth, now the wisdom, of the command, that men stumble at. But in
each case they disobey. Those leave it unobserved; these despise and
set it at nought. And the penalty is sure. For mark the twofold aspect
of God's dealing which is set forth in the passages chosen by St.
Peter to enforce his lesson. Spite of man's disobedience, God's
purpose is not thwarted. The stone which He laid in Zion has been made
the head of the corner. Though rejected by some builders, it has lost
none of its preciousness, none of its strength. Those who draw near
unto it find life thereby; are made fit for their places in the Divine
building, in the kingdom of the Lord's house which He will most surely
establish as the latter days draw on. But they who disobey are
overthrown. The despised stone, which is the sure word of God, rises
up in men's self-chosen path, and makes them fall, and at the last, if
they persist in despising it, will appear for their condemnation.
_Whereunto also they were appointed._ The Apostle has in mind the
words of Isaiah, how the prophet, in that place from which he has just
quoted, declares that many shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and
be snared, and be taken. This is the lot of the disobedient. These
penalties dog that sin. It is the unvarying law of God. The Bible
teaches this from first to last, by precepts as well as by examples.
The disobedient must stumble. But the Bible does not teach that any
were appointed unto disobedience. Such fatalist lessons are alien to
God's infinite love. The two ways are set before all men. God tries us
thus because He has gifted us above the rest of creation, that we may
render Him a willing service. But neither prophet nor Apostle teaches
that to stumble is to be finally cast away. Both picture God's mercy
in as large terms as those in which St. Paul speaks of the Jews: "Did
God cast off His people? God forbid.... They, if they continue not in
their unbelief, shall be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in
again" (Rom. xi.).
A hardening in part hath befallen Israel, and to the Church of Christ
there is offered the blessedness which aforetime was to be the portion
of the chosen people. But the offer is made on like terms of obedient
service, and involves large duties. St. Peter marks the likeness of
the two offers by choosing the words of the Old Testament to describe
the Christian calling, with its privileges and its duties. Believers
in Christ are a peculiar treasure unto God from among all people, a
kingdom of priests, and a holy nation, even as was said to Israel
(Exod. xix. 5, 6) when they came out of Egypt and received the Law
from Sinai. But among the dispersion, for whom he writes, there were
those who had been heathens, as well as the converts from Judaism.
That he may show them also to be embraced in the new covenant, and
their calling contemplated under the old, the Apostle points to
another of God's promises, where Hosea (i. 10; ii. 23) tells of the
grace that was ready to be shed forth on them which in time past were
no people, but now are the people of God, which had not obtained
mercy, but now have obtained mercy. Thus all, Jew and Gentile, are to
be made one holy fellowship, one people for God's own possession.
And this kingdom of God's priests has its duty to the world as well as
unto God. Israel in time past was chosen to be God's witness to the
rest of mankind, so that when men saw that no nation had God so nigh
unto them as Jehovah was whenever Israel called upon Him, that no
nation had statutes and judgements so righteous as all the Law which
had been given from Sinai, they might be constrained to say, "Surely
this great nation is a wise and understanding people," and might
themselves be won to the service of a God so present and so holy. And
now each member of the Christian body, while offering himself a living
sacrifice to God, while delighting to do His will, while treasuring
His law, is to exercise himself in wider duties, that God's glory may
be displayed unto all men. One of the psalmists, whose words have been
in part referred to Christ Himself, testifies how this priesthood for
mankind should be fulfilled: "I have published righteousness in the
great congregation; lo, I will not refrain my lips, O Lord, Thou
knowest. I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart; I have
declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation; I have not concealed Thy
loving-kindness and Thy truth from the great congregation" (Psalm xl.
9, 10). These were the excellencies which the Psalmist had found in
God's service, and his heart ran over with desire to impart the
knowledge unto others. With juster reason shall Christ's servants be
prompted to a like evangel. They cannot hold their peace, specially
while they consider how great blessings those lose who as yet own no
allegiance to their Master.
_That ye may show forth the excellencies of Him who called you out of
darkness into His marvellous light._ This theme fills the rest of the
letter. The Apostle teaches that in every condition this duty has its
place and its opportunities. Subjects may fulfil it, as they yield
obedience to their rulers, servants in the midst of service to their
masters, wives and husbands in their family life, each individual in
the society where his lot is cast, and specially those who preside
over the Christian congregations. Wherever the goodness of God's mercy
has been tasted, there should be hearts full of thanksgiving, voices
tuned to the praise of Him who has done great things for them. Lives
led with this aim will make men to be truly what God designs: a holy
nation; a kingdom of priests. And ever as men walk thus will the
kingdom for which we daily pray be brought nearer.
The opportunities for winning men to Christ differ in modern times
from those which were open to the earliest Christian converts; but
there is still no lack of adversaries, no lack of those by whom the
hope of the believer is deemed unreasonable: and now, as then, the
good works which the opponents behold in Christian lives will have
their efficacy. These cannot for ever be spoken against. A good manner
of life in Christ shall, through His grace, finally put the gainsayers
to shame. They shall learn, and gain blessing with the lesson, that
the stone which they have so long been rejecting has been set up by
God to be the foundation of His Church, the head stone of the corner,
and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
VII
_CHRISTIANS AS PILGRIMS IN THE WORLD_
"Beloved, I beseech you, as sojourners and pilgrims, to abstain
from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul; having your
behaviour seemly among the Gentiles; that, wherein they speak
against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which
they behold, glorify God in the day of visitation. Be subject to
every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the
king, as supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance
on evil-doers and for praise to them that do well. For so is the
will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the
ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your freedom for
a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God. Honour all
men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king."--1 PETER
ii. 11-17.
The Apostle opens his exhortations with a word eminently Christian:
_Beloved_. It is a word whose history makes us alive to and thankful
for the Septuagint Version. Without that translation there would have
been no channel through which the religious ideas of Judaism could
have been conveyed to the minds of the Western peoples. There are
several Greek words which signify "to love," but bound up with every
one of them is some sense which renders it ill-fitted to describe true
Christian love and still less suited for expressing the love of God to
man. The word in the text has been fashioned to tell of that love
which St. Paul describes in his "more excellent way" (1 Cor. xiii.).
