Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking,
Parallel Translations
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Putting away therefore all wickedness, all deceit, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking,
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Wherfore laye asyde all maliciousnes and all gyle and dissimulacion and envie and all backbytynge:
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Wherefore, laying aside all maliciousnes, and all guile, and dissimulation, and enuie, and all euill speaking,
Cross-references (50)
Passages linked to 1 Peter 2:1 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Ephesians 4:31 Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, outcry, and slander be put away from you, with all malice.
- James 1:21 Therefore, putting away all filthiness and overflowing of wickedness, receive with humility the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.
- James 4:11 Don’t speak against one another, brothers. He who speaks against a brother and judges his brother, speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge.
- 1 Peter 3:10 For, “He who would love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit.
- Colossians 3:5-8 Put to death therefore your members which are on the earth: sexual immorality, uncleanness, depraved passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. For these things’ sake the wrath of God comes on the children of disobedience. You also once walked in those, when you lived in them; but now you also put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and shameful speaking out of your mouth.
- Titus 3:3-5 For we were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward mankind appeared, not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit,
- Ephesians 4:22-25 that you put away, as concerning your former way of life, the old man that grows corrupt after the lusts of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, who in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. Therefore putting away falsehood, speak truth each one with his neighbor. For we are members of one another.
- 1 Timothy 3:11 Their wives in the same way must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, and faithful in all things.
- 1 Peter 4:4 They think it is strange that you don’t run with them into the same excess of riot, blaspheming.
- Psalms 34:13 Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking lies.
- 1 Corinthians 3:2-3 I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, you aren’t ready even now, for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
- Titus 2:3 and that older women likewise be reverent in behavior, not slanderers nor enslaved to much wine, teachers of that which is good,
- Hebrews 12:1 Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let’s run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
- James 5:9 Don’t grumble, brothers, against one another, so that you won’t be judged. Behold, the judge stands at the door.
- 1 Peter 4:2 that you no longer should live the rest of your time in the flesh for the lusts of men, but for the will of God.
- Psalms 32:2 Blessed is the man to whom Yahweh doesn’t impute iniquity, in whose spirit there is no deceit.
- Romans 13:12-13 The night is far gone, and the day is near. Let’s therefore throw off the deeds of darkness, and let’s put on the armor of light. Let’s walk properly, as in the day; not in reveling and drunkenness, not in sexual promiscuity and lustful acts, and not in strife and jealousy.
- Galatians 5:21-26 envy, murders, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these; of which I forewarn you, even as I also forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit God’s Kingdom. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts. If we live by the Spirit, let’s also walk by the Spirit. Let’s not become conceited, provoking one another, and envying one another.
- James 3:16-17 For where jealousy and selfish ambition are, there is confusion and every evil deed. But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy.
- 1 Peter 2:22 who didn’t sin, “neither was deceit found in his mouth.”
- Psalms 37:1 Don’t fret because of evildoers, neither be envious against those who work unrighteousness.
- Ezekiel 18:31-32 Cast away from you all your transgressions, in which you have transgressed; and make yourself a new heart and a new spirit: for why will you die, house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him who dies,” says the Lord Yahweh. “Therefore turn yourselves, and live!
- Matthew 7:5 You hypocrite! First remove the beam out of your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck out of your brother’s eye.
- Matthew 23:28 Even so you also outwardly appear righteous to men, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
- Luke 6:42 Or how can you tell your brother, ‘Brother, let me remove the speck of chaff that is in your eye,’ when you yourself don’t see the beam that is in your own eye? You hypocrite! First remove the beam from your own eye, and then you can see clearly to remove the speck of chaff that is in your brother’s eye.
- Romans 1:29 being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, malice; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil habits, secret slanderers,
- 1 Corinthians 14:20 Brothers, don’t be children in thoughts, yet in malice be babies, but in thoughts be mature.
- Proverbs 3:31 Don’t envy the man of violence. Choose none of his ways.
- Proverbs 24:1 Don’t be envious of evil men, neither desire to be with them;
- 2 Corinthians 12:20 For I am afraid that by any means, when I come, I might find you not the way I want to, and that I might be found by you as you don’t desire, that by any means there would be strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, factions, slander, whisperings, proud thoughts, or riots,
- 1 Samuel 18:8-9 Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him. He said, “They have creditd David with ten thousands, and they have only credited me with thousands. What can he have more but the kingdom?” Saul watched David from that day and forward.
- Job 36:13 “But those who are godless in heart lay up anger. They don’t cry for help when he binds them.
- Proverbs 14:30 The life of the body is a heart at peace, but envy rots the bones.
- Proverbs 24:19 Don’t fret yourself because of evildoers, neither be envious of the wicked;
- Isaiah 30:22 You shall defile the overlaying of your engraved images of silver, and the plating of your molten images of gold. You shall cast them away as an unclean thing. You shall tell it, “Go away!”
- Luke 11:44 Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like hidden graves, and the men who walk over them don’t know it.”
- John 1:47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and said about him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit!”
- 1 Corinthians 5:8 Therefore let’s keep the feast, not with old yeast, neither with the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
- 1 Thessalonians 2:3 For our exhortation is not of error, nor of uncleanness, nor in deception.
- James 3:14 But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, don’t boast and don’t lie against the truth.
- James 4:5 Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, “The Spirit who lives in us yearns jealously”?
- 1 Peter 1:18-25 knowing that you were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, from the useless way of life handed down from your fathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish or spot, the blood of Christ, who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, but was revealed in this last age for your sake, who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead, and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope might be in God. Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection, love one another from the heart fervently, having been born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which lives and remains forever. For, “All flesh is like grass, and all of man’s glory like the flower in the grass. The grass withers, and its flower falls; but the Lord’s word endures forever.” This is the word of Good News which was preached to you.
- 1 Peter 2:16 as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God.
- Revelation 14:5 In their mouth was found no lie, for they are blameless.
- Matthew 24:51 and will cut him in pieces, and appoint his portion with the hypocrites. That is where the weeping and grinding of teeth will be.
- Psalms 73:3 For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
- Isaiah 2:20 In that day, men shall cast away their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which have been made for themselves to worship, to the moles and to the bats,
- Matthew 15:7 You hypocrites! Well did Isaiah prophesy of you, saying,
- Mark 12:15 Shall we give, or shall we not give?” But he, knowing their hypocrisy, said to them, “Why do you test me? Bring me a denarius, that I may see it.”
- Luke 12:1 Meanwhile, when a multitude of many thousands had gathered together, so much so that they trampled on each other, he began to tell his disciples first of all, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (26 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain After having taught the faithful that they had been…
After having taught the faithful that they had been regenerated by the word of God, he now exhorts them to lead a life corresponding with their birth. For if we live in the Spirit, we ought also to walk in the Spirit, as Paul says. (Galatians 5:25.) It is not, then, sufficient for us to have been once called by the Lord, except we live as new creatures. This is the meaning. But as to the words, the Apostle continues the same metaphor. For as we have been born again, he requires from us a life like that of infants; by which he intimates that we are to put off the old man and his works. Hence this verse agrees with what Christ says,
“Except ye become like this little child, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 18:3.)
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Infancy is here set by Peter in opposition to the ancientness of the flesh, which leads to corruption; and under the word milk, he includes all the feelings of spiritual life. For there is also in part a contrast between the vices which he enumerates and the sincere milk of the word; as though he had said, “Malice and hypocrisy belong to those who are habituated to the corruptions of the world; they have imbibed these vices: what pertains to infancy is sincere simplicity, free from all guile. Men, when grown up, become imbued with envy, they learn to slander one another, they are taught the arts of mischief; in short, they become hardened in every kind of evil: infants, owing to their age, do not yet know what it is to envy, to do mischief, or the like things.” He then compares the vices, in which the oldness of the flesh indulges, to strong food; and milk is called that way of living suitable to innocent nature and simple infancy.
1. All malice There is not here a complete enumeration of all those things which we ought to lay aside; but when the Apostles speak of the old man, they lay down as examples some of those vices which mark his whole character.
“Known,” says Paul, “are the works of the flesh, which are these,” (Galatians 5:19;)
and yet he does not enumerate them all; but in those few things, as in a mirror, we may see that immense mass of filth which proceeds from our flesh. So also in other passages, where he refers to the new life, he touches only on a few things, by which we may understand the whole character.
What, then, he says amounts to this, — “Having laid aside the works of your former life, such as malice, deceit, dissimulations, envyings, and other things of this kind, devote yourselves to things of an opposite character, cultivate kindness, honesty,” etc. He, in short, urges this, that new morals ought to follow a new life.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain Having laid for the foundation the Spirit of God…
Having laid for the foundation the Spirit of God effectually working by the word, and having built thereupon three virtues which are the grounds of all Christian actions, to wit, faith, hope, and charity: now he proceedeth to a general exhortation, the first member whereof is, that we flee all show, both of secret and also open malice.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 1 Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile,…
1 Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings,
Ver. 1. All malice and all guile] Out with this leaven utterly, 1Co 5:7. Howsoever we otherwise fail, let us not in these be found faulty at all. These are not the spots of God’s children, Deu 32:5. They are without gall, without guile, children that will not lie: they do not wallow or allow themselves in any kind of these evils; which are therefore plurally expressed.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain Having in the former chapter mentioned the new birth,…
Having in the former chapter mentioned the new birth, 1Pe 1:23, and exhorted to brotherly love, as agreeable to it, 1Pe 1:22, he begins this chapter with a dehortation, wherein he dissuades them from those vices which are contrary to the state of regenerate men in the general, and brotherly love in particular.
Laying aside; or, put off; a metaphor from an old over worn garment, fit only to be thrown away: see Eph 4:22; Col 3:8,9; Jas 1:21.
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All malice; malignity, when men do evil to others voluntarily and industriously, or delight in other men’s harms: see Rom 1:29; Eph 4:31.
All guile: all fraudulence and impostures, and circumventing of others in any kind.
Hypocrisies; all flattering, and counterfeiting friendship, and showing love in words and outward carriage, when the heart is otherwise affected. Christ calls them hypocrites that flattered him, Mat 22:16,18.
Envies; grieving at other men’s welfare.
All evil speakings; all kind of detraction.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain Here we are first directed what to lay aside,…
Here we are first directed what to lay aside, in order to our fruitful and profitable entertainment of the word of God, namely, these five sins, malice, guile, hypocrisy, envy, and evil-speaking.
Whence note in general, That if any sin, much more if many sins, be kept close and lie dormant within us, they will certainly hinder the efficacy of the word upon us. As the foulness of the stomach hinders the natural digestion: till it be purged out, nothing can nourish within; in like manner, our apostle here advises to purge out these pestilent lusts of malice and guile, of hypocrisy and envy, &c., before we hear the word of God, as ever we expect to be nourished with it, and grow thereby.
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As sin hinders good from coming to us, so it hinders the word from working good in us; particularly
malice, or invetrate anger harboured in the heart; guile, or deceit in words or actions; hypocrisy, or an appearance of friendship, when the heart is otherwise affected; envy, or grieving at another’s good; and evil-speaking of all kinds, by lying, by slandering, by back-biting, by detracting, all which are contrary to the great command of love, and abstructive of the word of truth, by which we are born again;
but it is observable, particularly concerning malice, and guile, and evil-speaking, that our apostle puts the note of universality to them, Lay aside all malice, and all guile, and all evil-speaking; importing, that though some other sins will stick close unto us, yet not a jot of malice or guile should be found in us, at least prevailing in us, of any kind, or in any degree or measure, for one drop of this deadly poison may destroy us; therefore lay aside all malice, and all guile, and all evil-speaking, &c.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain The holy apostle has been recommending mutual charity, and…
The holy apostle has been recommending mutual charity, and setting forth the excellences of the word of God, calling it an incorruptible seed, and saying that it liveth and abideth for ever. He pursues his discourse, and very properly comes in with this necessary advice, Wherefore laying aside all malice, etc. These are such sins as both destroy charity and hinder the efficacy of the word, and consequently they prevent our regeneration.
I. His advice is to lay aside or put off what is evil, as one would do an old rotten garment: "Cast it away with indignation, never put it on more."
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1. The sins to be put off, or thrown aside, are, (1.) Malice, which may be taken more generally for all sorts of wickedness, as Jam 1:21; Co1 5:8. But, in a more confined sense, malice is anger resting in the bosom of fools, settled overgrown anger, retained till it inflames a man to design mischief, to do mischief, or delight in any mischief that befalls another. (2.) Guile, or deceit in words. So it comprehends flattery, falsehood, and delusion, which is a crafty imposing upon another's ignorance or weakness, to his damage. (3.) Hypocrisies. The word being plural comprehends all sorts of hypocrisies. In matters of religion hypocrisy is counterfeit piety. In civil conversation hypocrisy is counterfeit friendship, which is much practised by those who give high compliments, which they do not believe, make promises which they never intend to perform, or pretend friendship when mischief lies in their hearts. (4.) All envies; every thing that may be called envy, which is a grieving at the good and welfare of another, at their abilities, prosperity, fame, or successful labours. (5.) Evil speaking, which is detraction, speaking against another, or defaming him; it is rendered backbiting, Co2 12:20; Rom 1:30.
2. Hence learn, (1.) The best Christians have need to be cautioned and warned against the worst sins, such as malice, hypocrisy, envy. They are but sanctified in part, and are still liable to temptations. (2.) Our best services towards God will neither please him nor profit us if we be not conscientious in our duties to men. The sins here mentioned are offences against the second table. These must be laid aside, or else we cannot receive the word of God as we ought to do. (3.) Whereas it is said all malice, all guile, learn, That one sin, not laid aside, will hinder our spiritual profit and everlasting welfare. (4.) Malice, envy, hatred, hypocrisy, and evil-speaking, generally go together. Evil-speaking is a sign that malice and guile lie in the heart; and all of them combine to hinder our profiting by the word of God.
II. The apostle, like a wise physician, having prescribed the purging out of vicious humours, goes on to direct to wholesome and regular food, that they may grow thereby. The duty exhorted to is a strong and constant desire for the word of God, which word is here called reasonable milk, only, this phrase not being proper English, our translators rendered it the milk of the word, by which we are to understand food proper for the soul, or a reasonable creature, whereby the mind, not the body, is nourished and strengthened. This milk of the word must be sincere, not adulterated by the mixtures of men, who often corrupt the word of God, Co2 2:17. The manner in which they are to desire this sincere milk of the word is stated thus: As new-born babes. He puts them in mind of their regeneration. A new life requires suitable food. They, being newly born, must desire the milk of the word. Infants desire common milk, and their desires towards it are fervent and frequent, arising from an impatient sense of hunger, and accompanied with the best endeavours of which the infant is capable. Such must Christians' desires be for the word of God: and that for this end, that they may grow thereby, that we may improve in grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Pe2 3:18. Learn, 1. Strong desires and affections to the word of God are a sure evidence of a person's being born again. If they be such desires as the babe has for the milk, they prove that the person is new-born. They are the lowest evidence, but yet they are certain. 2. Growth and improvement in wisdom and grace are the design and desire of every Christian; all spiritual means are for edification and improvement. The word of God, rightly used, does not leave a man as it finds him, but improves and makes him better.
III. He adds an argument from their own experience: If so be, or since that, or forasmuch as, you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, Pe1 2:3. The apostle does not express a doubt, but affirms that these good Christians had tasted the goodness of God, and hence argues with them. "You ought to lay aside these vile sins (Pe1 2:1); you ought to desire the word of God; you ought to grow thereby, since you cannot deny but that you have tasted that the Lord is gracious." The next verse assures us that the Lord here spoken of is the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence learn, 1. Our Lord Jesus Christ is very gracious to his people. He is in himself infinitely good; he is very kind, free, and merciful to miserable sinners; he is pitiful and good to the undeserving; he has in him a fulness of grace. 2. The graciousness of our Redeemer is best discovered by an experimental taste of it. There must be an immediate application of the object to the organ of taste; we cannot taste at a distance, as we may see, and hear, and smell. To taste the graciousness of Christ experimentally supposes our being united to him by faith, and then we may taste his goodness in all his providences, in all our spiritual concerns, in all our fears and temptations, in his word and worship every day. 3. The best of God's servants have in this life but a taste of the grace of Christ. A taste is but a little; it is not a draught, nor does it satisfy. It is so with the consolations of God in this life. 4. The word of God is the great instrument whereby he discovers and communicates his grace to men. Those who feed upon the sincere milk of the word taste and experience most of his grace. In our converses with his word we should endeavour always to understand and experience more and more of his grace.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain Wherefore, laying aside all malice,.... Since the persons the…
Wherefore, laying aside all malice,.... Since the persons the apostle writes to were born again, and therefore ought to love one another, he exhorts them to the disuse of such vices as were disagreeable to their character as regenerate men, and contrary brotherly love; he dissuades them from them, and advises to "lay them aside", either as weights and burdens, which it was not fit for new born babes to carry; see Heb 12:1 or rather as old worn out clothes, as filthy rags, which should be put off, laid by, and never used more, being what were very unsuitable to their character and profession to wear: the metaphor is the same as in Eph 4:22 and the first he mentions is malice; to live in which is a mark of an unregenerate man, and very unbecoming such who are born again; and is not consistent with the relation of brethren, and character of children, or new born babes, who are without malice, and do not bear and retain it: "all" of this is to be laid aside, towards all persons whatever, and in every shape, and in every instance of it:
and all guile; fraud, or deceit, in words or actions; and which should not be found, and appear in any form, in Israelites indeed, in brethren, in the children of God; who ought not to lie one to another, or defraud each other, nor express that with their lips which they have not in their hearts; which babes are free from, and so should babes in Christ:
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and hypocrisies; both to God and men: hypocrisy to God is, when persons profess that which they have not, as love to God, faith in Christ, zeal for religion, fervent devotion, and sincerity in the worship of God; and do all they do to be seen of men, and appear outwardly righteous, and yet are full of all manner of iniquity: hypocrisy to men is, pretence of friendship, loving in word and tongue only, speaking peaceably with the mouth, but in heart laying wait; a sin to be abhorred and detested by one that is born from above; and is contrary to that integrity, simplicity, and sincerity of heart, which become regenerate persons, the children of God, and brethren one of another:
and envies; at each other's happiness and prosperity, riches, honours, gifts temporal or spiritual; for such are works of the flesh, show men to be carnal, are unbecoming regenerated persons, and contrary to the exercise of Christian charity, or love, which envieth not the welfare of others, either respecting body, soul, or estate:
and all evil speakings; backbitings, whisperings, detractions, hurting one another's characters by innuendos, false charges, and evil surmises; which is not acting like men that are made new creatures, and are partakers of the divine nature, nor like brethren, or as Christ's little ones, and who are of God, begotten again to be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain Wherefore laying aside - As inconsistent with that pure…
Wherefore laying aside - As inconsistent with that pure love. All dissimulation - Which is the outward expression of guile in the heart.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain We should lay aside all evil dispositions, and desire…
CHAPTER II.
We should lay aside all evil dispositions, and desire the
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sincere milk of the word, that we may grow thereby, 1-3.
And come to God to be made living stones, and be built up into
a spiritual temple, 4, 5.
The prophecy of Christ as chief corner stone, precious to
believers, but a stumbling stone to the disobedient, 6-8.
True believers are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, c.,
9, 10.
They should abstain from fleshly lusts, 11.
Walk uprightly among the Gentiles, 12.
Be obedient to civil authority, according to the will of God,
13-15.
Make a prudent use of their Christian liberty, 16.
Fear God and honour the king, 17.
Servants should be subject to their masters, and serve them
faithfully, and suffer indignities patiently, after the example
of Christ, 18-23.
Who bore the punishment due to our sins in his own body upon the
tree, 24.
They were formerly like sheep going astray, but are now returned
unto the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls, 25.
NOTES ON CHAP. II.
Verse 1. Wherefore, laying aside] This is in close connection with the preceding chapter, from which it should not have been separated, and the subject is continued to the end of the 10th verse. 1Pet 2:10
Laying aside all malice] See the notes on Eph 4:22-31. These tempers and dispositions must have been common among the Jews, as they are frequently spoken against: Christianity can never admit of such they show the mind, not of Christ, but of the old murderer.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 1Pe 2:1-3. Wherefore — Since the word of God…
1Pe 2:1-3. Wherefore — Since the word of God is so excellent and durable in itself, and has had such a blessed effect upon you as to regenerate you, and bring you to the enjoyment of true Christian love; laying aside — As utterly inconsistent with that love; all malice — All ill- will, every unkind disposition; or all wickedness, as κακιαν may be properly rendered, all sinful tempers and practices whatsoever; and all guile — All craft, deceitful cunning, and artifice, every temper contrary to Christian simplicity; and hypocrisies — Every kind of dissimulation; and envies — Grieving at the prosperity or good, temporal or spiritual, enjoyed by others; and all evil speakings — All reproachful or unkind speeches concerning others; as new-born babes — As persons lately regenerated, and yet young in grace, mere babes as to your acquaintance with the doctrines, your experience of the graces, your enjoyment of the privileges, and your performance of the duties of Christianity; desire — Επιποθησατε, desire earnestly, or love affectionately, or from your inmost soul, the sincere — The pure, uncorrupted milk of the word — That is, that word of God which nourishes the soul as milk does the body, and which is free from all guile, so that none are deceived who cleave to it, and make it the food of their souls; that ye may grow thereby — In Christian knowledge and wisdom, in faith, hope, and love; in humility, resignation, patience, meekness, gentleness, long-suffering, in all holiness and righteousness, unto the full measure of Christ’s stature. In the former chapter the apostle had represented the word of God as the incorruptible seed, by which the believers, to whom he wrote, had been born again, and by obeying which they had purified their souls; here he represents it as the milk by which the new-born babes in Christ grow up to maturity. The word, therefore, is both the principle by which the divine life is produced in the soul, and the food by which it is nourished. Some critics, following the Vulgate version, render λογικον αδολον γαλα, the unadulterated rational milk. But the context evidently shows that our translators have given us the true meaning of the apostle. By adding the epithet, αδολον, unadulterated, or pure, the apostle teaches us that the milk of the word will not nourish the divine nature in those that use it, if it be adulterated with human mixtures. If so be, or rather since, ye have tasted — Have sweetly and experimentally known; that the Lord is gracious — Is merciful, loving, and kind, in what he hath already done, and in what he is still doing for and in you. The apostle seems evidently to allude to Psa 34:8, O taste and see that the Lord is good: where see the note. Not only think and believe, on his own testimony, or on the testimony of others, that he is good, but know it by your own experience; know that he is good to you in pardoning your sins, adopting and regenerating you by his grace, shedding his love abroad in your heart, and giving you to enjoy communion with himself through the eternal Spirit.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain Wherefore laying aside - On the word rendered laying…
Wherefore laying aside - On the word rendered laying aside, see Rom 13:12; Eph 4:22, Eph 4:25; Col 3:8. The allusion is to putting off clothes; and the meaning is, that we are to cast off these things entirely; that is, we are no longer to practice them. The word “wherefore” (οὖν oun) refers to the reasonings in the first chapter. In view of the considerations stated there, we should renounce all evil.
All malice - All “evil,” (κακίαν kakian.) The word “malice” we commonly apply now to a particular kind of evil, denoting extreme enmity of heart, ill-will, a disposition to injure others without cause, from mere personal gratification, or from a spirit of revenge - Webster. The Greek word, however, includes evil of all kinds. See the notes at Rom 1:29. Compare Act 8:22, where it is rendered wickedness, and 1Co 5:8; 1Co 14:20; Eph 4:31; Col 3:8; Tit 3:3.
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And all guile - Deceit of all kinds. See the Rom 1:29 note; 2Co 12:16 note; 1Th 2:3 note.
And hypocrisies - See the 1Ti 4:2, note; Mat 23:28; Gal 2:13, on the word rendered dissimulation. The word means, feigning to be what we are not; assuming a false appearance of religion; cloaking a wicked purpose under the appearance of piety.
And envies - Hatred of others on account of some excellency which they have, or something which they possess which we do not. See the notes at Rom 1:29.
And all evil speaking - Greek: “speaking against others.” This word (καταλαλιὰ katalalia) occurs only here and in 2Co 12:20, where it is rendered “backbitings.” It would include all unkind or slanderous speaking against others. This is by no means an uncommon fault in the world, and it is one of the designs of religion to guard against it. Religion teaches us to lay aside whatever guile, insincerity, and false appearances we may have acquired, and to put on the simple honesty and openness of children. We all acquire more or less of guile and insincerity in the course of life. We learn to conceal our sentiments and feelings, and almost unconsciously come to appear different from what we really are. It is not so with children. In the child, every emotion of the bosom appears as it is. “Nature there works well and beautifully.” Every emotion is expressed; every feeling of the heart is developed; and in the cheeks, the open eye, the joyous or sad countenance, we know all that there is in the bosom, as certainly as we know all that there is in the rose by its color and its fragrance. Now, it is one of the purposes of religion to bring us back to this state, and to strip off all the subterfuges which we may have acquired in life; and he in whom this effect is not accomplished has never been converted. A man that is characteristically deceitful, cunning, and crafty, cannot be a Christian. “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” Mat 18:3.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain Wherefore laying aside all malice. St. Peter having put…
Wherefore laying aside all malice. St. Peter having put them in mind of the great benefit of Christ’s coming to redeem us from sin, exhorts them to avoid sin, to lead a life worthy of their vocation, to follow Christ’s doctrine, and imitate his example. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
John Nelson Darby 1862 · Public Domain 1 Peter Chapter 2
1 Peter Chapter 2
Thus cleansed therefore and born of the word, they were to put off all fraud, hypocrisy, envy, slander; and, as new-born babes, to seek for this milk of the understanding, in order to grow thereby (for the word is the milk of the child, as it was the seed of its life); and we are to receive it as babes in all simplicity, if in truth we have felt that the Lord is good and full of grace. It is not Sinai (where the Lord God declared His law from the midst of the fire, so that they entreated not to hear His voice any more), to which I am come, or from which the Lord is speaking. If I have tasted and understood that the Lord acts in grace, that He is love towards me, and that His word is the expression of that grace, even as it communicates life, I shall desire to feed on this milk of the understanding, which the believer enjoys in proportion to his simplicity; that good word which announces to me nothing but grace, and the God whom I need as all grace, full of grace, acting in grace, as revealing Himself to me in this character-a character which He can never cease to maintain towards me, making me a partaker of His holiness.
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I now know the Lord Himself: I have tasted that which He is. Moreover this is still in contrast with the legal condition of the Jew, although it is the fulfillment of that which the Psalms and the prophets had declared (the resurrection having plainly revealed in addition a heavenly hope). It was they themselves who were now the spiritual house, the holy priesthood. They came to the Living Stone, rejected indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious, and they were built up on Him as living stones. The apostle delights in this word “living.” It was to him the Father had revealed that Jesus was the Son of the living God. No one else had then confessed Him as such, and the Lord told him that on this rock (that is, on the Person of the Son of God in power of life, manifested in the resurrection, which declared Him to be such) He would build His assembly. Peter, by his faith, participated in the nature of this living rock. Here then (chap. 2:5) he extends this character to all believers, and exhibits the holy house built on the Living Stone, which God Himself had laid as the chief corner-stone elect and precious. Whosoever believed in Him should not be confounded. [4] Now, it was not only in the eyes of God that this stone was precious, but in the eyes of faith which- feeble as the possessors of it may be-sees as God sees. To unbelievers this stone was a stone of stumbling and of offence. They stumbled at the word, being disobedient, to which also they were appointed. It does not say that they were appointed to sin nor to condemnation, but these unbelieving and disobedient sinners, the Jewish race-long rebellious, and continually exalting themselves against God-were destined to find in the Lord of grace Himself a rock of offence; and to stumble and fall upon that which was to faith the precious stone of salvation. It was to this particular fall that their unbelief was destined.
Believers, on the contrary, entered into the enjoyment of the promises made to Israel, and that in the most excellent way. Grace-and the very faithfulness of God-had brought the fulfillment of the promise in the Person of Jesus, the minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to fulfill the promises made to the fathers. And, although the nation had rejected Him, God would not deprive of the blessings those who-in spite of all this difficulty to faith and to the heart-had submitted to the obedience of faith and attached themselves to Him who was the despised of the nation. They could not have the blessing of Israel with the nation on earth, because the nation had rejected Him; but they were brought fully into the relationship with God of a people accepted of Him. The heavenly character which the blessing now assumed did not destroy their acceptance according to the promise; only they entered into it according to grace. For the nation, as a nation, had lost it; not only long ago by disobedience, but now by rejecting Him who came in grace to impart to them the effect, of the promise.
The apostle, therefore, applies the character of “holy nation” to the elect remnant, investing them in the main with the titles bestowed in Exo 19:1-25, on condition of obedience, but here in connection with the Messiah, their enjoyment of these titles being founded on His obedience and rights acquired by their faith in Him.
But, the privileges of the believing remnant being founded on the Messiah, the apostle goes farther, and applies to them the declarations of Hosea, which relate to Israel and Judah when re-established in the fullness of blessing in the last days, enjoying those relationships with God into which grace will bring them at that time.
“Ye are,” he says, “a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a purchased people.” These are almost the words of Exo 19:1-25. He goes on: “Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God; who formerly had not obtained mercy, but have now obtained it.” These are the words of Hos 2:1-23. This sets before us, in the most interesting way, the principle on which the blessing is founded. In Exodus the people were to have this blessing if they exactly obeyed the voice of God. But Israel had not obeyed, had been rebellious and stiffnecked, had gone after strange gods, and rejected the testimony of the Spirit; yet, after their unfaithfulness, God Himself has laid in Zion a Stone, a chief corner-stone, and whosoever believed in Him should not be confounded. It is grace that, when Israel had failed in every respect, and on the ground of obedience had lost everything, God should bestow on them by Jesus, through grace, that which was promised them at first on condition of obedience. In this way all was secured to them.
The question of obedience was settled-on Israel’s disobedience-by grace, and by the obedience of Christ, the foundation laid by God in Zion. But this principle of grace abounding over sin-by which is shewn the inability of disobedience to frustrate the purposes of God, for this grace came after the completion of disobedience-this principle, so glorious and so comforting to the convinced sinner, is confirmed in a striking way by the quotation from Hosea. In this passage from the prophet, Israel is presented, not merely as guilty, but as having already undergone judgment. God had declared that He would no more have mercy (with regard to His patience toward the ten tribes); and that Israel was no longer His people (in His judgment on unfaithful Judah). But afterwards, when the judgment had been executed, He returns to His irrevocable purposes of grace, and allures Israel as a forsaken wife, and gives her the valley of Achor-the valley of trouble, in which Achan was stoned, the first judgment on unfaithful Israel after their entrance into the promised land-for a door of hope. For judgment is changed into grace, and God begins all afresh upon a new principle. It was as though Israel had again come up out of Egypt, but upon an entirely new principle. He betroths her to Him for ever, in righteousness, in judgment, in grace, in mercy, and all is blessing. Then He calls her “Ruhama,” or, “the object of mercy,” and “Ammi,” “my people.”
These, then, are the expressions which the apostle uses, applying them to the remnant who believed in Jesus, the stumbling-stone to the nation, but the chief corner-stone from God to the believer. Thus the condition is taken away, and instead of a condition we have blessing after disobedience, and after judgment the full and assured grace of God, founded (in its application to believers) on the Person, the obedience, and the work of Christ.
