Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all respect: not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked. For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly, because of conscience toward God. For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God.
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1 Peter 2:18-20 sits inside this longer paragraph.
Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all respect: not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked. For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly, because of conscience toward God. For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God. For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving you an example, that you should follow his steps, who didn’t sin, “neither was deceit found in his mouth.” When he was cursed, he didn’t curse back. When he suffered, he didn’t threaten, but committed himself to him who judges righteously. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live to righteousness. You were healed by his wounds. For you were going astray like sheep; but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.
Parallel Translations
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Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all respect: not only to the good and gentle, but also to the wicked.
For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly, because of conscience toward God.
For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is commendable with God.
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Servauntes obey youre masters with all feare not only yf they be good and courteous: but also though they be frowarde.
For it is thankeworthye yf a man for conscience towarde god endure grefe sufferinge wrongfully.
For what prayse is it if when ye be buffeted for youre fautes ye take it paciently? But and yf when ye do well ye suffer wronge and take it paciently then is there thanke with God.
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Seruaunts, be subiect to your masters with all feare, not onely to the good and courteous, but also to the froward.
For this is thanke worthie, if a man for conscience toward God endure griefe, suffering wrongfully.
For what praise is it, if when ye be buffeted for your faultes, yee take it paciently? but and if when ye doe well, ye suffer wrong and take it paciently, this is acceptable to God.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (2)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (37)
- Titus 2:9-10 (v18) Exhort servants to be in subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing in all things, not contradicting, not stealing, but…
- 1 Peter 2:19 (v20) For it is commendable if someone endures pain, suffering unjustly, because of conscience toward God.
- Matthew 5:10-12 (vv19–20) Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. “Blessed are you when people…
- 1 Peter 3:17 (v20) For it is better, if it is God’s will, that you suffer for doing well than for doing evil.
- 1 Peter 2:20 (v19) For what glory is it if, when you sin, you patiently endure beating? But if, when you do well, you patiently endure suffering, this is…
Show all 35 cross-references
- 1 Peter 3:14-17 (v19) But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “Don’t fear what they fear, neither be troubled.” But sanctify the…
- Luke 6:32 (vv19–20) If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.
- 1 Corinthians 15:10 (v19) But by the grace of God I am what I am. His grace which was given to me was not futile, but I worked more than all of them; yet not I, but…
- 1 Peter 3:14 (v20) But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “Don’t fear what they fear, neither be troubled.”
- 1 Peter 4:14-16 (v20) If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed; because the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. On their part he is…
- John 15:21 (v19) But they will do all these things to you for my name’s sake, because they don’t know him who sent me.
- Romans 13:5 (v19) Therefore you need to be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience’ sake.
- Ephesians 6:5-7 (v18) Servants, be obedient to those who according to the flesh are your masters, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as to…
- Colossians 3:22-25 (v18) Servants, obey in all things those who are your masters according to the flesh, not just when they are looking, as men pleasers, but in…
- Psalms 119:86 (v19) All of your commandments are faithful. They persecute me wrongfully. Help me!
- 2 Corinthians 1:12 (v19) For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience, that in holiness and sincerity of God, not in fleshly wisdom but in the grace of…
- 2 Corinthians 8:1 (v19) Moreover, brothers, we make known to you the grace of God which has been given in the assemblies of Macedonia,
- 1 Timothy 6:1-3 (v18) Let as many as are bondservants under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honor, that the name of God and the doctrine not be…
- 2 Timothy 1:12 (v19) For this cause I also suffer these things. Yet I am not ashamed, for I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to…
- Proverbs 3:32 (v18) For the perverse is an abomination to Yahweh, but his friendship is with the upright.
- Matthew 5:47 (v20) If you only greet your friends, what more do you do than others? Don’t even the tax collectors do the same?
- Ephesians 5:10 (v20) proving what is well pleasing to the Lord.
- Psalms 35:19 (v19) Don’t let those who are my enemies wrongfully rejoice over me; neither let those who hate me without a cause wink their eyes.
- Psalms 38:19 (v19) But my enemies are vigorous and many. Those who hate me without reason are numerous.
- Psalms 69:4 (v19) Those who hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head. Those who want to cut me off, being my enemies wrongfully, are…
- Psalms 101:4 (v18) A perverse heart will be far from me. I will have nothing to do with evil.
- Proverbs 8:13 (v18) The fear of Yahweh is to hate evil. I hate pride, arrogance, the evil way, and the perverse mouth.
- Matthew 26:67 (v20) Then they spat in his face and beat him with their fists, and some slapped him,
- Galatians 5:22 (v18) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith,
- James 3:17 (v18) But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceful, gentle, reasonable, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and…
- Proverbs 11:20 (v18) Those who are perverse in heart are an abomination to Yahweh, but those whose ways are blameless are his delight.
- Mark 14:65 (v20) Some began to spit on him, and to cover his face, and to beat him with fists, and to tell him, “Prophesy!” The officers struck him with the…
- 1 Corinthians 4:11 (v20) Even to this present hour we hunger, thirst, are naked, are beaten, and have no certain dwelling place.
- 2 Corinthians 10:1 (v18) Now I Paul, myself, entreat you by the humility and gentleness of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among you, but being absent am…
- Titus 3:2 (v18) to speak evil of no one, not to be contentious, to be gentle, showing all humility toward all men.
35 distinct cross-references across this passage (37 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (25 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18 Servants, be subject Though this is a particular…
18 Servants, be subject Though this is a particular admonition, yet it is connected with what is gone before, as well as the other things which follow; for the obedience of servants to masters, and of wives also to their husbands, forms a part of civil or social subjection.
He first would have servants to be subject with all fear; by which expression he means that sincere and willing reverence, which they acknowledge by their office to be due. He then sets this fear in opposition to dissimulation as well as to forced subjection; for an eye-service (ὀφθαλμοδουλεία, Colossians 3:22,) as Paul calls it, is the opposite of this fear; and further, if servants clamor against severe treatment, being ready to throw off the yoke if they could, they cannot be said properly to fear. In short, fear arises from a right knowledge of duty. And though no exception is added in this place, yet, according to other places, it is to be understood. For subjection due to men is not to be so far extended as to lessen the authority of God. Then servants are to be subject to their masters, only as far as God permits, or as far as the altars, as they say. But as the word here is not δοῦλοι, slaves, but οἰκέται, domestics, we may understand the free as well as the bond servants to be meant, though it be a difference of little moment.
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Not only to the good Though as to the duty of servants to obey their masters, it is wholly a matter of conscience; if, however, they are unjustly treated, as to themselves, they ought not to resist authority. Whatever, then, masters may be, there is no excuse for servants for not faithfully obeying them. For when a superior abuses his power, he must indeed hereafter render an account to God, yet he does not for the present lose his right. For this law is laid on servants, that they are to serve their masters, though they may be unworthy. For the froward he sets in opposition to the equitable or humane; and by this word he refers to the cruel and the perverse, or those who have no humanity and kindness.
It is a wonder what could have induced an interpreter to change one Greek word for another, and render it “wayward.” I should say nothing of the gross ignorance of the Sorbons, who commonly understand by wayward, (dyscolos,) the dissolute or dissipated, were it not that they seek by this absurd rendering to build up for us an article of faith, that we ought to obey the Pope and his horned wild beasts, however grievous and intolerable a tyranny they may exercise. This passage, then, shews how boldly they trifle with the Word of God.
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 On vv18–19 He goeth to the duty of servants towards their…
He goeth to the duty of servants towards their masters, which he describeth with these bounds, that servants submit themselves willingly and not by constraint, not only to the good and courteous, but also to the froward and sharp masters.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all…
18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.
Ver. 18. To the froward] Cross, crooked, trample, foolish. Tortuosis, curvis. The Greek word σκολιος comes of a Hebrew word סכל that signifies a fool.
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 On vv18–20 Servants; the word is not the same which Paul…
Servants; the word is not the same which Paul useth, Col 3:22, but may well comprehend the servants he speaks of, as implying not only slaves, but those that were made free, yet continued still in the family; and so signifies servants of whatsoever condition.
Be subject to your masters with all fear; not only reverence of masters, and fear of offending them, is to be understood, but fear of God, as appears by the parallel place, Col 3:22; see Eph 6:5-7.
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Not only to the good and gentle; by good he means not gracious or holy, but, as the next word explains it, gentle, just, equal.
But also to the froward; morose, crabbed, unjust, unmerciful.
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 On v18 Observe here, 1. The order and method of our…
Observe here, 1. The order and method of our apostle in the exhortations given to Christians in this epistle: he first excites them in the general practice of their duty, and to be holy in all manner of conversation, and next binds upon them the performance of relative and particular duties. In the foregoing verses he insisted upon the duties of subjects towards magistrates and governors; in this verse he propounds the duty of servants towards their masters. Thus let Christian servants be subject to their masters, whether Christian or heathen, giving due reverence and respect, not only to such as are kind and gentle, but to such as froward and wrathful.
Learn hence, That such as are in the lowest condition, being servants, yea, the meanest of servants, may glorify God in that condition.
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Learn, 2. That servants, to the end that they may glorify God in there servile condition, must be subject to their masters with all fear; yea, even to wicked and froward masters; because the ground of their obedience is the will and command of God, which binds them to their duty to their masters; though their masters fail and fall short in their duty to them.
Observe, 2. The several arguments made use of by St. Peter to enforce this duty upon servants.
1. This is highly acceptable and well-pleasing unto God, and will procure a gracious reward. We shall certainly receive a glorious reward from God for what we suffer wrongfully and unjustly from men. This is thank-worthy, and this is acceptable with God.
2. From the indecency of the contrary; because it is no virtue, but a just punishment for evil doers, to suffer patiently when we suffer justly is praise-worthy, yet not comparible with the praise of suffering patiently when we suffer patiently, as for ill-doing, will meet with a gracious, yea, with a glorious reward. What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently; this is acceptable with God.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv18–20 For this is thankworthy,.... Or "grace"; this is a…
For this is thankworthy,.... Or "grace"; this is a fruit and effect of grace, an instance of it, in which it shows itself: the Syriac version adds, "with God"; and so it is read in one of Beza's copies, and in the Alexandrian copy, and some others; that is, this is grateful to God, and acceptable with him; as in Pe1 2:20,
if a man for conscience towards God; or, "for a good conscience", as the Syriac version reads it; for acting according to his conscience, in matters of religion, in the things of God; "for the knowledge of God", as the Arabic version renders it; for the knowledge of God in Christ; for the Gospel of Christ, and a profession of it: or, "for God", as the Ethiopic version; for the cause of God and truth, and for the sake of things appertaining to God, and that make for his glory:
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endure grief; what occasions grief, as severe words, bitter reproaches, hard censures, and heavy blows; and that with patience, and without murmuring, and with resignation to the will of God:
suffering wrongfully; there being no just cause for an ill look, word, or blow, to be given.
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 On vv18–19 Servants - Literally, household servants. With all fear -…
Servants - Literally, household servants. With all fear - Of offending them or God. Not only to the good - Tender, kind. And gentle - Mild, easily forgiving.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv18–20 Verse 18. Servants, be subject] See Clarke on Eph…
Verse 18. Servants, be subject] See Clarke on Eph 6:5; "Col 3:22"; and "Tit 2:9".
With all fear] With all submission and reverence.
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The good and gentle] Those who are ever just in their commands, never requiring more work than is necessary or proper, and always allowing sufficient food and sufficient time.