In classic speech it implies more of the outward exhibition of
welcome, than of deep affection. But the translators of the Septuagint
have taken it specially for themselves, and use it first to express
the love of Abraham for Isaac (Gen. xxii. 2); and, thus consecrating
and elevating it, they have brought it at length to great dignity, for
they employ it to signify the love of the Lord for His people and the
highest love of man to God: "The Lord preserveth all them that love
Him" (Psalm cxlv. 20); "The Lord loveth the righteous" (cxlvi. 8). So
in the New Testament it can be used of the "well-beloved" Son Himself.
With such an expression of their union to each other in the Lord does
St. Peter preface his admonitions. They are counsels of love.
_I beseech you, as sojourners and pilgrims._ The Christian looks for a
life eternal. In comparison thereof the best things of this time are
of little account, while the evil of the world renders it no safe
resting-place. It is but as a lodging for a brief night, and at dawn
the traveller sets forward for his true home. Hence the argument of
the apostolic entreaty. You have no long time to stay, and none to
waste; your motto is ever, "Onward!" _I beseech you to abstain from
fleshly lusts, which war against the soul._ Of the perils of life's
journey the Psalmist gives us a telling sketch in the first verse of
Psalm i.; and if we may accept the words as the outcome of David's
experience, they teach us the subtlety of these lusts of the flesh, as
they war against the soul. They had led David to adultery and murder.
The first stage of the course through which they carry you is
described as walking by the counsel of the ungodly. It is not being of
their number, but only being ready to accept their advice; and though
the course has begun, it is still possible for him who walks to turn
round and to turn back. The next step shows captivation. The man
stands in the way of sinners, not afraid of his company now, though
they have a taint of positive guilt instead of the negative character
of ungodliness. But the war against the soul goes on; and the captive
at the next stage sinks down willingly, is pleased with his chains,
sits in the seat of the scorners, as ready now as they to make a mock
at sin. With good reason does St. Peter use most solemn words of
entreaty. The peril at all times is great. The flesh warreth against
the spirit. We cannot do the things that we would. But for these men
the danger was extreme. Some of them had lived in surroundings where
such sins were counted a part of religious duty; had the support of
long prescription; were sanctioned and indulged in by those of the
convert's own blood.
Yet the Apostle does not counsel the new-made Christians to run away
from this battle. They owe a duty to those who are out of the way, and
must not shrink from it, be it ever so painful: _having your behaviour
seemly among the Gentiles_. Their lives are to be led in the sight of
their fellow-men, to be so led as to have the approval of a clear
conscience, and to be void of offence in the eyes of others. This
outward seemliness is what Christian love exhibits as a testimony to
Christ's grace and an attraction unto the world, making known unto all
men the unsearchable riches of Christ: _that, wherein they speak
against you as evil-doers, they may by your good works, which they
behold, glorify God in the day of visitation_. The seemly conduct of
believers must be continuous, or it will fail of its effect. It is not
one display of Christian conduct, nor occasional spasmodic
manifestations thereof, which will win men to love the way of Christ.
And this is the result without which Christ's people are not to rest
satisfied. The evil reports of the adversaries are ill-grounded, but
they do not think so; and the only means of removing their perverse
view is by a continuous revelation of the excellence of Christ's
service. They may rail, but we must bless; they may persecute: we must
not retaliate, but returning good always for their evil, make them see
at length that this way which they are attacking has a character and a
power to which they have been strangers. This enlightenment is implied
in the word "behold": _They behold your good works_. It denotes
initiation into a mystery. And to unbelievers Christ's religion must
be a mystery. The clearing of the vision leads them up to faith. The
word in every place where it occurs in the New Testament is St.
Peter's own, and he employs it once (2 Peter i. 16) to describe the
vision, the insight, into the glory of Christ, which he and his
fellows gained at the Transfiguration. Such a sight removes all
questionings, and constrains the enlightened soul to join in the
exclamation, "Lord, it is good for us to be here." The victory for
Christ is to be won on the very ground where the opposition was made.
In the very matter over which the enemy reviled, there shall they
praise God for that which they erewhile maligned. This it is which
constitutes their day of visitation. Some have thought the visitation
intended was to be one of punishment for obstinate withstanding of the
truth, but it surely harmonises better with the glory of God that the
dispensation should be one of instruction and light. We seem to have a
notable example of what is meant in the history of St. Paul. He in all
earnestness persecuted the Way unto the death. The day of visitation
came to him, a day which, while darkening the bodily vision, gave a
clearness to the soul. The persecutor became the Apostle to the
Gentiles, and the world bore him witness that now he preached the
faith of which he had once made havoc (Gal. i. 23). This was God's own
conquest, but in the same manner will believers be helped to win their
victory. They are to aim at nothing less, never to rest content till
the accusers of their good deeds are brought to glory in the
performance of the same. So was Justin Martyr won to the side of
Christianity: "When I heard the Christians accused and saw them
fearless of death and of everything else that is counted fearful, I
was sure they could not be living in wickedness and in the love of
pleasures" (2 Apol. xii.). Well-doing shall not fail of its reward.
Men will testify, as of Isaac of old "We saw plainly that the Lord was
with thee, and we said, Let there now be an oath betwixt us" (Gen.
xxvi. 28).