It is affecting to see the expression of this grace in the term “Achor.” It was the first judgment on Israel in the land of promise for having profaned themselves with the forbidden thing. And there it is that hope is given: so entirely true is it that grace triumphs over justice. And it is this which has taken place in the most excellent way in Christ. The very judgment of God becomes in Him the door of hope, the guilt and the judgment having alike passed away for ever.
Two parts of the Christian life-so far as it is the manifestation of spiritual power-result from this, in the double priesthood; of which the one answers to the present position of Christ on high, and the other anticipatively to the manifestation of His glory on earth-the priesthoods of Aaron, and of Melchisedec. For He is now within the veil according to the type of Aaron; hereafter He will be a priest on His throne-it will be the public manifestation of His glory on earth. Thus the saints exercise “a holy priesthood “(1Pe 2:5) to offer up spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving. Sweet privilege of the Christian, thus brought as near as possible to God! He offers-sure of being accepted, for it is by Jesus that he offers them -his sacrifices to God.
This part of the Christian life is the first, the most excellent, the most vital, the source of the other (which is its expression here below); the most excellent, because, in its exercise, we are in immediate connection with the divine object of our affections. These spiritual sacrifices are the reflex, by the action of the Holy Ghost, of the grace which we enjoy; that which the heart returns to God, moved by the excellent gifts of which we are the object, and by the love which has given them. The heart (by the power of the Holy Ghost) reflects all that has been revealed to it in grace, worshiping the Author and Giver of all according to the knowledge we have of Himself through this means; the fruits of the heavenly Canaan in which we participate presented as an offering to God; the entrance of the soul into the presence of God to praise and adore Him.
This is the holy priesthood, according to the analogy of the priesthood of Aaron, and of the temple at Jerusalem which God inhabited as His house.
The second priesthood of which the apostle speaks is to shew forth the virtues of Him who has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light. Its description is taken, as we have seen, from Exo 19:1-25. It is a chosen generation, a holy nation, a royal priesthood. I only allude to the Melchisedec priesthood to shew the character of a royal priesthood. Priests, among the Jews, drew near to God. God had formed the people for Himself: they were to shew forth all His virtues, His praises. Christ will do this perfectly in the day of His glory. The Christian is called to do it now in this world. He is to reproduce Christ in this world. It is the second part of his life.
It will be noticed that the first chapter of this epistle presents the Christian as animated by hope, but under trial-the precious trial of faith. The second chapter presents him in his privileges, as of a holy and royal priesthood, by means of faith.
After this (chap. 2:11), the apostle begins his exhortations. Whatever may be the privileges of the Christian, in his position as such, he is always viewed as a pilgrim on the earth; and, as we have seen, the constant government of God is the object which presents itself to the mind of the apostle. But he warns them first, with regard to that which is inward, against those sources from which the corruptions spring, that (in the scene of this government) would dishonour the name of God and even bring in judgment.
Their conversation was to be honest among the Gentiles. Christians bore the name of God. The mind of men, hostile to His name, sought to bring disgrace upon it, by attributing to Christians the evil conduct which they themselves followed without remorse, while at the same time complaining (chap. 4:4) that they would not go with them in the same excesses and disorder. The Christian had only to follow the path of faithfulness to God. In the day when God would visit men these calumniators, with their will broken and their pride subdued by the visitation of God, should be brought to confess-by means of the good works which, in spite of their calumnies, had always reached their consciences-that God had acted in these Christians, that He had been present among them.
John Nelson Darby — Synopsis of the Books of the Bible: the New Testament (c. 1857–1862) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain Analysis:—Exhortation of the regenerate to nourish themselves with the…
1Pe_2:1-10
Analysis:—Exhortation of the regenerate to nourish themselves with the word of God, and to grow in Christ, to build themselves up on Him and to approve themselves a spiritual priesthood.
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1Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings1, 2As newborn babes, desire2 the sincere milk of the word3, that ye 3grow thereby; If so be4 ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious5. 4To whom coming6, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God7, and precious,85Ye also, as9lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by10 Jesus Christ.116Wherefore also it is contained in the Scripture, Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded.12 137Unto you therefore which believe he is precious: but unto them which be disobedient, the stone which the builders9 disallowed, the same is made the head of the corner, And a stone of stumbling, and rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient14: whereunto9 also they were appointed. But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people15; that ye should shew forth16 the praises17 of him who hath called you out of darkness into18 his marvellous19 light: 10Which in time past were not a people20, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy21, but now have obtained mercy22.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Pe_2:1. Wherefore, laying aside.—The section 1Pe_2:1-10. is connected, as are the exhortations in 1Pe_1:22, with the idea of regeneration and the love out of a pure heart flowing from it. To brotherly love out of a pure heart are opposed guile, deception, hypocrisy, envy and slander; if that is to spring up, these vices must die. On this account Peter exhorts Christians to lay them aside, to put them off. If a new life is implanted, it must grow, and therefore save corresponding, wholesome nourishment; on this account Peter entreats them to long for that nourishment that thus they might be able to grow and to overcome temptations.—The construction is here as in 1Pe_1:22. The Imperative reacts on the Participle. Laying aside is a figure taken from clothing and of frequent occurrence, Col_3:8; Eph_4:22; Jam_1:21. The old man is a garment, wholly surrounding, closely-fitting and forming a whole with us. “Take away the filthy garments from him—set a fair mitre upon his head,” was the direction concerning Joshua the high priest, Zec_3:3. The angel adding, “Behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.” The figures of laying aside and putting on clothes was peculiarly apposite because the early Christians were wont to lay aside their old garments and to exchange them for white and clean apparel when they were baptized and regenerated. It is necessary to observe that the exhortation to laying aside is only addressed to those who had the new man, while the unbelieving and unregenerate had first to receive another mind [μετάνοια, after-thought, after-wisdom, a change of disposition must precede baptism and new-birth.—M.]. The vices to be laid aside bear upon the relation to our neighbour and exert a deadly influence on brotherly love. κακία [nocendi cupiditas] denotes here, in particular, malicious disposition toward others, aiming at their hurt, injury and pain, and assuming various manifestations, cf. 1Co_13:5. The accomplishment of such evil intent necessitates lying, cunning and other artifices; its concealment requires hypocrisy and dissembling. The sense of dependence on those before whom dissimulation is practised, the sight of their happiness, the shame felt in the conscience in the presence of the virtuous—excite envy, and envy engenders all manner of evil, detracting and injurious speaking. [Malitia malo delectatur alieno; invidia bono cruciatur alieno; dolus duplicat cor; adulatio duplicat linguam; detractatio vulner at famam.—Augustine.—M.]. ‘Thus,’ observed Flacius, ‘one vice ever genders another.’ Huss says of κακαλαλιά that it takes place in various ways, either by denying or darkening a neighbour’s virtues, and either by attributing to him evil or imputing to him evil designs in doing good.
1Pe_2:2. As newborn babes.—This goes back to 1Pe_1:23. The connection is similar to 1Pe_1:14. They had been addressed as children of obedience, now their young and tender state is mentioned as a reason why they should seek strength in the word of God. ‘Newborn babes’ was a current expression among the Jews for proselytes and neophytes. As the desire and need of nourishment predominate in the former, so they ought to predominate in babes in Christ. The expression so far from being derogatory, sets forth the tenderness of their relation to God, and implies the idea of guilelessness, cf. Isa_40:11; Luk_18:15, etc.
Long for—word.—ἐπιποθεῖν denotes intense and ever recurring desire. While the regenerate experience a longing after the word of God, by which they had been begotten, similar to the desire of newborn babes for their mother’s milk, Psa_119:31; Psa_119:72; Psa_19:11, still the hereditary sin which yet cleaves to them renders it necessary that they should be constantly urged to the diligent use of the divine word in order to partake of it.—Milk, in opposition to solid food, 1Co_3:2; Heb_5:12; Heb_6:1, signifies the rudiments of Christian doctrine, not only its simple representation adapted to the capacity of the weak but also the more easily intelligible articles of Christianity. In this place, however, where no such antithesis exists, the figure comprises the sum-total of Christianity, the whole Gospel. Milk is the first, most simple, most refreshing, most wholesome food, especially for children; so is the word of God, cf. Isa_55:1. The most advanced Christians ought to consider themselves children, in respect of what they are to be hereafter. “Christ, the crucified, is milk for babes, food for the advanced.” Augustine. Clement of Alexandria suggests the partaking of the incarnate Logos.—λογικόν is best explained by the Apostle’s peculiarity to elucidate his figures by additional illustrations, cf. 1Pe_1:13; 1Pe_1:23. It is milk contained in and flowing from the word, spiritual milk, which, as Luther explains, is drawn with the soul. The rendering ‘reasonable’ is against the usus loquendi of the New Testament, and equally inadmissible in Rom_12:1. [Alford renders ‘spiritual’ after Allioli and Kistemaker.—M.] The nature of this milk is further defined by ἄδολον, which means unadulterated, pure, cf. 2Co_4:2; 2Co_2:17. [ἄδολον seems rather to be in contrast with δόλον in 1Pe_2:1.—M.] It is consequently doctrine that is not compounded with human wisdom and thus rendered inefficacious. For the word of God has the property that it exerts purifying, liberating, illuminating and consoling influences only in its purity and entireness. Irenæus says of the heretics: “They mix gypsum with the milk, they taint the heavenly doctrine with the poison of their errors.”
ἐν αὐτῷ, receiving it into your innermost soul, making it your full property. Growth in holiness depends on the constant assimilation of the word. “The mother who gave them birth, nourishes them also.”—Harless.
1Pe_2:3. If, otherwise ye have tasted.—A conditional statement is often by emphasis accepted as real. Grotius renders the sense well; “I know that you will this, as surely as you—cf. Rom_8:9; 2Th_1:6.” This form of speech contains also an invitation to self-examination. Calov perceives a connection with 1Pe_2:1. “The more you eradicate the bitter root of malice, the more also do you taste the sweetness of the goodness of the Lord.” Cf. Son_2:3; Son_5:13; Sir_23:27. The expression, to taste with reference to the figure of milk, and with full allusion to Psa_34:9, denotes experience of the essential virtue of a thing as perceived by the sense of taste. It is transferred very properly to the experiences of the soul which enters into and unites with the object in order to know it in all its bearings. Cf. Heb_6:5; Heb_2:9. [Alford says, “The infant once put to the breast desires it again.”—M.]
[Wordsworth quotes the words of Augustine (Serm. 353), addressed to the newly baptized: “These words are specially applicable to you, who are yet fresh in the infancy of spiritual regeneration. For to you mainly the Divine Oracles speak, by the Apostle St. Peter, Having laid aside all malice, and all guile, as newborn infants desire ye the “rationabile et innocens lac, ut in illo crescatis ad salutem,” if ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious (dulcis.) And we are witnesses that ye have tasted it. … Cherish, therefore, this spiritual infancy. The infancy of the strong is humility. The manhood of the weak is pride.”—M.]
That the deed is good.—[Friendly, Germ.] χρηστός applied to tender, pleasant-tasting solids and liquids, to the sweet flavour of old wine, Luk_5:39; then to persons, kindly, friendly, condescending, Eph_4:32; Luk_6:35. Ὁ κύριος is the Lord Jesus, 1Pe_2:4, who invites us to Himself and commends to us the ease of His yoke, Mat_11:29. He is here represented as the spiritual means of nourishment, the partaking whereof promotes the new life of Christians, and draws them to the word, which is His revelation, and in a certain sense identical with Him. “This is tasting indeed,” says Luther, “to believe from the heart that Christ has given Himself to me and has become my own, that my misery is His, and His life mine. Feeling this from the heart, is tasting Christ.” [The Lord, “quod subjicitur; ad quem accedentes, non simpliciter ad Deum refertur, sed ipsum designat qualis patefactus est in persona Christi.”—Calvin.]
1Pe_2:4. To whom approaching.—The Imperative construction is best adapted to what follows, as it supplies an appropriate progress in the development of the thought. We had before: “Take nourishment from the word of God, and from the communion of Christ; this is followed by an exhortation contemplating the gathering of a congregation of God, to wit: Build up yourselves, as living stones, into a temple of God. Ever-renewed approaching Christ is the means and condition of building. The Apostle thinks of passages like the following, Psa_118:22-23; Isa_8:14; Isa_28:16; Luk_2:34; Mat_21:42; cf. Mat_11:29; Joh_6:37. In the Old Testament, the priests are those who approach and draw near to God, Lev_16:1; Eze_40:46; Num_9:13; in the New Testament access to God is opened to all through Christ, cf. Heb_9:1, etc.; Heb_7:25; Heb_10:22; Heb_11:6; Heb_4:16. We draw near to Christ by prayer—(considering His person, His merit and His office)—by entering into His Word and drawing therefrom grace for grace by faith.
Unto a living stone.—The Apostle being about to speak of the sacred edifice of the New Testament, felt of course anxious to designate Christ as the corner-stone thereof. By the glory of the corner-stone, he desires to impress us with the glory of the edifice to be reared thereon. (Weiss). We do not decide upon the suggestion of Gerhard that Peter alludes to his own name. [Petrus a petra Christo sic denominatus metaphora, petræ delectatur, ac suo exemplo docet omnes debere esse petros, h. e., vivos lapides supra Christum fide ædificatos. Gerhard.—M.] Cf. Act_4:11; Rom_11:11; Eph_2:20; 1Co_10:4; Zec_3:9. He is a stone or a rock, because after the manner of rocks, He remains ever the same, unchangeably powerful and invincible; because His word is firm and immovable, and because God has ordained and designed Him to be the foundation of His spiritual temple. But why a living stone? This predicate reminds us of the predicates Peter is wont to join to other images, 1Pe_2:2; 1Pe_2:5; 1Pe_1:13; it denotes not only a spiritual stone, but alludes to the circumstance that His rocky firmness is to His followers not hardness, but absolute reliability, truth and faithfulness, that in Him there is nothing of rigidity and death but absolute light and life. Calov.—“He is alive and makes alive.” Joh_5:28; Joh_6:48; Joh_14:19, etc.; 1Pe_4:10; Act_2:28. He penetrates and fills with His life the whole organism of believers, and causes it to grow. “Peter here tenders us the most urgent invitation to draw near to Christ, for those to whom Christ is as yet a mummy, cannot feel themselves drawn to Him.” Steiger.
Disallowed indeed of men, but…precious.—ἀποδοκιμάζειν—to reject on proof or trial, like useless coin, to reject for want of proper qualification. Heb. מָאַם. He was rejected not only by the builders, but by men of every kind, of every occupation, of every age and generation, by Jews and Gentiles. Hence the expression is quite general, rejected of men, of the whole world of unbelievers. Opposed to this human judgment, proceeding from enmity to whatever is Divine and depending solely on externals, is the alone decisive judgment of God. Before God, in His eyes, and according to His decree He is chosen out and acknowledged precious and excellent before many millions, (antithesis between ἐκλεκτόν and ἀποδεδοκιμασμένον) and had in great honour. Cf. 1Ti_5:21; Luk_9:35; Rom_16:13. Everything met in Him the exact fulfilment of what prophecy had foretold concerning Him, and God made even His resurrection the means of establishing His Messianic character. Peter alludes to Isa_28:16, and laying stress on His preciousness with God, omits several of the predicates used in that passage. His rejection, therefore, so far from being matter of reproach, is one of the chief signs by which Jesus may be known as the true Messiah.
1Pe_2:5. Be ye also built up, etc. οἰκοδομεἴσθε cf. Judges 20, to be taken as a Middle in a reflexive sense. Christ being so excellent a corner-stone, on which rests the entire spiritual temple of God, be ye also inserted therein. Such being built up is something very different from a few ephemeral or passing flights of emotion; it starts from a solid foundation, includes continued and systematic activity, and demands in particular that every one, even he who is firmly and closely inserted in Jesus, should suffer himself to be put in that place and there to be inserted as a member of the whole, which the will of the great Architect assigns to him. As living stones, forasmuch as you are living stones and in the regeneration, 1Pe_1:3; 1Pe_2:2; have put on spiritual life emanating from Christ, cf. Joh_5:26; Joh_11:25; Joh_10:28; Joh_14:19. Calov specifies the following points of comparison: (a) the building upon the foundation-stone. “The stones of the building cannot stand without the foundation-stone. We do not carry Him, but He carries us. If we stand and rely upon Him, we must also abide where He is.” Luther. (b) The hardness and firmness in order to resist all assaults of enemies and all storms. Bernard, Serm. 60, on the Song of Sol., says: “Raised on the Rock, I stand secure from the enemy and all calamities; the world shakes, the body oppresses me, the devil pursues me; but I do not fall, for I am founded on a firm rock.” (c) The working, grinding, polishing and fitting of the stones, (d) The joining together with particular reference to the tie of love, (e) The mutual supporting. The lower stone supports the upper, this again the lower and the side stone, as Gregory says in Hom. on Ezek.: “In the Holy Church each supports the other, and each is supported by the other.” Cf. the vision of the building of the Church triumphant in Hermæ Pastor, vis. 3.
A spiritual house, not apposition, but effect and end of the building. Grotius rightly observes: In the spiritual building, individual believers are both living stones with reference to the whole temple of the Church, and a spiritual house or a temple of God, but this is inapplicable to this passage, which evidently treats of the founding of a people of God, (1Pe_5:9). As a house is a whole, consisting of different parts, so is the Church of God; as one master rules in a house, so the Triune Jehovah rules in His temple; cf. Eph_2:22; 1Co_3:16; 2Co_6:16. Among believers each is not to aim at separating himself into a house by himself; they should be united in the commonwealth of God, and together should constitute a spiritual temple. It is called spiritual in opposition to the material temple, made with hands, and also because it is wrought and occupied by the Spirit.
For a holy priesthood, (Lachmann after Codd. A. B. C. reads εἰς ἱεράτευμα,—the end of building,) a holy community of priests. “Under the Old Covenant, Jehovah had His house and His priests, who served Him in His house; the Church fulfils both purposes under the New, being both His house and His holy priesthood.” Wiesinger. The expression alludes to Exo_19:6.—2Ch_29:11. “The Lord hath chosen you to stand before Him, to serve Him, and that ye should minister unto Him and burn incense.” This applies to all Christians. All believers of the New Testament are anointed priests by the Holy Ghost. The priesthood is called ἅγιον, because they are consecrated to God, cleansed by the blood of Christ and studious of a holy conversation. Their activity consists in offering spiritual sacrifice’s.
To offer up spiritual sacrifices, etc., Ἀναφέρειν to carry up to the altar; cf. 1Pe_2:24; Heb_7:27; Heb_13:15; Jam_2:21, elsewhere προσφέρειν, to take to God, Heb_5:7. These sacrifices are spiritual, in opposition to the animal sacrifices of the Old Testament, and correspond to the Being of God, who is a Spirit, and to the spiritual house in which they are offered; they are wrought by the Spirit of God, and must be spiritually offered. This spiritual sacrifice necessitates voluntary surrender to the service of God, and approaching Him spiritually; and consists above all things in that believers should, according to Rom_12:1, present to the service of their God and Saviour, their bodies with all its members and powers, eyes and ears, mouth and tongue, hands and feet, and themselves, with all they have and are, and that not only once at their first conversion, but daily, Luk_9:23. Again, as the burning of incense was connected with the sacrifices of the Old Testament, so the incense of prayer, Rev_8:3-4, and especially the lip-sacrifice of praise, Heb_13:15; Psa_50:14, are integral parts of the sacrifices of the New Testament. They moreover include the sacrifices of love and charity; if Christians gladly communicate their temporal possessions, seek their neighbours’ good at the loss of personal advantage, and are prepared to give their life for the brethren. 1Jn_3:16; Heb_13:16; Php_4:18. But since these sacrifices are always imperfect and affected by manifold infirmities, they cannot be acceptable to God unless offered through Him in whom God is perfectly pleased. Hence the annexed sentence, εὐπροσδέκτους, Θεῷ διὰ, which last word is not to be joined with ἀνενέγκα, but with εὐπροσδέκτους in the sense of taking through, through the mediation of Christ, that is, through His goodness, power, advocacy and merits, cf. Eph_1:6. [But, on the other hand, joining διὰ κ.τ.λ. with ἀνενέγκα is supported by the analogy of Heb_13:15; and preferred by Grotius, Aret., de Wette, Huther, Wiesinger and Alford, who consider the former construction inadequate to the weighty character of the words, and would seem to put them in the wrong place, seeing that not merely the acceptability, but the very existence and possibility of offering of those sacrifices, depends on the mediation of the great High Priest.—M.]
1Pe_2:6. Because also it is contained in Scripture.—The Apostle again returns to the figure of the living stone, and supports it by a free and somewhat abbreviated quotation from Isa_28:16.—περιέχει for περιέχεται as some verbs are used both in a reflexive and a passive sense. Winer, p. 267, 2d Eng. edition. Steiger adduces a passage from Josephus.
ἀκρογωνιαῖος λίθον, a corner-stone of the foundation which unites two walls. Similarly Christ also is the connecting link of the Old and New Testaments, of Jews and Gentiles; ἐκλεκτόν see 1Pe_2:4. In the prophetical passage, the primary reference appears to be to a king of the house of David, but the Spirit points to the Messiah, according to the all but unanimous opinion of ancient commentators; the New Testament also renders that opinion necessary. Isa_8:14, describes Jehovah Himself as a stone of stumbling to those who do not let Him be their fear; and at Mat_21:42, our Lord applies to Himself the words of Psa_118:22. ἐκλεκτόν, ἔντιμον is repeated by the Apostle in order to show how precious and valuable this corner-stone is to him.
ὁ πιστεύων; the idea of confiding predominates here; hence the preposition ἐπί instead of εἰς or ἐν. In Hebrew הֶאֱמִין to build on something, to stand fast. The passage Isa_28:16, reads, “he that believeth shall not make haste,” (i. e., fly like a coward who throws away his arms.) Peter expresses a more general sense, he shall not be ashamed; his hopes shall not make him ashamed. “The precious corner-stone assures an eternal state of grace and salvation.” Roos. It was laid at the incarnation, and especially at the resurrection of Jesus.
1Pe_2:7. To you then, who believe, is the honour, etc.—The sense of ἡ τιμή is determined by the antithesis to the preceding καταισχυνθῇ, and at the same time refers back to ἔντιμος, while the part of unbelievers is nothing but shame, faith is to you honour and glory, cf. 1Pe_1:7; 1Pe_2:9. This dignity is farther enlarged upon at 1Pe_2:9 but the relation of unbelievers to Christ has first to be discussed.
ἀπειθεῖν relates as much to promises and facts as to precepts, cf. Heb_3:18-19; Heb_4:2-3; Heb_4:6; Joh_3:36; Act_14:2; Act_17:5; Rom_2:8; Rom_10:21; Rom_11:30; the contrast in this place gives prominence to the former relation.
λίθον, literally taken from the LXX. version of Psa_118:22. Here also λίθος is in the Accusative. This case may have been retained with reference to τίθημι in 1Pe_2:6. (Lachmann reads λίθος.)
οἱ οἰκοδομοῦντες, the chiefs, the dignitaries of the Jewish state are the builders, who tear up the foundation. “Whenever we see the dignitaries rise against Christ, we will call to mind the prediction of David, that the stone is rejected by the builders.” Calvin, cf. Rom_11:8; 1Th_2:15-16; 1Co_1:23.—οὑτος, emphatically just this one and no other.
εἰς expresses the destination and development towards the foundation-stone. Since His resurrection, He stands as the rock supporting His Church, but as a stone of stumbling and rock of offence to unbelievers, according to Isa_8:14.
1Pe_2:8. A stone of stumbling—who stumble.—πρόσκομμα, a collision producing hurt or injury, נֶגֶף.—σκάνδαλον, properly the catch in the trap, holding the bait, then the trap itself; figuratively, whatever causes to fall, seduces and involves men in sin and calamity. The running and stumbling against a thing is followed by falling. Ruin as the consequence of unbelief stands in contrast with the honour in store for believers, cf. Luk_2:34; Luk_20:17; Mat_21:42-44; Rom_9:32. The meaning is more than mere subjective taking offence and being vexed, as the sequel shows, not=ἀπειθεῖν.—οἱ προσκόπτουσιν, relates to ἀπειθοῦντες, who stumble while and because they do not believe the word.—προσκόπτουσιν must not be joined with λόγῳ, for it has already its object—i. e., Christ. Grotius erroneously confines himself to the temporal punishment of the Jews, whereas the reference is plain to whatever misery and ruin follows the rejection of Christ.
Whereunto they were also appointed.—εἰς ὃ καὶ ἐτέθησαν relates to the foregoing principal verb, to προσκόπτειν. Grotius rightly: “Unbelievers are appointed for this very thing that they stumble, endure the most grievous punishment for their unbelief.” τίθημι applied to the temporal acts of God, not to His eternal decrees and ordinances, cf. Joh_15:16; Act_20:28; 1Ti_2:7; 2Ti_1:11; 2Pe_2:6; Psa_66:9 in LXX.; 1Th_5:9. It denotes placing, setting in a definite situation, in certain circumstances, which often carry great dangers along with great disadvantages. Roos observes: “Had those unbelievers died in infancy, or had they been born deaf, or among ignorant heathen, they could not thus stumble. Had Caiaphas, Judas Iscariot and others been born several centuries sooner, they could not have so wofully sinned against the Son of God. Man is not wronged in being thus set among inestimable benefits and awful dangers; he is only to seize the benefits, to believe the word; if he is unwilling to do so, his condemnation is perfectly just.” Having once voluntarily surrendered themselves to unbelief, their stumbling is neither accidental nor optional, but it contains besides the natural connection also a Divine and inevitable arrangement: “He that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption,” Gal_6:8. Yea, God punishes sin with sin, unbelief with unbelief, if men wantonly repel grace and love darkness more than light. With this explanation we reject the expositions of the Calvinists, e. g., that of Aretius; “Satan and their native evil have set them not to believe,” and that of Beza: “That some are rejected not because of their foreseen sins, but because of the good pleasure of the Divine will.” Cf. on the other hand, Rom_10:11-18; Rom_16:26; 1Ti_2:4; Tit_2:11. The artificial exposition of Cornelius a Lapide is equally inadmissible, “They also were set (positi) to believe in Christ, but they refuse faith, just because they will not believe.” The parallelism, already noticed by Gerhard, ought not to be passed over, that God sets (appoints) Christ as the foundation and corner-stone of the τιμή for believers; while unbelievers are set (appointed) to stumble at this corner-stone, which is to them a stone of stumbling, vide Weiss.
1Pe_2:9. But ye are a…people for acquisition.—With reference to 1Pe_2:5, the Apostle describes the glory of the Christian state as contrasted with the lot of unbelievers, both because of their guilt and in accordance with the Divine appointment. The first and last of the predicates used are taken from Isa_43:20, in LXX.; the others refer to Exo_19:6. γένος, denotes a whole united by natural relationship, community of origin among several parts of a people. Applied to the Christian Church, it signifies the totality of those begotten of the same incorruptible seed, and having one Spiritual Father, 1Pe_1:3; 1Pe_1:23; 1Jn_5:1.
ἐκλεκτόν, similar to the Jewish Church of the posterity of Abraham and Jacob, the Christian Church is a company chosen out of the great mass of humanity, destined to salvation and glory and resting on a foundation stone which is also ἐκλεκτός, 1Pe_2:4. They constitute a royal priesthood just because they belong to the one family of the children of the great God. The Hebrew has “a kingdom of priests,” wherein God the King governs and animates all things. The priestly character is, however, the leading idea. You all may freely draw near to God, sacrificing, praying, and blessing, cf. Rev_1:6; Rev_5:10. But because you have community of life with Him, and should be the image of Him who rules at the right hand of the Majesty, 1Pe_3:22, you enjoy in Him also the prerogatives of royalty and government. Even now you must no longer serve the world, with Christ you may overcome the flesh, the world and the devil; your position as rulers will hereafter become more manifest to yourselves and to the world. In you shall be completely fulfilled what in the faithful of Israel could be realized only in feeble beginnings. Cf. Isa_61:6; Psa_148:14. Grotius quotes the saying of Cicero that it is a royal thing to be the servant of no passion.
ἔθνος ἅγιον. As Israel was, among the many nations of the world, separated and consecrated to God, Exo_19:6; Deu_7:6, so are you in a much higher sense a holy congregation in the midst of this sin-stained world, you are cleansed by the blood of Christ, sanctified by the Spirit of God, 1Pe_1:2, and bidden to strive indefatigably for holiness by renouncing the world and growing in brotherly love, 1Pe_1:22.
λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν=עַם םְגֻלָּה, a people acquired for possession, is the last title of honour, Exo_19:5; Deu_7:6; Mal_3:17. Tit_2:14; Isa_43:21. ὤν may be understood. λαός as exposed to ἔθνος may be designed to give prominence to the ideas of subordination to the King and of classification according to office and station, while ἔθνος suggests the idea of external relations and national habits. Some take περιποίησις actively for acquiring, as in 1Th_5:9; 2Th_2:14; Heb_10:39, in the sense of the people destined, to acquire the glorious inheritance of God; but the reference to the Old Testament and the absence of an object in the passage under notice, which elsewhere uniformly accompanies it, forbids such an interpretation. As God had acquired the people of Israel by taking them from the Egyptian house of bondage, so He has acquired the Church of the New Testament by the blood of his Son.—Following Isa_43:20, the Apostle next specifies the end for which God did choose them as His own and accord to them such high immunities, not that they should seek therein their own glory, but that they should glorify God. Cf. Mat_5:16. The construction is similar to that of ἀνενέγκαι in 1Pe_2:5.
That ye should publish, etc.—ἐξαγγείλητε=to publish forth, to tell out, to give wide-spread publicity to what takes place within, cf. Tit_2:14; Eph_2:10. This must take place by word and deed, not only by called teachers but by the entire community of believers.
The virtues.—ἀρετή, although of frequent use in the writings of the Greek philosophers, occurs in the New Testament, besides this passage, only in Php_4:8; 2Pe_1:3; 2Pe_1:5. The word used in the parallel passage of the Old Testament is תְהִלָּתִי, my praise, cf. Isa_48:8; Isa_48:12 in LXX. The ἀρεταί of God are, as Gerhard rightly explains, those attributes of God which shine forth from the work of our free calling and the whole contrivance of our salvation. The connection suggests more particularly His Omnipotence which removes every obstacle, and His mercy which condescends to the most degraded slave of sin. The last attribute, in particular, was expressed in the appearing of Christ. Believing congregations should be both the trumpets and mirrors thereof.
καλεῖν, elsewhere applied to the call of the Apostolate, Mat_4:21; Mar_1:19; Rom_1:1; Gal_1:15; 1Co_1:1; then to invitations to enter into the kingdom of God, Luk_5:32; 1Co_1:9; Rev_19:9; Mat_22:14; Mat_9:13; Luk_14:24; Luk_5:32; Rom_8:30; Rom_9:12; Rom_9:24; 1Co_1:7; 1Th_4:7; 1Th_5:24; 2Th_2:14; that is, the kingdom of grace and glory. 1Th_2:12; 1Ti_6:12; Heb_9:15; 1Pe_5:10. This invitation is mostly effected by the preaching of the Gospel, but sometimes also by God addressing men personally and calling them by their names, Gen_12:1; Exo_31:2; Isa_13:3; Act_9:4, and by the efficient working of His Spirit in their hearts. God the Father, the God of all grace is here, as elsewhere, He who calls, 1Co_1:9; Gal_1:15; 1Pe_5:10. He thus realizes in time (in this present life) the antetemporal (the eternal) act of election.