The froward.] σκολιοις. The crooked, perverse, unreasonable morose, and austere. Your time belongs to your master; obey him in every thing that is not sinful; if he employs you about unreasonable or foolish things, let him answer for it. He may waste your time, and thus play the fool with his own property; you can only fill up your time: let him assign the work; it is your duty to obey.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v18 1Pe 2:18-20. Servants — Οι οικεται, household servants, be…
1Pe 2:18-20. Servants — Οι οικεται, household servants, be subject to your masters — Though heathen, in all things lawful; with all fear — Of offending them or God; not only to the good — The tender, kind; and gentle — Mild, easy, forgiving; but also to the froward — The ill-natured and severe. “In this verse,” as Macknight justly observes, “the apostle establishes one of the noblest and most important principles of morality, namely, that our obligation to relative duties does not depend either on the character of the persons to whom they should be performed, or on their performing the duties they owe to us, but on the unalterable relations of things established by God.” For this is thankworthy — An acceptable thing to God. Greek, τουτο γαρ χαρις; literally, this is grace; that is, a grand proof of true grace; if a man for conscience toward God — From a pure desire of pleasing him; endure grief — Severe treatment; suffering wrongfully — The apostle here refers to those punishments which, according to the customs of that age, tyrannical masters were allowed to inflict on their servants, however contrary to justice and mercy such punishments might be. For what glory — Or praise; is it if, when ye be buffeted — Corrected or beaten; for your faults — For acts of manifest disobedience; ye shall take it patiently — Since the punishment being just, it ought in reason to be borne. But if when ye do well — Do your duty conscientiously; and suffer for it — As if you had neglected it; ye take it patiently — Receive it in a meek and quiet spirit; this is acceptable, or this is grace, with God — His eye, which always observes every individual of his people, and all their actions, is pleased with such a disposition and behaviour, though exhibited in the lowest ranks of human life.
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 On vv18–20 Servants, be subject to your masters - On the…
Servants, be subject to your masters - On the duty here enjoined, see the notes at Eph 6:5-9. The Greek word used here (οἰκέται oiketai) is not the same which is employed in Ephesians, (δοῦλοι douloi.) The word here means properly “domestics” - those employed about a house, or living in the same house - from οἶκος oikos, “house.” These persons might have been slaves, or might not. The word would apply to them, whether they were hired, or whether they were owned as slaves. The word should not and cannot be employed to prove that slavery existed in the churches to which Peter wrote, and still less to prove that he approved of slavery, or regarded it as a good institution. The exhortation here would be, and still is, strictly applicable to any persons employed as domestics, though they had voluntarily hired themselves out to be such. It would be incumbent on them, while they remained in that condition, to perform with fidelity their duties as Christians, and to bear with Christian meekness all the wrongs which they might suffer from those in whose service they were.
Those who are hired, and who are under a necessity of “going out to service” for a living, are not always free from hard usage, for there are trials incident to that condition of life which cannot be always avoided. It might be better, in many cases, to bear much than to attempt a change of situation, even though they were entirely at liberty to do so. It must be admitted, however, that the exhortation here will have more force if it is supposed that the reference is to slaves, and there can be no doubt that many of this class were early converted to the Christian faith. The word here rendered “masters” (δεσπόταις despotais) is not the same which is used in Eph 6:5, (κυρίοις kuriois.) Neither of these words necessarily implies that those who were under them were slaves. The word used here is applicable to the head of a family, whatever may be the condition of those under him. It is frequently applied to God, and to Christ; and it cannot be maintained that those to whom God sustains the relation of δεσπότης despotēs, or “master,” are “slaves.” See Luk 2:29; Act 4:24; 2Ti 2:21; 2Pe 2:1; Jud 1:4; Rev 6:10. The word, indeed, is one that might be applied to those who were owners of slaves. If that be the meaning here, it is not said, however, that those to whom it is applied were Christians. It is rather implied that they were pursuing such a course as was inconsistent with real piety. Those who were under them are represented as suffering grievous wrongs.
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With all fear - That is, with all proper reverence and respect. See the notes at Eph 6:5.
Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward - The word rendered “froward” (σκολιοῖς skoliois) means properly “crooked, bent;” then perverse, wicked, unjust, peevish. Anyone who is a servant or domestic is liable to be employed in the service of such a master; but while the relation continues, the servant should perform his duty with fidelity, whatever may be the character of the master. Slaves are certainly liable to this; and even those who voluntarily engage as servants to others, cannot always be sure that they will have kind employers. Though the terms used here do not necessarily imply that those to whom the apostle gave this direction were slaves, yet it may be presumed that they probably were, since slavery abounded throughout the Roman empire; but the directions will apply to all who are engaged in the service of others, and are therefore of permanent value. Slavery will, sooner or later, under the influence of the gospel, wholly cease in the world, and instructions addressed to masters and slaves will have no permanent value; but it will always be true that there will be those employed as domestics, and it is the duty of all who are thus engaged to evince true fidelity and a Christian spirit themselves, whatever may be the character of their employers.
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 On v19 Take notice that this is praiseworthy, an effect of…
Take notice that this is praiseworthy, an effect of God’s grace, a thing acceptable to God, when you suffer injuries patiently; whereas it is not glory, nothing that deserves commendation or reward, either before God or man, to suffer for doing ill, as a malefactor, who deserves punishments. But it is glorious and meritorious for you to suffer as Christians, and for the Christian faith: be not then ashamed to suffer in this manner. These sufferings are marks of God’s favour towards you, and you have the example of Christ, which you must imitate. (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).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v18 Analysis:—Exhortation of believing servants to self-denying obedience in doing…
1Pe_2:18-25
Analysis:—Exhortation of believing servants to self-denying obedience in doing and suffering after the example of Christ.
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18 Servants,41 be subject to your masters with42 all fear; not only to the good and gentle,19 but also to the froward.43 For this is thankworthy,44 if a man for conscience45 toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 20For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it,46 ye take it patiently, this is acceptable47 with God. 21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us48 an example, that ye should follow his steps: 22Who did no49 sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: 23Who, when he was reviled,50 reviled not again; when he suffered,51 he threatened not; but committed himself52 to him that judgeth righteously: 24Who his own self53 bare our sins in his own body on54 the tree, that we,55 being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes56 ye were healed. 25For ye were as sheep going astray;57 but are58 now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
1Pe_2:18. Domestics—but also to the crooked.—οἰκέται less harsh and more comprehensive than δοῦλοι. Estius in Calov shrewdly suggests that the Apostle may have selected this designation because he was addressing Jewish Christians, to whom the term ‘slave’ was obnoxious, as incompatible with the people of God.
ὑποτασσόμενοι.—The most simple construction is to connect the Participle with the preceding Imperatives, especially with the τὸν Θεὸν φοβεῖσθε, to which the following ἐν παντἰ φόβῳ seems also to refer. It is the Apostle’s way to intertwine his sentences after this manner: the following exhortations begin with similar participial sentences, 1Pe_3:1; 1Pe_3:7-9. We learn from it, that he considers the duties to which he exhorts included in the principal duty, 1Pe_2:12. He particularizes the exhortation, 1Pe_2:13, as to the manner how the fear of God should be evidenced, 1Pe_2:17.
In all fear.—Primarily, holy awe of God, after 1Pe_2:17. Cf. Col_3:22; Eph_6:5; with full, entire fear; but it also involves the dread of an earthly master. There are, as Cornelius observes, different kinds of fear: a, fear of punishment; b, fear of the guilt of offending God; c, fear of the offence of exciting masters to animosity against the faith.
ἀγαθοῖς good in themselves and kind to others.—ἐπιεικής indicates a particular exhibition of ἄγαθος=indulgent, yielding, kind like the Syrian captain, 2Ki_5:13-14.—ακολιός—עִקֵּשׁ, the contrary of the two other qualities, crooked in ways and therefore in heart, Psa_101:4; Pro_11:20; Pro_17:20; Pro_4:24, similar to a piece of crooked wood that cannot be bent and is not fit for use, perverse, contentious, morose in disposition and behaviour. “Before such masters the false longings for liberty are most apt to break out: but here is just the point at which Christian views and principles appear in the strongest possible contrast with merely human and natural ones, and at which the peculiarity of the Christian calling, as a power of endurance, shows its marvellous glory.” Wiesinger.
1Pe_2:19. For this is grace.—The sense of these words is determined partly by the following χάρις παρὰ Θεῷ, partly by the antithesis ποῖον γἁρ κλέος. This question suggests that of our Lord, Luk_6:32. “For if you love them, which love you, what thanks have you?” ποία ὐμῖν χάρις ἐστί; in Matt. it reads τίνα μισθὸν ἔχετε. The ideas of thanks, reward and praise are here conjoined. Here as there the reference is to thanks, praise, or honour before God. You have no praise before God, you cannot glory in your tribulations (cf. Rom_5:3), if you remain stedfast in troubles brought on by yourselves; but if, suffering wrongfully, you remain stedfast, you will have honour before God and secure His approval and good pleasure. Weiss compares the Hebrew מָצָא חֶך,=εὑρίσκειν χάριν ἐναντίον θεοῦ, Gen_6:8; Gen_18:3; Gen_30:27; cf. Luk_1:30; Luk_2:52; Act_2:47. As to the sense it is therefore=χαρίεν, cf. 1Ti_2:3; 1Ti_5:4. Col_3:20. The following explanation of Steiger is neither clear nor suited to the context. “It is grace indeed, even in the sight of God, to be able to suffer for God’s sake.” If he means: “Grace effects and shows its power in this, or the power and blessing of grace are exhibited in this,” παρἁ Θεῷ militates against his view.
For consciousness of God, etc—διὰ συνείδησιν Θεοῦ.—συνείδησις, the sharing of some knowledge, from σύνοιδα, I am conscious. Many take Θεοῦ as Genit. obj. on account of our knowledge of God, of His good will and pleasure; but it seems more natural to interpret: “because of the consciousness of God, because God knows all, because His eye sees all and because His arm punishes all evil,” cf. Col_3:23. In this sense Joseph suffered innocently; he thought, “how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God?” Gen_39:9. He suffered διὰ συνείδησιν Θεοῦ.—To take συνείδησις here in the sense of conscience is forbidden by the addition of Θεοῦ, although it often has that meaning, Joh_8:9; Act_23:1; Act_24:16; Rom_2:15; Rom_9:1; Rom_13:5; 1Co_8:7; 1Co_8:10; 1Co_10:25; 1Co_10:28; 2Co_1:12; 2Co_4:2; 1Ti_1:5; 1Ti_1:19; 1Ti_3:9; 2Ti_1:3; Tit_1:15; Heb_9:14; Heb_10:22; 1Pe_3:16.—Weiss explains; “The consciousness of God, as that of Him who has ordained this subjection, should ever accompany and prompt us to the discharge of this duty. The idea συνείδησις is here too much narrowed and taken subjectively instead of objectively.”
ὑποφέρει equivalent to the following ὑπομένειν= to endure with constancy, 2Ti_3:11; 1Co_10:13, to bear up under afflictions and to carry them cheerfully on one’s shoulders.—λύπαι, events causing multiform grief.
1Pe_2:20. When ye be buffeted for your faults—suffer patiently.—ἁμαρτάτοντες καἱ κολαφιζόμενοι ὑπομενεῖτε.—The antithesis of ἀδίκως πάσχειν—κολαφιζόμενοι=to beat with the fist (vulgo “box the ear”), if as malefactors and punished, you suffer afflictions patiently. [κολαφιζόμενοι; Bengel says: pœna servorum, eaque subita.—M.] The world may praise such conduct as courage and bravery, it will not give you glory before God.—Wrong: if the scourgings notwithstanding you persist in sinful courses; for the contrast is between merited suffering and martyr suffering. (Lachmann and Tischendorf read ποῖον γὰρ, but γὰρ is wanting in many MSS.).
1Pe_2:21. For even hereunto were ye called,—namely, to do good and to endure with patience, 1Pe_3:9, as we read, 1Th_3:3 : “We are appointed, set thereunto,” Act_14:22. The first reason of the endurance of wrongful sufferings and perseverance in well-doing was the favour of God; the second is the calling of Christians as a further inducement to which is mentioned the example of Christ. The words are primarily addressed to slaves, as Bengel explains: this belongs to your Christian calling, which finds you in the condition of slaves; but they may be applied to all Christians, as is evident from the adduced motive.
Because also Christ suffered for you.—καὶ Χριστὸς, even Christ, the wholly Innocent One, has suffered. καὶ refers to ἀδίκως πάσχων [Alford makes καὶ apply to ἔπαθεν ὐπὲρ ὑμῶν on the ground that the last two words carry with them the ἀγαθοποιῶν, as explained below, 1Pe_2:24.—M.].—ἔπαθεν. Huss: “Peter does not say what Christ did suffer, his object being to intimate that Christ endured for us every kind of suffering. Herein then we are to imitate Him, viz.: in patiently carrying whatever is laid upon us.” As the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord, he may not refuse to endure such sufferings.