The Apostle now turns to one illustration of Christian behaviour
wherein the converts might be tempted to think themselves absolved
from some portion of their duty. They were living under heathen
rulers. Did their freedom in Christ release them from obligations to
the civil powers? The question was sure to arise. St. Peter supplies
both a rule and a reason: _Be subject to every ordinance of man for
the Lord's sake_. Christians, just as other men, hold their place in
the commonweal. All that the state requires citizens to do in aid of
good government, order, the support of institutions and the like, will
fall upon them, as upon others. Whether the demands made upon them in
this wise be always for ends of which they would approve, they are not
to discuss so long as their rulers provide duly for the social order
and welfare. This is the apostolic rule. The reason is, Men are to
submit thus for the Lord's sake. The powers that be are ordained of
God, and He would have obedience yielded to them. The Bible knows
nothing about forms of government; these are to be ordered as men at
various times and under various conditions deem most helpful. But the
Bible doctrine is that God uses all powers of the world for His own
purposes and to work out His will. Of Pharaoh, who had deliberately
despised God's messages through Moses, the Divine voice declared that
he would long ago have been cut off from the earth, but was made to
stand that he might show God's power, and that His name might be
declared throughout all the earth (Exod. ix. 15, 16); and of the
Assyrian at a later day (Isa. x. 10, 12) God tells how he was used as
the rod of the Divine anger, but that the fruit of his stout heart and
the glory of his high looks would surely be punished. God employs for
His ends instruments with which He is not always well-pleased. These
can inflict His penalties, yea even may be made to advance His glory.
Pilate was assured by Christ Himself that the power which he was about
to exercise was only by Divine permission: "Thou wouldest have no
power against Me except it were given thee from above" (John xix. 11);
and St. Paul enforces obedience to authorities equally with St. Peter:
"He that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God" (Rom.
xiii. 2). Be subject, therefore, _whether it be to the king, as
supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evil-doers
and for praise to them that do well_. The order under which these
converts were living was superintended by some officer appointed by
the Roman emperor, and to this the form of the Apostle's words
applies. The king is the Cæsar; the governor is the procurator or
subordinate official by whom the imperial power was represented in the
provinces. When St. Peter wrote, Nero ruled in Rome, and was
represented abroad by ministers often of a like character.
How extreme must after this be the case of those who would claim
freedom to resist the rulers under whom they live. God has allowed
them to stand, He is using them for His own purposes, they may be the
ministers of His vengeance, and to Him alone does vengeance belong. He
intends them also to recognise the merit of the doers of good. It may
be that they do not fulfil God's intent in either wise, yet while He
suffers them to keep their power the Christian's duty is obedience to
every civil enactment, for anarchy would be a curse both to him and to
others, bringing in its train more hurt than help. When Christians
shall be found among those who abide by the law of the lands wherein
they dwell, even should their faith not be accepted by their rulers,
their good citizenship will hardly fail to disarm hatred and abate
persecution. And so they are to range themselves ever on the side of
order. _For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to
silence the ignorance of foolish men._ For this end believers are to
abide in the world, that through them the world may be renewed. The
opponents of their faith suffer, says the Apostle, from lack of
knowledge. As he says in another place, "they rail in matters whereof
they are ignorant" (2 Peter ii. 12). Had men known, they would not
have crucified the Lord of glory; and did they know, they would not
persecute His followers. But knowledge will not come without a
preacher. Such preachers of the excellence of their faith shall the
law-abiding Christians in each community be made. They shall publish
the lessons of their own experience; they shall win favour by their
example. The world will recognise that these men have a secret which
others do not possess, will find that they yield obedience to earthly
rulers because they are above all things servants of God. It was
through convicting them of their ignorance that Jesus put the
Sadducees to silence. "Ye do err," was His argument, "not knowing the
Scriptures nor the power of God" (Matt. xxii. 34). And when men are
made sensible of such ignorance, they are silenced for very shame (1
Cor. xv. 34). This word "silenced" is very expressive both in the
Gospel and here. It implies that a bridle or muzzle is put upon the
mouth of ignorance, so that it may either be guided into a better way,
or, if not so, be checked from doing harm. For some there are who not
only will be ignorant, but foolish also, whom no teaching will profit.
But even these will in the end be silenced. So, as says the brother
Apostle, "be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good" (Rom.
xii. 21).
The first part of the Apostle's exhortation in our verse had in view,
it may be, more especially the Gentile converts. Their past life had
been one of evil-doing in the sight of God; those whom they had left,
and who were most likely to be their adversaries, were still walking
in the same ways, and were to be won over and conquered for Christ. He
now turns more directly to those who had been Jews. These were no
longer bound to the observance of the ceremonial law, and we know from
the New Testament as well as from Church history that with this
release there were exhibited in the lives of many such excesses as
made them a disgrace to the Christian name. We find much about these
in the Second Epistle. St. Peter would not keep the Jewish converts
under the burden of the Law, but he warns them against their besetting
danger: _as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of
wickedness, but as bondservants of God_. There were bad Jews, even as
there have been bad Christians. These would welcome a rule which set
them at liberty from the Mosaic observances, to which their adherence
aforetime had been in outward seeming rather than in earnest zeal. To
these St. Peter preaches that to lay aside Judaism is not to embrace
Christianity. The Leader of the new faith had ever taught a different
lesson. He came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it, and to set
forth God's will in a nobler aspect. Those who would follow Him must
take up the cross. His service is a yoke which restrains from all
evil. Those who come to Christ come as bondservants of God, free only
because they are bound to the observance of the noblest law. They must
lay aside the flesh, with its affections and lusts, and not vindicate
their freedom by using it as an occasion to riot and self-indulgence.
And the Apostle binds together all his teaching in four closing
precepts: _Honour all men; Love the brotherhood; Fear God; Honour the
king_. All men, without distinction, are to be honoured, because in
all there remains the image of God. It may be defaced, blurred
exceedingly. The more needful is it to deal considerately with such,
that we may help to restore what has been marred. Those who are our
brethren in Christ, the brotherhood, we shall own with affection,
seeking to be of one heart and one soul with them, because they belong
to Christ. For them we shall have, if we be true to our faith, that
mighty love which passeth in excellence both faith and hope. But the
exhortation of St. Peter speaks in this wise: Ye who hold your
brethren in Christ unspeakably dear, do not allow that love to
suffice, to swallow up all regard for other men. They also need your
thoughts, your help. The heathen, the unbelievers--these have the
strongest possible claim, even their great need. And so with the other
pair of precepts. Ye who fear God, which is your foremost duty, do not
let that fear lessen your willingness to do honour to your earthly
rulers. The feelings toward God and the king differ in character and
in degree, but both have their place in proper share in the heart of
the true servant of Christ.