The darkness is, according to Flacius, the kingdom of darkness and that most sad condition which belongs to all men before they come to Christ. It comprises both ignorance of God and the greatest unrighteousness, the slavery of Satan, and lastly, all kinds of punishment, the curse and wrath of God, and, we may add, the anxious unrest and torment of conscience. This figure being applied to the Jews in the Old Testament, Psa_107:10; Isa_9:2, affords no clue, that Peter was addressing former pagans. Opposed to darkness is the wonderful light of God, who Himself is Light as to His Being. It translates believers into His holy and blessed communion of light; their understanding is therein enlightened, their will sanctified and their conscience filled with peace. It is a wonderful Light as to origin, nature and effect, since it makes of sinners the children of God. “It discovers wonderful things and cannot be seen by the worldly-minded.” Roos. “It is wonderful, just as to one coming out of long darkness the light of day would be wonderful.” de Wette.
1Pe_2:10. Which in time past—but now compassionated.—The remembrance of what they had once been, must deepen the sense of gratitude on the part of the readers of the Epistle. Peter cites freely Hos_2:23, where, of the people in their then condition, it is said that they were not the people of God, but that in the days of Messiah, God would say unto them, “Thou art my people.” The passage in Hosea manifestly refers to Israel. The prophecy met its fulfilment whenever a Jewish congregation joined Christianity. If the meaning were the substitution of a new Christian people, a people either composed of Jews and Gentiles, or mainly and by way of preference of Gentiles—for the people of Israel—those promises would either still remain unfulfilled, or be fulfilled in a way that needed, after the manner of Paul, to be more clearly defined and substantiated. Οὐ λαός not only no people of God but the very opposite. Ἐλεηθέν τες. “The Aorist denotes the historical fact, the act of Divine compassion to have really taken place.” Steiger.—οὐκ ἠλεημένοι, a long time before they had, under the Divine judgments, been given over to sin and its fruit of corruption.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. It would be erroneous to represent the nature of regeneration as a state out of which whatever is good is spontaneously flowing, as water flows from a strong fountain; the new man needs constant growth in all his powers. The light of his knowledge must deepen and increase; his will must become more firm and decided; he must grow in love, hope, patience and all other virtues, Heb_6:1; Eph_4:15; 1Th_4:1; 1Th_4:10; Php_3:12. This necessitates exhortation on the part of others, and the regenerate must (of course in the spirit of the Gospel, for the flesh is ever warring against the spirit) coerce himself to do good. “A Christian is in process of being, not already completed. Consequently, a Christian is not a Christian, that is, one who thinks that he is already a Christian, whereas he is to become one, is nothing. For we strive to get to heaven, but are not yet in heaven.” Luther.
2. Christianity is not satisfied with partial and superficial improvements; it demands inflexible severity toward the old man, and insists upon it that impurity in every shape and form shall be exposed and struggled with, 1Pe_2:1.—The progress of the Christian life corresponds every way to its beginning. He that in a first repentance has been awakened from spiritual sleep, must every day rise anew from sleep; he that has put on Christ in faith, must daily put Him on more thoroughly. This is necessary because the old man exists alongside the new, although the dominion of the former be broken.
3. The means whereby the new man is nourished and furthered is none other than that to which he owes his existence. He must grow out of (ἐκ) God, His spirit, and His word. It is a most dangerous opinion for any to hold that he has inwardly appropriated so much of the Divine word as to be able to dispense with the outward word. He that despises this may soon be punished by God, in that He will so effectually deprive him of His light and strength as to induce him to regard as Divine revelations his own vain imaginings and foolish dreams.—Wiesinger says: “The Christian may measure his love of God by his love of the word of God; it is his personal experience of the love of God that draws him to the word, and what he seeks is an ever-increasing, ever-deepening experience of the χρηστότης of the Lord. Inquiry led by such an impulse of personal communion with the Lord contains within itself its own rule and corrective, a power which gathers together into one centre of life all the varying phases of the Scriptures, and guards them from being shattered and alienated.”
4. A spiritual house, a temple, must also have a priestly people, 1Pe_2:4. The priestly consecration of the New Testament consists in that we seize by the self-surrender of true faith the true sin-offering and atonement made on Golgotha, and offered and presented to us in the means of grace. First comes the sin-offering, then the burnt-offering, then the thank-offering; hence none can live in the service and to the praise of God unless he first have seized, by the true burnt-offering of faith, the true sin-offering of Christ, and unless his whole life become (working outwardly from within) one whole thank-offering, one whole and undivided act of worship. The real burnt-offering is thenceforth repentance and faith, wherein man dies daily with the right sin-offering of Christ, and daily revives, and suffers himself and his whole life to be possessed of God, by being refined, purified and consumed in the fire of the Holy Ghost.” Kliefoth. The general priesthood of Christians applies only to converted, believing and living Christians, and implies that there is no class or state of Christians privileged with exclusive mediation of salvation. Luther has powerfully brought out this doctrine in connection with justification, and Spener propounded it anew. But God has likewise instituted for the church an office for the administration of the means of grace, a clearly defined service to be committed to certain persons, which is evident from 2Co_3:11; Eph_4:11; 1Co_12:28; Mat_28:19-20; Jam_3:1; 1Co_14:5.
5. The Divine pleasure rests on the spiritual sacrifices of the priests of the New Testament, only for the sake of Christ; where this truth is sincerely held, neither self-righteousness, nor despondency, its twin sister, can maintain their ground.
6. The nature of Christ reflects itself in believers. They are, 1Pe_2:5, stones, temples, priests. Every stone is, as it were, a temple by itself; many houses of God constitute the One Church of Christ.
7. Holy Scripture is silent concerning the predestination of individuals to unbelief, sin and damnation, although it teaches that God has (temporally) concluded all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all, Rom_11:32.
8. With the Reformers, we should draw the true idea of the Christian Church from 1Pe_2:9, although it applies only to a small fraction of the degenerate Christendom of the present. The ungodly are only in appearance and name, not in truth and in deed, members of the Church.
9. We learn from 1Pe_2:9 that there is no antithesis between the New Testament and the Old, provided the latter be treated according to its kernel and substance; Peter comprises both as a unit, but at the same time gives uniform prominence to the spirituality and intrinsicality of Christianity, and specifies a spiritual house, spiritual sacrifices and living stones; so that the Old Testament is represented by him as the Divinely appointed threshold and porch of the New. The province of bringing out the contrast between the Old Testament and the New was left to St. Paul.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
1Pe_2:1. Which are the things that kill brotherly love and ought therefore earnestly to be fought against and laid aside?—Growth in Christian perfection: (a) its soil; (b) its necessity; (c) its means.—Love of the Divinely given means of grace both the mark and task of the new man.—The foundation, on which all Christian exhortations are resting.—The true Church is the mother, nourishing her children with the pure milk of the Divine word.—Jesus, the sinner’s cordial and delight in life, suffering and dying.—Christ, the living stone, ever living and animating His people.—Christians are living stones in the building of the kingdom of God: 1. What does it mean? 2 What is necessary to it? 3. What advantage does it bring?—The Christian state a holy priesthood: 1. Its dignity; 2. Its duties.—The two-fold destination of the Church’s corner-stone.—Of the vessels of wrath set (prepared) for condemnation.—The chosen generation of the children of God: 1. Their election; 2. Their destination.—Only God’s people is a people indeed.
Starke:—The punishment of sin is affected by regeneration, for this must supply us with the ability to avoid evil.—He that betrays attachment to some one darling sin to which natural naughtiness, habit, or manner of life render him peculiarly liable, gives proof that he is not yet in earnest as to his sanctification.—Sin is an arch-deceiver; let every man take care not to be deceived, and not to regard evil and harmful as good and harmless.—The longer and the more we partake of the sweet milk of the Gospel, the more do we increase in the spirit.—Faith gives us some taste of the grace, mercy and loving-kindness of God, Psa_34:9.—He that tastes the goodness of God must show it in loving converse with his neighbour.—Well built on Christ; who can destroy this temple? Mat_16:18. In this temple offer diligently the incense of your prayer and sacrifice.—Good works are well pleasing to God, not because of their perfection, but because of Christ the Beloved, for they are wrought in God, Joh_3:21.—Consider the cause and the order of salvation; Christ is the cause, faith the order; both must go together or salvation is impossible, Joh_3:36.—Those who reject Christ lose their life, but do neither hurt Him nor His Gospel any more than a well-secured corner-stone can be hurt by those who stumble at it.—The great glory of believers:—they have consolation and joy in life and death.—The unconverted are abominable to God, the converted precious and acceptable.
Lisco:—Sincere repentance: (a) its nature; (b) its motive.—The blessed communion with Christ Jesus.—The exalted dignity of the Christian Church.—The Christian’s life of faith.—The eternally immovable foundation of the kingdom of heaven.—Christ stands in a contrasted relation to man.—The Apostle’s exhortation that we should build up ourselves.
Leighton:
1Pe_2:21; 1Pe_2:2. The apostle requires these two things: 1. The innocency of children; 2. The appetite of children.—Epictetus says: “Every thing hath two handles.” The art of taking things by the better side, which charity always doth, would save much of those janglings and heart-burnings that so abound in the world.—There is none comes to the school of Christ, suiting the philosopher’s word, ut fabula rasa, as blank paper to receive His doctrine, but, on the contrary, all scribbled and blurred with such base habits as these—malice, hypocrisy, envy, etc.—These two are necessary conditions of good nourishment: 1. That the food be good and wholesome; 2. That the inward constitution of them that use it be so, too.—Iisdem alimur ex quibus constamus.—Pure and unmixed, as milk drawn immediately from the breast; the pure word of God without the mixture, not only of error, but of all other composition of vain, unprofitable subjects or affected human eloquence, such as become not the majesty and gravity of God’s word, 1Pe_4:11.—“Desire the sincere milk”: 1. It should be natural; 2. earnest; 3. constant.
1Pe_2:3. The free grace of God was given to be tasted in the promises, before the coming of Christ in the flesh, but being accomplished in His coming, then was the sweetness of grace made more sensible; then was it more fully broached and let out to the elect world, when He was pierced on the cross and His blood poured forth for our redemption. Through those holes of his wounds may we draw and taste that the Lord is gracious, says St. Augustin.—“If ye have tasted.” There must be, 1. a firm believing the truth of the promises wherein the free grace of God is expressed and exhibited to us; 2. a particular application or attraction of that grace to ourselves, which is as the drawing those breasts of consolation, Isa_66:11, namely, the promises contained in both Testaments; 3. there is a sense of the sweetness of that peace being applied or drawn into the soul, and that is properly this taste.
1Pe_2:4-5; 1Pe_2:1. The nature of the building: It is a spiritual building; having this privilege that it is tota in toto et tota in qualibet parte. The Hebrew for the word for palace and temple is one. 2. The materials of it. 3. The structure or way of building it.—First coming and then built up.—As these stones are built on Christ by faith, so they are cemented one to another by love.—“A holy priesthood”: 1. The office; 2. The service of that office; 3. The success of that service.—[Apparent paradox: God claims the heart whole and yet broken.—M.]
1Pe_2:6. In these words are five things: 1. This foundation stone; 2. The laying of it; 3. The building on it; 4. The firmness of this building; 5. The greatness and excellence of the whole work.—What Seneca says of wisdom is true of faith: “Puto multos potuisse ad sapientiam pervenire, nisi putassent se jam pervenisse.”
1Pe_2:9; 1Pe_2:1. The estate of Christians; 2. Its opposition to the state of unbelievers; 3. The end of it. ‘Generation’: They are of one nation, belonging to the same blessed land of promise, all citizens of the new Jerusalem, yea, all children of the same family, whereof Jesus Christ, the root of Jesse, is the stock, who is the great king and the great High-priest, and thus they are a royal priesthood.—They resemble in their spiritual state the Levitical priesthood: 1. In their consecration: (a) they were washed, cf. Rev_1:5; (b) The washing was accompanied by sacrifice [Christ’s blood was shed in sacrifice]; (c) They were anointed [Christians are anointed with the gifts of the Spirit]; (d) They were clothed in pure garments, Psa_132:9; (e) They had offerings put into their hands. 2. In their services: (a) They had charge of the sanctuary [Christians have charge of their hearts]; (b) They were to bless the people [the prayers of Christians convey blessings to the world]. 3. In their course of life: [The life of Christians is regulated by a code of holy laws.—M.]
[Baxter:
1Pe_2:2. Alas what a multitude of dwarfs has Christ, that are but like infants, though they have numbered ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, or even sixty years of spiritual life.—M.]
[John Glas:
1Pe_2:9. “There is now no more any place on earth where the whole Church assembles for worship; but they all assemble in the heavenly Jerusalem, where Jesus is, the antitype of that on earth, in which the Church of Israel assembled, and toward which they worshipped from all corners of the land. Here they on earth have their conversation, Php_3:20; and unto that place the tribes of God go up now worshipping God, all serving in newness of the Spirit; and there are no worshippers now but spiritual worshippers. Thus there is an end put to all controversies about earthly holy places and temples of God made with hands.”—M.]
[1Pe_2:2. The early Christians administered milk and honey, which was the ordinary food of infants, to such as were newly received into the Church; showing them by this sign that by their baptism they were born again, and bound to manifest the simplicity and innocence of infants in their life and conversation.—M.]
[Mosheim:
1Pe_2:8. “The stone of stumbling and rock of offence,” as the prophet affirms, is the Lord of Hosts Himself; but this “stone of stumbling and rock of offence,” as asserted by the Apostle, is no other than Christ, the same stone which the builders refused. Therefore Christ is the Lord of Hosts Himself. If the Scripture, thus compared with itself, be drawn up into an argument, the conclusion may indeed be denied, and so may the whole Bible, but it cannot be answered.”—M.]
[Jones of Nayland:—“Whereunto they were also appointed.” Not appointed to be disobedient, but appointed, since they would be disobedient, to take their own course and the consequences of it; to stumble and fall at difficulties, of which they would easily have seen the proper solution, and so got over them unhurt, had they but modestly begged, and dutifully followed, the Divine illumination.”—M.]
[Abp. Secker:—Query: “What is the origin of the metaphor ‘living stones’, as applied to Christians?”—M.]
[Clarke suggests a common Hebrew root בָּנָה to build of בֵּן a son, בַּת a daughter, בֵּיח a house and אֶבֶן a stone. A house (בִּית) is built of stones (אַבָנִים), a house or family, also called בֵּית consists of sons (בָּנִים) and daughters (בָּנוֹת). The house of God is the Church which rests on Christ, the Living Stone, and Christians are members of Christ, drawing their life from Him and resting on Him, and therefore living stones.—M.].
Footnotes:
[1]1Pe_2:1. [ καταλαλίας = slanderings, so German; backbiting; Wiclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, Geneva; detractions, Reims.—M.]
[2] 1Pe_2:1. [ἐπιποθήσατε = long, yearn for, so German; covet, Wiclif.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. *πᾶσαν καταλαλίαν.—M.]
[3] 1Pe_2:2. [λογικὸν ἄδολον γάλα = spiritual (Alford) guileless milk. Many important MSS. add after αὐξηθῆτε, εἰς σωτηρίαν.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. αὐξη. θ. εἰς σωτηρίαν—M.]
[4]1Pe_2:3. [εἴπερ=if, otherwise, German; if, that is, Alford.—M.]
[5] 1Pe_2:3. [χρηστὸς=good, Geneva; sweet, Wiclif, Reims, Vulgate; pleasant, Tyndale.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. *εἰ—M.]
[6]1Pe_2:4. [προσερχόμενοι=nighing, Wiclif; approaching, Reims, Germ.—M.]
[7]1Pe_2:4. [παρὰ Θεῷ=with God, i. e., before God.—M.]
[8]1Pe_2:5. [οἰκοδομεῖσθε, Imper.=be ye built up.—M.]
[9]1Pe_2:5. [λίθοι ζῶντͅες=living stones.—M.]
[10] 1Pe_2:5. [διὰ=through, Germ.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. ἐποικοδ.—πνεύματος (**πνευματικ.)—ισ—Θεῷ without Article.—M.]
[11]1Pe_2:6. [διότι=for the which cause, Reims; because, Alford.—M.]
[12] 1Pe_2:6. [καταισχυνθῇ=ashamed, Germ., Tyndale, Geneva.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. ἐν γρ.—*ἐπ̓ αὐτόν.—M.]
[13] 1Pe_2:7. [To you, then, who believe, is the honour,—so, substantially, Wiclif, Reims, Vulgate, Germ., Alford. See note below.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. *ἡμῖν—ἀπιστοῦσιν—**λιθοσ.—M.]
[14] 1Pe_2:8. [And a stone of stumbling and rock of offence,—at which they stumble, Germ.—who stumble, Alford—being disobedient to the word, de Wette, Alford; who believe not on the word, Germ. At any rate ἀπειθοῦντες not προςκόπτουσι belongs to τῷ λόγῳ.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. **οἱ καὶ προσκόπτ.—M.]
[15]1Pe_2:9. [λαὸς εἰς περιποίησιν=a people for acquisition; of purchasing, Wiclif; of purchase, Reims; acquisitionis, Vulgate.—M.]
[16]1Pe_2:9. [ἐξαγγείλητε=publish, literally, tell out; Alford.—M.]
[17]1Pe_2:9. [τὰς ἀρετὰς=the virtues, Luther, Vulgate; the perfection, Kistemaker.—M.]
[18]1Pe_2:9. [εἰς=to, unto, rather than into, German.—M.]
[19]1Pe_2:9. [Θαυμαστὸν=wonderful, German.—M.]
[20]1Pe_2:10. [No people, German.—M.]
[21]1Pe_2:10. [Uncompassionated—compassionated, Alford.—οὐκ marks contrariety, unpitied and pitied.—M.]
[22]1Pe_2:10. [Uncompassionated—compassionated, Alford.—οὐκ marks contrariety, unpitied and pitied.—M.]
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain e. Exhortation to growth in spiritual life, 1Pe_2:1-8.
e. Exhortation to growth in spiritual life, 1Pe_2:1-8.
1. Wherefore—Because in the new birth (1Pe_1:23) you have begun a new life, to which the things named are antagonistic.
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Laying aside—Aorist, having laid aside, once for all, at conversion, these deadly foes of love. Malice is disposed to injure another, or to rejoice in his harm; guile is deceitful and insincere; hypocrisies counterfeit and put forth the seeming for the being; envies are displeased at and depreciate the ability, prosperity, performance, or reputation of others; evil-speakings insinuate, defame, backbite, and carry injurious tales. Each of this horrid family springs out of those before it. They are, as a foul garment, put off.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain 1. Wherefore laying aside] The sequence of thought goes…
1. Wherefore laying aside] The sequence of thought goes on, as is seen in the “new-born babes” of the next verse, from the thought of the “regeneration” of believers expressed in chap. 1Pe_1:3; 1Pe_1:23. As entering on a new and purer life they are to “lay aside” (compare the use of the kindred noun in connexion with baptism in chap. 1Pe_3:21) the evil that belongs to the old. As far as the list of evils is concerned, they point, especially in the “hypocrisies and evil speakings,” to the besetting sins of the Jewish rather than the Gentile character, as condemned by our Lord (Matthew 23 et al.) and St James (Jas_3:4), and so confirm the view which has been here taken, that the Epistle was throughout addressed mainly to Jewish converts.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain (1) Wherefore.—That is, Because the Pauline teaching is correct…
(1) Wherefore.—That is, Because the Pauline teaching is correct which brings the Gentiles up to the same level with the Jews. It may be observed that this newly enunciated principle is called by St. Peter in the previous verse of the last chapter, a “gospel,” or piece of good news, for all parties.
Laying aside.—This implies that before they had been wrapped up in these sins. There had been “malice” (i.e., ill will put into action) on the part of these Hebrew Christians against their Gentile brethren, and “guile,” and “hypocrisies,” and “jealousies,” which are all instances of concealed malice. Of these three, the first plots, the second pretends not to plot, and the third rejoices to think of the plot succeeding. The word for “all evil speakings” is literally, all talkings down—this is “malice” in word. Archbishop Leighton well says, “The Apostles sometimes name some of these evils, and sometimes other of them; but they are inseparable, all one garment, and all comprehended under that one word (Eph_4:22), ‘the old man,’ which the Apostle there exhorts to put off; and here it is pressed as a necessary evidence of this new birth, and furtherance of their spiritual growth, that these base habits be thrown away, ragged filthy habits, unbeseeming the children of God.” All these vices (natural vices to the Jewish mind) are contrasted with the “unfeigned (literally, un-hypocritical) brotherly kindness” of 1Pe_1:22.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain Wherefore laying aside. Those who would wear the white…
Wherefore laying aside. Those who would wear the white robe of regeneration must lay aside the filthy garments (Zec_3:3) of the old carnal life. So St. Paul bids us put off the old man and put on the Eph_4:22, Eph_4:24; Col_3:8, Col_3:10; comp. also Rom_13:14, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ." The metaphor would be more striking when, at baptism, the old dress was laid aside, and the white chrisom was put on. St. Paul connects the putting on of Christ with baptism in Gal_3:27, and St. Peter, when speaking of baptism inqesiv) 1Pe_3:21, uses the substantive (ajpo) corresponding to the word here rendered "laying aside" (ajpoqemenoi). All malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil-speakings. The sins mentioned here are all offences against that "unfeigned love of the brethren" which formed the subject of St. Peter"s exhortation in the latter part of 1Pe
1. St. Augustine, quoted here by most commentators, says, "Malitia malo delectatur alieno; invidia bone cruciatur alieno; dolus duplicat; adulatio duplicat linguam; detrectatio vulnerat famam" (comp.; Eph_4:22-31) the close resemblance between the two passages proves St. Peter"s knowledge of the Epistle to the Ephesians.
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HOMILETICS. Vers. 1-10.
The regenerate life.
I ITS GROWTH.
1. What must be shunned. St. Paul bids us work out our own salvation. The new birth is the beginning; that comes from God from his free grace. "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." But the new man must grow; and that growth is not spontaneous; it will not evolve itself without effort from the" incorruptible seed." Progress, growth in grace, requires earnest prayer, watchfulness, constant self-denial. St. Peter bids us "grow in grace". (2Pe_3:18) We do not bid a plant to grow; we watch its growth, we assist it. But Holy Scripture bids the Christian grow; the commandment implies the power. Our Father doth not mock us with precepts which we cannot obey. And growth in free agents implies effort. They must avoid all pernicious influences, everything which might check the growth of the precious germ. Especially they must avoid all offences against the law of love; for love is the very pulse of the regenerate life; these who are born again of the incorruptible seed must love one another with a pure heart fervently. There can be no such things as malice and guile and envy in the heart wherein the holy seed abideth; for these things come of Satan; they have the taint of hell. Christians must not speak evil of one another; it is Satan who is the accuser of the brethren. Christians must be true and real. The Lord Jesus hates hypocrisy; he condemned it sternly in the Pharisees; it is more hateful still in those who are called by his holy Name. The Christian must lay aside all these evil things; he must strip them off. They are the garments of the old man; he must put on the new.
1. What must be desired. "The sincere milk of the Word," the spiritual nourishment of the soul. They who cherish malice and envy in their hearts have no appetite for the heavenly food. They who have not holy love within themselves cannot desire the Word of him who is Love. But all who answer to the apostle"s description will long for it. Those to whom he wrote had not been Christians very tong; some of them probably only a very short time they were new-born babes. But the true Christian will always regard himself as a mere child in Christ; he will feel what little progress he has made in spiritual growth; and, feeling this, he will long for spiritual nourishment. The Word of God is the food of the soul; it is the suitable food, the food divinely provided for the soul, as milk is for infants. It is pure, unadulterated. The soul that desires it will assimilate it, will grow by its nourishing influence unto salvation, unto the measure of the stature of Christ. The Christian will desire the Word, that he may grow, thereby; not simply for present pleasure and excitement, not simply for knowledge, or for facility in preaching and theological controversy; but above all
2. things, that he may grow thereby. The Word of God is sweet to hear, knowledge is precious, religious eloquence is a great gift; but this pleasure and this knowledge are little worth in comparison with growth in holiness of heart and life. The Scriptures are able to make us wise; the wisdom which we should seek there is that wisdom which cometh from above, which is unto salvation.
3. What leads us to desire it. Experience, the taste of its sweetness. The psalmist says, "How sweet are thy words to my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" And in another psalm, which St. Peter quotes here, we are invited to taste and see that the Lord is good." His Word is sweet, but it derives its sweetness from him whose Word it is. We do not realize the sweetness of the Word of God till we have felt something of the sweetness of the Savior"s presence. For he himself, who is in the highest sense the Word of God, is the true food of the soul. He bids us feed on him by faith; he giveth food and drink to the soul that hungereth and thirsteth after righteousness; and that food and drink, which is himself, he giveth in the blessed sacrament and in the daily life of faith to those who lift up their hearts to him with earnest longing and strong desire. Those who have known how gracious the Lord is will long more and more for increasing nearness unto him.
II ITS CENTER, WHICH IS CHRIST; AND OUR RELATIONS TO HIM.
1. The Church is a spiritual temple, of which Christ is the chief Cornerstone. The whole universe is in a sense the temple of God: he fills it with his presence. The heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain him; he inhabiteth eternity. Yet he vouchsafed to manifest his presence in the ancient temple it was" the habitation of his house, the place where his honor dwelt." But that temple was the figure of a holier temple. God is a Spirit; his temple in the highest sense must be a spiritual house. It is built up of living stones, Christian men and women, living with the life of Christ, who come, drawn by the attracting force of love (as, the fable said, the stones of Thebes were drawn by the lyre of Amphion) to the one living Stone which was once disallowed of men, but is chosen of God and precious, and range themselves, or rather are built up by the power of the Holy Spirit, as chosen stones upon the one Stone first chosen, which is at once the Foundation on which the building rests, and the chief Cornerstone that holds the walls together, so that the whole building fitly joined and Compacted in all its parts groweth unto a holy temple in the Lord. The whole building is a temple; so in a true sense is each living stone therein, for the bodies of Christians are temples of the Holy Ghost; (1Co_6:19) but in the fullest sense the whole Christian Church is the spiritual temple of God it is a corporate unity, knit and framed together into one building by the chief Cornerstone, the principle of unity on which it rests, which binds its various parts into one whole. The closer Christians are bound by spiritual union with that one Corner-stone, the closer will they be bound together in the communion of saints, though they may be set as living stones in widely distant parts of the spiritual building. And God dwelleth in this temple, which is the holy Catholic Church, the whole congregation of Christian people throughout the world. He fills it, all and in every part, with his sacred presence. For this temple is very precious in his sight; each living stone is precious, and precious above all price is the chief Cornerstone which holds the whole together. "For this purpose chiefly did he make the world, that in it he might raise this spiritual building for himself to dwell in forever. And from eternity he knew what the dimensions and frame and materials of it should be. The continuance of this present world, as now it is, is but for the service of this work, like the scaffolding about it; and therefore, when the spiritual building shall be fully completed, all the present frame of things in the world and in the Church itself shall be taken away, and appear no more" (Leighton).
2. The Church is a spiritual priesthood. As Christ is in a transcendent sense the Temple of God, and yet Christians individually and the Christian Church as a whole are temples also through his grace, so Christ himself is the one great High Priest; but though that high priesthood is his alone and incommunicable, yet his saints thank him because he has made the Christian Church to be a holy priesthood, and individual Christians to be priests unto God. Under the ancient Law the priests only entered into the temple, the high priest alone into the holy of holies, and that but once a year; but now the veil which hid the holiest place is rent in twain, and all true Christians may enter as priests into the immediate presence of God, "having boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus" Heb_10:19). Through him (Eph_2:18) we have access to the Father, we come having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, having with us the blood of sprinkling, pleading the atoning power of the one great Sacrifice. For as the Lord Jesus is Temple and Priest, so is he also the one true Sacrifice. Yet we, if we are priests, must have something to offer: "Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?" St. Peter tells us that our offerings must be spiritual sacrifices. Such sacrifices are the prayers of the saints. "Let my prayer be set forth before thee as the incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice". (Psa_141:2) These prayers are presented before the throne in "golden vials full of odors" in the sacred imagery of the Revelation. (Rev_5:8) Prayer is a sacrifice when it issues from the heart, when its sweet odor is wafted upwards with the fire of holy love. And praise is a sacrifice: "Offer unto God thanksgiving;" "Whoso offereth praise glorifieth me"; (Psa_14:2) but to be a sacrifice it must be that sweet and holy melody which the thankful heart singeth unto the Lord. Almsgiving, too, is a sacrifice, (Heb_13:16) when the Christian offers willingly, out of a thankful heart, seeking not the praise of men, but only the glory of God. God accepts our poor gifts when they are brought to him in faith, as the Lord Jesus Christ accepted the two mites of the poor widow. But the chief sacrifice that we can offer is the sacrifice of ourselves. "My son, give me thy heart," is the Lord"s requirement. If we give him that, we give him all: it is a poor gift, worthless in itself, but yet precious in his sight because he first loved us, made more precious still by the precious blood of Christ which was shed that these hearts of ours might be cleansed and purified for a holy offering. It is all he asks, and all we have to give; if we give it, we shall be all the richer, for he giveth in return the unspeakable Gift the gift of himself, to abide forever in the heart that is given to him. "We offer and present unto thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto thee." We offer these our offerings through Jesus Christ, (Heb_13:15) pleading his merits, his atonement; and through him they are acceptable unto God. In themselves they are very mean and imperfect; not without blemish, as an offering should be; defiled with lingering taints of selfishness and earthliness; but if they are offered through him, in the faith of him, they are acceptable. For the priests of the spiritual temple are also living stones in that temple, incorporated into the mystical body of Christ, and thus their spiritual sacrifices are consecrated by his one prevailing Sacrifice, and through that Sacrifice are acceptable unto God.
3. What Christ is to true Christians. The apostle confirms his teaching by an appeal to the prophets: "It is contained in the Scriptures," he says. Search the Scriptures; they testify of Christ; we shall find treasures there, if only we search. The evangelical prophet testified of Christ long before he came in the flesh; he spoke of him as the chief Cornerstone; he speaks in the Name of God, "Thus saith the Lord God, Behold I lay in Zion for a foundation a Stone, a tried Stone, a precious Cornerstone, a sure Foundation." God the Father is the Master-builder; it was he who]aid the Cornerstone: "This is the Lord"s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." It is laid in Zion, in the Church, to be its one Foundation, the Rock on which it is built, which gives it strength and solidity; its chief Corner-stone, which gives it unity, without which it would fall to pieces. And that chief Cornerstone is elect, chosen of God from all eternity, chosen in the eternal purpose of God the Father to be the Foundation of the Church. And it is precious exceedingly, held in high honor of God, worthy of his love, for it is faultless in beauty and in strength a polished Cornerstone without flaw and without blemish. He that resteth on that Cornerstone, built up in faith upon it, shall not be put to shame. "For God hath laid this precious Stone in Zion for this very purpose that weary souls may rest upon it" (Leighton): and he that so resteth need not make haste; he need not run hither and thither for help, for his soul is established, his mind is stayed upon God. Nothing can shake him from that sure Foundation, while he rests on it in faith, "neither death, nor life nor things present, nor things to come, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." "Such honor have all his saints." This honor is for them that believe; they have the honor, high above all other honor, of indissoluble union with Christ; they rest on him, they are his and he is theirs: "My beloved is mine, and I am his." They know the exceeding preciousness of that living Stone, for they feel its strong support beneath them; its preciousness is for them; for their sakes, for their salvation, God laid that elect, that precious Stone in Zion. How precious faith is! (2Pe_1:1) it is faith that binds us firmly to that precious Cornerstone.