ὑπὲρ ὑμῶν (Scholz and Tischendorf read ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν); ὑπὲρ may mean: in your stead, or for your benefit, or both. The last is probable, if reference be had not only to 1Pe_2:22-23, but also to 1Pe_2:24, cf. 1Pe_3:18, where the vicarious character of the death of Jesus is unmistakably asserted. Winer remarks at p. 458 that ὑπὲρ sometimes touches closely upon ἀντί, because the agent, one acting for the benefit of another, in most instances becomes his substitute, cf. Gal_3:13; Rom_5:7; Rom_14:15 : Mat_20:28; Joh_15:13; Joh_10:15; Joh_6:51. The redemptive and typical nature of the sufferings of Christ are here intimately connected. Steiger justly asks: “What is it that makes the example of Christ obligatory to us, unless it be the fact that that typical suffering was at once and primarily a suffering for us, an offering of Christ and a benefit, engaging us to serve Him?”—This passage expresses in pregnant language the double idea: 1. You are obliged to obey Christ, because He suffered for you. 2. You are consequently called to innocent suffering, though you be guiltless, because also Christ, in suffering for you, suffered innocently and with the intent that in this respect you should imitate Him.
Leaving you—steps.—ὑπολιμπάνω another form of ὑπολείπω. Bengel remarks, “in abitu ad Patrum.”—ὑπογραμμός, 2Ma_2:29, a pattern to write or draw by, a copy-head such as a writing-master would give to his pupils. This requires a steady hand and daily practice. Hence, pattern, copy, example. It is characteristic of this epistle, that it lays great stress on the pattern of Christ, cf. Joh_13:15; Mat_11:29; Mat_20:28 with 1Pe_3:18; 1Pe_4:1; 1Pe_4:13.
ἴνα ἐπακολουθήοητε τοῖς ἴχνεσιν—ἴχνη, a footprint, also the heels of shoes. The figure of a copyhead passes into that of a guide, whose footprints travellers along a steep, narrow and slippery path must follow up step by step. The footprints of His readiness to suffer, of His gentleness and humility are particularly alluded to. ἴνα dependent on ἔπαθεν, not on ἐκλήθητε. The imitation and following of Christ consists especially in the daily taking up of the cross, Luk_9:23. [This passage is also imitated by Poly-carp, 100:8: Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ἀνήνεγκεν ἡμῶν τὰς ἁμαρτίας τῷ ἰδίῳ σώματι ἐπι τὸ ξύλον, ὃς ἁμαρτίαν οὐκ εποίησεν, οὐδὲ εὑρέθη σόλος ἐν τῷ στόματι αὐτοῦ · μμηταὶ οὖν γενώμεθα τῆς ὑπομονῆς αὐτοῦ….τοῦτον ἡμῖν τὸν ὑπογραμμὸν ἔθηκε σἰ ἑαυτοῦ.
Tertullian de Patientia, c. 3. “He Who is God, stooped to be born in the womb of His Mother, and waited patiently and grew up; and when grown up, was not impatient to be recognized as God. He was baptized by His servant, and repelled the tempter only by words. When He became a Teacher, He did not strive nor cry, nor did any one hear His voice in the streets. He did not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. He scorned no man’s company; He shunned no man’s table. He conversed with publicans and sinners. He poured out water and washed His disciples’ feet. He would not injure the Samaritan village which did not receive Him, when His disciples called fire from heaven to consume it. He cured the unthankful; He withdrew from those who plotted against Him. He had the traitor constantly in His company and did not expose him. And when He is betrayed and is brought to execution, He is like a sheep which before his shearers is dumb, and a lamb that doth not open its mouth. He who, Lord of angelic Legions, did not approve the sword of Peter drawn in His defence, He is spit upon, scourged, mocked. Such long-suffering as His, is an example to all men, but is found in God alone.”—M.]
1Pe_2:22. Who did no sin, etc.—This description of the innocent and patient suffering of Jesus is almost a literal quotation from the Septuagint version of Isa_53:9, the word ἁμαρτίαν, alone being substituted for ἀνομίαν. The passages Isaiah 1, 6; Isa_53:7, are more freely treated in 1Pe_2:23. The servant of God there designated is therefore none other than the Messiah. His perfect sinlessness is even more explicitly affirmed in Heb_7:26; 2Co_5:21.
εὑρίσκω not absolutely like εἶναι, but: no guile could be discovered in or proved from His words, all watching and sifting notwithstanding, and yet He was condemned. See Winer p. 701, cf. Jam_3:2. Bengel notices the fitness of this exhortation to slaves, who were greatly liable to the temptation of deceiving, slandering and menacing their fellow-slaves.
1Pe_2:23. Who being reviled—threatened not.—He fulfilled Pro_20:22; Pro_24:29; He did what David had done, 2Sa_16:10, etc. The strong and bitter words, which Jesus had sometimes to use, Mat_7:5; Mat_16:3; Mat_22:18; Mat_23:13; Mat_23:33; Mat_12:34, were not the utterings of personal hatred, nor retorts of insults heaped upon Him, but necessary evidences of the truth in order to cast a sting into the heart of His adversaries, and if possible to save them.
But delivered—righteously.—The second part of the sentence contains a climax. He even abstained from threatening, while He saw into the impending judgments, παραδίδου δὲ, He committed His cause to God, not however by invoking the vengeance of God on His enemies, but by praying for their conversion and pardon. If they persisted in repelling the overtures of grace, He left him to the justice of God. In this sense He said: “I seek not mine own glory: there is One that seeketh and judgeth.” Joh_8:50.—Jeremiah spoke differently in the spirit of the Old Testament: “Let me see Thy vengeance upon them, for unto Thee have I revealed my cause.” Jer_11:20.
To Him that judgeth righteously, otherwise than the anger of the injured part, and the violence of ungodly enemies would make it. It is both a great consolation and an invitation to leave vengeance to Him, cf. Rom_12:19; Rom_2:6-11; 1Pe_3:9; 2Th_1:6; Luk_18:7-8; Luk_9:55. Lechler remarks, that the Apostle’s language was giving one the impression of coming in contact with an eye-witness of the arrest, of the trial, of the rough ill treatment and even of the crucifixion of the Lord. [Calvin has the following: “Qui sibi ad expetendam vindictam indulgent, non judiciis officium Deo concedunt, sed quodam modo facere volunt suum carnificem.—M.]
1Pe_2:24. Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.—This verse is connected with ὑπερ ὑμῶν of 1Pe_2:21, and defines it more particularly; it also brings the antithesis to 1Pe_2:22 to a climax. Not only had He no sin, or did not sin Himself, but He bore our sins, etc.—ἀνήνεγκεν. The exegesis is determined by Isaiah 53 which evidently was before the Apostle’s mind. In that chapter occur the words נָשָׂא, סָבַל, φέρειν. The LXX. render: τῷ μώλωπι αὐτοῦ ἡμεῖς ἰάθημεν; in 1Pe_2:12, καὶ αὐτὸς ἁμαρτίας πολλῶν ἀνήνεγκεν; in 1Pe_2:10, “When His soul shall make an offering for sin.” All exegetical attempts to explain away the idea of substitution and the system of sacrifice closely connected with it, are altogether futile. As in the Old Testament, the expressions, “to carry one’s sin,” or, “to bear one’s iniquity,” are equivalent to “suffer the punishment and guilt of one’s sin,” Lev_20:17; Lev_20:19; Lev_24:15; Eze_23:35, so “to carry another’s sin,” denotes “to suffer the punishment and guilt of another,” or “to suffer vicariously,” Leviticus 3:19, 17; Num_14:33; Lam_5:7; Eze_18:19-20. Can this be done in any other way than by the imputation of the guilt and sin of others, as was the case in the sin and guilt-offerings? Weiss is quite arbitrary in persisting to exclude the idea of sacrifice from Isaiah 53, for 1Pe_2:10 clearly refers to it. From a Jewish point of view such a separation of the doctrine of substitution from the idea of sacrifice is simply impossible, cf. Joh_1:29; Lev_16:21-22.—The juxtaposition of ἡμῶν and αὐτός both here and in Isaiah 53 is not insignificant, but gives prominence to the idea of substitution. Calvin says: “As under the law the sinner, in order to become free from sin, offered a sacrifice in his stead, so Christ took upon Himself the curse which we have merited by our sins in order to expiate it before God.” Calov. “The cross of Christ was the lofty altar to which, when He was about to offer Himself, He ascended laden with our sins.”
ἀναφέρειν ἐπὶ τὸ ξύλον=to carry up to the tree of the cross and thus to carry away and blot out, cf. Jam_2:21; Heb_9:28. The expression “tree” for “cross” is by no means undesigned, but selected as in Act_5:30; Act_10:39, with reference to Deu_21:23, cf. Gal_3:13, where it is said of him that is hanged on a tree, “he is accursed of God.”
τὰς ἁμαρτίας not sin-offerings or offerings for our sins, a rendering which is inadmissible on grammatical grounds, but the guilt and punishment of our sins;—these He took upon Himself and expiated them, cf. Col_2:14; Gal_3:13; 2Co_5:21.
In His own body, cf. Eph_2:15. This expression is far from singular in connection with the fact that Christ bore the punishment of sin also in His holy soul, provided we start from the idea of sacrifice and assume that Peter was comparing the body of Christ with the body of the slain victim. Gerhard says: “The body is mentioned in particular, because it was visibly suspended from the cross, and because His bodily sufferings were more immediately perceptible by the senses.” Weiss tries to find a reference to the words of the institution of the Lord’s Supper—but this seems to be rather far-fetched. How this carrying of the punishment of man’s sin—which goes far beyond a compassionating entering into the feelings of our sinful misery—was possible must ever remain a wonderful mystery, on which the Petrine and Johannean doctrine of Christ as the real and original Head of mankind, sheds only a feeble light.
That having died to sins, we should live to the righteousness of Him.—Calov. “Peter combines the two benefits of the death of Christ, 1st, by it our sins are expiated, and 2d, in virtue of it sin is killed in us. We add, that the combination gives prominence to holiness as the end and aim of the atonement.
ἀπογίνομαι=ἀποθνήσκω, cf. Rom_6:2. Bengel remarks: “γενέσθαι τινὸς means to become somebody’s slave, ἀπό denotes removal. The body of Christ was removed, taken away from that tree, up to which He had carried our sins; thus we should remove ourselves from sin, become free from it.” This explanation is more acute than satisfactory. The negative, dying unto sin, must go hand in hand with the positive. The connection of holiness and renovation with the death of Jesus is not indicated here, but may be supplied by recollecting that the gift of the Holy Ghost and the power of faith were acquired by the death of Jesus. Thereby the vital strength of sin is broken and the desire of righteousness planted in the soul.—ζῇν τῇ δικαιοσύνῃ to live in the service of righteousness, in keeping the commandments of God and Christ instead of the former service of sin. Bengel: “The whole of righteousness is one, sin manifold.”
By whose stripe ye were healed.—Μώλωψ, a wound like that inflicted on slaves by scourging, a stripe or rather the weal left by a stripe. The Singular is used here as in Isaiah 53; the sacred body of Jesus was so tortured that it was, as it were, only one wound or stripe.—οὖ τῷ μώλωπι αὐτοῦ. (Lachmann and Griesbach. omit αὐτοῦ; Tischendorf retains it as the more difficult reading in his last edition). More emphatic than the relative by itself; supply τούτου before it.—Ἰάθητε. The apostle passes from the first person to the second, resuming his direct address to Christian slaves. So also at 1Pe_2:25; the whole section from 1Pe_2:18-25 is addressed to them. μώλωψ and ἰᾶσθαι suggest the secondary thought: You have to endure no kind of sufferings and wounds, but Christ, your Lord, endured them also; your Master exacts not more from you than He has borne Himself; He bears all in your stead in order to save you; how much more ought you, who are sinful, quietly and patiently to endure suffering?—But how shall we solve the prophetical and apostolical paradox, that Christ’s stripe is our healing? Healing is here primarily not to be understood as a sinner’s entire restoration to the image of God, else the preceding exhortation would not have been necessary, but as designating the healing of the stings of conscience, caused by sin; but this involves of course the principle that entire healing is rendered possible. “Sins, committed against, our conscience, hurt the soul and leave scars which ever and anon open afresh, sting the conscience and hurt the soul.” Steinhofer.—These wounds of your soul were healed when by faith in the atoning death of Jesus you received forgiveness. He suffered the smiters to draw long furrows on His back, Psa_129:3, to wound His head and face, His hands and feet, and to pierce His heart that in our stead, as the Head for the members, He might make atonement.”—
“Thou didst suffer stripe and weal,
Treatment full of shame and pain,
That my plague thou mightest heal,
And my peace forever gain.”