VIII
_CHRISTIAN SERVICE_
"Servants, be in subjection to your masters, with all fear; not
only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is
acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs,
suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and
are buffeted _for it_, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when
ye do well and suffer _for it_, ye shall take it patiently, this
is acceptable with God. For hereunto were ye called: because
Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye
should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found
in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when
He suffered, threatened not; but committed _Himself_ to Him that
judgeth righteously; who His own self bare our sins in His body
upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were going
astray like sheep, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and
Bishop of your souls."--1 PETER ii. 18-25.
The Gospel history shows very clearly that during our Lord's lifetime
His followers were drawn largely from the ranks of the poor. It was
fitting that He who had been proclaimed in prophecy as "the Servant of
the Lord" should enter the world in humble estate; and, from the lowly
position of the virgin-mother and her husband, the life of Jesus for
thirty years must have been spent in comparative poverty and amid poor
surroundings. The major part of His chosen disciples were fisherfolk
and such-like. And though we read of the wife of Herod's steward among
the women who ministered unto Him and of the richer Joseph of
Arimathæa as a secret disciple, these are marked exceptions. To the
poor His Gospel was preached, and among the poor it first made its
way. The question of the chief priests, "Hath any of the rulers
believed on Him, or the Pharisees?" (John vii. 48), tells its own
tale, as does also the significant record, "The common people heard
Him gladly" (Mark xii. 37).
It need not therefore much surprise us if St. Peter, now that he
begins to classify his counsels, addresses himself first to "household
servants": _Servants, be in subjection to your masters, with all
fear_. We have, however, to bear in mind, as we consider the Apostle's
exhortation, that most of those whom he addresses were slaves. They
had no power of withdrawing themselves, though their service should
prove burdensome and grievous. St. Paul, in writing to the same class,
nearly always employs the word which means "bondservants." Yet his
counsel agrees with St. Peter's. Thus he exhorts that their service be
"with fear and trembling" (Eph. vi. 5); in Col. iii. 22, "Obey in all
things them that are your masters." And to Timothy and Titus it is
given as a part of their charge to "exhort servants to be in
subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing to them in all
things" (1 Tim. vi. 1; Titus ii. 9).
When St. Peter and St. Paul wrote, this slave population was
everywhere very numerous. Gibbon calculates that in the reign of
Claudius the slaves were at least equal in number to the free
inhabitants of the Roman world; Robertson places the estimate much
higher. These formed, then, a very large share of the public to which
the first preachers had to appeal, and we can understand the
importance to the Christian cause of the behaviour of these humble,
but doubtless most numerous, members of the society. Their lives
would be a daily sermon in the houses of their masters. Hence the very
earnest exhortations addressed to them that by their conduct they
should adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things; that they
should count their masters worthy of all honour; that the name of God
and of the doctrine be not blasphemed; that they should be in
subjection _with all fear_. Everything in the New Testament concerning
slaves goes to show that they were a most important factor in the
early Christian societies.
Men wonder nowadays that there is so little said by any of the
Apostles about freeing slaves from their bondage. The best men in
those times and long before appear to have regarded slavery as one of
the institutions with which they were bound to rest content. It
flourished everywhere; it was countenanced in the Scriptures of the
older dispensation. Eleazar was Abraham's slave, and the Law in many
passages contemplates the possession by Israelites of persons who were
bought with their money. Hence we find no remonstrance against
slave-holding in the New Testament writings, only advice to those who
were in such bondage to cultivate a spirit which would render it less
galling and to strive that by their behaviour the cause of Christ
might be advanced. St. Paul represents the ideas of his age when,
writing to the Corinthians, he says, "Wast thou called being a
bondservant? Care not for it; but if thou canst be made free, use _it_
rather" (1 Cor. vii. 21). Freedom was worth having, but any heroic
effort to get rid of the yoke is not encouraged in the Epistles. Yet
it must have been a lot which called for the exercise of much moral
strength to make it bearable. Even from the house of the Christian
Philemon the slave Onesimus found cause to run away. But St. Paul in
his letter admits no right on the slave's part to take this course.
With the Apostle there is no question that the first duty is to go
back to his master. All that he urges is that the common profession of
Christianity by slave and master ought to, and doubtless would,
alleviate the conditions of servitude. There were in Christianity, as
time has shown, germs which would fructify, a spirit which some day
would strike on the chains of slaves. But the vision of such a time
had not dawned either for St. Paul or St. Peter. Christ has overcome
the world in many other matters beside slavery. It is only that
Christians are so tardy in awaking to the fulness of His lessons.
So in apostolic days the rights and claims of slave-masters were
looked upon as indisputable. Be subject, _not only to the good and
gentle, but also to the froward_. There is to be no resistance, no
lapse in duty. About service rendered to good masters there might be
little apprehension, but even here St. Paul finds occasion for
warning. "They that have believing masters," he says, "let them not
despise them because they are brethren" (1 Tim. vi. 2). Christian
freedom was not without its dangers in many forms, especially to minds
wherein liberty was a strange idea. But froward masters are to be
faithfully served likewise, and care is to be taken withal to remove
every occasion for their frowardness. The apostolic lesson is to make
suffering endurable, noble, acceptable to God, by seeing that it be
always undeserved. How strange a doctrine this in the eyes of the
world! The rule of purely human conduct would be just the opposite. If
wrong be undeserved, rebel at once. Christianity supplies a motive
for the contrary course: _conscience toward God_. The world's spirit
is not His spirit, and to have praise with Him should be the
Christian's single aim. Men can at times be patient when rebuke is
deserved, but the world sees that that deserves no credit. "What thank
have ye?" they cry. But they give no praise for the bearing of
unmerited rebuke.
The world counts such conduct weakness, and is still far from
comprehending the Divineness of the virtue of yielding patiently to
wrong. God has long been teaching the lesson, but it has been slowly
learnt. He chose the milder, timid Jacob rather than the fiery Esau.
Both had faults in multitude. With the world Esau is oft the
favourite. At a later day He stamps with approval the noble mercy of
David in sparing Saul, while round Daniel and his companions in
Babylon there gathers something of a halo of New Testament sanctity by
reason of the noble confession which they made under persecution.