4. What he is to the disobedient; or to such as disbelieve (Revised Version); for, as Leighton says, unbelief itself is "the grand disobedience;" "This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent" Joh_6:29). Unbelief lies at the root of all disobedience; all disobedience flows from it; he cannot be disobedient who realizes by faith the power, the love, the presence, of God. The builders were disobedient; the priests and scribes disallowed the stones which God had chosen. So, alas! now too often the great men of the world, the builders of its policy, "leave out Christ in their building;" and not only they, but sometimes "the pretended builders of the Church of God, though they use the name of Christ, and serve their turn with that, yet reject himself, and oppose the power of his spiritual kingdom. There may be wit and learning, and much knowledge of the Scriptures amongst those that are haters of the Lord Christ and of the power of godliness, and corrupters of the worship of God. It is the spirit of humility and obedience and saving faith that teaches men to esteem Christ, and to build upon him" (Leighton). But the unbelief and disobedience of men cannot turn aside the purpose of God; the living Stone that was once disallowed is become the Head of the corner. He is exalted high above all the power of the enemy. "The kings of the earth may set themselves, and the rulers may take counsel together against the Lord, and against his Anointed. But he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, he shall speak unto them in his wrath, Yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion." He is the Head of the corner now," Head over all things to his Church." "He must reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet;" then shall the King sit upon the throne of his glory, and they who have rejected him shall to their confusion see him raised "far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come." But he is to the disobedient not only the Head of the corner to their confusion, but also a Stone of stumbling and a Rock of offence to their destruction. It is no light thing to reject the Son of God, to set the cross at naught, to despise the love of him who died upon the cross for us. Such sinners against their own souls must fall. He tasted death for every man; and to every man the death of the Son of God is full of momentous results everlasting life to the believer, but to the willful and impenitent sinner what can it be save utter death? The living Stone is the Foundation, the Head of the corner; "this is the Lord"s doing," and who can stand against the Lord? The Stone becomes a Stumbling-block to the disobedient; they fall upon it. One day it must fall on them, as in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar it fell on the great image which represented all the empires of the world. "Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." For this is the Lord"s appointment. That Stone must become a great mountain and fill the whole earth; and resistance to the decree of the Most High can only end in ruin and destruction; those who reject the living Stone must in the end be crushed beneath it.
5. What true Christians are to Christ.
(1) They are "a chosen generation," an elect race. As the Israelites were one race, descended from one ancestor, so Christian; in virtue of their new birth, are the children of the heavenly Father, a regenerate race. And they are chosen, the elect people of God, chosen in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world; a high and sacred dignity.
(2) "A royal priesthood." Not only a priesthood, as St. Peter had said in ver. 5, but a royal priesthood. Royal, because the priests of the spiritual temple serve the King of kings; they are his attendants; they belong to "the household of God, the royal household of the great invisible King. And they reign upon the earth; for they have given their hearts to Christ to be his kingdom; and "this is the benefit of receiving the kingdom of Christ into a man"s heart, that it makes him a king himself. All the subjects of Christ are kings, not only in regard of that pure crown of glory they hope for, and shall certainly attain; but in the present they have a kingdom which is the pledge of that other, overcoming the world, and Satan, and themselves, by the power of faith" (Leighton). The true Christian has a royal heart; he reigns with Christ the King over the passions, affections, and desires of his lower nature. The free Spirit of God dispenses to the contrite "the princely heart of innocence" ("Christian Year: Sixth Sunday after Trinity").
(3) "A holy nation." One nation, though living in different lands, under different forms of earthly government; but all citizens of the one heavenly country, all subjects of the one Almighty King. And holy, because they are his, separated to his service, bound by that dedication to follow after holiness of heart and life.
(4) "A peculiar people." The children of Israel were to be God"s "peculiar treasure above all people". (Exo_19:5) The Christian Church, the Israel of God, is his treasure now, his special possession. He spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for them; and that Church, purchased at such a price, is very precious: "They shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels;" or rather, as in the Revised Version, "in the day that I do make, even a peculiar treasure.
6. What is their bounden duty. All these high and holy dignities are theirs. The estate of Christians is very lofty; they are the children of the Most High, heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. They should maintain a greatness of mind, a holiness of life suitable to their exalted station; they "should show forth the praises of him who hath called them out of darkness into his marvelous light." For they were once not a people; they had no center of unity, no part in the heavenly kingdom, no hope; for they had not obtained mercy. But now God hath called them, "Say ye unto your brethren, Ammi; and to your sisters, Ruhamah"; (Hos_2:2) they are his people; they have obtained mercy. "Ammi, my people." There is a treasure of holy meaning in that word. We are his; he cares for us; we belong to him. Then we must show forth his praises, and that not only with our lips, but in our lives. We must proclaim to others the blessedness of religion. He has called us out of the darkness of sin and ignorance into the light of his presence. That light is wonderful. Christians never cease to wonder at the glory and blessedness of that light which in times of near communion with God streams into their hearts. If they walk in that light, it must kindle a holy flame in their own souls; they must become a light also ("Ye are the light of the world," the Savior said to his chosen); they must let their light shine before men, that men may see their good works, and glorify their Father which is in heaven.
LESSONS.
1. "Taste and see that the Lord is good." Having once tasted, you will long for his presence, you will desire the heavenly food.
2. Seek to be built up in Christ; not loose stones lying round the one Cornerstone, but resting upon it, joined as living stones to the one Foundation.
3. Be faithful priests unto the Lord. Offer every day the daily sacrifice of prayer and praise; renew every day the sacrifice of self.
4. Consider the great dignity of Christians; be full of thankfulness; rejoice in the Lord; show forth his praises.
HOMILIES BY C. NEW
Vers. 1-3.
The possession of Christian life summoning to spiritual growth.
The argument so far is as follows: Redemption; this issuing on holiness; that leading to the fear that they should prove to be without redemption; that fear being excited, the test of love is suggested. They are regarded as bearing that test, and proving their possession of life. The next idea is obviously that of growth.
I WE HAVE HERE THE IDEA OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH.
1. That implies life. Only living things can grow. Peter can speak of growth because he calls them "new-born babes." Spiritual life is not a mere change or reformation, but an entirely new principle of being. Not only is that implied in such words as, "Ye must be born again;" "If any man be in Christ Jesus, it is a new creation;" "You hath he quickened who were dead;" but entire arguments are based on the use of those words in this sense. It is as impossible for the natural heart, which is enmity against God, to bear fruit to God, as for grapes to grow on thorns; for Divine fruit there must be a Divine nature. This is implanted by the Holy Spirit through the Divine Word. The cry, "Father, Father? is the birth-cry of a new life; from that moment we are of God"s family.
2. Also that this life is immature. That truth is helpful to those who have followed the apostle so far, to their discouragement, and are inclined to say, "If holiness is the proof of salvation, and holiness is measured by Christian love, and I have so little of this, is it possible that I am a Christian at all?" These words, however, assume that there may be life without perfection. We are all born babes, and have to reach a full-grown manhood stage by stage. Only Adam came from God"s hand perfect. "A babe" is equivalent to weakness, helplessness, ignorance, rudimentariness. Who could guess what a babe could become, or see in the new-born child of God the perfected spirit bowing in the eternal glory before his throne?
3. Also that it is natural for the life to progress. It never occurs to us to wonder if a child will grow; we know it will unless it dies. Disease may retard growth, only death can permanently stop it till maturity is reached. Growth is part of life; naturally, silently, steadily, the babe increases in stature and strength. Then, since spirituality is a life, it only needs that we fulfill the ordinary conditions of life to ensure that it advances from strength to strength. Growth is spontaneous; no man by anxious thought can add to his stature one cubit; give it but the right conditions, and life cannot help growing. Moreover, growth should naturally affect all parts of our spiritual nature, as of our physical; it is only by disuse that some faculties advance alone faith, or hope, or patience, etc. There is provision in what we are for growth up to him who is the Head "in all things.
II THE MEANS BY WHICH SPIRITUAL GROWTH IS SECURED.
IS not this simpler not easier, but simpler more reasonable and possible than many suppose? How do we treat a babe that it may grow? let us treat the spiritual babe-life in the same way.
1. There must be the avoidance of" what is antagonistic to life. "Laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evilspeakings." These are but a selection of the evils that are hurtful to the Divine nature; they are probably mentioned here rather than others, because, judging from the frequent exhortations in the Epistle to love, to subjection to one another, etc., they represent a class of sins to which these Christians were specially prone; these were the sins which most easily beset them. As in homes where there are children, there are many devices to keep them from harm, so the spiritual life of the young believer must be jealously guarded from what would check its progress.
2. And there must be the partaking of suitable food. "Desire the sincere pure, unadulterated milk of the Word." It is the invariable teaching of Scripture that Christian growth depends on the proper use of the Word of Psa_1:2, 3 37:31Jo 6:63 17:17 Act_20:32 1Ti_4:6 2Ti_3:17). Christ is the food of the soul, but he is imparted through his Word. The Word of God has for its substance God the Word. Spiritual feebleness is probably spiritual starvation.
III THE ARGUMENT BY WHICH THE SOUL IS PERSUADED TO USE THESE MEANS.
"If so be ye have tasted," etc., that is, seek this spiritual growth:
1. Because your experience of Divine grace has been only a taste of what is possible. We are predestined to be conformed to the image of God"s Son. Think what that involves of character and blessedness; and of this most of us have as yet had only a taste! But that taste makes us long for more.
2. Because, also, by growth you prove your reception of Divine grace. "If so be." Then is there doubt about it? Let spiritual growth destroy that doubt. Growth is a sure proof of life. A deeper sense of sin; a more earnest desire for holiness; a greater joy in God, his presence, service, will; are the clear proof that we have tasted of Divine grace. But if there be no growth, if the means of grace are no more useful to us than rain is to a rock, Divine life within us is not yet. C.N.
HOMILIES BY U.R. THOMAS Vers. 1-3.
Spiritual childhood.
In this "therefore" (Revised Version) our apostle gathers up the argument, perhaps, of all the preceding part of the letter, certainly of the passage immediately preceding this; viz. if we as Christians have begun to live this higher life, how will its early stage manifest himself? So we naturally note
I SOME OF THE SIGNS OF SPIRITUAL CHILDHOOD.
One of the signs that Christian men and women are, what Peter had heard the Lord say they ought to be, like little children growing children is in what they lack. This whole group of evils are most unchildlike evils. "Putting away" implies that they had been wrapped in them, swaddled as it were in them. "Wickedness," or malice. Perhaps the wider meaning of wickedness is intended here. Leighton says, "All is one garment, or parts of one, for sometimes some are mentioned, and sometimes others." "Guile," "hypocrisies" the first being the spirit of deceit, the second the acting a part as on a stage. "Envies;" "evil-speakings." Here again the first describes the malign spirit, the second the speech that spirit inspires.
II THE CHIEF NOURISHMENT OF SPIRITUAL CHILDHOOD.
"Spiritual milk." Milk is a good standard of all food; it contains all the constituents of food. So does the Word of God contain all elements of spiritual nutrition. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." Similarly, there is a natural aliment, and there is a spiritual aliment. "Without guile;" that food is to be simple, unadulterated. Milk when impure is a terrible source of disease; so the Word of God, when mixed with error, works deadly mischief. "Long for;" have a keen appetite for the Word of God, not for the sugar-plums of sentiment or the stimulants of sensationalism, but the milk of the Word. A true appetite is at once a sign of health and a means to health.
III THE TRUE DEVELOPMENT OF SPIRITUAL CHILDHOOD.
"Grow." The bud that does not become a flower is a failure. So the Christian that does not grow is a failure. Piety is the art of right growing. "Unto salvation." That is the ideal not mere rescue from guilt, but attainment of holiness; not mere emancipation, but citizenship. "If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." This implies that the Christian character is developed, even in its early stages, from a solid experience. Only tasted, but surely tasted. Luther puts it well for us: "To them who with the heart believe the word, "Christ has been sent for me and is become mine own; my miseries are his; his life is mine, that word is sweet. U.R.T.
HOMILIES BY R. FINLAYSON Vers. 1-10.
Newborn babes and the higher Israel.
I NEWBORN BABES.
1. Duty conditioning appetite for the Ignorant. "Putting away therefore all wickedness, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evilspeakings." This duty is connected with the foregoing ("therefore"), as coming under it. As the regenerate, we are to put away all dispositions and manifestations that offend against good brotherhood. We are to put away first, as being the radical vice, all malice (as we should read, with the old translation), i.e. the desire to hurt, from the slightest beginnings up to the most deadly passion. We are also to put away all guile, i.e. want of openness, of straightforwardness, also in the whole compass of the idea. With all guile we are to put away its manifestations in hypocrisies, i.e. all attempts to personate, especially to make ourselves appear better than we really are. We are also to put away envies, i.e. pinings on account of the good estate of others. Finally, we are to put away manifestations of envy in all evil-speakings, i.e. attempts to injure the good name of others. From the way in which this duty is brought in, it is evident that it has a bearing on what follows, which is probably this that unbrotherliness is a bar to our life being properly sustained.
1. Appetite for the Word. "As newborn babes, long for the spiritual milk which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby unto salvation." The apostle seizes upon the fact of his readers having been lately regenerated, and calls them "newborn babes" in relation to God. Babes have suitable nourishment provided for them in their mother"s milk; as (whether lately or long ago regenerated) we have suitable nourishment provided for us in what in the spiritual sphere is milk, viz. the Word (without any reference to the distinction of weaker or stronger in it). Babes save a pure provision ("without guile" is another unhappy change); so what is provided for us in the Word is pure as mother"s milk. Babes have a strong natural craving for milk; so we are to have a strong craving for the Word. Babes are constituted with a strong craving for milk, that their growth may go forward; so we are to have a strong craving for the Word, that our higher
2. development may go forward, which is to issue in salvation (both the elimination of all evil elements and the acquisition of all good elements). From the connection the teaching is that we are thus to see to our individual development for the sake of the society to which we belong. We owe it to Christians collectively that we grow individually.
3. Appetite for the Word encouraged. "If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious." The language is based on Psa_34:8. It is to be observed that "the Lord" of the psalmist is here taken to be Christ (as appears from the following verse). There is kindness displayed in the nourishment that is provided for babes; so there is the kindness of Christ displayed in what is provided for us in the Word. As the Word, or Divine Revealer, Christ is also the Divine Nourisher. Christians are those who know this, not merely by report, but by experience. They have "tasted that the Lord is gracious." And Peter goes upon the supposition that those who have tasted once will desire to taste again, and will not be easily satisfied.
II THE HIGHER ISRAEL.
1. Characterization under temple imagery in relation to Christ.
(1) Way in which we are related to Christ. "Unto whom coming." With this there is transition to new imagery. The language is general; yet it was frequently associated with the going up of worshippers to the temple. We are to make our approach to Christ for union to him and communion with him; and our approach to him is to be habitual, that with stronger union there may be closer communion.
(2) Representation that is given of Christ. "A living Stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious." This is a very striking though homely image applied to the most wonderful event or series of events in history. Let us call up the scene from which the language is taken. A building is being erected amid dust and rubbish and confused noises. The builders are ever wanting stones for each new place as it arises in the building, and search about among what are laid down for them. One stone they all pass by because of some defect or blemish that it has in their eyes. You can see, from the way in which they treat it, that it is not deemed worthy to have even an obscure place in the building. But the architect comes and sees to this stone, which was to have no place, being put into the place of honor. It becomes, as we shall see afterwards from its designation, the most important stone in the building. Now, the great archetypal building which is being erected that of which every building, common or sacred, is a type, that of which the Jewish temple was in a special manner a type is the Church. The Jewish rulers were employed by God in carrying out his purposes of love and mercy toward the race. They were the builders, having subordinately the selecting and preparing of the stones and the putting them into their places. In this first introduction of the imagery they are not directly referred to; it is simply men that are mentioned. But in accordance with Psa_118:22, afterwards quoted, we must think of men representatively, i.e. in the builders. Christ was a living Stone, i.e. he was absolutely in living significance all that a stone can be in a building. He came before the eyes of the builders with extraordinary claims, with most exalted ideas, with a most wonderful manifestation of love. He was as a stone laid down for them, and they could not but pass some judgment upon him. What they did (and not merely in their own name, but as representing men) was to reject him even to crucifying him. We see him the "despised and rejected of men" in being a Stone rejected of the builders. He was to be of no use in the Church or theocracy with which these had to do. Ay, they thought that they were relegating him in God"s name to a different fate altogether. But what was despised among men was highly esteemed with God. So in striking contrast with the human judgment, it is said here with God elect; precious," i.e. he was the great Object of electing love, and had all the qualities on which the Divine approbation could rest. And God, having allowed men to go so far, takes things out of their hands, and, in accordance with his ancient design as to the ordering of things in his Church, instates Christ in the place of highest honor and serviceableness, making him, as we are now to see, the Stone in which we are built up.
(3) What we are in relation to Christ. "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." Very beautiful is the way in which we are called "living stones" along with Christ. We also are living stones, only with this difference, that we derive all our living consequence in the building from Christ. A stone, according to the general idea, is not meant to be by itself; it is meant to be placed along with others in a building. So we rise to the idea of our being as living stones built up a spiritual house. Ancient Israel had a temple; the heightening consideration is that we as Christians are the temple. Whereas also material elements (such as in the Jewish temple) can only in a very restricted way be used for the glorifying of God, there is far greater freedom and capability when we come to the spiritual elements that exist in the Church. "To the intent that now unto the principalities and the powers in the heavenly places might be made known through the Church the manifold wisdom of God" Eph_3:10). But that is not all; for ancient Israel the complete conception was broken up. They had a temple, and they had also, distinct from it, a priesthood. The heightening consideration is that we combine the two ideas. We are the temple and the priesthood in one. The Jewish priests had a sacred character. "Once a priest, always a priest." They could not take to trading; God"s service required their undivided attention. So even in trading we are to have a sacred character, abjuring self and referring all to God. Our feet are always to be found in the path of God"s commandments which cover things both temporal and spiritual. The Jewish priests offered up fruits, animals; the heightening consideration is that we offer up spiritual sacrifices. These are only acceptable to God through Jesus Christ; and therefore we require to remember that his sacrifice comes first. After it, founded upon it, and deriving all their virtue from it, come our sacrifices, which are distinctively eucharistic, i.e. they are forms of giving thanks. They are this even when we begin, as we must do, by offering up ourselves. Gratitude, especially for what has been done for us in redemption, prompts us first to offer up ourselves, and then ourselves in good thoughts, in earnest prayers, in loving deeds.
2. Scriptural foundation for the characterization. "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." This is a free quotation Isa_28:16. Attention is called to the declaration of the eternalcounsel. It is "the Lord God" who says, "I lay;" but there is not excluded laying by human agents. From the temple in Zion we are to pass in thought to the Church. The chief corner-stone is the most important stone in the building, both combining as being in the corner, and supporting as being the foundation-stone; such is Christ to the Church, with the epithets formerly applied to him. The prophet goes beyond this to the consequence of believing. As it stands in the prophecy, the language is, "He that believeth shall not make haste," i.e. shall go on his way calmly. As altered here, it is, "He that believeth on him Christ as the Stone shall not be put to shame." Believing, in builders" language, is taking Christ as the Foundation. If Christ is the Foundation, it must be designed that stones should be laid upon him or in relation to him. That is the design of any foundation the design, then, of Christ as the Foundation. If we are laid upon Christ as the Foundation, we shall never be put to shame; i.e. shall never have the shame connected with the foundation proving insufficient.
3. Consequence of believing. "For you therefore which believe is the preciousness." It is better to translate, "is the honor." This is the positive side of the conception that we have just noticed. Laid upon Christ as the "chief Cornerstone, elect, precious," there is the corresponding honor; i.e. the honor of having a definite, abiding place in the building, with a share in the glory that is communicated to it by Christ.
4. Consequence of not believing. "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." The statement of consequence is preceded by a statement of wonderful fact Psa_118:22, which by our Lord himself, and by Peter in his speech before the Sanhedrin, is connected with the action of the Jewish rulers. The blindness of the builders. The position which these Jewish rulers occupied was a very honorable one. They were appointed to build. It is of the greatest importance that those who lead the thought or action in any way should be really builders, clearly and boldly grasping the principles, and earnestly and vigorously carrying forward the work. It is an incalculable evil when any take advantage of their gifts or position to promulgate opinions which are fitted to sap the foundations to do the work of him who has been a destroyer from the beginning. There are some, not only in other countries, but in this country, who do not see that it is necessary to build. They are levelers, not builders. They would pull down, not merely the wrongs of past centuries, but the rights of all centuries; not merely church establishments, but the Church itself; not merely human speculations, but the everlasting truths of the Bible. It is a gigantic mistake. A nation"s greatness will soon be shown to be hollow, if there is no building up in family piety; no just and generous dealing, as between all classes, and toward other nations. A sad havoc some of our destructives would make, if there were not some honorable public men, and many who are quietly building away in their own homes and in their own neighborhoods, as they see to be right before God. But those Jewish rulers were further appointed to build up the Church. They had to deliberate and to devise regarding all that greatly pertained to the ecclesiastical life of the nation. And the honorableness of their position at that time appears in this, that they might have had the placing of Christ in the building. It was something more honorable than had fallen to Moses, who merely introduced the types of Christ. It fell to them, as the representatives of the Church at the time, to single out and introduce Christ himself. But there, also, lay their great responsibility. They might do a great service, putting Christ into the place intended for him; or they might do a great disservice, setting him aside, and putting him in a false light before the nation who were appointed to lead when the times were becoming full of most profound interest. It depended on how they used their responsibility. It unhappily turned out in the latter way. Their crime is represented as a refusing of him whom God meant to be chief Cornerstone. What made their conduct so criminal was that they acted against the light. True, there were others who rose up about that time claiming to be the Messiah. But they were there, as the appointed, trained representatives of the nation, to sift the evidence. And the damaging circumstance was that they had evidence more than enough, as full as the conditions allowed, presented to them by Christ; and yet they rejected him. He had a wonder-working power greater than was possessed by their great ancestor Moses which was a clear mark of God on him. And as remarkable as his forth-putting of power was his range of knowledge, extending beyond earth to the things which he had seen with the Father which was another mark of God. And then the whole tone of his life was in keeping, and fitted to remove all honest doubt. But these builders were blind. They could not distinguish Messiah-ship when they saw it. They would not even give him credit for ordinary goodness. They could have got as much from the old as would have enabled them to slide easily into the new. Had they truly appreciated the types, they would have known the Antitype. Had they been apt students of prophecy, they would have known him to whom prophecy bears witness. But they had not even the right Old Testament point of view. They were falsely conservative. They had substituted authorized lint outward and temporary forms and ceremonies for the living, eternal ideas, and rabbinical traditions for the decisive words of inspiration. And their conservatism would have been most destructive. If they had got their way, they would have kept Christ from having his proper place or any place in the building. And thus there would have been no salvation for man, but black, terrible destruction. No temple would have risen up in this world, each stone a saved soul. That would have been the consequence of the conservatism of those Jewish leaders. What they thought was building up, and keeping to the truth, and resisting innovation, would have been in its results the pulling down of all to the depths of ruin. So blind were these builders. They are not the only destroyers who would raze to the foundation; but those also are making work for destruction who build narrowly, who do not take the breadth of the Word of God for themselves, nor will allow it for others. Had these Jewish builders been loyal to the truth, reverencing the old which had fairly stood the test, and welcoming also the new which seemed to premise larger development, they would not have made the mistake which they did. Had they even had some spiritual affinity to the Messiah, they would have been carried out beyond their narrowness. Israelites indeed, in whom there was no guile, they would have been carried on from a glorious living past to a more glorious and widening, living future. But this is their condemnation, that light came into the world; and they loved the darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Let us beware of self-deception. These rulers thought they were doing God service in what they did to Christ. If they could so far deceive themselves who occupied so prominent a position in the Church, have we not reason to be on our guard? The builders as overruled by the great Architect. It has always been matter for surprise, how bad men get into power. Job makes it matter of complaint in his day, that the earth was given over into the hand of the wicked. There are some who go great lengths in sin without having much in their power. But when men get a long line, as it were, and go the whole length of it, cruelly trampling on the most sacred rights and tenderest feelings of their fellow-men, the evil seems so great as to call loudly for Divine interference. Think of Nero, for his amusement setting fire to Rome, and then, to screen himself, glutting his soul with the slaughter of God"s saints. But never did God allow men to go such lengths, while sitting by and refusing to interfere, as when he allowed those builders to refuse him on whom the whole building up of a Church in this world depended. Never was human liberty brought into such antagonism to the Divine sovereignty. Those who were in power at the time, finding Christ troublesome, were permitted to crucify him. They laid his dead body in a tomb, and rolled a stone against the mouth of it, and sealed the stone, and set a watch, and thought they had done with him. It would have been a sad thing if their conduct had prevented the building up of a Church in the world. That, we know, could never be. This may be put on the ground of the Divine purpose. Christ was the living Stone, elect. He was linked to the Divine purpose, the great object of the Divine election. And we are accustomed to think that the purposes of God must travel on securely through all to their accomplishment. In the place that God intended for Christ must he unfailingly be. But deeper than the purpose itself is the ground of the purpose in the character of God, and the fitness of the Stone for the place. Divine love struggled for gratification in the building of us up out of the ruins of sin; that was the deepest ground of the purpose. It must, however, have been forever pent up, if no path had been found for its egress. But when God really formed the purpose, he must have seen his way to the desired end all clear. To begin to build without knowing how to finish is foolishness, with which only man is chargeable. "Every house is builded by some man; he who built all things is God." He must have had the conception of this universe in his mind before he brought forth those worlds and this earth of ours in all their wonderful order; he had the conception beforehand of the tabernacle, (Exo_25:40) and also of the temple. (1Ch_28:11-19) So when the great Architect had planned the Church from all eternity, and had for ages been making preparations for it, and directing stones to be put into it, he must have known how the Foundation-stone was to be laid. Christ was a fitting Stone for the place. He was not chosen blindly without regard to qualifications. He was not only elect, but also a tried Stone; and, what is the same idea, precious, proved to be precious by trial. One great strain there was that made trial of him, occasioned by our sin; but he stood the test, he was shown to be a precious Stone, sufficient for the purpose of God, and so he was put into the foundation-place. Those builders had not the placing of him there. He was a Stone refused, disallowed by them. But God was independent of them, and got others more humble than they, but more in sympathy with the purpose, to do what they should have done. Ay, even they were taken up into the purpose as unconscious, involuntary instruments. For it was in the very refusing of him in his death that he became chief Cornerstone. They were thus doing what they did not intend to do. And he rose triumphant out of their hands when they thought they had effectually secured him in the tomb. Let us admire the placing of Christ as chief Cornerstone. "This is the Lord"s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes." The Lord had his purpose of mercy to men and of honor to Christ carried out notwithstanding the criminal conduct of the builders. And in the history of these latter times the same triumph will be repeated. All schemes that leave out Christ will prove abortive, and those that build by them will be left behind an advancing tide of Christianity. And at last it will be shown, by a clear and abundant induction of facts, that Christ is the only Stone in whom men can be built up into a glorious temple of God. What, then, is the consequence to them that disbelieve, i.e. refuse to believe? The Stone so honored of God becomes, in the language of another prophecy, (Isa_8:14) "a Stone of stumbling, and a Rock of offense;" i.e., in accordance with our Lord"s (comment on Psa_118:22, Mat_21:44) on which they are broken. They who disbelieve are broken in their spiritual nature; that is their shame. The Foundation-stone which is honor to believers, becomes to them the stone of punishment, the stone of vengeance. They are broken, as if you took a pillar of the temple, and broke it into a thousand pieces. They thus stumble to their hurt and shame, because they disbelieve the Word (as we should translate), i.e. refuse to believe what God says about the Stone. It is God"s appointment that they who thus disbelieve should in their fall be broken.
5. Further characterization under Old Testament designations in relation to God.
(1) God"s elect. "But ye are an elect race." This is after Isa_43:20.We are not to lay stress upon ancient Israel being of one stone (race), but upon their Divine election, as being the reason of their existence. We owe our existence as the successors of Israel to the fact that we have been chosen by God out of the world.
(2) God"s ministers. "A royal priesthood." This is after Exo_19:6, where the expression is "kingdom of priests." This language, applied to ancient Israel, pointed to all being priests (in token of which the heads of families acted personally as priests in the yearly offering up of the Paschal lamb); it also pointed to their being priests under a great King. The idea was only fully exhibited in the separate yet representative priestly class. They, in a special manner, acted as priests, and had a royal character as belonging to the royal household. This full idea is taken up by us as Christians. We have sacred offices to perform, and we have the honor which comes from our being even here in the "King"s palace.
(3) God"s saints. "A holy nation." This is also after Exo_19:6. The leading word is here again the second in the original holy. "This had to be filled and coined afresh with a new meaning, and thus is one of the words wherein the radical influence, the transforming and newly fashioning power, of revealed religion is most clearly shown" (Cromer). As to the Homeric age, Nagelsbach says, "Holiness, as a constituent element of the Divine viewed in itself, or only perceived in the intercourse of the gods among themselves, is never mentioned. Never is there a title given to the godhead indicating a consciousness similar to that in which the Bible speaks of the true God." According to the conception of ancient Israel, we are to be a community permeated with Bible ideas of God"s holiness, and conformed to it in our customs.
(4) God"s possession. His right in us. "A people for God"s own possession." The idea is contained in Exo_19:5, "Ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people." The language is after Isa_43:21 (following, or race-elect). We are already acquired by God; only not fully redeemed. (Eph_1:14) In so far as the thought of peculiarity is to be associated with the language, it is to be referred to God"s right in us, which is peculiar in being supreme. What his right in us involves. "That ye may show forth the excellences of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." It involves that we have been redeemed. We became the objects of an effectual and glorious calling. We were at the pole of darkness away from God in the darkness and chili of our own thoughts. We are now at the opposite pole of light near to God in the marvelous light and exhilaration of what he is and what he thinks especially about us in redemption. It involves that, as redeemed by God, we show forth his praises, or excellences. Steiger is wrong in saying that the object of this is the conversion of those who still disbelieve. The thought is rather of what has been gained by God. Having effected for us a change of state, the thought of which is oppressive in its vastness, he has gained this, that we show forth his excellences; i.e. as our tribute to God, we tell on, from the depths of our heart the excellences which he has displayed in our blessed experience. Huther remarks that the word is for the most part employed without definite application to telling abroad what happens indoors. Doxology comes in similarly in Eph_1:14. Heightening of doxology. "Which in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy." This is after Hos_2:23. The words here, as in Rom_9:25, seem to be applied to the calling of the heathen. Before their conversion they had no true corporate life. Rome could not give them that; they were no people. Now they were the people of God, with a unity of life in Christ, and inheriting all the titles and privileges of ancient Israel. They had a special call, then, to tell out the excellences of God. What were they to tell out? His excellent power, his excellent wisdom, his excellent righteousness. Yes, these, but especially his excellent mercy. Once not in the possession of mercy, that condition was now ended. By circumstances over which they had no control, the gospel had been brought to them in their heathen state. The message of Divine love had touched their hearts. By God"s mercy they were numbered among his people pardoned and cleansed. Well, then, did it become them to pay their highest tribute of praise to the excellence of that mercy that had found them in their forlorn heathenism. And have we not all reason to praise the mercy that has ordered our circumstances, that has broken down the hardness of our hearts, that has admitted us to glorious privileges? R.F.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain Wherefore laying aside all malice.