[German Hymn,—
Du hast lassen Wunden schlagen,
Dich erbärmlich richten zu,
Um zu heilen meine Plagen,
Um zu setzen mich in Ruh!—M.]
Tauler:—“He had to die that we might live: He was afflicted that we might rejoice; He was wounded that we might be healed: He shed His blood that we might be cleansed: the blood of the Physician was shed and made the patient’s remedy.”
1Pe_2:25. For ye were straying like sheep.—The Apostle adds how and from what state they came to this healing. For ye were straying like sheep. A sheep is a stupid animal: so is the sinner, repelling salvation and straying in the ways of corruption. Sheep, as Aristotle observes, are subject to as many diseases as man. Stray sheep, separated from the shepherd and the flock, lack food and care, are exposed to many dangers, may become a prey to the wolf or fall into some abyss. The expression is taken from Isaiah 53, and the figure is of frequent occurrence in the Old Testament, Num_27:17; 1Ki_22:17; Psa_119:176; Eze_34:5; Eze_34:11, and in the New, Luk_15:4, etc.; Joh_10:15 etc.; Mat_9:36. It may have been particularly appropriate to the case of slaves of the dispersion who often changed masters and their place of domicile. Straying and sickness are often conjoined. “The figure of stray sheep alludes to original union with God and represents straying as alienation from God in consequence of sin.” Joh_10:12. Wiesinger.
But ye are now brought back (from the wilderness of sin, error and death) to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.—ἐπεστράφητε, ye have been converted and have suffered yourselves to be converted. By faith you have laid hold of the atonement made for all and have returned from your wanderings. Christ is the arch-Shepherd, the true, the good Shepherd, promised already in the Old Testament, Isa_40:11; Eze_34:23; Eze_37:24; Psa_23:1; cf. John 10, 11; Heb_13:20; 1Pe_5:4. He even gives His life for the sheep, Joh_10:12. The Apostle turns to that side of the pastoral relation of Christ which exhibits Him as the Bishop and Guardian of souls.—ἐπίσκοπος is used of God in the LXX. version of Job_20:29; the phrase is however more probably taken from Eze_34:11-12, where we read: “For thus saith the Lord God, Behold I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out (ἐπισκέψομαι). As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.” He is ever careful of the salvation of His sheep and seeks to protect them from destruction. He is the Shepherd and Guardian of souls.—ψυχῶν not without special significance as it relates to slaves, and servants who are so often treated, as if they had no immortal soul, and who may therefore so much the more readily forget that they have a soul which they may lose, and that with the soul lost, all else is lost.
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. The Divine origin of Christianity may also be demonstrated by the fact that it enters into and hallows every relation of life and descends to the most degraded of men and to the lowest conditions of society.
2. The glory of the Christian vocation is peculiarly manifested by endurance of wrong and indefatigable well-doing under it.
3. Plato anticipated the ideal of such a righteous man in the following passage of his second book on the State: “Without doing any wrong, he must have the greatest appearance of unrighteousness in order to be thoroughly approved in righteousness, since even slander and its consequences cannot move him, and although all his life-long considered unrighteous, he is yet righteous. The righteous, thus minded will be bound, scourged, tortured, blinded in both eyes and finally, having endured every possible evil, he will be hung.” Plato’s ideal and conception find their strongest fulfilment and reality in Christianity.
4. The exhortation that we should copy in ourselves, the pattern which Christ has left us in His life and death is enclosed forwards and backwards, 1Pe_2:21 and 1Pe_2:24, by the recollection that He was crucified for us. This is the impelling motive which at once enables us to imitate Christ and to do it cheerfully.
5. The vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus, based on Isaiah 53, is here affirmed with so much clearness that even rationalistic adversaries are unable to resist it, cf. Wegschneider, Instit. p. 407, 6th ed. How we are healed by the wounds of Jesus, is a mystery which reason cannot fully solve, and to which we have to submit by faith in the clear testimony of Holy Writ. “Jesus, who by His blood has effected our reconciliation, is Himself the Physician who heals our souls.” Even Dr. Baur is constrained to admit that the idea of substitution cannot be denied in such passages of the New Testament as Rom_4:25; Gal_1:4; Rom_8:3; 1Co_15:3; 2Co_5:19, that the preposition ὑπέρ denotes both the idea of substitution and what takes place for the benefit of man; that these two points are passing the one into the other, so as to interpenetrate each other, but that the latter is decidedly predominant; that according to the Apostle’s doctrine the justice of God had to be satisfied by an actual atonement for the punishment of sin; that viewing the death of Jesus from the stand-point of Divine justice, is only the outer side of the event and its merely judicial aspect, but that the inmost ground of the Divinely-made institution is the grace of God, Rom_3:24, 2Co_5:19, and a point so much more extensive than the other as to constrain us to regard only as an emanation of Divine grace whatever Divine justice may claim of the death of Jesus; that it was grace that God would not allow men to be punished in their own persons, but in their substitute. See Baur, Lehrbegriff des Ap. Paulus p. 541. This is certainly a wonderful testimony from the lips of an unbeliever.
6. The medicine has been prepared by His wounds, the balsam has been cleared under the press of the cross.—“The blood of Jesus is the most precious balsam with which Jesus washes and heals our wounds, as the good Samaritan poured oil and wine in the wounds of the bleeding and half-dead man to lessen their smart and to heal them. There is vital strength in this crimson oil whereby we are fully healed.” Steinhofer, Evang. Glaubensgrund, p. 434.
7. Observe the important distinction between the atonement as the objective act of God in Christ in virtue of which salvation has been acquired for and is offered to sinners, and the subjective appropriation of salvation by means of conversion. The words of Paul: “Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God,” 1Co_6:11, apply only to those who have sought Christ in penitence and faith and laid hold of His merits.
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
How may the much-lamented difficulties relating to domestics be remedied? 1. By the return of the fear of God into the houses and hearts of men; 2. By masters and servants entering upon the imitation of Christ.—The secret of partaking more and more of the grace of God.—The Christian call, 1. To a state of grace, in order to be and live in it; 2. To suffer innocently and patiently; 3. To persevere in well-doing.—The Christian’s consolation in innocent suffering.—Righteousness of life must flow from righteousness by faith.—The sufferings of Christ for us and before us.—The power of Christ’s example.—The great change in conversion.—Man a stray sheep, while excluded from the calling of God in Christ.
Starke:—God ordains, that one should rule and another serve.—Bad masters are for the trial and perhaps also for the chastisement of servants.—Masters are often decried as whimsical for desiring propriety and right in things spiritual and temporal. Servants, be ashamed and do not slander your godly masters, but learn to be wise and to do all things right after the will of God and their mind—Many masters may deal ill with their people, but if they endure wrong patiently, attend to their service in the fear of God, pray diligently for their masters, they are God’s people and God will be their helper and reward, Gen_31:12.—As it is the shame of servants to be punished for ill-doing, so it is their veritable honour and glory before God and man if they endure wrong innocently and patiently, 1Pe_4:15-16.—Christians are not called to voluptuousness and good days but to the cross, 1Pe_2:21.—We should often look at ourselves in the sufferings of Christ, as if they were a mirror, that we may be glorified into the same image, Heb_12:3.—Christ is our Gift and Pattern, our Mediator and Head, our Shepherd and Light. What is our duty? To believe and to obey (follow) Joh_8:12.—The words, the ways and the works of Christ are, as it were, living letters and footprints for us to copy and follow, Heb_12:6.—If you have a just cause and yet are oppressed, be still and persevere, God will maintain your cause, Psa_94:15.—Away with foolish sacrifices for the living or the dead! The one sacrifice of our High-priest Jesus Christ on the cross is sufficient for the reconciliation of the whole world, Heb_9:12; Heb_9:26; Heb_10:11-12.—The exaltation and glory of Christians blossom forth from the cross.—Sin was sacrificed and slain by Christ that it should also be dead in us. Where it lives, the virtue of the death of Christ is as yet unfelt, Rom_6:6.—Sin is like a maze: whoso enters the same cannot easily find his way out.—Whoso remains in the wilderness out of Christ (extra) must at last fall into the abyss of hell and eternally despair, Act_4:12; Psa_119:176.
Augustine:—“We must not cease to hope for the wicked, but rather pray for them the more diligently, that they may become good, because the number of saints has at all times been increased by the number of the ungodly. Those who are goats to-day, may be sheep to-morrow, those who are weeds to-day, to-morrow may be wheat.”
Kapff:—What is necessary in conversion? 1. That we should be healed by the wounds of Jesus. 2. That we should die to sin and live to righteousness.
[Leighton:
1Pe_2:18. It is a thing of much concernment, the right ordering of families; for all other societies, civil and religious are made up of these. Villages and cities and churches and commonwealths and kingdoms, are but a collection of families: and therefore such as these are, for the most part, such must the whole societies predominantly be. One particular house is but a very small part of a kingdom, yet the wickedness and lewdness of that house, be it but the meanest in it, as of servants one or more; and though it seem but a small thing, yet goes in to make up that heap of sin that provokes the wrath of God and draws on public calamity.—Servants. 1. Their duty (be subject); 2. Its extent (to the froward); 3. Its principle (for conscience toward God).—The eagle may fly high and yet have its eye down upon some carrion on earth; even so a man may be standing on the earth and on some low part of it, and yet have his eye upon heaven and be contemplating it. That which one man cannot at all see in another, is the very thing that is most considerable in their action, namely, the principle whence they flow and the end to which they tend. This is the form and life of actions, that by which they are earthly or heavenly. Whatsoever be the matter of them, the spiritual mind hath that alchymy indeed, of burning base metals unto gold, earthly employments into heavenly.—1Pe_2:21. The particular things that Christians are here said to be called to, are suffering, as their lot, and patience, as their duty, even under the most unjust and undeserved sufferings.—He that aims high, shoots the higher for it, though he shoot not so high as he aims. This is that which ennobles the spirit of a Christian, the propounding of this our high pattern, the example of Jesus Christ.—1Pe_2:24. The eye of a godly man is not fixed on the false sparkling of the world’s pomp, honour and wealth. It is dead to them, being quite dazzled with a greater beauty. The grass looks fine in the morning, when it is set with those liquid pearls, the drops of dew that shine upon it; but if you can look but a little while on the body of the sun, and then look down again, the eye is as it were dead; it is not that faint shining on the earth that it thought so gay before: and as the eye is blinded and dies to it, so within a few hours that gayety quite vanishes and dies itself.—Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour, that, as they say (Intellectus fit illud quod intelligit), it makes the soul like Him, assimilates and conforms it to His death, as the Apostle speaks. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true in a spiritual sense of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer; it takes the very print of His death by beholding Him and dies to sin, and then takes that of His rising again, and lives to righteousness; as it applies it to justify, so to mortify, drawing virtue from it. Thus said one, “Christ aimed at this in all those sufferings that with so much love He went through; and shall I disappoint Him and not serve His end?”—M.]
[On the duties of Christian servants see Bp. Fleetwood’s “Sermons on relative duties.”—M.]
[Jortin:
1Pe_2:18. “The law of nature knows no such thing as slavery, for by nature all men are free and equal; but by the civil laws, and by the practice of nations, it was established, and still continues among those who know not the Gospel; and the more is the shame and the pity, it is to be found in some places where Christianity is professed. The religion of Christ, when it first made its progress in the world, left the civil laws of nations, in a great measure, as it found them, lest by altering or repealing them, it should bring confusion and disturbance into human society; but, as by its own genius and tendency, it leads men gently back to the precepts of nature and equity, to kindness and to mercy, it put an end by degrees, in most civilized nations, to that excessive distance and difference between masters and slaves, which owed its origin to outrage and war, to violence and calamity; so that in Christian countries the service which is performed is usually, as it ought to be, voluntary and by agreement. But what the writers of the New Testament have said concerning slaves, holds true concerning hired servants and all those who are employed in other denominations under a master, that they discharge their office modestly, diligently and willingly, and act with faithfulness and integrity in every thing that is committed to them.”—M.]