These are chapters in the Divine lesson-book. Such lives marked stages
in the preparation for the Servant of the Lord. Men, if they would
have hearkened, were being trained to estimate such a character at
God's value. Now Christ's example is before us, and we are bidden to
follow it.
_For hereunto were ye called._ Strange invitation to be dictated by
love, a call to suffering! And yet the Master at first promises
nothing else to His followers: "If any man would come after Me, let
him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (Matt. xvi.
24). And what can a Christian wish for but to be like Christ? And the
very reason given ought to make us love the cross. We are called unto
suffering because Jesus suffered for us, leaving us an example that we
should follow His steps. He has trodden the hard road, the winepress
of the wrath of God, alone and for men. At this point the Apostle
begins to apply to Christ Isaiah's description of the suffering
"Servant of the Lord," "who did no sin, neither was guile found in His
mouth" (Isa. liii.). But soon the memory of the scenes he had
witnessed is present with him; and his words, though holding to the
spirit of Isaiah's picture, become a description of what he himself
had seen and heard when Jesus was taken and crucified: _Who, when He
was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not, but
committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously_. How the brief
words sum up and recall the dark history--Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod;
the mockery, the scourging, the railing crowd, the dying Jesus, and
the parting prayer, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."
So far the Apostle speaks of the example of Christ, which, though far
above and beyond us, we are exhorted and called on to follow. And
there are many who will go with him thus far who value our Lord's work
only for its lofty example. Indeed, it is characteristic of those who
deny the mediatorial office of Christ to be loudest in magnifying the
grandeur of His character. To His good works, His love for men, His
spotless life, His noble lessons, they accord untiring praise, as
though thereby they would atone for denying Him that office which is
more glorious still. But St. Peter stops at no such half-way house. He
knows in whom he has believed, knows Him for the Son of the living
God, a Teacher with whom were the words of eternal life. So in
pregnant words he sets forth the doctrine of the Atonement as the end
of Christ's suffering: _Who His own self bare our sins in His own body
upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto
righteousness_. He bare our sins. The words tell of something beyond
our powers to comprehend; but some light is shed on them by a kindred
passage (Matt. viii. 17), where the Evangelist applies to the work of
Jesus those other words from Isa. liii., "Himself took our infirmities
and bare our sicknesses." The narrative in the Gospel has just
recorded how Jesus wrought many miracles. First a leper was healed,
then the centurion's servant, next Simon's wife's mother, and
afterwards many sick and demoniacs beside. There is no record here of
the effect produced on Jesus Himself by these exhibitions of
miraculous power, but from other passages in the Gospels we do find
that He was conscious in Himself of a demand on His power when such
cures were wrought. Thus we are told, at the cure of the woman with
the issue, that Jesus perceived in Himself that the power proceeding
from Him had gone forth (Mark v. 30); and again when many were cured,
that "power came forth from Him and healed them all" (Luke vi. 19). Of
the woman Jesus says expressly, "Thy faith hath made thee whole"; and
the manifestation of eagerness to touch Jesus is a sign of the faith
of the others whom the Divine power blessed with health.
The Bible recognises everywhere the analogy between sin and sickness.
May we not trace some analogy between the Lord's works of healing and
that mightier deliverance from sin won by Christ upon the cross, an
analogy which may help, if but a little, to give meaning to the
bearing by Christ of human sins? A power went forth when the sick were
healed; and through that imparted power they were restored to health,
faith being the pathway which brought the Divine virtue to their aid.
Thus Jesus bore their diseases and took them away. Look through this
figure on the work of our redemption. Christ has borne the burden of
sin. He has died for sin that men may die from sin, that sin may be
slain in us, the fell disease healed by the power of His suffering. We
cannot comprehend what was done for the sick when Christ was on earth,
nor what is wrought for sinners by His grace in heaven. Those alone
who reap the blessing know its certainty; and they can but say, as the
blind man whose sight was restored, "One thing I know: that, whereas I
was blind, now I see" (John ix. 25).
To this teaching, that Christ's suffering wrought man's rescue, St.
Peter adds emphasis by another quotation from that chapter of Isaiah
which he has so much in mind: _by whose stripes ye were healed_.
Christ was stricken, and God grants to His sufferings a power to heal
the souls of those whom He loves because they strive to love Him.
Healing through wounds! Soundness through that which speaks only of
injury! Mysterious dispensation! But long ago it had been
foreshadowed, and shown also how little connexion there was to be,
except through faith, between the remedy and the disease. Those who
were bitten of the serpents in the wilderness gazed on the brazen
serpent, and were healed. In the dead brass was no virtue, but God was
pleased to make of it a speaking sacrament; so has it pleased Him to
give healing of sins to those who by faith appropriate the sacrifice
on Calvary. Christ has claimed the type for Himself: "I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself" (John xii.
32).
And now, as is so often his wont, St. Peter varies the figure. The
wounded sinner finding cure becomes the wandering sheep that has been
brought back into the fold: _For ye were going astray like sheep, but
are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls_. But the
message, the teaching, the love, is all the same. He who before was
the great Exemplar, whose footsteps we should follow, is now the
Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, who goes before His sheep. This Shepherd
has been a Sufferer, too. He has given Himself up as a prey to the
wolves that His flock might be saved. Now, with a voice of love, He
calls His sheep by name; and hearing, they follow Him.
But He is more than this. Brought within the fold, the sheep still
need His care; and it is freely given. He is the Bishop, the Overseer,
the Watchman for His people's safety, who, having gathered them within
the fold, tends them with constant watchfulness. The figure passes
over thus into the reality in the Apostle's closing words. The cure
which the great Healer desires to accomplish is in the souls of men.
For them His care is bestowed, first to bring them safe out of the way
of evil, then for ever to keep them under the sheltering care of His
abundant love.
IX
_CHRISTIAN WIVES AND HUSBANDS_
"In like manner, ye wives, _be_ in subjection to your own
husbands; that, even if any obey not the word, they may without
the word be gained by the behaviour of their wives; beholding
your chaste behaviour _coupled_ with fear. Whose _adorning_ let
it not be the outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of
wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on apparel; but _let it be_
the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible _apparel_ of a
meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great
price. For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who
hoped in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their
own husbands: as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose
children ye now are, if ye do well, and are not put in fear by
any terror.