1Pe_2:1-3
Wherefore laying aside all malice.
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Malice laid aside
I. That regeneration and the low of sin cannot stand together, it must needs be accompanied with a new life. Do vines bear brambles?
II. That there is no perfection here to be attained, for even the best have sin dwelling, though not reigning, in them.
III. That it is no easy thing to be a Christian.
IV. That under those corruptions here named all others are included.
V. That most of those here mentioned are inward corruptions which we must as well avoid as the outward. (John Rogers.)
Renovation
I. What is to be laid aside? All malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, evil speakings. These are only a few specimens of the many lusts which are to be cast out, if we would enter the kingdom of heaven. If a child has swallowed poison I could not expect that wholesome food would confer any benefit upon him-the poison must be first removed; and if these poisonous evils lodge in your hearts and be not repented of, they prevent the Word of God having its proper effect, they effectually neutralise it.
II. The special reason why these are to be laid aside. The fact of their being newborn babes, the apostle urges as a reason why they should put away all these evils. This reason is a very efficacious one. If you are born again, what have you to do any more with the old habits of corruption?
III. What is to be desired? The sincere milk of the Word.
IV. For what is the sincere milk of the word to be desired? That ye may grow thereby. (H. Verschoyle.)
A catalogue of sins to be avoided
I. It is exceedingly profitable to gather special catalogues of our sins which we should avoid, to single out such as we would specially strive against, and do more specially hurt us.
II. The minister ought to inform his flock concerning the particular faults that hinder the work of his ministry where he lives. It is not enough to reprove sin, but there is a great judgment to be expressed in applying himself to the diseases of that people.
III. The apostle doth not name here all the sins that hinder the Word, but he imports that in most places these here named do much reign, and marvellously let the course of the Word.
IV. It should be considered how these sins do hinder the Word. (N. Byfield.)
Malice.-
Malice
is an old grudge upon some wrong done, or conceived to be done to a man, whereupon he waits to do some mischief to him that did it. Anger is like a fire kindled in thorns, soon blazeth, is soon out; but malice, like fire kindled in a log, it continues long. This is often forbidden (Eph_4:31; Col_3:8).
1. We ought to take heed of the beginnings of unadvised anger. God is slow to wrath, and so should we be.
2. If we be overtaken (as a right good man may) take heed it fester not, grow not to hatred; heal it quickly as we do our wounds. The devil is an ill counsellor. (John Rogers.)
The venomous disposition
There are plants which may be said to distil venom of their own accord. The machineel tree, for example (by no means uncommon in the West India Islands), affords a milky fluid which blisters the skin as if it were burnt with a hot iron; and indeed so dangerous has the vegetable been accounted, that if a traveller should sleep under its shade it was once popularly believed he would never wake again. The venomous disposition of these plants has its representative in the human family. There are persons to be met with who are so spiteful as to cause pain the moment you come into contact with them. Their lips distil malice, and it seems the object of their life to inflict malignant wounds. If you trust them your happiness will sleep the sleep of death. (Scientific illustrations.)
All guile.-
Guile
It is meant of guile that is between men and men in their dealings with each other, as in buying, selling, letting, hiring, borrowing, lending, paying wages, doing work, partnership, etc.; when men would seem to do well, but do otherwise; when one thing is pretended, but another practised. We are not born for ourselves, but for the good of each other; we must not lie one to another, seeing we are members one to another, as it were monstrous in the natural body to see the hand beguile the mouth, etc., and yet how common is this sin! how doth one spread a net for another! not caring how they come by their goods, so they be once masters of them. (John Rogers.)
Guile in small matters as well as great to be avoided
All-this is added to show (lest any should think none but guile in great matters or measure forbidden here) that there is a thorough reformation required. Therefore it will not serve any mans turn to say, My shop is not so dark as others; I mingle not my commodities so much as such and such; I never deceived in any great matters. All guile must be abandoned by a Christian who cares for his soul. A Christian must show forth the truth of his Christianity in his particular calling, in his shop, buying, selling, etc., that men may count his word as good as a bond, that they dare rest on his faithfulness, that he will not deceive. (John Rogers.)
Hypocrisies.-
Preservatives against hypocrisy
1. Keep thyself in Gods presence; remember always that His eyes are upon thee (Psa_16:8; Gen_17:1).
2. Thou must pray much and often to God to create a right spirit within thee; for by nature we have all hypocritical hearts (Psa_51:10).
3. Keep thy heart with all diligence, watching daily and resisting distractions, wavering thoughts, and forgetfulness. Judge thyself seriously before God (Jam_4:8; Mat_23:26).
4. In all matters of well-doing be as secret as may be (Mat_6:1-34) both in mercy, prayer, fasting, reading, and the like.
5. Be watchful over thy own ways, and see that thou be as careful of all duties of godliness in prosperity as in adversity, in health as in sickness (Job_27:9-10).
6. Converse with such as in whom thou discernest true spirits without guile, and shun the company of known hypocrites.
7. Be not rash and easy to condemn other men for hypocrites, only because they cross thy opinions, or humours, or will, or practice. It is often observed that rash censurers that usually lash others as hypocrites fall at length into some vile kind of hypocrisy themselves. (N. Byfield.)
Hypocrisy
Hypocrites are like unto white silver, but they draw black lines, they have a seeming sanctified outside, but stuffed within with malice, worldliness, intemperance; like window cushions made up of velvet, and perhaps richly embroidered, but stuffed within with hay. (J. Spencer.)
Hypocrisy ineffective
Coals of fire cannot be concealed beneath the most sumptuous apparel, they will betray themselves with smoke and flame; nor can darling sins be long hidden beneath the most ostentatious profession, they will sooner or later discover themselves, and burn sad holes in the mans reputation. Sin needs quenching in the Saviours blood, not concealing under the garb of religion. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Envies.-
The hatefulness of envy
I. Consider the subject persons in which it usually is. It is found most in natural men (Tit_3:3), yea, in silly men (Job_5:2). This was the sin of Cain (Gen_4:1-26). yea, of the devil himself.
II. Consider the cause of it. It is for the most part the daughter of pride (Gal_5:26), sometimes of covetousness (Pro_28:22), and often of some egregious transgression, such as in Rom_1:29, but ever it is the filthy fruit of the flesh (Gal_5:25).
III. Consider the vile effects of it, which are many.
1. It hath done many mischiefs for which it is infamous. It sold Joseph into Egypt (Gen_37:1-36), and killed the Son of God (Mat_27:8);
2. It deforms our natures, it makes a man suspicious, malicious, contentious, it makes us to provoke, backbite, and practise evil against our neighbours.
3. It begins even death and hell, while a man is alive (Job_5:2). It destroyeth the contentment of his life, and burns him with a kind of fire unquenchable.
IV. It is a notable hindrance to the profit of the Word, and so no doubt it is to prayer and all piety, as evidently it is a let of charity (Php_1:15). (N. Byfield.)
All evil speakings.-
Rules against evil speaking
He that would restrain himself from being guilty of backbiting, judging, reviling, or any kind of evil speaking, must observe such rules as these.
I. He must learn to speak well to God and of godliness. If we did study that holy language of speaking to God by prayer, we would be easily fitted for the government of our tongues toward men: we speak ill to men because we pray but ill to God.
II. He must study to be quiet and not meddle with the strife that belongs not to him; resolving that he will never suffer as a busybody in other mens matters (1Th_4:1-18; 1Pe_4:15).
III. He must keep a catalogue of his own faults continually in his mind. When we are so apt to task others it is because we forget our own wickedness.
IV. His words must be few, for in a multitude of words there cannot want sin, and usually this sin is never absent.
V. He must not allow himself liberty to think evil. A suspicious person will speak evil.
VI. He must pray to God to set a watch before the doors of his lips.
VII. He must avoid vain and provoking company. When men get into idle company the very complement of discoursing extracteth evil speaking to fill up the time; especially he must avoid the company of censurers, for their ill-language, though at first disliked, is insensibly learned.
VIII. He must especially strive to get meekness, and show his meekness to all men (Tit_3:1-2).
IX. If he have this way offended, then let him follow that counsel, Let his own words grieve him (Psa_56:5); that is let him humble himself seriously for it before God by hearty repentance; this sin is seldom mended, because it is seldom repented of. (N. Byfield.)
Pernicious and evil speaking abundant
Alas, evil speaking floods the world as some weeds cover the fields in early summer! My heart was made sad in some journeys last year as I saw many large tracks of grain almost hidden by a yellow sea of flowering weeds. For the time you think it is not possible that any of the corn can come to perfection. Even there, however, a harvest is reaped; but the harvest would have been heavier if the fields had been clean. Evil speaking, like one dominant weed, covers the surface of society, and chokes in great measure the growth of the good seed. Christians, ye are Gods husbandry-ploughed field; put away these bitter things in their seed thoughts and in their matured actions, that ye may be fruitful unto Him. If the multitude of words spoken by professing Christians in disparagement of their neighbours were reduced first by the omission of all that is not strictly true and fair; and next by the omission of all that is not spoken with a good object in view; and next by the omission of all that, though spoken with a good intention, is unwisely spoken, and mischievous in its results;-the remainder would, like Gideons army, be very small in number, but very select in kind. The residuum would consist only of the testimony of true men against wickedness, which truth and faithfulness, as in Gods sight, compelled them to utter. (W. Arnot.)
As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word.-
Christian childhood and its appropriate nourishment
I. The similitude by which Christians are here represented.
1. This may relate to the commencement of the spiritual life at regeneration, as compared with its subsequent growth in this world. Not only has this life a beginning here, after the natural birth, but it begins like that, in a small, feeble, and almost imperceptible manner.
2. But this childhood may relate to the whole state of the spiritual life in the present world as compared with its future manhood.
II. What that growth is which the scripture is calculated thus to promote though the whole course of our mortal existence.
1. In knowledge. At first this principle is weak in its perception of the things of revelation. It begins with those parts of Scripture which lie nearest to human observation, and in which the Bible most accommodates itself to human ignorance. It proceeds to those passages suited to an awakened and quickened state of feeling.
2. In purity. The mind naturally conforms itself to the sentiments with which it is conversant.
3. In heavenly mindedness. To that world from which the Scriptures Came, and about which they frequently treat, they insensibly draw the devout peruser. They facilitate the withdrawment of our minds from this world by the transitoriness which they attach to all earthly excellences, and by making them to stand for signs of others, yet greater and better, in the celestial economy. Hence our elevation is effectively promoted.
4. In peace and tranquillity of mind, amidst all the disturbances and ills of life. What book is, or can be, like the Bible, for its perpetual reference of all things here to a Divine superintendence?
5. In fine, the Scripture is calculated to promote the growth of every grace of the Spirit necessary to complete the Christian character. It feeds repentance by the evil it discloses in sin; it feeds Divine love by the excellence it portrays in God, rectifying the misconceptions of the carnal mind; it feeds faith by the representation of its objects, and by the impression it makes of its innate majesty and authority on the devout peruser of its pages. In like manner it feeds hope, patience, resignation, zeal, and every other grace which branches out of the principle of spiritual life, and completes the character of the man of God.
III. What that state of mind is which Christians are required to cultivate in order to secure this great benefit from the Scripture.
1. There must be the removal of what would otherwise prove fatal impediments. James inculcates the same duty under a different metaphor (1Pe_1:21). He compares the Word to a fruit bearing plant, requiring a clean and friendly soil for its growth. The weeds of evil dispositions must be eradicated, or its roots will not spread, nor its virtue disclose itself. Purify your hearts, therefore, he adds elsewhere, ye double minded. Be ye doers of the Word, etc.
2. These impediments being removed, we must cherish and promote the spiritual appetite. The appetite of the infant for its appropriate supply is natural. The spiritual appetite, to be analogous to it, must have several properties.
(1) It must be earnest. The child cries, is impatient for its designed support; and it is not an idle, cold, sluggish desire after the aliment provided for spiritual growth that will subserve our growth. My soul breaketh, says David, for the longing it hath to Thy statutes.
(2) It must be specific and suitable. No toys and gew-gaws, no gifts of gold and silver, no, nor even of the most delicious food, will compensate the infant for the absence of its natural support. Thus we must take heed not to substitute for the truth of Scripture the sentiments of men, though set forth with all the advantages of learning and eloquence.
(3) It must be constant, The infant tires not of its proper food, but finds in it all it wants both nutritive and delicious. Nor must we tire of the Word of God, nor seek for a greater variety than it presents. It contains within itself all that is necessary for life and godliness, for comfort and improvement. (J. Leifchild.)
Gods newborn babes and their food
I. Our condition as Gods little ones. Newborn babes. This world is but the nursery in which the heirs of God are spending the first lisping years of their existence, preparatory to the opening of life to full maturity yonder in the light of God.
1. This word should teach us humility. Our best pace and strongest walking in obedience here is as but the stepping of children in comparison with the perfect obedience of glory, when we shall follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. All our knowledge here is but as the ignorance of infants, and all our expressions of God and of His praises but as the first stammerings of children, in comparison with the knowledge we shall have of Him hereafter. It becomes us, therefore, not to exercise ourselves in great matters, or in things too high for us, but to quiet ourselves as a child that is weaned of its mother. Not surprised, if unnoticed or unknown; not angry, if treated with small respect; not discouraged, if face to face with incomprehensible mysteries.
2. This word should also teach us hope. There is no young thing so helpless as a babe. But He who has appointed the long months of babyhood has also provided the love and patience with which mother and father welcome and tend the strange wee thing which has come into their home. And shall God have put into others qualities in which He is Himself deficient? Shall He have provided so carefully for us in our first birth, and have provided nought in our second? Your weakness, and ailments, and nervous dread, and besetting sins, and hereditary taint of evil habit and dulness of vision, will not drive God from you, but will bring Him nearer.
3. This word should also teach us our true attitude towards God. Throw yourself on Him with the abandonment of a babe. Roll on Him the responsibility of choosing for you-directing, protecting, and delivering you. If you are overcome by sin, be sure that it cannot alienate His love, any more than can smallpox, which has marred some dear tiny face, prevent the mother from kissing the little parched lips.
II. Our food. Long for the spiritual milk which is without guile (R.V.). There is nothing which so proves the inspiration of the Scriptures as their suitableness to the nurture of the new life in the soul. As long as that life is absent, there is no special charm in the sacred Word: it lies unnoticed on the shelf. But directly it has been implanted, and whilst yet in its earliest stages, it seeks after the Word of God as a babe after its mothers milk; and instantly it begins to grow.
III. How to create an appetite for the Word. Desire. One of the most dangerous symptoms is the loss of appetite. And there is no surer indication of religious declension and ill-health than the cessation of desire for the Word of God. How can that appetite be created where lacking, and stimulated where declining?
1. Put off the evil that clings to you.
2. Remember that your growth depends on your feeding on the Word.
3. Stimulate your desire by the memory of past enjoyment. If so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Spiritual development
The text urges three important elements of holy living.
I. Soul mortification-Lay aside all malice, etc. This is a sacrifice. It does not come natural to the human soul. It demands effort. It is not an immediate attainment, but demands a period of growth. The series of worldly developments here alluded to are important marks of fallen men, and at the same time are painful disfigurements to professing Christians.
1. There is malice-i.e., ill-feeling of every kind. Under malice may be ranged political animosities which disturb the kindly relationship of men; unreasoning prejudice; the desire to injure those whom we dislike; bitterness, etc.
2. There is guile. This includes deceit.
3. There is hypocrisy-pretending a fictitious goodness which we do not possess. I take it that this includes cant, boasting, parade of religion, etc., for the word is not hypocrisy, but hypocrisies.
4. Envies. Again in the plural, for there are different kinds of envy.
5. Evil speakings. The failing here alluded to goes far to cause all the bitterness of worldly society.
II. Soul development. There must be not only casting out of the evil, but also the taking in of what is good. The first requirement for development is to be brought into a state fit for growth.
III. Soul incitement-Since ye have tasted, etc. The first taste creates a desire for a more abundant supply. (J. J. S. Bird, B. A.)
Soul evolution
I. That soul advancement is an evolution - That ye may grow thereby. That is, the growth of the whole soul-all its faculties, forces, and germs of power. Growth implies-
1. Inner life. A dead thing cannot grow. Sometimes education is spoken of as if the mind were a vessel into which a certain amount of information is to be poured until the mind is filled. Sometimes, as if the mind were a stone, on which the instructor was to act as a lapidary, and polish it into some beautiful form. Hence we hear so much of accomplishments, painting, drawing, music, etc. Sometimes, as if the mind was arable land, to be ploughed and in which to plant seed to germinate and develop. Philosophically, nothing can grow in the soul. It is the soul itself that grows.
2. An inner life of latent power. A thing may have life, and nothing within for future development. Not so with the soul; it has boundless possibilities.
3. A life possessing developing conditions.
II. That soul evolution involves soul hunger. As newborn babes desire [R.V., long for] the sincere [R.V., spiritual] milk. Vegetable life grows without a desire; so, indeed, with animal life. But if the soul is to grow, it must desire it intensely.
1. The hunger must be for natural nutriment.
2. The nutriment must be of the best kind-Sincere [R.V., spiritual] milk. What is the best kind? The truth as it is in Jesus. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The milk of the Word
I. Healthy appetite: or, in other words, an earnest desire for spiritual nourishment.
1. It is of prime importance that we have a real craving for spiritual truth, for Christ will benefit us only as we appropriate Him.
2. We should further cultivate a discriminating taste. The babes taste guards it against unwholesome food; it covets nothing but the mothers milk. So ought we to acquire a sensitive palate in respect of spiritual things, a palate able to discriminate between the precious and the vile. Is not the vitiated taste of many hearers of the gospel a symptom of a long-standing disease?
3. We should further habituate ourselves to desire strong meat, to digest well the great fundamental doctrines of the gospel. This then is the first requisite of orthodoxy, namely that we possess vigorous, healthy digestive organs. Gospel truth must be mixed with faith in them that hear it; that is to say, they must possess healthy organs, able to supply the spiritual secretions necessary to convert what we read and hear into part and parcel of our spiritual life.
II. Healthy food; or, in other words, Gods truth as contained in Holy Writ.
1. The milk of the Word. The great verses of the Bible are like so many breasts, from which we are to suck in the spiritual aliment necessary to our well-being. Do you know what it is to eat words, and especially Gods words? The process is as real as eating bread and meat, and the results are much more abiding. Thy words were found, and I did eat them: he converted them into an integral part of his spiritual nature.
2. The milk of the Word, or rational milk. Rational milk in contrast to the rites and ceremonies both of the Jewish and heathen religions. Christians are to live more by mind and less by the senses.
3. The sincere-unadulterated-milk of the Word, that is to say, milk free from all deleterious admixtures.
III. Healthy growth. That we may grow thereby unto salvation. In this Epistle salvation is used technically for salvation in the future, salvation full, complete, perfect. Now what does this growth unto salvation imply?
1. For one thing it implies growth in knowledge, for spiritual enlightenment is an essential factor in salvation.
2. Growth unto salvation further implies growth in holiness. Having laid aside all sin, and all malice, and all evil speaking. Other religions forbid particular sins; but whilst prohibiting one class of sins, they tolerate other classes. Mahometanism, for instance, prohibits drunkenness; seldom does a Mahometan get intoxicated. But whilst prohibiting drunkenness it licenses adultery. And by thus flinging away sin from us our spiritual palate will gradually recover its normal, healthy tone; we will relish the unadulterated milk of the Word more than our ordinary food and drink. (J. C. Jones, D. D.)
The Christian life in some of its characteristics
It is agreed that religion, subjectively considered, is life. He that hath the Son hath life. If a man has religion, it is life in him. But it is finite life, limited and dependent. It requires for its continuance outside support and supply. Turning now to this life let us take note of some of its characteristics.
1. And, first, all life grows. This may not he apparent to the eye, but it is to the reason. Growth is the most unambiguous and decisive sign of life. A swelling bud, a beating pulse-this is proof. Life and growth go together as inevitable antecedents and consequents; and where there is growth, there is increment. This does not necessitate augmentation in size. It is not untrue to fact or absurd to say of a thing growing that it is growing small. Many a tree, many an animal, not a few persons of our acquaintance, are not as large as they formerly were.
2. Wherever there is growth, there is eating. The plant eats; down in the ground at the end of the rootlets we find spongioles, and these are mouths. In transplanting a shrub or tree the thing we care for is not to destroy these mouths, If true of vegetable life that it lives by eating, it is more obviously true of animal life. Do you say that in many of the lowest forms of sentient life we find no mouths? True apparently; but the bodies of such invertebrates abound in absorbents that serve the same purpose.
3. That nothing eats without an appetite. The etymology of this word (appetitus) gives as its striking meaning a seeking for, longing after. In vegetable life we have the analogue of appetite; for we find that every root, trunk, branch, is elongating itself in pursuit of its required supply. The tree in the thick forest extends itself to get up into the light and heat; and the stray vegetable in the cellar does the same to get out of the dark and cold just where the light and warmth have been pouring in. This power to elongate and reach its supply is one of the most interesting phenomena in the vegetable kingdom. Nor is it otherwise among animals. Their power to help themselves is itself a department of science, and awakens the deepest interest. Besides the power of elongation to get supply, they have the power of locomotion. Appetite unsupplied is hunger, one of the most intense forms of physical unrest; and impels to the most intense exertions to get relief. But what next after appetite? You say that our series of organic facts cannot end in appetite; you say it must have its correlative supply. You add that there is a wonderful law in nature ordaining in every grade of life that there shall be as many forms of reciprocal supply as there are subjective wants. For every mouth there is the required morsel, and, in general a superabundant supply. In man this law bears sway in a three-fold form, for he has in him three lives: life of body, brain, and soul. The physical life grows by eating what the physical appetite craves; the supplies here are found in the outward physical world. This life can live and grow on bread alone. The intellectual life grows by eating what the intellectual appetite craves; the supplies here are found in the truths of fact and principle discoverable in the world of science. The moral and spiritual life grows by eating what the moral and spiritual life craves; here the supplies are found in all the verities that appertain to the soul in relation to God and the immortal life. Having these three forms of life, and, in natural order, these three forms of growth, eating, and appetite, and, having these three forms of supply, man can have three forms of satisfaction: he can be physically, intellectually, and morally supplied and at rest. Therefore he can have three forms of health. He can be whole in body, mind, and soul; or he can be ailing in one department of his being, and well in other respects. In order to perfect health in each life there must be a perfect working of the functions of each in possession of a perfect supply. A man can have as many forms of hunger, starvation, and death by starvation, as he has lives. The inference here is inevitable, that if a man has in him three lives, and, in his prerogative of free will, can make each growthful or not, according as appetite is fed or not fed, then man has in him the power of a three-fold suicide. Thus far we have been considering life as it develops normally. In its various grades we find it growing according to a natural law inlaid in the constitution. We find it interfered with only by encroachment and want of supply. Unfallen human life observed this law in the primeval garden. But this adherence to law in an orderly unfolding did not continue. Sin entered, and with it a new factor, disease. It is an easy consequence of sin, itself wholly unnatural; it belongs to that category of thorns and thistles, toil and sweat and birth pangs, visited upon the race as instruments of probationary discipline and culture. This prepares us to notice the benignity of nature in providing not only for normal but as well for abnormal wants. Not only does she provide for hunger, thirst, rest, to repair waste and recover tone, but she is a storehouse of remedies for disease. There are provisions not only for life when exhausted by expenditure, but when assailed and wounded by assault. It is well known that animals when ill either refuse to eat, or, eating, select a medicinal diet. Such food is found in those forms of supply abounding in nature that are repelled in a state of health. Disease sharpens an instinctive appetite for them, and impels to a search for them. Man as a physical being, diseased, like all animals, finds himself dependent for cure on medicinal remedies stored in nature. There is a more subtle force in man, and a more destructive one, than disease, and whose proper seat is the soul. It is sin: what disease is to the body, sin is to the spiritual powers of man. The spheres in which these destructive forces work greatly differ, but such is the organic connection between them that we are quick to see the natural alliance of sin and disease. As in physical disease there is a suppression of appetite for common food, and a search for a medicinal diet, so in mans apostate condition and severance from God there is disclosed in the remains of his fallen nature, in the intuitions of reason and the instincts of a guilty conscience, a longing after some form of deliverance that has an expiatory value. Sin itself seems to evoke a longing for a remedy that will destroy it. A sick man wants health, and if lie finds it at all, he finds it in natures stores; a lost man wants salvation, and if he finds it at all, he finds it in Christ crucified. Mark here the point of critical interest: when the sinner in the consciousness of his need turns to Christ and believes on Him, he is born again. In this change, his third life has been taken off the creature as having a supreme interest and placed upon God where it originally belonged; and so, being in Christ Jesus, the man, dead in trespasses and sins, is made alive from the dead. But the new man that is born in him is, to use the apostles figure, a babe in Christ. There exist still in the converted man the remains of the old nature, and these remains are summed up by the apostle and called the old man. And now what have we? A marvellous phenomenon! a man with four lives in him. The physical and intellectual lives remain; then we have the new life, the babe in Christ, called the new man; finally we have a fourth life in the remains of the old life, called by St. Paul the old man. In the soul of the renewed man then we find two lives; and let us mark their relation to each other. In the first place, the new man though a babe holds the ascendency. He is so much the creation of the Spirit that we can say of him that he is the child of a King. In his minority in this world he has to retain his throne by warfare. In the text, St. Peter, addressing believers, urges them to exercise the appetite, characteristic of newborn babes, in their longing for the spiritual milk of the Word which is without guile, that they may grow thereby. He assumes the existence of life, and life that is to grow by eating in compliance with an awakened appetite. The reign of law is supreme in all growth. All the characteristics of life in the lower kingdoms of nature reappear here in the spiritual sphere. We have seen that all appetite, wherever found, finds its corresponding supply in its environment. This is true of the life of the believer. That life is Divine in its origin from heaven, and in its nature spiritual; therefore corresponding to it is an objective supply equally Divine and spiritual. But you ask, How about the old third life, now called by the apostle the old man, and which we have seen to be living a dying life? Does it grow? I reply that the old man still lives, but, struck with death, is in a mortal decline; there is growth too; but in proportion as the new man grows strong, he grows weak. If the new life is stationary, the old life holds its own; if it is retrograde, the old life waxes and regains ascendency, sin reigns. But you say that if the old life lives in any form, even a lingering death, it must have food, and what is it? This is a vital question; can we find an answer? We have seen that the new life is in spirit totally unlike the old life, and cannot therefore live on the same diet, unless it is mixed. Here we fall upon the great source of weakness among believers-adulteration of food. The Divine plan for the new life is that it should live and grow on spiritual milk, which is without guile. The word spiritual here does not refer to the Holy Spirit as the originator of this diet, but to the Spirit of the new life itself, with which this diet is perfectly congruous. The new life is spirit, and has a diet fitted to it as such; but the diet must be without guile, unadulterated, the pure Word of God. When the new life has this food, and only this food, and enough of it, it hastens on to full growth. Instances abound in the Church of persons of signal excellence in whom this life has had a luxurious exposition. But this food, so nutritious and medicinal to the new man, is innutritious and destructive to the old man. The Divine plan is to kill the old life by the natural process of starvation. It is said that in certain soils clover will not grow under butternut trees; the roots of the butternut extract from the soil all the elements the clover lives on, and so the clover starves and dies. It is by this same law of death by starvation that the old life in believers is to end its career. But the painful fact is that its law is not obeyed. Strange as it may be, believers do not insist that the spiritual milk they drink shall be without adulteration. They allow a mixed diet-elements introduced that are agreeable to the old man. When the diet is half and half, when both the old and the new man can sit at the same table and partake of the same food with equal pleasure, neither is satisfied; both live a stunted life. It is just here that we find an explanation of the mystery of the weakness that abounds in Christian living. Believers half live, because fed on a diet half of which is prepared for the old life. They consult with flesh and blood. They are self-indulgent; and the self they indulge is the old self. They hanker after forbidden food. In them the old life is robust and well to do, the new is pinched and emaciate. Why is this? Because the Divine law of growth in the text is not heeded. Believers are not studious as to their diet. They do not live on the spiritual milk of the Word, and insist that it shall be without guile. They are too tender and sympathetic with the old self. Vigorous self-denial is here demanded. This order is never introverted. It is always the new man in us that drives out the old; and to have the strength required to do it he must have for his diet the spiritual milk of the Word, which is without guile. (C. B. Hulbert.)
The Word compared to milk
1. The Word is compared to milk in respect of the plainness of it to young children, which is therefore opposed to strong meat, that is, harder points, and mysteries of religion, so especially for the nourishing nature thereof.
2. It is also compared to milk for the sweetness of it. The Word is sweet to a newborn Christian.
3. Besides, as milk is a general food for all rich and poor, so is the Word the common food of all Christians, the means of their edifying. (John Rogers.)
The simultaneous outgoing of evil and incoming of good
Observe the relation in which the negative and the positive stand to each other. Although the precept about putting off first meets our eye on the page, the act is not represented as taking precedence in point of time. It is neither first put off the evil and then admit the good, nor first take in the good and then get quit of the evil. The language of the text determines that the two acts are strictly simultaneous. The form of the sentence is, Laying aside these, desire this. This is scientifically correct as well as scripturally true. The coming of Christ unto His own, to the throne of a human heart, is like the morning. And how does the morning come? Is it first that the light comes and then the darkness departs? or first the darkness departs and then the light advances? It is neither. As the light advances the darkness recedes. The processes are strictly simultaneous, but in nature the advance of light is the cause and the departure of darkness the effect. Such, also, is the rule in the spiritual sphere. It is indeed true that evil must depart to let in the good, but it is the advance of the good that drives the evil before it. Christ is the stronger who overcomes the strong and casts him out and reigns in his stead. To take in the milk and retain also the envies and evil speakings will give neither comfort nor growth. The effort to mingle these opposites mars the happiness of many a life, and distorts all its testimony for the truth of the gospel. (W. Arnot.)
Desire
As in children, all speak and work at once-hands, feet, mouth. The Greek word signifieth vehemently to desire. (J. Trapp.)
The sincere milk of the Word
Guileless, unmixed milk, not sugared or sophisticated with strains of wit, excellency of speech, etc. (J. Trapp.)
Appetite for Divine things wanted
The Rev. Mr. Walker, of Muthil, was preaching in a neighbouring parish. Next day he was met by one of the resident landowners, who explained to the reverend gentleman that he had not been hearing him on the Sabbath afternoon, as he felt he could not digest more than one sermon. I rather think, said Mr. Walker, the appetite is more at fault than the digestion. (C. Rogers, LL. D.)
That ye may grow thereby.-
Christian growth
I. Christians are to grow-grow unto salvation. This implies present immaturity-that they have not yet reached the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Their hope is ofttimes indistinct and tremulous, even when it is not averted from its appropriate object. Their holiness is stained by innumerable defilements of the flesh and the spirit. Their fear dissolves into a carnal security or a worldly dissipation. Nor does brotherly love continue. But if they are Christians indeed all these elements of the new creature exist at least in the germ. Growth may be slow, and, for a time, even imperceptible. Obstructed by the remaining constitutional taint of the old nature, it may be hindered also by unfavourable circumstances, by the diseases incident to childhood, or through neglect of the appropriate means of growth. But the tendency is there, and that tendency is to be fostered by Christian education.