[Macknight:—“In this verse the Apostle establishes one of the most noble and important principles of morality, namely, that our obligation to relative duties does not depend, either on the character of the persons to whom they are to be performed, or on their performance of the duties which they owe to us, but on the unalterable relations of things established by God.”—M.]
[Bp. Horne:
1Pe_2:21. “Our Lord was ‘both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life.’ (Collect for second Sunday after Easter.) By His sacrifice He procured us grace to follow His example, which otherwise would have been proposed to us in vain; by His example He showed us how to make a right use of that grace, which, unless we do, it is given in vain. So that if he who regards Him as an example, and not as a Redeemer, will be lost, because he cannot follow Him; he who takes Him for a Redeemer, and not for an example, will be lost, because he does not follow Him, since redemption was in order to holiness; and although it be most certain that without Christ no man can attain unto holiness, yet it is no less certain that “without holiness no man shall see the Lord.” He only is fully and effectually redeemed, and has evidence to assure him of it, who bears stamped on his soul the image and superscription of his Saviour.”—M.]
[Dean Stanhope:
1Pe_2:24-25. “A consideration of the purpose for which our Saviour suffered should be a matter of great consolation to us, when we meditate upon His sufferings, and cause us to mingle tears of joy with those of grief. The latter we should be insensible not to pay to the excruciating agonies of our beloved Master; the former we should be unthankful and cruel to ourselves not to give to the happy effects of the misery which He so graciously condescended to undergo for us. But, to make both effectual, let us, inflamed with zeal and gratitude and love unfeigned, endeavour for our own particular, and most devoutly beg for the rest, as the best of Churches teaches us, that the innumerable benefits of this precious blood-shedding may have their full extent and free course; that “we and the whole Church of Christ may receive remission of sins” and all the other blessed effects of His passion; that He, who “hath made a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world,” would cause His way to be known, and show His saving health to the yet dark and unbelieving nations; and that all, who do already know it, may walk worthy of their knowledge and of the high vocation wherewith they are called. And O! that the death tasted by our Redeemer for every man may be effectual to the saving of every man! Even so, blessed Jesus, “by thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and passion, good Lord, deliver us.”—M.]
Footnotes:
[41]1Pe_2:18. [Domestics, family servants, οἰκέτης not so harsh as δοῦλος. ‘In all fear be subject to your masters,’ Cod. Sin.—M.]
[42]1Pe_2:18. [ἐν=in, not with.—M.]
[43] 1Pe_2:18. [σκολιός= עִקֵּשׁ Deu_32:5, crooked, perverse. These σκολίοι are “salvi et intractabiles, duri ac morosi,” so Gerhard.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. ἐν παντ. φόβ. ὑπ.—M.]
[44]1Pe_2:19. [For this is grace, so German for χάρις, but χάρις not=gratia divina but=laus. Cf. Calvin, “Idem valet nomen gratiæ quod laudis. Intelligit enim nullam gratiam vel laudem conciliari nobis coram Deo, si pœnam sustinemus quam nostris delictis simus promeriti: sed qui patienter ferunt injurias, eos laude dignos esse, et opus facere Deo acceptum.”—M.]
[45] 1Pe_2:19. [Consciousness, not conscience. The man knows that God is cognizant of his suffering, and acts rather with respect to God than to man. German: Mitwissen, not Gewissen, the former denoting cognizance in the sense of joint knowing, the latter, conscience. Render the whole verse, “For this is grace, if, on account of God’s cognizance, any one endures tribulations (λύπας), suffering wrongfully.—M.]
1Pe_2:20. [ποῖον=German ‘was für ein,’ or English, ‘what kind of.’—M.]
[46]1Pe_2:20. [Cod. Sin. κολαζόμενοι ὑπομένετε. German, “suffer patiently.” The participial construction of the Greek is, on the whole, preferable to English version. “For what kind of glory (is it) if doing wrong (sinning), and being buffeted, ye endure it patiently? but if well doing, and suffering (for it), ye endure (it) patiently, this is grace.”—M.]
[47]1Pe_2:20. [χάρις, as above, “with God.” The idea here, and in 1Pe_2:19, seems to be that such conduct is the evidence of grace received, as none but a child of grace would thus act.—M.]
[48]
1Pe_2:21. [Cod. Sin. reads ἀπἐθανεν (died) for ἔπαθεν (suffered).—ἡμῶν ὑμῖν is the reading supported by the greatest number of MSS. Another reading, ἡμῶν ἡμῶν, according to Syr. Copt. Ephr. Aug., and still another, ὑμῶν ὑμῖν, Elzevir, Alford; on this last is based the German version, which renders “suffered for you, leaving you, etc.”—M.]
[ὑπογραμμός=a copy-head,=a pattern, to write or paint by.—M.]
[49]
1Pe_2:22. [ἐποίησεν, the Aorist, as distinguished from the Imperfect, ἐποιει, has the force of “never in a single instance.” Alford.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. ηὑρέθη.—M.]
1Pe_2:23. [The German retains the preferable participial form.—M.]
[50]1Pe_2:23. [Render thus: “Who being reviled, reviled not again, suffering, threatened not.”—M.]
[51]1Pe_2:23. [Render thus: “Who being reviled, reviled not again, suffering, threatened not.”—M.]
[52]
1Pe_2:23. [παρεδίδου, either, “delivered (His enemies) up to (the Father),” so Alford, or, “delivered (His cause) up to (the Father”); in either case, as Alford suggests, perhaps not without reference to “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”—M.]
[Cod Sin. *ἐλοιδόρει.—M.]
[53]1Pe_2:24. [“Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.”—M.]
[54]1Pe_2:24. [The force of ἀνήνεγκεν is that “He took our sins to the tree, and offered them up on it.” Alford. Cf. Vitringa in Huther: “Vix uno verbo ἔμφασις vocis ἀναφέρειν exprimi potest. Nota Ferre et Offerre. Primo dicere voluit Petrus, Christum portasse peccata nostra, in quantum illa ipsi erant imposita, Secundo, ita tulisse peccata nostra, ut ea secum obtulerit in altari. Respicit ad animantes, quibus peccata primo imponebantur, quique deinceps peccatis onusti offerebantur. Sed in quam aram? ξύλον ait Petrus, lignum, h. e. crucem.—M.]
[55]1Pe_2:24. [ἀπογενόμενοι=having died. The German renders, “that, having died to sins (i. e., our own), we should live to the righteousness of Him by whose stripe ye are healed”; but this construction is untenable on textual grounds.—M.]
[56]
1Pe_2:24. [Stripe, singular, is the right rendering of μώλωπι. μώλωψ. “Paradoxon apostolicum: vibice sanati estis. Est autem μώλωψ vibex, frequens in corpore servili, Sirach 12, 12.” Bengel.—M.]
[Cod. Sin. *τῷ σωμ without ἐν.—μώλωπ. without αὐτοῦ.—M.]
[57]1Pe_2:25. [Translate: “For ye were straying (ἦτε πλανώμενοι) like sheep.”—M.]
[58]
1Pe_2:25. [The German renders ἐπεστράφητε passively, “ye are brought back”; but the 2 Aor. Pass, ἐπεστράφην, is often found in a Middle sense, cf. Mat_9:22; Mat_10:13; Mar_5:30,—translate, therefore, “but ye have returned.”—M.]
[Cod. Sin. πλανώμενοι.—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.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv18–20 Servants--Greek, "household servants": not here the Greek for "slaves."…
Servants--Greek, "household servants": not here the Greek for "slaves." Probably including freedmen still remaining in their master's house. Masters were not commonly Christians: he therefore mentions only the duties of the servants. These were then often persecuted by their unbelieving masters. Peter's special object seems to be to teach them submission, whatever the character of the masters might be. Paul not having this as his prominent design, includes masters in his monitions.
be subject--Greek, "being subject": the participle expresses a particular instance of the general exhortation to good conduct, Pe1 2:11-12, of which the first particular precept is given Pe1 2:13, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." The general exhortation is taken up again in Pe1 2:16; and so the participle Pe1 2:18, "being subject," is joined to the hortatory imperatives going before, namely, "abstain," "submit yourselves." "honor all men."
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with--Greek, "in."
all--all possible: under all circumstances, such as are presently detailed.
fear--the awe of one subject: God, however, is the ultimate object of the "fear": fear "for the Lord's sake" (Pe1 2:13), not merely slavish fear of masters.
good--kind.
gentle--indulgent towards errors: considerate: yielding, not exacting all which justice might demand.
froward--perverse: harsh. Those bound to obey must not make the disposition and behavior of the superior the measure of the fulfilment of their obligations.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv18–20 4. Patience of servants under ill-treatment, 1Pe_2:18-25.
4. Patience of servants under ill-treatment, 1Pe_2:18-25.
Servants, though free in Christ, and spiritually ennobled, might not indulge impatience and resentment toward their earthly masters, however tyrannical and brutal they might be.
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18. Servants—Domestic servants, but perhaps including all grades of service, from slaves to employees.
All fear—The highest degree of respect and submission; easy to kind and considerate masters, but distasteful and difficult to the perverse and morose. Yet the obligation is the same in both cases.
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 On vv18–20 18. Servants, be subject to your masters] The counsels…
18. Servants, be subject to your masters] The counsels thus opening are carried on to the close of the chapter. The fulness with which slaves are thus addressed, here and in Eph_6:5-8, Col_3:22, 1Ti_6:1-2, indicates the large proportion of converts that belonged to that class. Nearly all the names in Romans 16 and many of those of other members of the Church are found in the Columbaria or Catacombs of Rome as belonging to slaves or freedmen. The term for “servants,” here and in Luk_16:13, Act_10:7, Rom_14:4, differs from the more common word as pointing specially to household servants, the “domestics” of a family. It may have been chosen by St Peter as including the wide class of libertini or freedmen and freedwomen who, though no longer in the status of slavery, were still largely employed in the households of the upper classes, as scribes, musicians, teachers, physicians, needle-women and the like. It is obvious that the new thoughts of converts to the faith of Christ must have brought with them some peculiar dangers. They had learnt that all men were equal in the sight of God. Might they not be tempted to assert that equality in word or act? They felt themselves raised to a higher life than their heathen masters. Could they endure to serve loyally and humbly those whom they looked on as doomed to an inevitable perdition? Was it not their chief duty to escape by flight or purchase from the degradation and dangers of their position? The teaching of St Paul in 1Co_7:21-23, as well as in the passages above referred to, shews how strongly he felt the urgency of this danger. Cardinal Wiseman’s Fabiola may be mentioned as giving, with special vividness and insight, a picture of this aspect of the social life of the early Church.
with all fear] So St Paul urges obedience “with fear and trembling” (Eph_6:5). There was, looking to the then existing relations of society, a comparative nobleness in a service into which the fear of offending their master, as distinct from the mere dread of the scourge or other punishment, entered as a motive into the obedience of slaves. And this was not to depend on the character of the master. He might be good and easy-going, or perverse and irritable. Their duty was in either case to submit, with thankfulness in the one case, with a cheerful patience in the other.
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 On vv18–20 (18) Servants—Second division of the second prudential rule: subordination…
(18) Servants—Second division of the second prudential rule: subordination social. This word is not the same as is used by St. Paul—e.g., Eph_6:5; Col_3:22—but is used only besides in Luk_16:13; Act_10:7; Rom_14:4. It brings forward the family or household relation of servant or slave to master, and not (as does the common word used in 1Pe_2:16) the mere fact of ownership. We need not be surprised at directions for household servants, or slaves, in a letter addressed to Jewish Christians, for there were large numbers of Hebrews in this position both now and later; St. Clement, for example, was probably both.
Be subject.—Rather, being subject, or submitting yourselves. The participle joins this clause loosely to the “submit yourselves” of 1Pe_2:13, where the word is the same. (Comp. 1Pe_3:1.)
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With all fear.—“All” implies everything which goes to make up true fear, every kind of fear; and the “fear” (as when we speak of the fear of God) is not intended to mean any unmanly cowardice, dread of punishment, or such terror as is involved in having secrets which one dreads to have divulged. One commentator well defines it as “the shrinking from transgressing the master’s will, based on the consciousness of one’s own inferiority.”