"Ye husbands, in like manner, dwell with _your wives_ according
to knowledge, giving honour unto the woman, as unto the weaker
vessel, as being also joint heirs of the grace of life; to the
end that your prayers be not hindered."--1 PETER iii. 1-7.
The Apostle gave at first (ii. 13) the rule of Christian submission
generally; then proceeded to apply it to the cases of citizens and of
servants. In the same way he now gives injunctions concerning the
behaviour of wives and husbands. The precept with which he began holds
good for them also. _In like manner, ye wives, be in subjection to
your own husbands._ The life and teaching of Jesus had wrought a great
change in the position of women, a change which can be observed from
the earliest days of Christianity. We can gather in what estimation
women were generally held among the Jews at that time from the
expression used in the account of our Lord's interview with the woman
of Samaria. There it is said (John iv. 27) that the disciples
marvelled that Jesus was talking with a woman. Such a feeling must
afterwards have been entirely dispelled, for all through the earthly
life of Christ we find Him attended by women who ministered unto Him;
we read of His close friendship with Mary and Martha, and are told, at
the time of His death (Matt. xxvii. 55), that many women beheld the
Crucifixion afar off, having followed Him from Galilee. Women were the
earliest visitors to the tomb on the great Easter morning, and to
them, among the first (Luke xxiv. 22), was the Lord's resurrection
made known.
We are not surprised, therefore, in the history of the infant Church,
to read (Acts i. 14) that women were present among the disciples who
waited at Jerusalem for the promise of the Father, nor to learn how
the daughters of Philip the evangelist (Acts xxi. 9) took a share in
the labours of their father for the cause of Christ, or that Priscilla
(Acts xviii. 26), equally with her husband, was active in Christian
good offices. Other examples occur in the Acts of the Apostles:
Dorcas, Lydia, and the mother of Timothy; and the constant mention of
women which we find in the salutations with which St. Paul concludes
his letters makes it clear how large a part they played in the early
propagation of the faith. "Fellow-workers," "servants of the Church,"
"labourers in the Lord," are among the terms which the Apostle applies
to them; and we know from the Pastoral Epistles what help the
primitive Church derived from the labours of its deaconesses and
widows.
To be occupied in such duties was sure to give to women an influence
which they had never possessed before; and the women converts, in
countries such as these Asiatic provinces, were exposed to the same
sort of danger which beset the slave population at their acceptance of
the Christian faith. They might begin to think meanly of others, even
of their own husbands, if they were still content to abide in
heathenism. Such women might incline at times to take counsel for
their life's guidance with Christian men among the various
congregations to which they belonged and to set a value on their
advice above any which they could obtain from their own husbands. They
might come to entertain doubts also whether they ought to maintain the
relations of married life with their heathen partners. With the
knowledge that such cases might occur, St. Peter gives his lesson. And
as in the case of slaves, so here, he gives no countenance to the idea
that to become a Christian breaks off previous relations. Wives,
though they have accepted the faith, have wifely duties still. Like
Christian citizens living in a heathen commonwealth, they are not by
religion released from their previously contracted obligations; they
are to abide in their estate, and use it, if it may be done, for the
furtherance of the cause of Christ. Be in subjection to _your own_
husbands; they have still their claim on your duty.
There is much gentleness in the Apostle's next words. He knows that
there may arise cases where believing wives have husbands who are
heathen. But he speaks hopefully, as thinking they would not be of
frequent occurrence: _even if any obey not the word_. Wives,
especially if they be of such a character as the Apostle would have
them be, could not have been won to the faith of Christ without much
converse with their husbands on so deep a subject; and the word which
was working effectually in the one would often have its influence with
the other. It might not always be so. But husbands, though not obeying
the word as yet, are not to be despaired of.
And here we may turn aside to dwell on the tone of hope in which St.
Peter speaks of these husbands who obey not. For the word
ἀπειθοῦντες, by which they are described, is the same that is used
in ii. 18 of those who stumble at the word, being disobedient. The
lesson here given to Christian wives, not to despair of winning their
husbands for Christ, gives warrant for what was said on the former
passage: that the disobedience which causes men to stumble need not
last for ever, nor imply final obduracy and rejection from God's
grace. But this by the way.
The Apostle adds the strongest motive to confirm wives in holding to
their married state: _That the husbands may without the word be gained
by the behaviour of their wives: beholding your chaste behaviour
coupled with fear_. "Without the word" here means that there is to be
no discussion. They are so to live as to make their lives a sermon
without words, to work conviction without debate; then, when the
victory is won, there will remain no trace of combat: all will tell of
gain, and nothing of loss.
And once again St. Peter uses his special word (ἐποπτέυειν)
as he describes how the husbands shall be affected by the behaviour of
their wives. They shall gaze on it as a mystery, the key to which they
do not possess. The wives in heathen homes must have been obliged to
hear and see many things which were grievous and distasteful. The
husbands could hardly fail to know that it was so. If, then, they
still found wifely regard and respect, wifely submission, with no
assertion of a law of their own, no comparison of the lives of
Christian men with those of their own husbands, if a silent,
consistent walk were all the protest which the Christian wives offered
against their heathen environments, such a life could hardly fail of
its effect. There must be a powerful motive, a mighty, strengthening
power, that enabled women to abide uncomplainingly in their estate.
For this the husbands would surely search, and in their search would
learn secrets to which they were strangers, would learn how the tongue
was restrained where remonstrance might seem more natural, how pure
life was maintained in spite of temptations to laxity, and the
marriage bond exalted with religious observance even when reverence
for the husband was meeting with no equal return. Such lives would be
more powerful than oratory, have a charm beyond resistance, would win
the husbands first to wonder, then to praise, and in the end to
imitation.
And from describing the grace of such a life the Apostle turns to
contrast it with other adornments of which the world thinks highly.