II. The particular means here specified by which this growth is to be promoted is the sincere milk of the Word.
III. But, in order to the profitable use of even the pure milk of the Word, there are certain conditions prerequisite.
1. There is, first, the necessity of spiritual life. Without it, as there can be no growth, so neither is there any desire after the means of growth,
2. If the soul is to enjoy the full benefit of the provisions of grace it must also be careful of its spiritual health, avoiding all occasions of disease, and especially maintaining a constant guard against the evil tendencies of its own constitutional taint.
3. When the soul has thus been purified of malice and wickedness, one unfailing sign of its healthy condition is a desire-an earnest desire-for the nutriment of the Divine Word.
4. If we would grow by means of the Word it is important that we use the Word for that end.
IV. The motives by which this exhortation is enforced.
1. In this growth itself there is blessing enough to be its own motive and great reward. There are other considerations, however, suggested by the text. Observe-
2. The introductory word, wherefore, literally laying aside, therefore, etc., referring back to the illustrious attributes of the Word, as these had been set forth at the close of the first chapter. It had there been magnified as the Word of the Lord, as the incorruptible seed, as the living, abiding, everlasting Word. Seeing, then, says Peter, this precious Word decays not, grows not obsolete, and can as little be exhausted as it can be superseded by the word of man or of angel, what remains but that ye follow on to know it, give yourselves wholly to it, and drink deep, drink daily, drink forever of the Divine fountains. This might the rather be expected of them as-
3. In the third place, they had already experienced the regenerating power of the Word, as newborn babes. This is not so much a comparison as a reason. If, moreover, they remember still that they are but children, what more natural than that they should be ambitious to grow?
4. And finally, as they had been made subjects of the gospels regenerating power, so they had likewise tasted the sweetness and blessedness of its revelations. If so be-or if indeed, as you profess, and as I fully believe-ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, good, kind. You tasted, and you are well aware that you did no more than taste, of the heavenly gift, of that which shall be the eternal satisfaction and joy of all the redeemed. With what confidence, then, in your ready compliance may I not say, Open your mouths wide and the good Lord will fill them. Enlarge to the uttermost both your capacities and your desires, and you will still find this cup of blessing, this river of God, as full as at the first. (J. Lillie, D. D.)
Soul growth
I. It involves young life. There is no growth without life, and old life grows not. Soul growth consists in the simultaneous and harmonious development of all the powers of the mind under the inspiration and direction of supreme love to God.
II. It involves suitable aliment.
1. The Word must be taken into the soul by hearing and reading.
2. The Word must be digested by the soul by reflection and prayer.
3. The Word must be incorporated in the soul by holy activities and habits.
III. It involves a healthy appetite.
1. The soul must have an appetite for truth before it will take it.
2. The soul must have an appetite for the genuine truth before it will get the right nutriment. (Homilist.)
Growth by the Word
I. The great end to be sought after. That ye may grow. The newborn babe is a fit emblem of the Christian. He is one who has in him the principle of a higher life, and therefore the capacity of growth.
1. In what is it the Christian is to grow? In all that constitutes the new nature which he has received of God.
(1) The foundation of the Christian life is laid in the knowledge of Jesus Christ.
(2) On this there must be a superstructure of virtue and moral goodness reared, and the advancement of the one must keep pace with that of the other.
2. This growth is a gradual process. We must be prepared for fluctuations and vicissitudes in our spiritual condition.
3. Whenever this growth takes place it will be discernible. Not directly, or in itself. A child grows without being in the least degree sensible of it. Nor can even the keenest onlooker see the child grow. The fact that it has grown is discovered from the comparison of what it is now and what it had been at some period more or less distant in the past. Even so it is with Christian growth.
II. The means by which this great end is to be secured.
1. The truth of God is revealed to us as being adapted to nourish the life of God in the soul.
2. We are to desire Gods Word in order that we may grow thereby. It is very possible to desire Divine truth for other reasons and other ends than this. It is quite possible to desire to read Holy Scripture because we have been accustomed to do so, or because this wonderful book is very pleasant to read, and touches every part of our intellectual nature.
But we must use it intelligently, perseveringly, to secure the great end.
1. Have we any right to call ourselves babes in Christ, children of God, born again? If not, then simply we cannot grow. Dead things, stones, cannot grow.
2. Ought not the necessity of growing to be more deeply felt, and the duty on which it depends to be more faithfully discharged? (W. L. Alexander, D. D.)
Retaining infantile ideas
What man amongst us would consent to be dressed in the garb of his infancy, and to be sent forth into the world dandled in the arms of bearers and habited in the long clothes of his babyhood? But so far as spiritual knowledge and attainments are concerned men are only too willing to retain their infantile ideas, and to resent any attempt to lead them to larger and loftier conceptions of truth, to a more robust and manly faith. (J. Halsey.)
The influence of food on spiritual growth
Spiritual growth and development are required of us, and spiritual growth and development are a matter of spiritual diet. Buckle, in his History of Civilisation, shows how the characters and dispositions of the various races of men are affected by the food they eat. The broad general truth of this is obvious. The gross feeders are slow thinkers, and the difference in the intellectual qualities between the Eskimo with his blubber and the Frenchman with his cutlets and claret is as great as the difference between the foods themselves. We are what we are-physically, mentally, and to a great extent even morally-mainly in virtue of our diet. If we were to be always subsisting on babies food, farinaceous powders and sopped rusks, we should never grow into a stalwart manhood. At the same time you do not expect elevation and refinement of thought from the gourmand and the epicure. The man who con fines himself to the elements of thinking limits himself to the infantile stages of growth, to their helplessness and dependency. (J. Halsey.)
Spiritual growth to be sought
They take a pride in cultivating their physical nature, in developing their muscle and sinew to the highest efficiency; they will even go into severe training to achieve this end; but in the spiritual sphere the toothless, flabby, milk-imbibing infant is their ideal. (J. Halsey.)
Thinking aids growth
And it is in that thinking faculty that resides your power of growth. The machine can never be anything else or anything better than it is unless human thought be brought to bear upon it. You cannot teach a machine anything, and because it cannot think it cannot grow. The instinct in the animal is always mere instinct. It never grows. The instinct whereby the bee makes its cell today is the same as that of its ancestors who sipped honey in primeval Eden. The ox is as bovine today as when it first appeared upon the stage of existence. Not one solitary idea has ever entered its brain during all those perhaps hundreds of thousands of years. It has never been able to think itself out of the animal groove, to lift itself, by force of its own will, one step in the scale of creation. But in virtue of his thinking faculty mans capacity for growth is illimitable. If he will only use it, cultivate it, develop it, no bounds can be set to its power to expand and elevate him. (J. Halsey.)
Appropriate aliment
The relation of growth to nutrition is a law of the universe. Every description of life has its appropriate aliment, and only as it is provided with this will it grow; and if you were a farmer you would find that you could not raise your corn and other crops without first charging the soil with silica and ammonia and phosphates, and other elements essential to the building up of the tissues of the plant. The religious manhood is built up no otherwise. It is purely a question of nutriment. (J. Halsey.)
Deep Christian knowledge to be desired
You have seen on a summers evening the gnats gliding upon the smooth surface of a great river. What do they know of the rivers wealth, of the beautiful gardens of aquatic weeds, of the shoals of silvery fish and other forms of life that teem in the clear depths beneath? Such is the knowledge of the universe that many Christian people possess, and that they think it right to possess. They skim the surface, but are careful not to wet their wings, and to go no deeper than the guardians of orthodoxy assure them it is safe. (J. Halsey.)
A sermon for men of taste
If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious. If, if-then this is not a thing to be taken for granted. If-then there is a possibility that some may not have tasted that the Lord is gracious. If, if-then this is not a general but a special mercy, and it becomes our business to inquire whether we are comprehended in that company who know the grace of God by inward experience.
I. First, then, taste is prominent in the text.
1. The taste here meant is doubtless faith. Faith, in the Scripture, is all the senses. It is sight (Isa_45:22); hearing (Isa_55:3); smelling (Psa_45:8); touch (Mar_5:30-31). Faith is equally the spirits taste. How sweet are Thy words to my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to nay lips. We shall have an inward and spiritual apprehension of the sweetness and preciousness of Christ as the result of living faith.
2. The taste here meant is faith in one of its highest operations. To hear Christs voice as the very voice of God in the soul will save us, but that which gives the true enjoyment is the aspect of faith wherein Christ, by holy taste, becomes assimilated to us; we feed on Him; He becometh part of us; His living Word sustaineth us, and His precious blood cheereth us as generous wine. Do you ask, In what respect does faith taste that the Lord is gracious? It is faith operating by experience.
3. Faith, as exhibited to us under the aspect of tasting, is a sure and certain mark of grace in the heart. It is a sure sign of vitality. Man, by nature, is dead in trespasses and sins. Or, to put it in another light, if men have a taste of Christ, it is certain evidence of a Divine change, for men by nature find no delight in Jesus.
4. This taste, where it has been bestowed by grace, is a discerning faculty. If thou canst live upon a gospel which leads thee to depend upon thyself, thou hast no spiritual taste, or else thou wouldst loathe, as much as ever Egyptian loathed to drink of the waters of Nile when turned into blood, to drink of any river which flows from created springs; thou wouldst only drink of the cool stream of the river of life which rises at the foot of the throne of God and flows around the base of Calvary, where Jesus shed His blood. Say, soul, dost thou love Jesus only? Is He all thy salvation and all thy desire, and dost thou repose wholly and solely in Him? For if not, then thou hast no spiritual taste, and thou hast no reason to believe that thou belongest unto Jesus Christ at all.
5. Faith as a taste is not Simply a discerning but a delighting faculty. Men derive much satisfaction from the organs of taste. I pray you delight yourselves in Christ! Let your faith so taste Jesus as to make you glad. Let your joy be as the joy of harvest, and sing ye with Zechariah, How great is His goodness, and how great is His beauty! Corn shall make the young men cheerful, and new wine the maids.
6. This taste of ours is in this life imperfect. As old master Durham says, Tis but a taste! We have not yet rested beneath the vines of Canaan; we have only enjoyed the first fruits of the Spirit, and they have set us hungering and thirsting for the fulness of the heavenly heritage. We groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption.
7. Though ours is an imperfect, we thank God it is a growing taste. We know that sometimes in the decline of life the taste, like the other powers of manhood, decays; but, glory be to God, a taste for Christ will never decay.
II. Men who have thus tasted of Christ have special sins to avoid and objects to desire.
1. We first dwell upon evils to be avoided.
2. The apostle, having told us what to avoid, tells us what to eat and drink. As newborn babes desire, etc. The Christian man should desire pure doctrine; he should desire to hear the gospel plainly and truthfully preached-not in the words which mans wisdom teacheth, but in the words which the Holy Ghost teacheth. It is a sign of declining health in a Christian when he does not love the means of grace. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Christian experience exemplified
I. Define Christian experience so far as expressed in the language of the text. Tasting supposes life; where there is no spiritual life there can be no spiritual taste. Tasting implies reception, and this is requisite in order to appreciation. They who savingly prove the gracious character of God are such who have the inward evidence of it. Religion is not a matter of speculation, but of experience; not of form, but of hallowed feeling. Such participation is no criterion of extraordinary proficiency in Christianity; it is essential to its existence.
II. The exemplification of such experience of religion in the soul.
1. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, what thanks do you owe Him?
2. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, be gracious like Him.
3. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, you know what you are to hope for. Proofs hitherto of His love are pledges for the future.
4. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, think what is expected from you. Grow in spiritual stature. The more ample the crop the more delightful to the husbandman and to every beholder who feels an interest in what is excellent.
5. If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, pity those that have not. (Essex Remembrancer.)
A gracious experience of God
I. We may consider the goodness of God. He is said to be gracious, or of a bountiful, kind disposition. The graciousness of God is always sweet; the taste of that is never out of season. God is gracious, but it is God in Christ. Though God is mercy and goodness in Himself, yet we cannot apprehend Him so to us, but as we are looking through that medium, the Mediator. His grace is all in Christ. Let us therefore never leave Him out in our desires of tasting the graciousness and love of God, for otherwise we shall but dishonour Him and disappoint ourselves.
II. Ye have tasted. There is a tasting exercised by temporary believers spoken of in Heb_6:4. That is merely tasting, rather an imaginary taste than real; but this is a true feeding on the graciousness of God; yet is it called but a taste in respect of the fulness to come. Jesus Christ being all in all unto the soul, faith apprehending Him, is all the spiritual senses. Faith is the eye that beholds His matchless beauty, and so kindles love in the soul, and can speak of Him as having seen Him and taken particular notice of Him. It is faith that touches Him and draws virtue from Him, and faith that tastes Him. In order to this there must be a firm believing of the truth of the promises, wherein the free grace of God is expressed and exhibited to us-a sense of the sweetness of that grace being applied or drawn into the soul, and that constitutes properly this taste He that hath indeed tasted of this goodness, oh, how tasteless are those things to him that the world calls sweet! As when you have tasted something that is very sweet, it disrelishes other things after it. Therefore can a Christian so easily either want or use with disregard the delights of this earth.
III. The inference. If ye have tasted, etc., then lay aside all malice and guile, and hypocrisies and envies, and all evil speakings, Surely if you have tasted of the kindness and sweetness of God in Christ, it will compose your spirits and conform them to Him. It will diffuse such a sweetness through your soul that there will be no place for malice and guile; there will be nothing but love, and meekness, and singleness of heart. As the Lord is good, so they who taste of His goodness are made like Him (Eph_4:32). Again, if ye have tasted, then desire more. This is the truest sign of it. He that is in a continual hunger and thirst after this graciousness of God has surely tasted of it. My soul thirsteth for God, saith David (Psa_42:2). He had tasted before; he remembers that he went to the house of God with the voice of joy. This is that happy circle wherein the soul of the believer moves. The more he loves it the more he shall taste of this goodness, and the more he tastes the more he shall still love and desire it. But observe-If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, then desire the milk of the Word. This is the sweetness of the Word, that it hath in it the Lords graciousness, gives us the knowledge of His love. This they find in it who have spiritual life and senses, and those senses exercised to discern good and evil, and this engages a Christian to further desire of the Word. (Abp. Leighton.)
The test of taste
Peter is here quoting from Psa_34:8 : O taste and see that the Lord is good. The passage actually runs-O taste and see that Jehovah is good, and Peter does not hesitate for a moment to apply the passage to the Lord Jesus.
I. A royal dainty. The Lord is gracious. Jesus is full of grace. Once tasted, this grace is remembered.
1. The Lord is gracious in His person, nature, and character. He would never have been Immanuel, God with us, if He had not been gracious.
2. We have found Him exceeding gracious in the manner of dispensing His salvation. He is most free, spontaneous, and generous in His gifts of grace.
3. As He is gracious by nature and gracious in manner, so is He gracious in His gifts. How gracious was He when He gave Himself for us! What priceless boons follow therefrom! He gave us pardon and life. Where sin abounded, grace doth much more abound. Since we have come to know our Lord, how gracious have we found Him to be! He giveth more grace. Oh, the wonders of free grace in its continuance and perseverance! Truly the Lord is gracious.
4. The Lord is gracious, for He hears prayer.
5. Some of you have been favoured with choice times, as the days of heaven upon the earth. You have climbed the mount and been alone with God. Oh, the rapture of intimate fellowship with God!
6. Possibly your experience has been of a sadder kind; you have backslidden, and He has restored you in His grace. But you do not know how gracious the Lord is.
7. Remember that He is preparing us for a glory inconceivable. Everything is working out His perfect design.
II. But now think of a special sense which is exercised in tasting that the Lord is gracious. Faith is the souls taste by which we perceive the sweetness of our Lord and enjoy it for ourselves. In answering the question, What is meant by taste? I would bid you notice the likeness of the word taste to another, namely, test.
1. Taste is a test as to things to be eaten. We prove and try an article of food by tasting it. Even so we do not speculate upon the grace of God, but we have known and believed the love which God has toward us.
2. In order to spiritual taste there must be apprehension. We must have some idea of what being gracious means, and some conviction that this is truly the character of our Lord Jesus. The clearer the knowledge the more distinct the taste may become.
3. After apprehension must come appropriation. Martin Luther saith, And this I call tasting, when I do with my very heart believe that Christ hath given Himself unto me, and that I have my full interest in Him, that He beareth and answereth for all my sins, transgressions, and harms, and that His life is my life. When this persuasion is thoroughly settled in my heart, it yieldeth wonderful and incredible good taste. Appropriate Christ, I pray you. Let each one take Him to himself, and then you will know what tasting means. But taste further means appreciation. You may have a thing within yourself and yet not taste it, even as Samsons lion had honey within its carcase, but he was a dead lion, and so could not taste it. A man may get the gospel into his mind, but never taste it. It wants a living man, and a living appropriation, and a living appreciation, or else the royal dainty is not tasted. Have you ever enjoyed the truth that the Lord is gracious? Jesus is all in all to all who are in Him.
III. A searching question. If so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
1. This is a very simple elementary question. I may not know what a dish is made of, but I may have tasted it for all that. I may be grossly ignorant of the mysteries of cookery, but I can tell whether a dish is sweet to my taste. I put it to every one here, whether babes or strong men Have you tasted that the Lord is gracious?
2. However simple is the question, it goes to the root of the matter; it takes in the whole ease of a mans soul. Do you know Christ by personal reception of Him? If not, you are in an evil case. Oh, that you would come to the feast! Oh, that you would eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness!
3. Every man here must answer that question for himself. We cannot in this matter be sponsors for one another. Tasting is an operation which must be performed by the individual palate. There is no other method of practising it. Let me tell you when we have tasted the graciousness of the Lord. We have done so after great bitterness. Our Lord, as George Herbert would say, has put His hand into the bitter box and given us a dose of wormwood and gall. We have drunk the cup in submission, and afterwards He has made us taste that the Lord is gracious, and then all bitterness has clean gone, and our mouth has been as sweet as though wormwood had never entered it. The taste of grace is always on some mens palates; their mouths are filled all the day with the praises of the Lord. These are happy beings; let us be of their number.
IV. A series of practical inferences.
1. Desire the sincere milk of the Word. If you have tasted it, long for more of it.
2. Next, expect to grow, and pray that you may do so. Pray for more faith, more hope, more love, more zeal, and so let us grow. Desire the sincere milk of the Word, that you may grow.
3. Next, If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious, abhor the garlic flavour of the worlds vices. I mean those alluded to in the first verse malice, guile, hypocrisies, envies, and all evil speaking.
4. I want you also, if you have tasted that the Lord is gracious, to lose taste for all earthly trifles. Let the ox have its grass and the horse its hay, but souls must feed on spiritual meat. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The experimental test
There are two ways of ascertaining whether a reputed loaf of bread is really bread, or a reputed glass of water is water. One way is by chemical analysis; the other way is by eating and drinking. Upon the whole the common and experimental test is the more satisfactory, and it is quite as scientific. Some people reach Christ by long and painful argumentation and searching into all the evidences of Christianity, while others simply take God at His word and come to an experimental knowledge of the truth and saving power of the gospel. This is by far the better way. O, taste and see that the Lord is good. (J. R. Pentecost.)
Tasting
A taste whets the appetite. (J. A. Bengel.)
Experience in religion
A hundred thousand tongues may discourse to you about the sweetness of honey, but you can never have such knowledge of it as by taste. So a world full of books may tell you wonders of the things of God in religion, but you can never understand them exactly but by the taste of experience. (N. Caussin.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 1–3. Wherefore. In view of the salvation and duty…
1–3. Wherefore. In view of the salvation and duty of brotherly love pointed out in chapter 1. Laying aside all malice. The things to be laid aside are inconsistent with brotherly love. Malice. The mental state opposed to love. Guile. The mental state opposed to sincerity. 1:22. Hypocrisies. Guile exhibited in word and deed. Envies. “Love envieth not” (1 Cor. 13:4). Evil speakings. Speaking evil of others.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain THE Jewish Christians addressed in this epistle are thought…
CHRISTIAN LIFE CALLS FOR THE PUTTING AWAY OF EVILS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
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THE Jewish Christians addressed in this epistle are thought of as “born again” into the Christian faith and life. The key-note of the epistle is “hath begotten us again.” (1Pe_1:3) and “being born again” (1Pe_1:23). The idea that on professing faith in Christ a man enters on and begins a new life, as a spiritual babe, in a spiritual atmosphere, in which, and in receipt of spiritual nourishment, he is to grow up into the fulness of the spiritual man in Christ, is decidedly Pauline. But St. Peter makes a special application of it to the Jews who became Christians, and might plead that they were already born of God, and that Christianity involved no vital change in their standing and relations; it was really no more than an unfolding, or reformation, of the life unto God which they already had. Both St. Paul and St. Peter distinctly claim for the Christian profession that it is a new life, beginning with a new spiritual birth, in the power of the Holy Spirit. If this is fully apprehended, the substance of the epistle will be understood as a varied help toward the training and shaping and nourishing of the spiritual babe up through its stages of growth, and the ordering of the various relations into which the babe must come as it grows. But there is a Jewish blending of figures and ideas taken from the old dispensation which is sometimes a little difficult for us to follow, but which would be very suggestive to those familiar with Judaism, who were directly addressed in the epistle. This chapter has been described as an exhortation to realise the idea of the new Israel. “The apostle bids them put away all elements of disunion, and combine into a new Temple, founded on Jesus as the Christ, and into a new hierarchy and theocracy.” Personally each professor of faith in Christ had begun a new life. Unitedly those who professed faith in Christ constituted a newly founded race, a spiritual Israel, a kingdom of priests.
1Pe_2:1. Wherefore.—Because the new life has begun for you. There is something befitting that new life. There are things associated with the old life which are manifestly unfitting, and must be put away. The things mentioned are precisely the besetting sins of the Jewish character. Laying aside.—The counsel implies recognition of their power to deal both with wrong feelings toward others and with wrong expressions of such feelings. Literally it is “having laid aside,” and it is implied that this is involved in the old life being ended, and the new life begun. This is what ouǧht to be. St. Peter urges them to make things be as they ought to be (compare St. Paul’s teaching concerning the lingering corruptions of the “old man,” as in Romans 7). Malice.—Generally wickedness, or disposition to injure others; perhaps resentment of supposed wrong, which was a characteristic evil of the Jewish mind. The relations of the Jewish Christians and Jews would provide easy occasion for such resentments. Guile.—The great weakness of Jewish character in every age. The Laban taint in the Abrahamic race. Hypocrisies.—Like, yet distinct from, “guile.” The idea here would be met by “insincerities,” over-anxiety to make a Christian appearance. The apostle would say “be genuine,” do not strain for effect. Let the new life grow naturally, and show itself and express itself how it will. We might put his counsel in this shape: “Beware of cant and sentimentality.” Envies.—These would spoil the fellowship of the Christians among themselves. Evil speakings.—With special reference to the characters of others. St. Peter would support the motto nil, nisi bonum. Augustine thus marks the significance of these terms: “Malice delights in another’s hurt; envy pines at another’s good; guile imparts duplicity to the heart; hypocrisy (flattery) imparts duplicity to the tongue; evil speakings wound the character of another.”
1Pe_2:2. Newborn babes.—The Greek word ἀρτιγέννητα implies the earliest stage of infancy. It was usual for Rabbinical writers thus to designate proselytes. Compare the term “neophytes.” Sincere milk.—Simple, unadultered. De Wette, “The pure, rational milk.” In view of the additions which had been made to the genuine Word of God by the Rabbinical schools, and its over-laying by perplexing and mischievous commentaries, St. Peter properly calls upon those beginning the new life to take nothing but the Word God as provided, and to cultivate an appetite for it. R.V. gives “The spiritual milk which is without guile,” and it adds to the verse the words “unto salvation,” for which there is good authority. For St. Peter’s use of the word “salvation” see 1Pe_1:5; 1Pe_1:9-10.
1Pe_2:3. Tasted.—Or had a beginning of experience of personal relations with the Lord Jesus. The words are taken from Psa_34:8, LXX. version. Gracious.—More precisely “usable,” “serviceable.” The figure in the Greek word is the mellowness of old wine. The idea of the apostle is that if the Christians were like newborn babes the food they had tasted once they would want again.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Pe_2:1-3
Christian Growth is in Christian Control.—In these verses the growth is seen in what it enables a man to throw off. When men became Christians out of Pagan or heathen associations, there would necessarily be a great deal of the old life and habit that must be thrown off—a great incrustation of old evils that must be resolutely dealt with. The apostle Paul recognises how much had been done in this way by his Gentile converts when he says (1Co_6:10-11), “Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.” But St. Peter wrote his epistle mainly, if not exclusively, for Jewish converts, not for Gentile Christians. The point is, however, equally applicable to them. For there were characteristic moral faults of Judaism, and especially of the later, formal, and corrupt Judaism, which were quite as antagonistic to the Christian spirit, and the Christian life, as any of the open vices of Paganism could be. “Hypocrisies and evil-speakings “were characteristic Jewish sins. And they must be thrown off if the Christian life is to find free expression; they would be surely thrown off with advancing Christian growth. The point has its continuous application in every age, and to-day. More or less defined, every Christian life is a new start and a change. There has always been much in the old life which is unsuitable in the new. A man carries habits, tendencies, cherished ideas, infirmities, into the profession of faith in Christ, which he must gradually throw off if he is to “walk worthy of his vocation”; and the throwing off is not best done as a series of efforts, it is the natural result of growth in the Divine life. Grow, and the more vigorous life of the soul will surely shake off the old evils and frailties. In relation to the evils of our habits, disposition, hereditary tendencies, etc.—
I. We can deal with the things that give them their opportunity and power.—In that sense we can “lay them aside,” “put them away.” A man may not have gained power over himself so as to allow himself to be placed in circumstances of temptation; but he may have gained such a power of control over his circumstances that he can alter conditions and relations which he knows are temptations to him. The familiar illustration is the man who has the craving for drink. He cannot directly master that craving, but he can watch everything, and carefully avoid everything that excites it. By so doing he can wear the craving out, and presently gain the full victory, and consciousness of full strength to resist. Shaping life so that there shall be no appeals to our natural frailties in it, is the duty which is seldom recognised. And yet, in that sense, the Christian’s life is in his own hands.
II. We can suitably nourish the spiritual growth.—“The sincere milk of the Word” is not the “milk for babes” of which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews treats. St. Peter’s “sincere milk” is rational (intellectual), or more precisely spiritual milk; and he only calls it milk because his thoughts are occupied with the terms “begotten again,” “new-born babes.” He means this: Nourish yourselves into spiritual strength with just that spiritual food which is precisely adapted to your spiritual condition. It may be milk, if that is best for you; it may be strong meat, if that is best for you. The one important thing is that the Christian should grow; and the conditions of growth are very largely within his own control. He must meet his possibilities and responsibilities.
III. We shall want to nourish that spiritual growth if we rightly apprehend the responsibilities of the Christian life.—Growth is the one demand of all life—vegetable, animal, intellectual, moral, spiritual. Wherever there seems to be life, we ask what we feel to be the testing question, “Does it grow?” Every life has an aim—it is moving toward something. It will never reach it if it does not grow.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Pe_2:2. Things to be Laid Aside.—The apostle mentions five, but he includes others of like nature, and he means they are to be laid aside once for all, never to be touched, thought after, or desired again. Having been laid aside, the temptation to them must be resisted, and not one of these noxious weeds must be permitted to show its head.
I. All malice—or all manner of malice. Malignity, or resentment of real or fancied injuries. You think that some one has done you a wrong, and you are angry with him; you owe him a grudge, you are determined to have your revenge. This is malice (Ecc_7:9).
II. All guile.—Guile is deceit, and (opposed to truth and openness of mind. A man who cherishes guile is never to be trusted, and he is so suspicious that he can seldom trust any one himself. A true Christian is sincere.
III. Hypocrisies.—These are allied to guile, and are indeed a species of it. Hypocrisy is acting a part as on a stage, where a person appears to be what he really is not. A. hypocrite is one who deceives, and intends to do so—does it knowingly.
IV. Envies.—Some men see others better off’, more respected, and in possession of greater honours than themselves, and they envy them, want to be like them, and are mortified if they cannot be.
V. All evil speakings or slanderings.—Envies lead to these, and these are the bane of all society. What heartburnings, and jealousies, and misunderstandings have arisen from the practice of evil-speaking! There are many ways of speaking evil of others. You may insinuate doubts as to their piety; you may ask questions about them which will lead others to ask questions still more significant. And it is an easy thing to blast the character of another, whilst it is a very difficult thing to repair the injury. These things the Christian is thought of as having already laid aside, and in all circles of true believers they are—and they should be—guarded against with the utmost care.—Thornley Smith.
1Pe_2:3. Testing Conditions.—St. Paul commends the duty of self-examination and heart-searching in connection with the Holy Sacrament in 1 Corinthians 11. This verse of our text may suggest suitable preparatory self-examinations.
I. The beginnings of a religious life.—“Tasting that the Lord is gracious.” We are very anxious to gain assurance that our beginning has been right. Perhaps we make too much of the initial stages. The New Testament describes the beginnings of religious life under a variety of forms and figures. Sometimes it is the passing in at a gate, or it is the first breath of a new life; or it is the first cry of new-born babe; or the first prayer of a penitent soul; or the healing in response to a look; or the answer to a call; or the laying of a life foundation. Here it seems to be the infant’s first taste of food—the wakening, as it were, of a new sense, which discovers that “the Lord is gracious.” St. Peter’s words may be read in the light of his own experience. There is one incident of unsurpassed tenderness in St. Peter’s life. It is his interview with Christ after the resurrection, when, again and again, but using somewhat different terms, Christ asked the searching question, “Lovest thou Me?” That was the time, above all other times, in which St. Peter felt the graciousness of the Lord. That was not his conversion, but it was his first “soul-taste,” the scene that henceforth toned his life. By this expression St. Peter evidently means—
1. A personal realisation of the graciousness of the Lord. He had been brought up in a knowledge of God that must have included His goodness. But such things as we may learn about God may lie on the mind as mere knowledge. St. Peter says that it must get in to a man, and become the man’s own. The soul, with its sensitiveness and receptivities, must touch and taste. It is easy enough for us all to sing, “God is Love.” It is a solemn moment when the soul wakes up to say, with a passion of personal feeling, “Yes, God is love.” “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
2. A heart realisation of the graciousness of the Lord. Many a man’s mind has hold of it, but it is much more for the affections to be swayed and constrained by it, and for the graciousness to flow in on the soul like the tide of new life to one who has been sick.
3. And it is nothing less than the graciousness of God that is tested. That word “graciousness” must be meant to express more than goodness, more than kindness. God is good to all; kind to the unthankful and the unholy, but gracious to the penitent sinner. So “graciousness” is the sinner’s “taste” of the Lord. Now, cannot a man know for himself whether, made sensitive by sin-burden, he has “tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
II. The privileges that belong to such a beginning.—Not to any particular degree of Christian attainment, but to the very beginning. First privilege—a right to the name, and to the hope, of a Christian. Second, a right of admission to Christ’s Church, which is the communion of such. Third, a right to kneel at the altar of the Lord, to sit down at the table of the Lord, which is the feast together of those who, in love, respond to love.