Masters.—This is the word which properly corresponds to the word by which the “servants” are described, not merely “owners,” as in Eph_6:5; Col_3:22.
The froward.—Literally, the crooked. Its meaning is made clear by the contrasted adjectives, “good,” i.e., kindly, considerate; and “gentle,” or, rather, reasonable, not disposed to take too stern a view of matters. A “froward” master, then, is one with a warped nature, who is unreasonably exacting, capricious, and cross-grained; in fact, one who will deal with his servants in the manner spoken of in the following verses.
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 On vv18–20 Servants. The word is not douloi, slaves,but oijketai, household…
Servants. The word is not douloi, slaves,but oijketai, household servants, domestics. St. Peter may have used it as a less harsh term, in Christian kindliness and courtesy; or he may have chosen it purposely to include the large class of freedmen and other dependents who were to be found in the houses of the great. The frequent mention of slaves in the Epistles shows that many of the first Christians must have been in a condition of servitude. (comp. 1Co_7:21-23; Ephesians Col_3:22; 1Ti_6:1, 1Ti_6:2, etc.) It was only natural that men should feel uneasy and irritable under the yoke of slavery as they came to learn the equality of all men in the sight of God, and to understand the blessed privileges and the high hopes of Christians. The apostles counseled submission and resignation to the will of God. Slavery was an unnatural institution; it must in time disappear under the softening influences of the gospel. But Christian slaves were to wait in faith and patience. The sacred writers use language of studied moderation, carefully avoiding any expressions which might be regarded as exciting to violence or revolutionary outbreaks. Be subject to your masters with all fear. The participle uJpotassomenoi seems to look back to the imperative uJpotaghte in ver. 13; the relation of slaves to their lords being one of the ordinances of man alluded to there. (comp. Eph_6:5, where St. Paul bids slaves to be obedient to their masters "with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ The holy fear of God, by whose providence they were set in that lowly station, would involve the fear of failing in their duty to their masters. All fear; not only fear of punishment, but also fear of neglecting duty. Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. Servants must not make the character of their masters an excuse for disobedience; if their masters are froward (skolioi, literally, "crooked, perverse"), still they must be submissive to the wilt of God.
Vers. 18-25.
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Special address to servants.
I THEIR DUTIES.
1. Submission to their masters. Religion touches every condition of life; none is left out. And none may make the circumstances of their life an excuse for neglecting religion. God set them where they are; their station, their circumstances, are such as he was pleased to appoint. He "will have all men to be saved;" therefore we may be sure all men may be saved, whatever may be their outward circumstances. It is for them to do their duty to God and to man in that station to which God has been pleased to call them. There are many compensations in life; riches have their cares; high rank has its responsibilities. Men must not fret and chafe against the toils and privations of their lot; they must do their duty in it, and they wilt find peace and inward satisfaction. "Brethren," says St. Paul, speaking to slaves, (1Co_7:24) "let every man, wherein he is called, therein
2. abide with God." God has a message for servants. Their lot was very hard under the stern rule of slavery, when even men of wide views like Aristotle regarded slaves as "living tools." But Christian slaves were to take comfort; they were the Lord"s freedmen; (1Co_7:22) they were, equally with the highest in rank, living stones in the Lord"s spiritual temple; they might gain for themselves a high place there by the quiet, faithful discharge of the humblest duties. Then let them serve their masters with all respect and reverence; and that, not simply out of gratitude, if they happened to have kind and indulgent masters, but out of submission to the holy will of God, whatever might be the character of those under whom they were placed. There is a lesson here for all who occupy subordinate positions of any sort let them pay proper reverence and obedience to their superiors. It is their duty, not only to those superiors, but to God.
3. The motive of that submission. Consciousness of God. This high motive dignifies the humblest position in life, and makes the respect and submission which Christian servants yield to their masters, or Christians in any condition to their superiors, a beautiful and holy thing. They recognize the great truth of the presence of God; they try to live in the habitual consciousness of that presence; they try to think of God all the day long, in all the little details of their daily occupations, and to perform each duty, great or small, as unto the Lord. Thus Christians in the humblest positions may "adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things". (Tit_2:10) These words of St. Paul were spoken of Christian slaves. Slaves might adorn the Church of God, and bring honor to Christ. Through the grace of God, the last are often first, the lowest in this world highest in the kingdom of heaven.
4. The reward of that submission. It is thankworthy; it is acceptable with God. The master might be much beneath his slave; the superior may be much beneath his official inferiors in all that constitutes true greatness; it has often been so, it must be so sometimes still. The Christian, in whatsoever state he is, must be content; if he has to suffer wrong, injustice, cruelty, he must take it patiently. To submit to deserved punishment, to own our fault, and to accept the consequence, is hard to our proud, selfish nature; yet it is but a plain duty; it merits no praise. But when Christians submit to undeserved suffering; when in the ancient times they endured stripes and the prison and the death of martyrdom; when now Christian men, or women, or children endure persecution, sometimes very hard to bear, from those in various ways above them, or, it may be, from fellow-servants or school-fellows; when they take it patiently in the consciousness of God"s presence, this is the work of God"s grace; this is lovely in the sight of God; and the Scripture saith in God"s great condescension, this is thankworthy with God.
II THE GREAT EXAMPLE.
1. Christians are called to imitate Christ. Christians are called to suffering; the cross is the badge of their profession; without the cross they cannot be disciples of the crucified Lord. This was the meaning of your calling, St. Peter says; you knew it when you became Christians; you must not forget it in the hour of trial. Christ suffered for you, yes, for you slaves; he left behind him, when he ascended into heaven, an example for you to imitate, a sketch for you to fill up in detail. Try by the grace of God the Holy Spirit to renew the likeness of God in your hearts; look to the Lord Jesus Christ as your Model; copy one by one the features of that Divine loveliness; fill up the portrait, little by little, touch by touch, looking with fixed attention on the great Original. And, to change the figure, follow him; he goeth before you. Climb the steep ascent of heaven, stepping in the very footprints of the Divine Guide. He will lead you safe. But there is only one way the way which he trod himself, the royal way of the most holy cross.
2. The innocence of Christ. He did not sin, yet he suffered. We have sinned, yet we murmur under our chastisements. We fret and complain all the louder, if we think that our afflictions are not the direct result of sin; all the more if we think that they are wrongfully inflicted. We fancy that there are none so hardly dealt with, none so unjustly treated; we magnify our distress; we will not be comforted; we refuse to see any alleviation, any ray of light, any evidences of mercy. But we should think of our sins, our unworthiness, our need of chastisement for our profit in holiness. Above all, we should think of the innocent Savior. "He did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth." We have sinned in thought, word, and deed; let us not complain.
1. The patience of Christ. He was buffeted and spat upon and cruelly mocked, yet he opened not his mouth; he was scourged, he was nailed to the cross; he suffered through all those six hours the intensest agony; he threatened not, he did not call for the twelve legions of angels. He committed all, himself, his cause, his torturers, to him that judgeth righteously he left it all to God. He is our high Example. We should learn of him; we should pray for those who despitefully use us: "Father, forgive them." Here is the Christian"s comfort when he is unjustly treated.
2. God judgeth righteously; he knoweth them that are his; he knows their prayers, their self-denials, their temptations. If the world judge them harshly, it matters little; God judgeth righteously; they leave all to him. And when men speak evil of them, when they impute unworthy motives and accuse them falsely, they think of Christ mocked, reviled, blasphemed, and try to learn of him meekness and patience.
3. How Christians are enabled to follow that example. Christ is our Example; but he is more he is the Propitiation for our sins. It would be vain to set before us miserable sinners an example of perfect holiness, were it not that he bare our sins in his own body on to the tree. None other than the holy Son of God could bear that awful burden. The Lord "laid on him the iniquity of us all." He bare that tremendous load of human sin in his own body on to the tree, and there he took our sins away, dying, as he did, for all men, in our stead, suffering our punishment. Men think sin a light matter; true Christians know that it is a heavy burden, too heavy for them to bear. It was a heavy burden to Christ; it made him sweat those great drops of blood; it made him cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" He only could bear that tremendous load. The Lord laid it on him; he took it on himself in his gracious mercy. He came to give his life a ransom for many; he was made sin for us, though he was without sin; the Lord made his soul an offering for sin. And the end of that stupendous sacrifice was that we, being dead to sin, should be enabled to copy that Divine Example, and should live unto righteousness. Such an event as the death of the Son of God must involve great and far-reaching consequences; it requires of us, for whom he died, not merely an outward change, not some slight improvement in our lives, but a death unto sin. When we look upon the cross, and think who it was that suffered there for us, we see the intense guilt of sin, we see the great love of God; and we draw from the death of Christ a hidden source of strength which helps us to crush sin out of our hearts, though the effort be like a death-struggle and the agony like a death-pang; for by his death he broke the power of Satan, giving himself in his deep holy love to suffer our punishment and to take away our sins. Therefore we must be unto sin as though we were not, as though we had departed, as though the sinful "I" was gone, and Christ was there instead: "Not I, but Christ;" "To me to live is Christ;" he who knows the meaning of those words is dying unto sin. As he dies unto sin, he lives unto righteousness; a new life dawns into his soul, new aspirations, new emotions. He is full of the energy of a vigorous life; but it is not the old life that is gone; it is a new life which only they can know who die withChrist unto sin. It is his death which gives them life; his stripes heal their souls. They tortured and lacerated his holy body, but they heal the sickness of our souls; for it was for our sins that he submitted to that dreadful outrage. Each blow shows us the guilt and misery of sin; each drop of blood most precious cleanses the souls that turn to him in faith. He has borne our punishment, and we are free if we are his indeed, he abiding in us and we in him. Let us contemplate his sufferings with awe and reverence and gratitude, mourning for those sins of ours which added to his agony, killing them out of our hearts by the power of his death; thanking him in adoring love for his exceeding great love; bearing our little griefs patiently and cheerfully in the remembrance of his bitter cross and passion.
4. What they were; what they are now. "All we like sheep have gone astray." All have wandered from God, some in one direction, some in another, each turning to his own way. We flatter ourselves, in our folly, that we have not sinned like this or that neighbor. It may be so; his temptation was not our temptation; but our sin may be greater in the sight of God. All without exception have gone astray. But the Lord came in his mercy to seek and to save that which was lost. Happy those lost ones whom he has found, who, drawn by his grace, have returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of their souls! For he is the good Shepherd; he knows his sheep, and cares for them; and those sheep that have returned to him shall never perish, none can pluck them out of his hand. He is the Bishop, the Overseer, of our souls. He thinks of all our spiritual wants, our temptations, our distresses. He watches for our souls; he provides for our present necessities, for he feeds us with the sincere milk of the Word, with the bread of life; for our future welfare, for he is gone to prepare a place for us in heaven.
LESSONS.
1. Christ took upon him the form of a servant; let Christians in humble positions be content.
2. Let them do their duty, taking slights and injustice patiently, as in the presence of God.
3. Let them fix their thoughts upon the great Example. He did no sin; yet he suffered; he reviled not again.
4. He is more than our Example; he is our Strength He bore our sins. He gave us power to die unto sin and to live unto righteousness. We can do all things (if we abide in him) through him that strengtheneth us.
Vers. 18-25.
Servitude and subjection.
Writing to slaves, Peter, like Paul who was himself a Roman citizen and a Christian freeman exhorts to patient endurance of the ills and wrongs too often inflicted by irresponsible power upon the unprotected and despised. Beside the specially Christian motives to which the apostle here appealed, he knew that there were other and more obvious motives. There was necessity. The power lay with the master, and the bondslave must needs submit. There was expediency. Resistance and rebellion on the part of the slave would only bring upon him punishment and increase of suffering. But Paul relies upon the distinctively Christian motives to produce patience and submission.
I CHRIST"S OWN EXAMPLE OF PATIENT ENDURANCE OF WRONG.
Our Savior, though sinless, suffered the contradiction and the contumely, the agonies and the death, inflicted by unjust and unfeeling men. And he did this without even reviling his enemies. The apostle, in vers. 21-24, paints in impressive colors the figure of the meek and much-enduring Redeemer, and holds up this incomparable figure for the admiration and imitation of the Redeemer"s followers and friends.