_Whose adorning_, he says, _let it not be the outward adorning of
plaiting the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, and of putting on
apparel_. We can see from the catalogue in Isaiah (iii. 18-23) that
the daughters of Zion in old days had gone to great lengths in this
outside bravery, and provoked the Lord to smite them. These had
forgotten the simplicity of Sarah. But that in the house of Abraham
there were found no such ornaments is hardly to be believed. The
patriarch, who sent (Gen. xxiv. 53) to Rebekah jewels of silver and
jewels of gold, did not leave his own wife unadorned. Nor does the
language of St. Peter condemn Rebekah's bracelets, if they be worn
with Rebekah's modesty. The New Testament does not teach us to neglect
or despise the body. A misrendering in the Authorised Version, "Who
shall change our vile body" (Phil. iii. 21), has long seemed to lend
countenance to such a notion. It is one of the gains of the Revised
Version that we now read in that place, "Who shall fashion anew the
body of our humiliation." Sin has robbed the body of its primal
dignity, but it is to be restored and made like unto the body of
Christ's glory. And He did not despise the body when He deigned to
wear it that He might draw nearer unto us. If these things be present
to our thoughts, we shall seek to bestow on the body whatever may make
it comely. The mischief arises when the adornment of the outer brings
neglect of the inner man, when fine apparel has for its companions the
haughtiness, the stretched-forth necks, and wanton eyes which Isaiah
rebukes. Then it is that it rightly comes under condemnation. When the
jewel is (as Rebekah's was) the gift of some dear one--a parent, a
husband, a near kinsman--it rouses grateful reminiscences, and may
fitly be prized, and holily worn, and ranked near to the rings of
betrothal and of marriage.
Let these be the feelings which regulate womanly adornment, and it may
be made a part of the culture of the heart, the inner man, which St.
Peter urges the Christian wives to be careful to adorn: Let your
adorning _be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel
of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great
price_. All Scripture regards man as of twofold nature, the outward
and the inward, of which the latter is the more precious. He is a Jew
who is one inwardly (Rom. ii. 29); the inward man delighteth in the
law of God (Rom. vii. 22); while the outward man perishes the inward
man may be renewed day by day (2 Cor. iv. 16), being strengthened with
power through God's Spirit. This hidden man is the centre from which
all the strength of Christian life comes. Let this be rightly adorned,
and the outward life will need no strict rules; there will be no fear
of excess, least of all when the inner life is cared for because it is
precious before God. Its pure array passeth gold and gems, be they
ever so beautiful. This is a grace which never fades, but will
flourish through eternity.
The Apostle proceeds to commend it by a noble example. The Old
Testament Scriptures do not dwell largely on the lives of women, but a
study of what is said will oftentimes reveal deeper meaning in the
record and put force into a solitary word. The writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews couples Sarah with Abraham in the list of heroes and
heroines of faith, and St. Peter from a single word finds a text to
extol the submission which she showed to her husband. He probably
refers to Gen. xviii. 12, where she gives the title of "lord" to
Abraham, as Rachel in another place (Gen. xxxi. 35) does to her father
Laban: _For after this manner aforetime the holy women also, who hoped
in God, adorned themselves, being in subjection to their own husbands:
as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord_. A Scripture example which
has more in common with the experience of the Asian women is the life
of Hannah. Her lot, for a time at least, was as full of grief and
disappointment as theirs could be; but her trust in God was unshaken.
Her patience under provocation was exemplary, while the picture of her
home life is one full of touching affection on the part of both
husband and wife; and the mother's gratitude, when her prayer was
granted, is set forth in her noble hymn of thanksgiving and in the
devotion of her child to the service of the God who had bestowed him.
Ruth is another of those holy women who must have been in St. Peter's
thoughts, who, though not of the house of Israel, manifested virtues
in her life which made her fit to be the ancestress of King David. The
Apostle, however, seems to have had a purpose in his special mention
of Sarah. As the sons of Israel looked back to Abraham and to the
covenant sealed with him, yea, not seldom prided themselves on being
his children, so the daughters of Israel counted themselves as Sarah's
daughters after the flesh. St. Peter now gives them another ground for
that claim. God's promises to Abraham have been fulfilled in Christ,
and so Christian Jewesses are more truly than ever daughters of Sarah.
_Whose children ye now are._ But to the heathen converts the same door
was opened. They by their faith were now made partakers of the ancient
covenant. They too were become Sarah's daughters. Let them, one and
all, continue in the well-doing which has been commended; let it be
seen in the daily round (ἀναστροφὴ) of their lives, led in
quietness and humility. The excessive love of adornment against which
they are warned marks a condition of boldness and unrest. But unrest
may enter into the other actions of their life. Their behaviour is to
be coupled with fear and reverence, but it should eschew everything
which partakes of flighty irregularity. It should be steady and
consistent, running into no extremes either of humiliation or the
contrary. _Do well, and be not put in fear by any terror._
The Apostle now addresses Christian husbands. In his counsel to
subjects and slaves he has not dwelt on the duties of rulers and
masters. Perhaps he judged it unlikely that his letter would come to
the hands of many such, or it may be he thought the lessons which he
had to give were more needed by the subject people, if Christ's cause
were to be furthered. But with husbands and wives life has of
necessity a great deal in common, and the one partner can hardly
receive counsel which is not of interest to the other. To the wives
the Apostle spake as though examples of unbelieving husbands might be
rare. Christian husbands with unbelieving wives he hardly seems to
contemplate. We know from St. Paul (1 Cor. vii. 16) that there were
such. But doubtless heathen wives hearkened to Christian husbands more
readily than heathen husbands to their Christian wives. The husbands
are to use their position as heads of their wives with judgement and
discretion: _Dwell with your wives according to knowledge_. The
knowledge of which St. Peter speaks is not religious, godly, Christian
knowledge, but that foresight and thoughtfulness which the
responsibility of the husband calls for. He will understand what
things for his wife's sake he should do or leave undone. This
knowledge, which results in considerate conduct towards her, will
manifest itself in Christian chivalry. The woman is physically the
feebler of the two. No burden beyond her powers will be laid upon her;
and by reason of her weaker nature regard and honour will be felt to
be her due. For the woman is the glory of the man (1 Cor. xi. 7). Such
observance will not degenerate into undue adulation nor foolish
fondness, apt to foster pride and conceit, but will be inspired by the
sense that in God's creation neither is the man without the woman,
nor the woman without the man.