God’s Graciousness.—This is the sweetness of the word, that it hath in it the Lord’s graciousness, and gives us the knowledge of His love. This they find in it, who have spiritual life and senses, and those senses exercised to discern good and evil, and this engages a Christian’s further desire of the Divine Word. They are fantastical, deluding tastes that draw men from the written Word, and make them expect other revelations. This graciousness is first conveyed to us by the Word; there first we taste it, and there still we are to seek for it; there the love of God in Christ streams forth in the several promises. The heart that cleaves to the Word of God, and delights in it, cannot but find in it, daily, new tastes of His goodness. Here it reads His love, and by that stirs up its own to Him, and so grows and loves every day more than the former, and thus is tending from tastes to fulness. It is but little we can receive here—some drops of joy, that enter into us; but there we shall enter into joy, as vessels put into a sea of happiness.—Leighton.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain 1. “Therefore having laid aside all malice, all guile,…
ARGUMENT 7
REGENERATION, SANCTIFICATION AND GROWTH IN GRACE
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1. “Therefore having laid aside all malice, all guile, hypocrisies, jealousies, and all calumniations.” This dark catalogue constitutes the motley cohort of inbred sin, here revealed as surviving in the hearts of the regenerate, keeping up an annoying civil war till expurgated in entire sanctification, here indicated by apothemenoi, “laying aside.” This participle pursuant to the constant usage of New Testament writers, denotative of God’s work in full sanctification, is in aorist tense, which always denotes an instantaneous action, forever annihilating the gradualistic theology of sanctification out of the Bible. All gradualism in both works of grace is human, simply involving our approach to God, till we come in contact with them, when He always does His work instantaneously. The gradualistic theology of sanctification is all man’s work without God, and therefore utterly spurious throughout. Dr. Clarke well says, “Gradual sanctification, like seriatim pardon, is to be discarded as a Romish heresy.”
2. “As newly born babes desire the pure milk of the Word in order that you may grow thereby into salvation.” The order of the Holy Ghost in this passage is beautiful, edifying and inspiring. Regenerated people, having unhesitatingly pressed forward into entire sanctification instantaneously received, are importunately commanded to appreciate and utilize the pure Word of God, in order that they may grow in grace, till they reach final salvation, which is the glorification of the soul and the body. In this invaluable argument a most important clause “eis sooteerion,” into salvation, does not appear in the English. It is the keynote in the heavenly music which rings through this beautiful paragraph, constituting the climax of Peter’s clear head and powerful exegesis of the gracious economy. In the days of Martin Luther if a man claimed to know that he was converted, it was thought he ought to be hung for blasphemy. In the time of Wesley, a profession of sanctification was anathematized by the clergy as preposterous impudence. Nowadays many of the holiness people look with suspicion upon the experiences of grace subsequent to sanctification, as conducive to fanaticism. You see Peter sweeps all embargoes from the field, opening up the Gospel stadium illimitable and infinitesimal to the enthusiastic adventurer. He would first have you gloriously regenerated by the Holy Ghost. Then in your newly-born babyhood press forward into the experience of instantaneous and entire sanctification. Then you become homo unius libri — a man of one book. Secular papers, novels and trashy literature are thrown away, the Bible and holiness books alone encumbering your center table. Oh, how you voraciously devour and fatten on the blessed Word of God! The grand enthusiasm of this triumphant, spiritual progress is that you actually grow into gianthood and ripen into that glorious spiritual maturity, which culminates in transfiguration, held up so conspicuously by the inspired writers as “salvation,” in its ultimate and transcendental sense.
3. “If you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Just as the body has the senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, so the human spirit is invested with the same. Though a dead man has all these organs, he is utterly destitute of sensation, till quickened unto life by the Holy Ghost. Still his spiritual sensation is more or less obtuse till entire sanctification expunges all hereditary ailments and disabilities, rendering his spiritual susceptibilities and sensations intensely acute and supernaturally delightful.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Sermon Bible 1900 · Public Domain 1Pe 2:1
1Pe 2:1
The Milk of the Word.
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This subject divides itself into three parts:—
I. Healthy appetite, or, in other words, an earnest desire for spiritual nourishment: "As new-born babes, desire" earnestly, covet eagerly, "the sincere milk of the word."
II. Healthy food, or, in other words, God’s truth as contained in Holy Writ: "Desire the sincere milk of the word." The milk of the word, or, according to a better translation, rational milk, the sincere milk, i.e., milk free from all deleterious admixtures.
III. Healthy growth: "that ye may grow thereby unto salvation." Growth unto salvation implies (1) growth in knowledge, (2) growth in holiness.
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter, p. 214.
References: 1Pe 2:1-3.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. viii., No. 459. 1Pe 2:2.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iv., p. 139.
1Pe 2:2
The Baptismal Vow.
I. In our hearts and lives, the evil which we cast away is for ever returning; the truths which we have learned we are for ever forgetting; the good which we should do we are continually leaving undone. Wherefore our baptismal promise requires to be renewed, not once only at our confirmation, but continually all our lives. We never can hear another renewing it with his lips without having great cause to renew it ourselves also, for his need of renewing it is not greater than ours. And as the three parts of our vow, although distinct, are yet all renewed together at our confirmation, so do they need to be also by us all. Repentance, faith, and holiness are joined inseparably in all our earthly life; it is only by keeping them so joined that we shall come to that blessed division of them when, there being no more sin, there will be no more repentance, when sight will leave no place for faith, and holiness shall then be all in all for ever.
II. Every day we need repentance. Our baptismal vow promised to renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same and the carnal desires of the flesh, so that we would not follow or be led by them. It is either by the temptations of the flesh, or by those of the world, or by both, that by far the greatest number of souls, and in by far the greatest portion of their lives, are tempted and are overcome. The evil, then, not renounced, but allowed to overcome us, is a thing which requires of us indeed a deeper thought and a deeper sorrow than to many of us may seem even possible. We shall not care to believe God’s truths, nor shall we care to follow His holiness, unless we do earnestly desire to renounce our evil, unless we watch for it everywhere, and fear God’s judgment upon it, and believe that it is as great and as abiding as His word and as the death of His Son declares it to be.
T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. v., p. 122.
1Pe 2:3
The Spiritual Temple of Priestly Worshippers.
I. We have in the text a spiritual house: "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house." Christ is the foundation; and as stone after stone is placed on Him, He, being a living stone, infuses His life right through the entire mass. Evidently no one can be a member of the Church unless he has come to Christ, for the Apostle distinctly says that the spiritual house consists of those who have come to the living Rock, Christ Jesus. (1) Now where are the stones formed? They are cut out of the quarry of nature; stone by stone is brought out of that deep cavern, placed upon the living Stone, and each united to the others. The Spirit of God goes into the deep, black quarry of human nature, and there hews out the hidden stones, and by His own almighty power bears them to the foundation-stone and places them in a living temple, to go no more out for ever. (2) The stones must be brought to each other. There must be union existing between all the stones of the spiritual temple, ay, and not only union, but also mutual support. While all rest on the foundation, each stone touches, and serves to strengthen and support, the others. (3) The Church is spiritual also in its glories. There was an external magnificence about the temple of Solomon, although the external glory even of that material temple was nothing compared with the internal beauty. But what is the beauty of the Lord’s temple now? Is there anything external about it? You will find, generally speaking, that the majority of Christians consist of the poor.
II. Within this spiritual house we have priestly worshippers—"a holy priesthood." The death of Christ abolished all earthly priesthood by making every believer a priest. In the old dispensation the priesthood was limited to one tribe; I should be correct if I said it was found in one family: but when Christ died, invisible hands took hold of the veil of the Temple and rent it in twain from the top to the bottom, and now, by virtue of union with Christ, every believer is a priest. It is this doctrine of the universal priesthood of believers that is the very core and centre of New Testament teaching. All believers in the world are kings and priests unto God; and though apparently without robes, yet are they all decked in the glorious garment of the Lord our Righteousness.
III. Spiritual sacrifices. There can be no priesthood without sacrifices. The two things were correlative, and the chief employment of the priest was to offer up sacrifices. Now, although the work of sacrifice is changed in its nature, it is not done away with. In a spiritual house, and by a spiritual priesthood, there must, for the sake of conformity, be a spiritual sacrifice. What is the sacrifice that the holy priesthood offers? Surely (1) communion in prayer, (2) also communion in praise; and (3) we offer ourselves in sacrifice.
A. G. Brown, Penny Pulpit, No. 1093.
References: 1Pe 2:3.—Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 142. 1Pe 2:4.—Ibid., Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1334.
1Pe 2:4
The Living Stone.
I. Note the Church, or spiritual temple, in its foundation: Christ.
II. The Church, or spiritual temple, in its superstructure.
III. The Church, or spiritual temple, in its service: "a holy priesthood."
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter, p. 233.
The Spiritual Church.
Believers in Jesus are here presented in two aspects: they are called a "spiritual house" and "a holy priesthood," two phrases which, if you translate the word here rendered "house" into the more sacred word "temple," will be found to have a very religious significance and a very close connection with each other. "Coming to Christ as a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious," believers rise into a spiritual house from Christ, the great High-priest, consecrated after no carnal commandment; believers rise into a holy priesthood by a majestic investiture that is higher than the ordination of Aaron. There are two points especially presented to us here: spirituality and holiness. Let us take those and dwell upon them for a moment.
I. Any thoughtful observer of the successive ages of the world’s history will discover that each generation has in some remarkable particulars progressed upon its predecessor. This progress is inseparable from the creation of God; is present everywhere, from the formation of a crystal to the establishment of an economy; is seen in the successive dispensations in which God has manifested His will to man. You can trace through all these dispensations the essential unity of revealed religion. Believers are the stones in the spiritual temple, broken, it may be, into conformity or chiselled into beauty by successive strokes of trial; and wherever you find them, in the hut or the ancestral hall, in the climate of the snow or the climate of the sun, whether society hoot them or whether society honour them, whether they robe themselves in delicate apparel or rugged home-spun, they are parts of the grand temple which God esteems higher than cloister, crypt, or stately fane, and of which the top stone is to be brought on with shouting of "Grace, grace, unto it!" That is the first thought: a "spiritual house," and also of these lively stones is built up a "spiritual house."
II. Then take the second thought: holiness: "a holy priesthood." In the Jewish dispensation these words often meant nothing more than an outward separation of the services of God. Thus the priests of the Temple and the vestments of their ministry were said to be ceremonially holy; but there is more in that word, surely, than this ritual of external sanctity. There is the possession of that mind which was in Christ Jesus the Lord; there is the reinstatement in us of that image of God which was lost by the foulness of the Fall. Many are the passages of Scripture in which holiness is considered as the supreme devotion of the heart to the service of God, and is represented as the requirement and the characteristic of Christianity. "What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?" "Be ye holy, as I am holy"; "As He which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation"; "For God hath not called us to uncleanness, but unto holiness"; "Having, therefore, these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God."
W. M. Punshon, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 161.
References: 1Pe 2:4, 1Pe 2:5.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiii., No. 1376. 1Pe 2:4-6.—W. Spensley, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 268.
1Pe 2:5
Trifles to do, not Trifles to leave undone.
I. It was a great saying of the Psalmist when he said, "I am small and of no reputation, yet do I put my trust in Thee." A very great saying; for, indeed, nothing makes man yield to temptation so easily as the thought of being insignificant, and that what he does matters little. If you are so small that nothing you do makes much difference, and of no reputation, so that your actions will not be known, why not do as you please? insinuates the devil. Take your own way; no one will be the worse for so unknown and obscure a person. Satisfy your own will; God does not care, or man either, for you and yours. And so the deed is done which makes the leak; the little hole, as it were, is bored which lets the water through the dyke; the loosening has begun, and, small though it be, all will break up. It is the bad work of the small, the idle sins of the many of no reputation, that ruin the world. For, indeed, every life as a life is equally valuable. The progress of the world is marked by the level the many get to, or, in other words, by the goodness of the small and those of no reputation who nevertheless, like the Psalmist, put their trust in God. This main truth is stamped in characters so broad and large everywhere that, like the daily miracle of nature, no one heeds it.
II. Never neglect in yourself or another what comes every day. Many a great love has been overthrown by a little disagreeable habit always recurring. The dropping of water has passed into a proverb for the transcendent power of this seeming weakness. And how do little, vexatious, and mean offenders, like the flies in summer, sting all the more because they are mean. That is great to us which touches us greatly. and small things touch us most; and our being small does not prevent us from being powers.
E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. ii., p. 177.
Society.
I. The measure of a man’s excellence is his power of uniting with others for good; the measure of a nation’s excellence is the obedience and co-operative power that are in it, freedom from abusive language; freedom from violent acts; the sense to see great men; the sense to see great laws; the sense to appreciate good work and despise talk and self-glorification. The end of the world’s existence is that this iron fact of society’s linked chain shall become a glorious perfection of many in one and one in many, an image of the perfect unity of God.
II. We all know that man does not live alone. How few consider the deep, the terrible meaning of this great fact. Take, for instance, Abraham and his race. How for thousands of years the Jew has been a marked man in feature, a marked man pre-eminent in patience, perseverance, intellect, in a word, in intense vitality, shown all the more as being the vitality of a fallen race, whilst all other fallen races have practically disappeared. What a grand inheritance Abraham, the faithful, the true, the temperate, the hardy man of God, passed on to his children taken as one body! Society means that good and evil are ever intermingling with unfailing energy, and that, as one or other prevails, the society lives or dies. This is as true on a large scale as on a small, true in a nation, true in a man.
E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. ii., p. 171.
References: 1Pe 2:5.—E. Thring, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiv., pp. 90, 103; J. G. Rogers, Christian World Pulpit, vol. iv., p. 409; W. Skinner, Ibid., vol. xi., p. 225; A. Mursell, Ibid., vol. xxvi., p. 89; J. Keble, Sermons from Christmas to Epiphany, p. 313; Ibid., Sermons for Saints’ Days, p. 415; J. Natt, Posthumous Sermons, p. 234; Homilist, 4th series, vol. i., pp. 296, 297.
1Pe 2:6
The Divine Foundation.
I. Jesus Christ as the foundation-stone. This means that Jesus is (1) the cardinal truth of the Christian system; (2) the central truth of Christianity; (3) the all-comprehensive truth of Christianity.
II. Jesus Christ is the corner-stone, or the harmonising truth, of Christianity. He is the corner-stone (1) of the religions of the world; (2) of Christian doctrines; (3) of Christian Churches.
III. He is the sure foundation. "Whosoever believeth in Him shall not be confounded."
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter, p. 251.
I. Jesus Christ is the corner-stone, uniting Jews and Gentiles. (1) Jews and Gentiles met in His person. (2) They had a place in His ministry. (3) They are united in the Church He established.
II. Jesus Christ is the corner-stone, uniting men and angels.
III. He unites God and man (1) in His person; (2) in His ministry; (3) in His Church.
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter, p. 271.
Reference: 1Pe 2:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxiv., No. 1429.
1Pe 2:6-7
Christ the One Foundation.
Let us consider a few of the senses in which Christ makes good this title of corner-stone.
I. How, do we think, did the first preachers to the heathen win converts? By appealing to men’s deepest sense of need, to the felt necessity of a centralising, consolidating principle of human life. Two things, at least, we must secure if life is not to be a failure. (1) One is something certainly true, a truth to stand by amid uncertainties. As we advance in our earthly journey, perplexities gather round on all sides; life has not verified our first expectations; it raises questions which it does not answer; there is a confusion and discord of theories, but where is that which we can depend upon and grasp firmly, looking life and death in the face? The answer is in the words of Jesus, "I am the Truth." (2) Again, man needs a power of moral and spiritual rectification. He wants to be cleansed from his own unholiness, relieved of his own sense of guilt, otherwise he cannot build in peace; how should he? Life, to be worth having, must be a life with a quiet conscience. To believers in Christ He is all-precious, because He can and does help them to become pure and single-hearted, high in aim and active in duty.
II. In His relation to the several doctrines and institutions of His kingdom, Christ sustains the character of the one foundation. (1) It is so in regard to doctrines; He is the one object whom they set before us. (2) He is also the foundation of all His ordinances. (3) If Christ be in these ways the foundation of our spiritual life in all its aspects, should He not be also the foundation of all that we do? Let us "consider our ways," and resume the building of the spiritual house within us, being assured that the promise will be abundantly verified to us, "Be strong, and work, for I am with you."
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine, p. 291.
1Pe 2:7
The Preciousness of Christ.
The writer, in some four or five verses of the chapter, has been employing the image of a building, or rather of a temple, to describe the relation existing between Christ and His Church. According to this image, the Lord Jesus Christ is the solid foundation-stone, which bears the weight of the entire superstructure, and upon which the firmness and solidity of the edifice depend. This stone has been selected by God and placed by Him in its appointed situation; this stone, moreover, is a living stone: it has the property of communicating life to that which is brought into contact with it, and to it are drawn in rapid succession the other living stones, the members of the mystical body of Christ, who are to be built together into a spiritual house. The main thought of the passage—that Christ, the personal Christ, is the foundation-stone of the sacred structure, and that as such He is precious to a certain class of persons, though undervalued and contemned by others—is simple and obvious enough.
I. Christ is valuable, or precious, when considered in Himself. The rarity of an article or of a substance is one of the constituting causes of its value. The one last copy of a remarkable edition of a remarkable book; the one picture of a famous artist, who deviated for once from his ordinary style, and left behind him a singular production of his genius; the one gem, which surpasses all other gems in size and brilliance, or even, it may be, in the peculiarity of its defects—these things, and such as these, are frequently the subjects of an earnest and eager competition, and happy is the man considered to be who can succeed in making himself the possessor of a coveted prize. Rarity, then, makes a thing valuable. And if so, how valuable must He be whom the Scripture calls wonderful, He who is the only-begotten of the Father, the incarnate Son of God. (2) Our foundation-stone is precious also on account of its own intrinsic worth and excellence and its perfect adaptation to the purpose which it is intended to subserve. (3) Christ’s preciousness is enhanced by that training and discipline, that process of intellectual and spiritual preparation, which it was the Father’s good will that He should be called upon to undergo.
II. Christ is valuable, not only in Himself, but also in the estimation of His people. They think much of Him. There is nothing His people would not consent to part with, if the parting were necessary, in order to retain their possession of Christ. And Christ is more precious to His people the longer and the better they know Him. I have heard it said that the feeling of many persons, when they first see the far-famed cathedral of St. Peter at Rome, is one of disappointment. The building seems neither so large, nor so grand, nor so imposing, nor so beautiful as they had expected it to be. But when they become better acquainted with it the feeling of disappointment passes away; the beauty, the glory, grow upon the visitor. So what we knew and appreciated of Christ when we first put ourselves into His hands is as nothing when compared with what we know and appreciate of Him upon further acquaintance.
G. Calthrop, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 1005.
1Pe 2:7-8
Believers and Unbelievers.
I. The relation which Jesus Christ sustains to believers: "Unto you therefore which believe He is precious." (1) The first element in our idea of preciousness is rarity. (2) Another important element in our idea of preciousness is usefulness. (3) There must also be real intrinsic worth. All these we have in Christ Jesus.
II. The relation which Christ sustains to unbelievers. (1) He is by them rejected. (2) He becomes to them a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. (3) Those who through unbelief crucify to themselves afresh the Son of God do themselves incalculable moral hurt.
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter, p. 288.
References: 1Pe 2:7, 1Pe 2:8.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. v., No. 242; vol. xvi., No. 931; vol. xxi., No. 1224; Ibid., Evening by Evening, p. 61; H. Allon, The Vision of God, p. 75; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 124.
1Pe 2:9
Predestination.
I. It is impossible to read the Scriptures and not to see that there are some persons predestinated to glory. There are persons who, in the words of St. Paul, are vessels which God hath aforetime prepared unto glory. It is a fact—we see it with our eyes—that God makes a distinction between the heathen who have never heard the name of Christ and the Christian. The latter has high privileges which the former has not. The Christian has God’s word to guide him, but not only this: he has the Holy Spirit dwelling in him; he can reach to higher degrees of excellence here; and reason would surmise that he is intended for higher enjoyments hereafter. What reason surmises, revelation asserts. This, then, is the first, the foundation blessing of Christianity, in which we may humbly rejoice, and according to which all spiritual blessings are to be dispensed; it is the first link in the golden chain of glory which is to raise man from earth to heaven, the first round of that ladder up which man is to ascend to God, as angels descend to man.
II. But we may proceed yet farther. Our blessed Saviour tells us that there are many mansions in His Father’s house, comparing the house that is to be to that which existed on earth while He yet tabernacled with men. In the temple of the first Jerusalem there was a variety of chambers or mansions, employed for different purposes, though all relating directly or indirectly to the services of the sanctuary. In the new Jerusalem, which will itself be the temple of the universe, there will in like manner be many mansions or chambers. It is very possible that we are not only each of us predestined to heaven, but predestined also each to our particular place in heaven, that our very mansion is fixed. Let the glory which is awaiting us, and to which we are predestined, elevate our characters, ennoble our thoughts, extend our views. Co-heirs we are with Christ Himself, who is our Head; vessels we are designed for high honour; we are of the household of the King of kings; we are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, called out of darkness into His marvellous light.
W. F. Hook, Sermons on Various Subjects, p. 48.
References: 1Pe 2:9.—R. Flint, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxiv., p. 216; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. x., p. 284.
1Pe 2:9-10
The True Israel.
I. "Ye are a chosen generation," the word "generation" here meaning, not contemporaries, but the offspring of one common parent, the offshoots of one original stock. The Israelites were a special "generation." (1) They had sprung from Abraham as their common progenitor. (2) The Jews were, moreover, a "chosen generation"—called out of the darkness of Chaldæan idolatry to the marvellous light of Divine revelation.
II. "Ye are a royal priesthood." (1) The Jews were a nation of priests. (2) "A royal priesthood." "Ye are kings and priests," kings over yourselves and priests unto God. A grand spectacle to see men monarchs of themselves, ruling their own passions and keeping their lusts in subjection. (3) "Ye are a royal priesthood, to show forth the excellences of Him who hath called you.". By your holy conversation, upright demeanour, you are to show forth the character of your God.
III. "Ye are a holy nation." As a people bound together for the purposes of holiness, we should show forth the excellences of God.
J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter, p. 307.
References: 1Pe 2:12.—Archbishop Thomson, Church of England Pulpit, vol. i., p. 273. 1Pe 2:12, 1Pe 2:13.—Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 98. 1Pe 2:15.—W. Walters, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xviii., p. 358; J. Keble, Sermons from Easter to Ascension, p. 303.
1Pe 2:16
I. The designation "servant of God" embodies an opinion or theory about human life. When a being like man finds himself in this present sphere of existence, with the endowments of thought and of passion which go to make up his nature, he naturally asks himself how he may make the best of his opportunity. For some men life is pleasure; for others it is energy; for others it is active thought; for the last class it is moral excellence. In all these cases, man lives within the compass of his own being, for something which it yields, or which, as he think, satisfies and completes it. His pleasure, his energy and thought, nay, his very virtue, are parts of himself. They exist as sensations, moods, facts, satisfactions of his being; they have no existence apart from him. The servant of God, too, may—nay, will sooner or later—taste exquisite pleasures, may exercise his thought on the highest subjects, may achieve real excellence in character and conduct; nay, in different degrees he cannot help doing this: but for him these things are not ends of action; they are only the accompaniments of his real object. He thinks of life only as service; he conceives of it as the surrender of his will, of his time, of his affections, of his intellect and memory, of his goods, if needs be, of his friendship, reputation, and health, and life, to a perfectly holy Being, who exists in utter independence of himself, who has the very highest claim upon his obedience. For him life is a constant sense of having upon him a Master’s eye; it is a constant reference to what is known or may be inferred about a Master’s will.
II. The right and property which God has over all men, as based on creation, is in the case of Christians reinforced by a second right based upon redemption. When all had been lost by abuse of that free will which is man’s highest endowment, the infinite mercy stooped from heaven in the person of the Eternal Son to rescue us from misery and from shame, to endow us with the means of grace and with the hope of glory. If it is maintained that the service of God is unworthy of man’s dignity, the answer is, first, that God made man, and, secondly, that He has made man to know and to serve Himself. Our human nature, notwithstanding its ancient error, does when cross-questioned point upwards; and experience confirms what reason and observation suggest. Those who have served God, though amidst imperfections and failures, yet do know that this service expands, satisfies, completes, all that is best and strongest in their thoughts and affections; above all, that it corresponds with the facts of their being, that it is based on truth.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, No. 821.
1Pe 2:16
The text sets before us the limits of Christian liberty, the responsibility which lies upon every Christian for the right government of his private individual will, according to what he knows, or ought to know, or might have known, of the will of God.
I. The love of liberty is generally said to be a feeling implanted in the heart of man. It begins to show itself in his earliest years. Even in our childhood we are all apt to show impatience at the control exercised over us by our parents and guardians, and in our strong manhood we chafe under the restraints of law and the commands of our superiors whenever they happen for the moment to cross or impede anything we desire to do. The sense of freedom is itself pleasure.
II. And yet, notwithstanding this hearty love of freedom, which appears so natural to us, the very earliest lesson we have to learn is that we are not free to act as we please even in earthly matters; that our will is not our own, but that of our parents and governors. Even when we are grown up and think we are about to taste the desired fruits of the liberty of manhood, the disagreeable conviction is forced upon us that if we would live happily and creditably here, we must prevent our desires and wills from ranging too widely. It is our highest interest, as it is our bounden duty, to consider in all our actions how far they will be for the general good as well as for our own good.
III. This, then, is the measure of the Christian’s liberty in the world. We are free agents within the limits of God’s laws, and of human laws also, as deriving their force and value from God’s permission. The true Christian is the only man who is free upon earth because he will never desire to do more than God’s law permits him, and that, indeed, in glorious liberty. There is no such freedom as serving God.
P. Williams, Oxford and Cambridge Journal, April 24th, 1884.
Freedom and Law.
I. Christ has given to us men, first of all, political or social freedom. He has not, indeed, drawn out a scheme of government and stamped it with His Divine authority as guaranteeing freedom. The New Testament only notices two elements in man’s life as a political or social being. One is the existence of some government which it is a duty to obey, be it assembly, president, king, or emperor; the other element is the freedom of the individual Christian under any form of government whatever. The whole social fabric totters to its base when there is a conflict between human law and Divine law enthroned in conscience, when law and the highest liberty are foes. To avoid such a misfortune must be the aim of all wise legislators, to deprecate it the heartfelt prayer of all good citizens.
II. Christ gave men also intellectual freedom. He enfranchised them by the gift of truth. He gave truth in its fulness, truth absolute and final. Until He came the human intellect was enslaved. The religion of Christ gave an immense impulse to human thought. He led men out into the great highways of thought, where, if they would, they might know the universal Father, manifested in His blessed Son, as the Author of all existence, as its object and as its end.
III. Christ has made us morally free. He has broken the chains which fettered the human will, and has restored to it its buoyancy and power. Man was morally free in paradise; he became enslaved in consequence of that act of disobedience which we name the Fall. How was he to be enfranchised? What had been lost was more than regained in Christ. A Christian lives under a system of restrictions and obligations; and yet he is free. Those obligations and restrictions only prescribe for him what his own new, heaven-sent nature would wish to do and to be. They are acceptable to, they are demanded by, the "new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness."
H. P. Liddon, Easter Sermons, vol. ii., p. 211.
References: 1Pe 2:16.—H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty, vol. i., p. 227; E. Bickersteth, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 221; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. vii., p. 295.
1Pe 2:16-17
Christian Freedom.
I. We are here warned against two great enemies of our souls, which are ever seeking to bring us into bondage, and to substitute for the true Christian liberty the fancied freedom, but real slavery, of self-indulgence. These two enemies are (1) the lust of the flesh, and (2) pride. Our own consciences will tell us that they are not enemies whose hostility is limited to persons placed in particular circumstances or to one particular period of Christian history, but that they make war upon all classes at all times. One proof of their universal enmity to Christ’s servants is that they are two of the temptations through which the devil assailed Christ. It well becomes us, then, to take heed against snares so subtle that they were chosen by the great enemy for his own evil purposes; and, at the same time, if we tremble at our own experience and recollection of their power, we shall be comforted by the thought of One who, in that He Himself hath suffered being tempted, being tempted by those very inclinations, is able to succour them that are tempted.
II. Selfishness and pride are here set before us as the two great enemies which war against the soul, and are ever seeking to bring it into bondage. And how are we to be delivered from their fetters, or from their assaults? The true reason why we remain slaves to these passions, in some one or more of their various manifestations, is that we are still strangers to the love of God. It is only in Christ that we can find safety or deliverance. Seek for true freedom in forgetting yourselves and remembering Him; think of the witness borne by His life and death against all self-seeking and self-exaltation; and learning to see all things and all persons no longer through the mists of pride and selfishness, but in the pure, heavenly radiance of His Gospel, let each offer up to Him the thoughtful prayer,—
"Give unto me, made lowly wise,
The spirit of self-sacrifice;
The confidence of reason give;
And in the light of truth Thy bondman let me live."
G. E. L. Cotton, Expository Sermons on the Epistles, vol. ii., p. 1.
1Pe 2:17
The Obligation of Christians to the World and the Church.
I. "Honour all men." Christians in deed and truth, called by the grace of God to be a peculiar people, separate from the world, have this rule laid upon them. Why? Because in all men, even in those who refuse the Gospel, in the worshippers of the world, in those who are strangers to the family of Christ, there is something worthy of honour. The most depraved of the human race has an infinite price set upon his life; the blood of the meanest does not fall to the ground unavenged. There is a Divine light, "which lighteth every man that cometh into the world"; and for the sake of that, honour is due unto him, though by choosing darkness rather than light he has dishonoured himself. You owe to all men courtesy, generosity, charity, respect, and (what is perhaps harder than all) justice.
II. Having fulfilled this law, draw the line broadly and distinctly between it and the second rule: "Love the brotherhood." Remember where you are, if you be lively members of the body of Christ. You have been chosen out of the world, gathered into a fold of which Christ is the door, adopted into a home for the members of which He prayed to the Eternal Father "that they may be one, as We are." If you be true to your character, you will find in the peace of love and unity of your Christian home not only a solace for the troubles of the world, but a counterattraction against its sinful pleasures and shelter against its dangers. And, moreover, that love and union, which ministers to your joy, serves to the glory of God, and wins souls from the world into the Church.
C. W. Furse, Sermons at Richmond, p. 143.
References: 1Pe 2:17.—Homiletic Quarterly, vol. i., p. 405; vol. xiii., p. 274; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Village Sermons, 4th series, p. 51; Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 25; F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xix., p. 17; R. Duckworth, Ibid., vol. xxiv., p. 211; J. G. Rogers, Ibid., vol. xxvii., p. 117.
1Pe 2:19
Patience under Undeserved Wrong.
I. St. Peter teaches that suffering is thankworthy, a gift from God, and acceptable in turn to Him, if it be accompanied by two conditions. (1) It must be undeserved. A slave, too, might be punished for doing what would merit punishment in a free man; a slave, too, might be violent, or abusive, or careless about that which belonged to others, or intemperate, or dishonest, or treacherous. If punished for offences of this kind, he might not complain. "What glory is it," asks St. Peter, "if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently?" The law, the eternal law, that punishment follows wrong-doing, is not suspended in the case of the slave. (2) And such suffering must be for conscience toward God. It must be borne for God’s cause and sake, and with a good hope of God’s approval. This it is which makes pain at once bearable and bracing, when the conscience of the sufferer can ask the perfect moral Being to take note of it, just as David does in so many of his psalms. "Look Thou upon me, and be merciful unto me. Lord, be Thou my Helper." Mere suffering which a man dares not offer to God, though it be borne patiently through physical courage, through "pluck," as we term it, has no spiritual value. "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit." This is the Consecration Prayer, uttered on the cross, uttered, if in other language, wherever men suffer for conscience toward God; and by it suffering is changed—changed assuredly into moral victory.