II CHRIST"S EXPRESS COMMAND THAT HIS PEOPLE SHOULD REFRAIN FROM RETALIATION.
His precepts, preserved in the sermon on the mount, expressly forbade revenge, and inculcated brotherly kindness, and, more than this, the return of good for evil. And when Jesus himself was seized by the agents of those who plotted against his life, he forbade his friends to draw the sword in his defense.
III THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF ENJOYING A HIGHER, A SPIRITUAL, LIBERTY.
The meanest bondman who found Christ found freedom. He may have been treated with contempt and even harshness and cruelty; but he knew within himself that he was the Lord"s freedman. He could endure bondage to an earthly master, for Christ had set him free from sin and spiritual slavery and death. Carrying this conviction in his breast, he could joyfully endure insults, injustice, and ill treatment.
IV THE HOPE AND PROSPECT OF LIBERATION.
His view might be gloomy as far as the earthly horizon extended. But he looked forward to "death, which sets the captive free." He was the free citizen of the heavenly Jerusalem, and his prospect in the life to come was bright. A Stoic slave, like Epictetus, was conscious of possessing, in the power of suicide, the means of freeing himself from a yoke which became insupportable. But this power extended only to release; the Christian bondman, forbidden self-destruction, had before him a brighter hope a hope not only of release, but of liberty and glory.
V THE DESIRE TO PRODUCE AN IMPRESSION FAVORABLE TO THE CHRISTIAN FAITH.
Submission was not only "thankworthy," and "acceptable with God;" it might well prove profitable to fellow-men. When masters met, not with a sullen acquiescence, not with a surly defiance, not with a stolid insensibility, but with uncomplaining, cheerful obedience, a favorable impression was produced upon their minds. They could not but inquire into the cause which produced fruit so unusual and so admirable. And they could not but, in many instances, examine into the religion which introduced into human society an element so new, so impressive, and so beneficial. J.R.T.
Vers. 18-25.
Servants urged to patient endurance of undeserved suffering.
Having dealt with the character becoming the Christian citizen, he passes to that becoming the Christian servant. Probably the Churches addressed were composed largely of that class, who, however, were scarcely above the rank of slaves; and these are here called mainly to endurance because, probably, they were exposed to considerable oppression. Paul gives a more complete teaching on the duty of the Christian servant. Peter here contemplates him rather as a sufferer from overwork, unreasonable demands, the jealousy of fellow-servants, misrepresentation, cruelty; and he says in effect, "As to work, your master"s treatment of you is to make no difference to your fidelity;" as to suffering, "this is thankworthy, etc. This passage is characteristic of Peter. Compare what he records in his own Gospel. (Mar_14:53-66) Are not both these events hidden beneath the text? The events of that solemn night when he heard Jesus say, "I have given you an example," were burned into his memory. Uppermost in his thought of Jesus would be that of patient endurance, as when he answered the high priest nothing, and his servant"s denial by a look.
I THE PERSONS ADDRESSED. "Servants." That is:
1. In lowly life there may be the working out of noblest principles.
Remember that the apostle has taken ver. 12 for his text in this second section of the Epistle. What more could the cultured and influential do than he there requires, but which he urges here on slaves? At any rate, it ranks high in Christian service. The greatest principles of grace can be exemplified in the humblest position. As the Son of God was in the Babe of Bethlehem as truly as he is on the eternal throne, the love of God may inspire us, the will of God be done by us, and the glory of God secured by us, in the humblest ranks and tasks as in the highest.
2. Where no great deed is apparent, there may be the greatest victories.
These servants were not called to prominent places in Church life, nor to activity in public events, nor to anything the world counts great, but to patient endurance. Yet is anything harder, and therefore, greater? It requires greater force of Christian character to suffer than to act; many eyes are fixed on action, in suffering we are cast almost wholly on the unseen. Was not Christ"s power in his sufferings? Not before his miracles, but before his cross, the world bows with awe. Just as his own nine beatitudes reach their highest point in "Blessed are ye when men shall revile," etc. Let the sufferer, him with few talents, him who is oppressed, know that in enduring well he may rank with Jesus Christ"s nobility.
3. Untoward circumstances may be used to the highest results. It seems a misfortune to be oppressed, but these verses show how much is possible by endurance. Then we can exemplify Divine grace, "for this is grace, if a man for," etc.; we can constrain others to "glorify God in the day of visitation;" we can in this important point follow Christ; and we can secure much of that personal godliness which was the end for which he died we might live unto righteousness." There is no abiding satisfaction without travail of soul; life"s storms may cast up rare treasure to our feet.
II THE DUTY ENFORCED.
Patient endurance of undeserved suffering.
1. Notice that the endurance must be undeserved. Scripture consolations are often taken by sufferers who have no right to them. Much of our suffering is deserved e.g., bad treatment from others, which is often due to our moral unloveliness. The apostle, however, thinks of that which is unmerited suffering, e.g., for right doing. There is a mystery in this, but it is something that Scripture recognizes this, yea, even says it is this "whereunto ye are called.
2. This endurance is due to a consciousness of God. "This is grace, if a man for conscience toward God," etc. All endurance is not Christian. We may endure because we are not sensitive, or because we are stoical. That is not the endurance that needs Christianity for its existence, or that is followed by Christian blessing. Aim at the endurance which is only possible through taking God into account: "God is in my trouble, and God is with me in my trouble." "He endured as seeing him who is invisible.
3. This is the endurance which is fulfilled after the manner of Christ. It is possible to endure, but with impatience and repining. Christian endurance is of a higher order; it is like Christ"s, who had no unkind feeling for his persecutors. At the feast they said he had a devil, but, nothing daunted, he stood and cried, "If any man thirst," etc.; he rejected the suggestion to call down fire on the inhospitable village; he called Judas in the moment of his treason, "Friend;" he healed Malchus"s ear who was binding him; he forgave Peter"s denial; he prayed for his murderers. We are here summoned to endurance like that (vers. 22, 23).
III THE MOTIVES APPLIED.
How can we rise to endurance like this? Three motives are suggested here.
1. This patient endurance is pleasing to God. "If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable literally, "grace with God." He regards it as grace, or, if you will, as thanks. It is the utterance of the submissive spirit which says, "Not my will, but thine be done." It is wonderful that we can give pleasure to God; yet every token of loving, trustful, obedient submission must please the Father. Think of him saying, "For my Name"s sake thou hast borne," etc.
2. This patient endurance is following Christ. "Leaving us an example." There is much comfort in knowing we put our feet into his footprints, and that he knows what we suffer, since he has experienced it first. It is much to have indications that we are on the right track. "If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross, and follow me;" "If ye were of the world, the world would love its own, but," etc. But best of all, to follow him is to ensure his presence. His servants serve at his side, as Peter did. To follow is to follow him close. "To go forth without the camp, bearing his reproach," is to go forth "to him.
3. This patient endurance is a working out of redemption. "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being," etc. Since Christ by his sacrifice has freed us from sifts condemnation that we might become righteous, it becomes us to welcome anything by which that righteousness may be attained. If for our righteousness he would endure the cross, we may not shrink from the discipline of his love to that end. C.N.
Vers. 18-25.
The Christian as a servant.
As the sun extracts no sweeter odors than when its rays fall on the tiny lily of the valley or the modest violet, so the truth of Christ never fills the air with more fragrance than when, as here, it is addressed to men and women of lowly station and occupation to "bondmen.
I THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN AS A SERVANT.
"Be in subjection." Obedience is the essential virtue of servitude. Fulfill commands. Discharge tasks. "With all fear." Not terror, but proper awe. The craven is not the product of Christianity, but the respectful man is. Widen the application to all employed. How this teaching oils the wheels of the social machine!
II THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE CHRISTIAN AS A SUFFERING SERVANT.
There is no one-sided view of social duty here. It is implied:
1. Difficulties often arise from the character of employers. There is an exquisite ideal for masters here and gentle. But many a servant "endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully." Some masters are "froward," i.e. like a crooked stick you do not know how to hold. Some are rough. Their servants are buffeted tongue, fist, temper, strike.
2. Such difficulties, when rightly met, bring honor and Divine praise. This leads to
III THE DIGNITY OF THE CHRISTIAN AS A SUFFERING SERVANT.
1. Dignity, inasmuch as a suffering servant may resemble the blessed Savior. Follow his steps who was
1. perfect, yet wronged;
2. reviled, yet unreviling;
3. suffering, yet not vindictive.
4. Dignity, because inasmuch as for our salvation our Lord became a suffering Servant. Burdened, we are relieved by him; dead, we are quickened by him; diseased, we are healed by him; wandering, we are restored by him; and that by his being burdened and dying. U.R.T.
Vers. 18-25.
Subjection of servants to their masters.
I THE GENERAL NATURE OF THE SUBJECTION TO MASTERS.
"Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear." The word for "servants" here is more courteous than in Ephesians and Colossians. It is literally "domestics," and includes free servants and bondservants. From the strain of the exhortation it would seem that the latter are principally addressed. It belongs to the present constitution of things (and for ends of training) that some are in the position of requiring service, others are in the position of rendering service. It is proper that the will of the former should regulate the service, that the will of the latter should be subjected in the service. This is the Divine foundation on which mastership and servitude rest. The feeling proper to servants in the relation is fear. Paul uses stronger language when he says, "with fear and trembling". (Eph_6:5) Peter strengthens, too, but it is not by an additional substantive, but by an adjective, "with all fear." That cannot mean "all that fear can be," but rather" all that fear should be in the relation." There is fear in the sense of reverence to be shown towards the regulator of service (not diminishing or exaggerating what there is in that); and this will be accompanied by another fear, viz. anxious solicitude about coming up to all that is due in the service. There is a higher setting of the duty, which is not to be left out of view. There is fear in the sense of reverence to be shown towards him who (to our greater freedom and comfort in service) is over the earthly regulator of service; and this will be accompanied by another fearing, anxious solicitude about coming up to all the Divine requirements in the service. In this there is the condemnation of bad compliance, i.e. doing what is wrong because the master requires it. According to Roman jurists, such bad compliance was the duty of freedmen, the necessity of slaves. We can understand that Peter intended to guard against bad compliance when he does not state the duty of subjection absolutely, but with modification.
II SUBJECTION EVEN TO MASTERS THAT ARE FROWARD.
"Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward." We cannot but admire the great sobriety that there is in apostolic teaching. There are masters that are good, i.e. amiable, and that are also gentle, i.e. showing their amiability in exacting nothing but what is reasonable. In the case of such masters there can be no question of the obligation of service. Unless the servant is ill-grained, the service is rendered freely and without any sense of burdensomeness. But what about masters that are froward, or awry, i.e. ill-dispositioned, and that show their ill disposition by making unreasonable demands of their servants, and (when they can do it with impunity) abusing them? Is there any obligation of service there? "Yes," say the apostles, with the sobriety characteristic of them, "the obligation remains, and remains the same.
III CONSIDERATION DRAWN FROM THE PRAISEWORTHY CHARACTER OF SUBJECTION TO MASTERS THAT ARE FROWARD.
"For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." It was the slave especially that suffered wrongfully. There was a great wrong in his being a slave, and there were many wrongs connected with his state of slavery. He was at the mercy of his owner; if he did not get justice, he had no redress. Was his position, then, unendurable? By no means; the apostle contrives even to throw a halo around it. He does so by bringing God into the question. If a man has the consciousness of God, i.e. of him as recognizing not only his rights of humanity but also his sonship in Christ; of him also as able to right all matters between him and his master, and to see to all fidelity receiving its reward at last; of him especially as appointing griefs for his earthly lot; then he can endure those griefs, whatever they are. And if he thus encourages himself in endurance, then there is that which is acceptable. It is difficult to catch the precise shade of meaning. One way of it is "there is grace." But we must not run into the Roman Catholic error of supererogatory merit, which can be communicated to others. Another way of it is "there is loveliness." That readily passes into the meaning "there is that which, coming out into beauty, calls for praise." This meaning seems to be caught up in the following word, "glory." In enduring griefs from a bad master there is something like martyrdom. But let a man be on his guard here. If he commits a fault and is buffeted (receives a blow) for it, and takes this patiently, there is no halo attaching to that. It is when a man does well in the matter of service, and suffers for it, and then takes it patiently, that he has praise in the highest sphere (whatever men may think of it), viz. praise with God for conduct that rises into loveliness.