But beyond and above these daily graces of domestic and social
intercourse, the Apostle would have husband and wife knit together by
a higher bond. They are _joint heirs of the grace of life_. Both are
meant to be partakers of the heavenly inheritance, and such
participation makes their chief duty here to be preparation for the
life to come. Those who are bound together not by wedlock only, but by
the hope of a common salvation, will find a motive in that thought to
help each other in life's pilgrimage, each to shun all that might
cause the other to stumble: _That your prayers be not hindered_. They
are fellow-travellers with the same needs. Together they can bring
their requests before God, and where the two join in heart and soul
Christ has promised to be present as the Third. And in praying they
will know one another's necessities. This is the grandest knowledge
the husband can attain to for the honouring of his wife; and using it,
he will speed their united supplications to the throne of grace, and
the union of hearts will not fail of its blessing.
X
_THEY WHO BLESS ARE BLESSED_
"Finally, _be_ ye all like-minded, compassionate, loving as
brethren, tender-hearted, humble-minded: not rendering evil for
evil, or reviling for reviling; but contrariwise blessing; for
hereunto were ye called, that ye should inherit a blessing. For
he that would love life, and see good days, let him refrain his
tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: and let
him turn away from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and
pursue it. For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and
His ears unto their supplication: but the face of the Lord is
upon them that do evil. And who is he that will harm you, if ye
be zealous of that which is good? But and if ye should suffer for
righteousness' sake, blessed _are ye_: and fear not their fear,
neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord:
_being_ ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you
a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness
and fear: having a good conscience; that, wherein ye are spoken
against, they may be put to shame who revile your good manner of
life in Christ."--1 Peter iii. 8-16.
The Apostle now ceases from his special admonitions, and enforces
generally such qualities and conduct as must mark all who fear the
Lord. _Finally_, he says--and the word may indicate the close of his
counsels; but the virtues which he inculcates are of so important a
character that he may very well intend them as the apex and crown of
all his previous advice--_be ye all like-minded, compassionate, loving
as brethren, tender-hearted, humble-minded_. St. Peter has here
grouped together a number of epithets of which all but one are only
used in the New Testament by himself, and they are of that graphic
character which is so conspicuous in all the Apostle's language.
_Like-minded._ If the word be not there, the spirit is largely
exemplified in the early history of the Church. How often we hear the
phrase "with one accord" in the opening chapters of the Acts. Thus the
disciples continued in prayer (i. 14); thus they went daily to the
Temple (ii. 46); thus they lifted up their voices to God (iv. 24), for
all they that believed were of one heart and one soul (iv. 32). Such
lives exhibit harmony of thought, the same aim and purpose. The men
may not, will not, always use the same means or follow the same
methods, but they will all be seeking one result. Such unity is worth
more than uniformity. _Compassionate._ This feeling St. Paul describes
(Rom. xii. 15) as rejoicing with them that do rejoice and weeping with
them that weep. For the παθήματα of this life are not
always sorrowful, though the best of them are not worthy to be
compared with the glory that shall be revealed (Rom. viii. 18)._Loving
as brethren._ The sense of the brotherhood of Christians is strongly
marked in all the New Testament Scriptures. It is the name by which
our Lord claims fellowship with men, being not ashamed to call them
brethren. It is the designation of the Christian body from the first
(Matt. xxiii. 8), is constantly found in the Acts and the Epistles
(Acts vi. 3, ix. 30, xi. 29), and has been used of the Church in every
age, marking how as one family we dwell in Him. Next comes the word
which is not St. Peter's alone: _Tender-hearted_. St. Paul has it
(Eph. iv. 32), but it is no Greek notion. It was a Jewish idea that
deep feeling was closely connected with some of the organs of the
body; and in the Old Testament, as in the story of Joseph (Gen.
xliii. 30) and elsewhere (1 Kings iii. 26), we come upon such phrases
as "His bowels did yearn upon his brother." This Hebrew notion the
LXX. has conveyed into Greek by the word which St. Peter here uses,
and which those translators had used and consecrated long before. For
them so exalted was the thought contained in it that they employ it in
the prayer of Manasses (ver. 7) to express the tenderness of God
towards the penitent, the yearning love of the Father, who sees the
prodigal afar off, and has compassion. _Humble-minded._ This word and
those akin to it are almost a New Testament creation. The heathen had
no admiration for the temper it expresses, and where they do use the
word it is in a bad sense as signifying "cowardly" and "mean-spirited."
Before Christ none had taught, "He that is greatest among you shall be
your servant" (Matt. xxiii. 11).
It is manifest that if such harmony, kind feeling, attachment,
affection, and humility flourished among believers, these virtues
would put discord to the rout, and leave no occasion for rending the
oneness of the Christian body. They would also be proof against evil
from without, both in deed and speech, neither tempted to _render evil
for evil_ in their actions nor _reviling for reviling_ in their words.
They have a duty to the world, and cannot thus belie their Christian
profession. They are called to adorn the doctrine of their Saviour,
and the Master's sermon has among its prominent precepts "Bless them
that curse you." This is the spirit of St. Peter's exhortation, _But
contrariwise blessing_; that is, Be ye of those who bless. For there
is a law of recompense with God in good things as in evil; the
blessers shall be blessed: _For hereunto were ye called, that ye
should inherit a blessing_. It is as though he urged them thus: Ye
were aforetime enemies of God; but ye have been made partakers of His
heavenly calling (Heb. iii. 1), that ye may come to blessing. This
should move you to bless your enemies. And more than this, the servant
of God may receive no blessing from the world, may get curses for his
blessing; but yet he knows where to flee for consolation. He can pray
with the Psalmist, "Let them curse, but bless Thou" (Psalm cix. 28),
conscious that the Lord will stand at the right hand of the needy.
The psalmists knew much of such trials, and it is from the words of
one of them (Psalm xxxiv. 12-16) that St. Peter enforces his own
lesson.
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