II. And here it may be asked, "Why did not the Apostles denounce slavery as an intolerable wrong? Why did they trifle with it, and allow the Church which succeeded them to trifle with it? Why did they seem, indirectly at least, to sanction it by advising slaves to honour and obey their owners? Was not this of the nature of a compromise between good and evil—between the high principles of Christian morality on the one hand and the debased institutions of heathen life on the other? Would it not have been better to break with slavery at once and altogether,—better for the honour of the Christian revelation, better for the best interest of man?" Certainly, nothing can well be more antipathetic than the spirit of the Gospel and the spirit of slavery; for slavery postulates an essential distinction between man and man, which is unknown to the Gospel. The Gospel proclaims the unity of the human race and the equality of all its members before God. The Gospel is based upon, and it consecrates, the laws of God in nature; and slavery, on the other hand, is distinctly unnatural: it is a rejection of the fundamental equality of man. It often, and very consistently, professes to reject belief in the unity of the human race. To slavery the deepest of all distinctions between human beings is the distinction between the man who is his own owner and the man who is owned by another. "In Christ Jesus," exclaims the Apostle, "there is neither bond nor free." But the exact question which the Apostles had to consider was not whether slavery was a bad social institution or theoretically indefensible, but this: whether slavery necessarily ruined the prospects of the human soul. A slave might be a Christian—he might be the best of Christians—easily enough. If he were harshly treated, that was not peculiar to his condition of life; it might even promote his sanctification. If he were tempted to do wrong, St. James would tell him that he should count this all joy, knowing that the trial of his faith worked endurance. If he had to choose between sinful compliance with a master’s will and punishment, though that punishment were death, he, with his eyes fixed on the Divine Sufferer, would know his part. The grace of God may make the soul of man independent of outward circumstances; and there is no real slavery when the soul is free. At the same time, although the Apostles were working, as I have said, for another world, in the course of doing so, and, as it were, incidentally, they were destined to be, from the nature of the case, great social reformers in this. They could not but detest slavery, but how was it to be done away with? Was it to be by some sudden revolutionary effort, supposing the thing to be possible? Was it to be by the influence of new principles—first upon the opinions of men, and then upon the structure of society? The Apostles chose the latter method, but it was a method which took time. The Apostles trusted to the infiltration of new principles into the thoughts and actions of men, and not to those violent and tragical catastrophes which, even when they succeed, succeed amid ruins. It was not the duty of the Gospel to proclaim a social war. There were sects at that time nearly related to Judaism. The Essenes and Therapeutæ they were called, and their teaching was certainly very familiar to St. Paul—sects which held that the slave should at once refuse all obedience to his master, in the name of human rights. But slaves, maddened by oppression into rebellion against order, would not, in that age at least, have put an end to slavery. It was better to teach a higher ideal of life, both to the slave and to the master, and meanwhile to proclaim the truth, "This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully." In Christian households, a hundred courtesies softened the hardship of the legal relation between master and slave. The sense of a common brotherhood in Christ had already sapped the idea of any radical inequality between them.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 943.
1Pe 2:20
Writing probably from Rome, certainly in one of the closing years of his life, St. Peter saw the great tendency of social and political circumstances around him towards that outbreak of violence against the worshippers of Christ which is known in history as the first persecution, in which he and St. Paul laid down their lives. He is anxious to prepare the Asiatic Christians for the trials which are before them. Then, as now, there were bad Christians who fell under the just sentence of the criminal law, and St. Peter reminds them that there is no moral glory in suffering that which we have deserved, even though we take our punishment uncomplainingly. "What glory is it if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently?" But he knew also that cruel and aggravated sufferings awaited numbers of inoffensive men and women, whose only crime would be that they were worshippers of the meek and lowly Jesus and centres of light and goodness in a corrupt and demoralised society. When the storm burst, as it would burst, they might be tempted to think that the government of the world was somehow at fault in this award of bitter punishment to virtuous and benevolent persons, conscious of the integrity of their intentions, conscious of their desire to serve a holy God, to do any good in their power to their fellow-creatures. Accordingly St. Peter puts their anticipated trials in a light which would not, at first sight, present itself, and which does not lie upon the surface of things: "If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." There is no glory in submitting to deserved punishment; there is a peculiar moral glory in patience under unmerited wrong, if not according to any human, yet certainly according to a Divine, standard. "This is acceptable with God." Now, many men have said, and more, perhaps, have thought, about such teaching as this, that it is a splendid paradox. That a criminal should suffer what he has deserved satisfies the sense of justice; that a good man should suffer what he has not deserved violates the sense of justice: and if he submits uncomplainingly, he acquiesces in injustice. Nay, he does more: he forfeits the independence, the glory, of his manhood. His business as a man, knowing himself to be innocent, is, we are told, to resist to the last extremity, and to submit at last, if he must submit, under protest against the violence which deprives him of his liberty or his life. The precept to take it patiently is, in a word, objected to as effeminate and anti-social.
I. Now, here it must be remarked that for serious Christians this question is really settled by the precepts and example of our Lord Himself. "Even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us 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, He threatened not; but submitted Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." In His public teaching our Lord made much of patient submission to undeserved wrong. He pronounced those men blessed who suffered for righteousness’ sake. "Blessed are ye," He says, "when men shall revile you and persecute you, and say all manner of evil against you falsely. Rejoice and be exceeding glad." Not in exemption from suffering, but in truthful endurance, would His true followers find their peace. "In your patience possess ye your souls." Nay more, Christians, He says, are to welcome such trials. They are to meet the persecutor half-way. If smitten on one cheek, they are to present the other. They are to do good to them that hate them, to pray for their persecutors, for their calumniators; and their example is the all-merciful God, who sheds the light of day, who sends down the rain, upon those who set Him at defiance, upon the just and the unjust. For Christians the question whether patience under undeserved wrong is right, is a duty, is not an open question. It has been settled by the highest authority—our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. From His teaching there is no appeal. In His example we Christians see the true ideal of human life. "As He is, so are we in this world," says St. John; "Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ," says St. Paul; "Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps," says St. Peter. And for thousands upon thousands of Christians in every generation this has decided the matter, and will decide it. If He in whom the prince of this world had no part, who is fairer than the children of men, thus came among us wounded and bruised for transgressions and iniquities which were not His own, why should we discuss the question any further whether patient submission to undeserved wrong is or is not a duty? It is ruled by the highest of all authorities, by the first of all precedents. "As He is, so are we in this world."
II. Although it is true that sin is followed by punishment, because God is righteousness, it does not follow that all human suffering in this life is a punishment for sin. The Jews came to think that, whatever sufferings befell a man, they must be in exact proportion to his personal sinfulness, and therefore that the very suffering and unfortunate among mankind were, so to speak, placarded by God’s providence as the most conspicuous of sinners,—that misfortunes and agony were sure proofs of known or undiscovered crime. The Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with their sacrifices were supposed to be sinners above all the Galileans. The eighteen upon whom the tower of Siloam fell were adjudged worse men than any of their contemporaries. Such a theory would have regarded a fire attended with loss of life, or a great railway accident, as God’s revelation of a certain number of possibly unsuspected, but certainly very wicked criminals indeed. Against this idea the Old Testament itself contains some very emphatic protests. Thus the book of Job has for its main object to show that Job’s misfortunes are no real measure of his sins. His unyielding resistance to his friends on this point, followed by the Divine verdict in his favour at the close of the book, shows that pain and misfortune are not to be regarded as always penal. And if the question be asked by some anxious soul, "How am I to know? Is this unjust humiliation, or this insult, or this loss of means, or this illness, or this heartache, a punishment for past sin, or a tender discipline?" the answer is, "Conscience must itself reply." Conscience reveals to man the true meaning of pain, not pain the contents of conscience. No outward sign marks one misfortune as a penalty, and another misfortune as a discipline; but conscience, with the map of life spread out before it, is at no loss for information.
III. In this glad acceptance of undeserved pain we see one of the central forces of the Christian religion, by which, as a matter of fact, it made its way among men eighteen centuries ago and ever since. The religion of Jesus Christ, embodied in His own teaching, and illustrated by His cross, has brought to bear a mighty force upon human life: the force of passive virtue. Heathenism knew something of active virtue. Energy for good in many forms was highly rated by it; but the passive excellences of Christian character—love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, meekness—were known very slightly, or known only to be despised as mean-spirited and effeminate. Yet, in truth, passive virtue often requires more courage than active virtue. In battle soldiers can often rush forward to the charge when they cannot keep their ranks under a heavy fire; and in life to do is again and again easier, far easier, than simply to bear. Patient endurance is, indeed, a moral accomplishment, in which, as a rule, women do better than men, but it is not, in the depreciatory sense of the term, effeminate. It belongs to the highest forms of human courage. Effeminate, indeed! It is the passive virtue which has conquered the world for Christ. In the early Church there was no great stock of those showy qualities which take society by storm. Not many mighty, we know, not many wise, not many noble, were called. Few could speak or act so as to control the attention of mankind at large; but there was a something that all could do. All—such was Christ’s strengthening grace—all could suffer in such fashion as to show that a new power was abroad in the world—a power before which pain, man’s ancient enemy, had ceased to be formidable. Literature, social prestige, political influence, were all against the Church; but in the long run the old empire was no match for a religion which could teach its sincere votaries generation after generation to regard pure suffering as a privilege, as a mark of God’s favour, as a pledge of glory. And if this way of taking the troubles which are laid upon us supplies Christianity with its force, so it secures to human life its best consolations. It will not matter much in the long run, if by discipline the neck of our natural pride is broken, and our old sins are finally put away, and love to God is purged from earthly alloy, and an advance is made in sweetness, in humility, in self-denial, in submission to God’s will, in all the points which are least easy, even for serious Christians, to acquire. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us an exceeding, an eternal, weight of glory." "Heaviness may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 806.
1Pe 2:21
The Great Exemplar.
I. That which strikes us first in the example which Christ has left is its faultlessness. We are startled by His own sense of this. He never utters one word to God or to man which implies the consciousness of a single defect. Read the lives of the great servants of God in the Old or New Testament—of Abraham, of Moses, of Samuel, of David, of Elijah, of St. Peter, of St. Paul. They all confess sin. They all humble themselves before men. They implore the mercy of God. Think of any great man whom you have ever known, or whose life you have read. He has feared God, loved God, worked for God through long years; yet he is full of the sense of his inconsistencies, of his imperfections, pervading his life and his conduct. He is profuse in his acknowledgments of his weakness and of his sin. Nay, if he were not thus willing to confess his sin, you yourself would question his goodness, for what he says is, as you instinctively feel, no more than the fact. But Jesus Christ reproaches Himself for nothing, confesses nothing, regrets nothing. He is certain of all that He says and does. "I do always those things that please the Father." In this sinlessness He is, although our model, yet beyond our full reach of imitation. We cannot in our maimed and broken lives reproduce the complete image of the immaculate Lamb. The best of men knows that in his best moments he is beset by motives, thoughts, inclinations, from which Christ was utterly free. "If we say that we have not sinned, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." But this does not destroy—on the contrary, it enhances—the value of His ideal example. In all departments of thought and work the ideal is, strictly speaking, by man unattainable. Yet man may never lose sight of the ideal. In the Gospels ideal human life appears in a form of flesh and blood. It is the ideal, and, therefore, it is beyond us; yet it is not the less precious as a stimulus and guide to our effort at self-improvement.
II. And then, again, we are struck by the balance and perfection of excellences in our Lord’s human character. As a rule, if a man possesses some one excellence in an unusual degree, he will be found to exhibit some fault or shortcoming in an opposite direction. Now, of this want of balance in excellence, of this exaggeration of particular forms of excellence, which thus passes into defect, there is no trace in our Lord. Read His life over and over again with this object in view, and, unless I am mistaken, nothing will strike you more than its faultless proportions.
III. Consider, again, a feature which runs through His whole character: its simplicity. In nothing that He says or does can we detect any trace of striving after effect. The number of men of whom anything remotely like this is true is very small indeed. The effort to create an impression is the result sometimes of timidity, sometimes of vanity, but it always impairs moral beauty, whether of speech or work. Our Lord always says what He has to say in the most natural and unpretending words. His sentences unfold themselves without effort or system, just as persons and occasions demand. Every situation offers an opportunity, and He uses it. He attends a wedding; He cures a paralytic; He stoops to write upon the ground; He eats with a Pharisee; He raises a corpse to life; He washes the feet of His disciples, just as it comes, just as is right from day to day, from hour to hour, from minute to minute. The most important and useful acts follow on with the most trivial and ordinary. There is no effort, no disturbing or pretentious movement. All is as simple as if all were commonplace. It is this absence of anything like an attempt to produce unusual impressions which reveals a soul possessed with a sense of the majesty and the power of truth. Depend upon it, in the degree in which any man becomes really great, he becomes also simple.
IV. And one further point to be remarked in our Lord’s example is the stress which it lays upon those forms of excellence which make no great show, such as patience, humility, and the like. As we read the Gospels we are led to see that the highest type of human excellence consists less in acting well than in suffering well. The ancient world never understood this. With them virtue was always active force. Yet the conditions of our human life are such that, whether we will or no, we are more frequently called upon to endure than to act; and upon the spirit in which we endure everything depends. Our Lord restored the passive virtues to their forgotten and true place in human conduct. He revealed the beauty, the majesty, of patience, of meekness, of uncomplaining submission. Experience has shown that Christ’s Divinity is no bar whatever to an imitation of His life as man. And this imitation is not a duty which we are free to accept or decline. "The elect," says St. Paul, "are predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son of God." If there is no effort at this conformity, there is no note of a true predestination. We cannot enter into the designs of God in giving us His Son if we are making no effort to be like His Son. Like the law, the life of Christ is a schoolmaster to bring us to the cross of Christ. After gazing at Him we come to Him out of heart with ourselves, emptied, happily emptied, of self, crushed by a sense of our utter unworthiness to bear His name, to wear His livery; and He once more stretches His pierced hand to pardon, and offers the chalice of His blood to strengthen our souls for such work as may remain to make them more like Himself.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit, New Series, No. 1091.
References: 1Pe 2:21.—R. Balgarnie, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xxix., p. 407; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, Sunday Sermonettes for a Year, p. 152; Ibid., The Life of Duty, vol. i., p. 218; Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 354; Clergyman’s Magazine, vol. ii., p. 91.
1Pe 2:21-22
Christ our Example.
I. While our salvation is specifically described as the effect of our Lord’s greatest obedience—that is, His death—yet, viewing the subject of redemption generally, our salvation is the fruit of His whole obedience. This is apparent from the plan itself of salvation, as revealed to the enlightened mind of a Christian in the Scriptures of truth. It was necessary that the High-priest of our profession should be holy, harmless, undefiled; that of Him, the Victim who suffered for us, it should be asserted and proved that He did no sin, and that guile was not found in His mouth.
II. His history has been before the world for more than eighteen hundred years. For eighteen hundred years the world has frequently made the attempt to imagine a faultless character; but no faultless character has ever been exhibited to mankind but that of our Jesus. His charity, His piety, His purity, His fortitude, His self-possession, His self-denial, His self-government—all prove the perfection of His character and confirm the judgment of His very enemies. They could not even ground condemnation on the frivolous accusation of the false witnesses, but condemned Him at last for that fact which is the very foundation of our hope: they condemned Him because He declared Himself to be the Son of God, thereby, as they correctly and logically reasoned, making Himself equal with God. The Lord Jesus was condemned for asserting His Divinity.
III. He is now held forth to us as an example, that we should follow His steps. The precise point marked out for our imitation is not obedience simply, but obedience attended with suffering. Our virtues are never to be trusted until they are tried, and they are never tried without suffering. The Christian, then, will bear his trials thankfully. He will thank God for removing from his heart even that which rends his heart asunder, because he knows that God does not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men; that He only sends affliction to effect for us or in us some ulterior blessing; and that it is good for us to be afflicted, affliction working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
W. F. Hook, Parish Sermons, p. 226.
1Pe 2:24
The Witness of the Apostles.
I. St. Peter says of Christ, with whom he had lived in daily intercourse, He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree." Wonderful and unexampled assertion that He whom he called the sacrifice for human sin, the reconciliation of the world, was no person whose name had come down to him from the remoteness of time, but One whom he had himself known! He had known Him, and yet he proclaimed this unutterable mystery about Him. Had our Lord been mere man, do we not know what must have followed a constant, near intercourse with Him? How could a claim to a supernatural spotlessness, as the Lamb of God, had it not been real, have stood such an ordeal? It must have vanished with the light of day and the constant scrutiny of watchful eyes. Yet it was those who had the closest connection with Christ who announced to the world the tremendous mystery which attached to Him, the mystery which, as St. Paul says, had been hid from ages and generations: that He was the image of the invisible God, the Firstborn of every creature; that He was before all things, and that by Him all things consist; and that it pleased the Father by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, whether they be things in heaven or things on earth, having made peace by the blood of His cross.
II. And were the Apostles men whose witness can be set aside upon any ground of weakness, want of judgment and proper strength of mind? I think it may be said that it would be difficult to point out any set of men in history whose judgment, so far as we can gather from their conduct and writings, upon a life and character would be more solid and more competent. Our Lord gathered about Him the choicest specimens of the Jewish mind, strong and vigorous men, as their after-life showed, men of solid character and understanding, who were able when left to themselves to carry on the work which He had begun with power and firmness, with a wise policy as well as an ardent zeal, and who showed themselves able to cope with adversaries and the assailing forces of the world. It was this company of men that surrounded Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry. It was such men who saw in Christ the Man without sin, the undefiled Lamb of God, who took away the sin of the world, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. It was the purpose of God to give us that special guarantee to the supernatural holiness of Christ which was contained in the testimony of such men, who had known Him, and lived with Him, and yet felt this assurance about Him, to show us that the belief in the mystery about Him had gone through the most trying of all ordeals: familiarity with Him.
J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p. 278.
References: 1Pe 2:24.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. iii., p. 202; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xii., p. 301; Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix., No. 1143; G. Calthrop, Pulpit Recollections, p. 133; Archbishop Maclagan, Church of England Pulpit, vol. iii., p. 205. 1Pe 2:25.—Preacher’s Monthly, vol. v., p. 222. 1Pe 3:1, 1Pe 3:2.—R. Tuck, Christian World Pulpit, vol. v., p. 180. 1Pe 3:3, 1Pe 3:4.—H. W. Beecher, Ibid., vol. xxiii., p. 372; G. Calthrop, Words to my Friends, p. 346. 1Pe 3:4.—Christian World Pulpit, vol. xi., p. 264; Homiletic Magazine, vol. xv., p. 168. 1Pe 3:6.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xxvii., No. 1633.
The Sermon Bible, ed. William Robertson Nicoll (1888–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. R. Dummelow 1909 · Public Domain New Life According to the Ancient Promise, and after…
New Life According to the Ancient Promise, and after the Example of Christ
B (iii). 1Pe_2:1-10. St. Peter considers that the Christian is the continuation of the Jewish Church. Christ's coming has been a time of reformation (Heb_9:10), but there has been no break with the past. After setting forth the doctrine of salvation (1Pe_1:3-9), he went on to show that it was the fulfilment of the doctrine of the prophets (1Pe_1:10-12). Now, after writing about the new life of Christians (1Pe_1:13-22), and showing that it also had been promised in prophecy (1Pe_1:24), he bids his readers in the half-playful language of metaphor (cp. Heb_5:12-14) to live simply, like new-born babes, nourished on simple, spiritual food, which the Lord Himself gives them, as has been signified in OT. (1Pe_2:1-3). He then shows that the Lord named in his quotation has been manifested in Jesus Christ, who is the comer-stone, spoken of in the Psalm, of the spiritual Temple which is being built up of His people to take the place of the old Jewish Temple with its imperfect sacrifices (1Pe_2:4-6). Obedience to the faith, not privilege of race, is the means by which this union with Christ in the new Temple is effected (1Pe_2:7.). Finally, he brings title after title of the chosen people from OT., and applies them to his readers, teaching them how their new position makes them God's royal priests and prophets to the world, and closes with a quotation from Hosea, the prophet of God's loving-kindness, which must touch their hearts, and commend all that he has said (1Pe_2:9.).
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1. Malice] RV 'wickedness.' A general word, as, beginning a new life, they must turn from worldly vices and become as little children (Mat_18:3). With this and the following v. cp. Jam_1:21.
2. The sincere milk of the word] RV 'The spiritual milk which is without guile.' Grow thereby] RV adds 'unto salvation,' which was omitted in the MSS which the AV translators followed.
3. If.. ye have tasted, etc.] from Psa_34:8 : cp. Heb_6:5. The Lord in the Psalm is Jehovah. As in other places in NT., words spoken of Him are applied to Christ, through whom God is manifested to man (Heb_1:10).
4. The references in this v., as in 1Pe_2:7, are to Psa_118:22 : cp. St. Peter's speech, Act_4:11. In 1Pe_2:6 a passage from Isa_28:16, on the same subject, is quoted from the Septuagint. Precious] RM 'honourable,' in contrast to 'disallowed.'
5. Lively stones] RV 'living stones,' as in 1Pe_2:4. The whole process of salvation is a process of life: cp. Joh_1:4; Joh_4:10; Joh_6:35; Joh_11:25; Joh_14:6; Rom_12:1; Heb_10:20 and 1Pe_1:23; (RM). Are built up] i.e. are being built up.
6. Wherefore] RV 'because.'
7. Which be disobedient] RV 'disbelieve.'
8. The reference is to Isa_8:14. Whereunto also they were appointed] as the words of Isaiah show. God has indeed appointed the disobedient unto stumbling, but also His royal priesthood for their recovery.
9. A chosen generation] RV 'an elect race': cp. Isa_43:20.
A peculiar people] RV 'a people for God's own possession': cp. Exo_19:5. Praises] RV 'excellencies'; AVmg. 'virtues': cp. Php_4:8; 2Pe_1:3, 2Pe_1:5. St. Peter repeats the teaching of the prophet (cp. Isa_43:21) that men are elect, not for their own sakes only, but to be God's priests and prophets to the world, so as to tell of Him to others, and to present, as spiritual sacrifices, in union with the sacrifice of Christ, not only themselves (Rom_12:1), their praise and alms (Heb_13:15.), but also the heathen (Rom_15:16 cp. Php_2:17), whom they win for God. Into his marvellous light] in which God dwells. It is unapproachable (1Ti_6:16), yet He, with whom all things are possible, has called us into it: cp. Isa_57:15, and see on 1Pe_5:10.
10. From Hos_1:6-9; Hos_2:1, Hos_2:23 : cp. Rom_9:25.
1Pe_2:11 to 1Pe_4:11. With the word 'beloved,' St. Peter begins each of the two following divisions of his letter. The keynote to this division is given in the references to Christ as suffering patiently, for the sake of others, to take away sin, and as having triumphed through suffering. He is the example and protector of these sojourners, whose life among an estranged population is one of constant suffering, under which they ought to be patient, gentle, and good, holding faster to one another in love, not, however, forgetting that they live and suffer on behalf of the heathen among whom they dwell.
The whole may be subdivided into four parts: A, 1Pe_2:11., introductory; B, 1Pe_2:13 to 1Pe_3:12, their duty as subjects—as, in particular, servants, wives, husbands; and again, in general, as members of a Christian community; 1Pe_3:13 to 1Pe_4:6, encouragement for their dangers and sufferings, the purpose of which is explained; D, 1Pe_4:7-11, exhortation to a sober, spiritual, and loving Christian life, to the glory of God.
A. 1Pe_2:11. Introduction, which sketches the thought of the whole section.
11. Strangers (RV 'sojourners') and pilgrims] from Gen_23:3 and Psa_39:12 cp. Heb_11:13. Fleshly lusts] the desires of the body, which, though innocent when under restraint, were always a source of temptation among the heathen.
12. Conversation honest] RV 'behaviour seemly': cp. 1Pe_1:15. In the day of visitation] (from Isa_10:3) when God shall no longer overlook the heathen ignorance: cp. Act_17:30. Then the good lives of the Christians, even though seen in memory only, may help them at last to glorify God.
B. 1Pe_2:13 to 1Pe_3:12. The duties of the Christians, as a body and in particular classes.
B (i). 1Pe_2:13-17. 'You are all subjects of the government, and must live as such. The government, though it might seem to be a mere human institution, is really created by God, and you see God's will working through it, as through the rest of the creation. God's will is that you should do well, and be at last delivered from the misconstructions of your ignorant neighbours. The government, by its repression of evil and encouragement of well-doing, is acting towards both these ends. When you recognise that such submission is submission to God's will, then submission becomes part of that freedom to which you have been brought by redemption—a freedom which those only know who have become slaves of God. This freedom obliges you to have a wide and noble rule of courtesy. Honour all men: only so can you keep the private rule of your community to love the brotherhood. In the same way honour to the king must follow fear towards God, by whom kings rule: as indeed Holy Scripture teaches you.' With this paragraph cp. Rom_13:1-7; Tit_3:1.
13. Ordinance] RM 'Gr. creation': cp. 1Pe_4:19.
The king] i.e. the Roman emperor.
14. Governors] i.e. of provinces.
16. The licence of the heathen, unlike the freedom of the Christian, could be used as a cloke, or pretext, for wickedness (see RV); they would do what they chose, considering it no one's business but their own.
17. Fear God. Honour the king] cp. Pro_24:21.
B (ii). 1Pe_2:18-25. Another ordinance of man, yet also of God's creation, is the family, which includes servants, wives, and husbands. Hitherto in this section St. Peter has rather hinted at than spoken plainly of suffering. Now he comes to a class who are sufferers indeed—the slaves of the household. He makes no more complaint against slavery than against the emperor, but his tender heart goes out to these ill-treated slaves, and he honours them above all their fellow-Christians by presenting to them, as their example in a special manner, Christ suffering innocently, patiently, trustfully, offering Himself in His sufferings as a sacrifice for the sins of us all. Thus these slaves, who are, like Christ, 'despised and rejected,' have a glory and grace which is specially their own, and are a special care of Christ.
19. Thankworthy] RV 'acceptable'; RM 'Gr. grace.' The Gk. for 'grace' and 'thankfulness' is the same. As joy in suffering partakes of the divine glory (cp. 1Pe_1:8), so thankfulness and cheerfulness reflects the gracious light of God's countenance: see on 1Pe_1:2.
22-25. This picture of Christ is taken from the description of the suffering servant of Jehovah in Isaiah 53.
24. Bare our sins.. on] RM 'carried up.. to.' A sacrificial term is here used: cp. Heb_7:27; Heb_9:28; Heb_13:15. The tree] i.e. the Cross: cp. Deu_21:22. Act_5:30; Act_10:39; Act_13:29; Gal_3:13.
25. Shepherd] suggested by Isa_53:6 : cp. Isa_40:11 and 1Pe_5:4; Bishop] RM 'overseer': cp. Act_1:20; (AV and RM). The overseer or bishop is an officer of the Church in the Pastoral Epistles: cp. Act_20:28; Php_1:1. Here the reference may be to the officer of the household who is set over the servants (cp. Luk_12:42-46); he may have no interest in them except as chattels, but they have an unseen overseer who cares for their very selves.
J. R. Dummelow, A Commentary on the Holy Bible (Macmillan, 1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain Further Practical Admonitions. 1Pe 2:1-10
Further Practical Admonitions. 1Pe 2:1-10
Growth in holiness:
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v. 1. Wherefore, laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil-speakings,
v. 2. as new-born babes, desire the sincere milk of the Word, that ye may grow thereby;
v. 3. if so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious.
The apostle here continues the admonitions which he began in chapter 1, placing the old evil life of the unconverted in opposition to the sanctification of the believers: Laying aside, then, all wickedness, all guile and hypocrisy and envy, and all slanderings, like newly born infants yearn after the spiritual, unadulterated milk, that by it you may grow unto salvation. The sins which the apostle mentions in the first verse are characteristic of the unconverted state, but are incompatible with true sanctification. There is wickedness, or malice, whose constant aim is to harm one’s neighbor. There is, as an expression of this malice, guile, which tries to reach its selfish object by deceiving one’s neighbor; hypocrisy, which always assumes a garb to cloak the real condition of the heart and mind; envy, which begrudges one’s neighbor everything that the goodness or the mercy of the Lord has given him; and, as a culmination of them all, slanderings, backbitings, cleverly composed speeches which are intended to detract from the good name of one’s neighbor. All these vices should be laid aside, put off, because it interferes with the Christian’s growth in holiness and will certainly kill faith in his heart. Instead of that, the true believers will be found like infants that have just been born, like sucklings. For just as a healthy baby at that age is eager for its nourishment, practically hungry all the time, so the Christians should have an insatiable longing for the milk of the Word, for the nourishment which is the proper food for all believers from their conversion to their death. This Word of the Gospel is a spiritual milk, which, as Luther writes, the soul must draw and the heart seek; and it is a pure, unadulterated milk, it should be used just as it is found in Scriptures, without the slightest addition of man’s wisdom. Through this mental and spiritual food, the Word of the Gospel, the growth of the Christian takes place, the growth in grace, the growth in faith, the growth in sanctification, unto salvation. The Word works in us pure, holy, wholesome thoughts, wishes, and works, it gives us the strength both to will and to do according to the good pleasure of our heavenly Father.
In order to call the attention of his readers to the importance of this food and of the growth thereby, the apostle refers to an Old Testament passage: If, indeed, you have tasted that good is the Lord. Psa 34:9. He assumes as a matter of course that the Christians have enjoyed the food to which he has referred. But the excellence of this food is in itself an incentive for the believers to be eager for the proper spiritual growth. The very first taste of the goodness, of the kindness of the Lord, as shown in the Word of His grace, is bound to make the Christian eager for more of this wonderful benevolence, for more of this glorious news of the forgiveness of sins through Christ. Thus the faith that accepts and holds Christ is increased and strengthened through the Word, and out of this strength there flows, in turn, a truly righteous demeanor, true goodness of heart, Christian kindness and benevolence.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Peter continues teaching his readers about holiness and obedience.
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Therefore put aside all evil, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all slander
These sinful actions are spoken of as if they were objects that people could throw away. The word "Therefore" here refers back to everything that Peter has said about being holy and obedient. AT: "So then, get rid of everything that is evil, and hypocrisy, and envy, and all slander" or "So then, stop being evil, or being deceptive, or being hypocritical, or envying, or slandering" (See: Metaphor)
As newborn infants, long for pure spiritual milk
Peter speaks of his readers as if they were babies. Babies requires very pure food, which they can digest easily. In the same way, believers need pure teaching from God's word. AT: "Just as babies long for their mother's breast milk, so you must yearn for pure spiritual milk" (See: Metaphor)
long for
"desire intensely" or "yearn for"
pure spiritual milk
Peter speaks of the word of God as if it were spiritual milk that nourished children. (See: Metaphor)
you may grow in salvation
Here the word "salvation" refers to when God brings the salvation of his people to completion when Jesus returns (see 1 Peter 1:5). They were to increasingly act in ways that were consistent with this salvation. You can translate this with a verbal phrase. AT: "you may grow up spiritually until God saves you completely" (See: Abstract Nouns and Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
grow
Peter speaks of believers advancing in knowledge of God and faithfulness to him as if they were children growing up. (See: Metaphor)
if you have tasted that the Lord is kind
Here to taste means to experience something personally. AT: "if you have experienced the Lord's kindness toward you" (See: Metaphor)
translationWords
evil
deceive
hypocrite
envy
slander
pure
spirit
save
lord
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.