IV CONSIDERATION DRAWN FROM THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST.
1. Their exemplary character.
(1) Reason for their being presented as an example. "For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps." Servants were called to endure suffering. When they were called to be Christians like others, they were called to the proper bearing of all hardships appointed for them. There was One whose example was to be studied by them. It will not be thought that Christ is unworthy of imitation. It may, however, be thought that he is too great for imitation that he is only for admiration. The word translated "example" suggests a great picture left us in the life of Christ: how are we to copy it line for line? Christ is also put before us here as Leader of the way: how are we to follow him step for step? The solution of this is that his example is singularly imitable, that he is a Leader whom it is singularly easy to follow. There is a vulgar greatness which is full of self-importance, which is imprisoned in private interests, which multiplies distinctions. But true greatness is forgetful of self, covets nothing which it cannot communicate, goes down in hope of raising up. We are told here that Christ suffered as well as the slaves. We are told also that he suffered for the slaves (the meaning of which is afterwards brought out). He thus, on the one hand, brought excellence near to us; we do not think of his teaching theoretically as from a chair of learning. On the other hand, by the great advantage conferred on us, he obtained the right to be our Example, power over us to make us follow him.
(2) The innocence of Christ in his sufferings. "Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth." Did slaves suffer innocently? Christ suffered innocently too. It is to be noted that the idea of sinlessness entered into the Old Testament conception of the Messiah. The language here, with a slight exception, is taken from the Septuagint Version of Isa_53:9, "He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth." The Servant of God (in this a pattern to servants) did no sin, i.e. brought no suffering upon himself by his own faults. This sinlessness extended to faultlessness in speech, especially to freedom from a common fault in slaves connected with the frequent use of force. Guile was not found in his mouth, i.e. there never passed from him, even inadvertently, an expression that was fitted to convey a false impression (with the escaping of suffering or anything else as his end). For completeness we must give this sinlessness a positive aspect, He did always what the truth required in act, and spoke always what the truth required in speech. What we have here in a general statement is given in detail in the portraiture of Christ in the Gospels. It is interesting to notice the impression produced on the apostles by what they saw. "The idea of sinlessness was by no means so common an idea that all that was necessary to lead men like the apostles to apply it to Christ was an accident or some insufficient occasion. Quite the contrary: this idea was never thought of, nor had it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive it, until it appeared, not as an idea merely, but as a reality, in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. Even now to believe in the realizing of the idea of sinlessness in an individual is not so very easy a thing for human nature in its present state. Men are not in general much addicted to the weakness of believing too easily in the existence of purity of heart and true greatness; it is a fact that they are only too prone to doubt them when they really exist. It appears as something marvelous and extraordinary in the extreme, that once, and only once, in the world"s history (and that, too, in a time of great moral degradation) the impression could be produced upon the minds of a number of men, that a character was unfolding itself before their very eyes, of perfect purity and sinless holiness, and that the consequence of its manifestation was to produce in them a faith for which they lived and in which they died. But once does this fact occur in the history of mankind" (Ullmann).
(3) The patience of Christ in his sufferings. "Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously." There is here an echo of Isa_53:7, "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth." When he was reviled, i.e. was injured in what was said against him, he reviled not again; i.e. did not resent the injury by any injurious word in return. When he suffered, i.e. was injured in what was done to him, he threatened not; i.e. though conscious of power, he was not provoked by the injury to exercise his power, or even to threaten the exercise of it, against his enemies. The words have special but not exclusive reference to the judgment-scene followed by the crucifixion-scene. When reviled as a sabbath-breaker, he calmly answered that his Father worked on the sabbath day as well as himself. When reviled as casting out devils by the prince of the devils, he met the wicked suggestion by calmly showing how Satan could not cast out Satan. When reviled as a blasphemer, he simply vindicated himself by pointing to his works. When he was brought before the Sanhedrin on charges which were clearly unfounded and prompted by malice, he was silent under them; and it was only when he was appealed to by oath that he lifted his eyes to his judges, and said, "Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." When, again, he was brought before Pilate on a charge of sedition which his judge knew to be unfounded and malicious, he maintained the same silent demeanor; and it was only when he was appealed to that he fearlessly asserted his claim of Kingship. He silently submitted to the rudest mockings, to the most cruel scourgings. He silently carried his cross, and when, nailed to it, he looked round on his murderers, the prayer which rose to his lips was, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." He was able to endure all this unjust treatment without being hurried into a wrong, word, without any disturbing influence on his mind, because he committed himself to him that judgeth righteously, i.e. in the consciousness of his rectitude he left himself and all his interests to him whose judgment was different from and of a higher order than the judgment of the Sanhedrin and the judgment of the Roman governor. And what a powerful argument (how touching, too, to be brought in for the sake of the slaves!) to induce them to bear patiently all their wrongs which, however great, were small in comparison with the wrongs which were heaped on Christ!
2. Their vicarious character.
(1) Punishment for our sins. "Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree." The language is still suggested by Isaiah 53. "Tree" is the word which Peter uses in his sermons for the cross. The simple statement here is that Christ carried the burden of sins. An expansion of it is that he carried the burden of sins to whom they did not belong. A further expansion of it is that he carried the burden of our sins in his body, i.e. on the ground of human nature in its completeness (body as well as soul). The statement fully expanded is that he carried the burden of our sins in his body on to the tree, i.e. to the place where death was inflicted on him for them. He carried the burden of the Divine displeasure against our sins so as to carry them away into forgetfulness.
(2) Salvation intended by them. "That we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness." This death unto sins is death not merely unto their condemnation, but unto their power. The life unto righteousness is life not merely in the possession of the favor of God, but in the possession of power to do the will of God. In the state in which Christ found us it was natural for us to seek to revenge ourselves for injuries. In the state which Christ intends for us it becomes natural for us to be placable, to be silent under injuries, and to seek by our gentleness to overcome the evil that is manifested against us. And that is part, only part, of the Divine life which Christ died to secure for us.
(3) Salvation experienced through them.
(a) Restoration to health. "By whose stripes ye were healed." The language is from Isa_53:5. Having changed to "we" in the previous parts of this verse, he now returns to "ye." It is implied that in their former state they were sick. "The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
From the sole of the foot even unto the head, there is no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises, and putrefying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment." There was an irregular action of their powers, with languor, feverishness, loss of appetite, and other distressing symptoms. But the time came when healing was experienced, giving the powers their regular action and bringing back tone, endurance, keenness, and all healthful symptoms. The remarkable thing is that the healing is ascribed to the Savior"s stripes. The word is literally weal (in the singular number), i.e. the mark of a stripe. It is a word with which slaves were familiar, as they were also with buffeting formerly used (to which, as well as to stripes, Christ was subjected). Weal is taken here as the symbol of Christ"s atoning death; and the slaves are told, in a way that was fitted to go home to them in the remembrance of bitter experiences, that from the mark of the lash on our Lord healing had gone forth on them.
(b) Return to the fold. "For ye were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." The language is based on Isa_53:6, "All we like sheep have gone astray," themetaphor being abruptly changed, as in Isaiah. In their former state they were like sheep without any one to care for them, or keep his eye on them. Sheep, left to themselves, wander from the fold. So we, left to ourselves, wander from God who is our Home, our Fold, where we have shelter and abundance. They were now in the happy condition of having a Shepherd and Bishop for their souls. The words refer to Christ. The first points rather to the actual bestowal of care; the second points rather to observation that leads to care being bestowed. Christ leads us to rich thoughts; and he does not lead us to rich thoughts without keenly observing our condition. If we would have this Shepherd and Bishop for our souls, we must, like those whom Peter addresses, be turned toward him. The words would seem to indicate the action that is needed on our part. We have nothing to do but to turn ourselves toward Christ. We are to turn ourselves from our sins which have been atoned for, and no longer constitute a hindrance; and we are to turn ourselves toward Christ to have his affection in the form of care and oversight, with which our souls can lack nothing. 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 On v18 Servants, be subject to your masters.
1Pe_2:18-25
Servants, be subject to your masters.
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Submission enjoined
The word here rendered servants means not slaves in the strict sense of the term, but domestic servants-hence the exhortation is the more applicable to our own age and country.
I. Their duty.
1. Servants, be subject to your masters in all fear. Let not the service you render be constrained and forced, but ready and joyous, remembering that, however humble, it is ennobled by religion.
2. But to what extent are they to submit? Has God placed you under a master who is exacting and ungenerous? act worthily of your profession, and show that master that there is something real in religion.
3. A cogent reason is assigned. For this is thank-worthy-literally grace-if a man for consciousness of God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
II. The example of the Lord Jesus is set before us as the ground on which the submission should be practised. (Thornley Smith.)
The duty of servants
I. Their duty. Be subject. Keep your order and station under your masters, and that with fear and inward reverence of mind and respect to them, for that is the very life of all obedience. Do faithfully to your utmost that which is entrusted to you and obey all their just commands, and suffer patiently even their unjust severities. But, on the other side, this does not justify nor excuse the unmerciful austerities of masters. It is still a perverseness in them, as the original word is here, and must have its own name, and shall have its proper reward from the sovereign Master and Lord of all the world.
II. The due extent of this duty. To the froward. It is a more deformed thing to have a distorted, crooked mind, or a froward spirit, than any crookedness of the body. How can he that hath servants under him expect their obedience when he cannot command his own passion, but is a slave to it? And unless much conscience of duty possess servants, more than is commonly to be found with them, it cannot but work a master into much disesteem with them when he is of a turbulent spirit, a troubler of his own house. The Christian servant, however, who falls into the hands of a froward master will not be beaten out of his station and duty of obedience by all the hard and wrongful usage he meets with, but will take that as an opportunity of exercising the more obedience and patience, and will be the more cheerfully patient because of his innocence, as the apostle here exhorts. All men desire glory, but they know neither what it is nor how it is to be sought. He is upon the only right bargain of this kind whose praise is not of men, but of God. If men commend him not he accounts it no loss, nor any gain if they do, for he is bound for a country where that coin goes not, and whither he cannot carry it, and therefore he gathers it not. That which he seeks in all is that he may be approved and accepted of God, whose thanks are no less to the least of those he accepts than a crown of unfading glory. Not a poor servant that fears His name and is obedient and patient for His sake but shall be so rewarded.
III. The principle of this obedience and patience. For conscience towards God. This imports, first, the knowledge of God and of His will in some due measure, and then a conscientious respect unto Him and His will so known, taking it for the only rule in doing and suffering.
1. This declares to us the freeness of the grace of God in regard to mens outward quality, that He doth often bestow the riches of His grace upon persons of mean condition. He hath all to choose from, and yet chooses where men would least imagine (Mat_11:25; 1Co_1:27).
2. Grace finds a way to exert itself in every estate where it exists, and regulates the soul according to the particular duties of that estate. A skilful engraver makes you a statue indifferently of wood or stone or marble, as they are put into his hand; so grace forms a man to a Christian way of walking in any estate. There is way for him in the meanest condition to glorify God and to adorn the profession of religion; no estate so low as to be shut out from this; and a rightly informed and rightly affected conscience towards God shows a man that way and causes him to walk in it.
3. As a corrupt mind debaseth the best and most excellent callings and actions, so the lowest are raised above themselves and ennobled by a spiritual mind.
An eagle may fly high and yet have its eye down upon some carrion on the earth; even so a man may be standing on the earth, and on some low part of it, and yet have his eye upon heaven and be contemplating it. For conscience.
1. In this there is, first, a reverential compliance with Gods disposal, both in allotting to them that condition of life, and in particularly choosing their master for them, though possibly not the mildest and pleasantest, yet the fittest for their good.
2. In this there is, secondly, a religious and observant respect to the rule which God hath set men to walk by in that condition, so that their obedience depends not upon any external inducement, failing when that fails, but flows from an inward impression of the law of God upon the heart.
3. In this there is a tender care of the glory of God and the adornment of religion.
4. There is, lastly, the comfortable persuasion of Gods approbation, as is expressed in the following verse, and the hope of that reward He hath promised. Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ (Col_3:24). (Abp. Leighton.)
The conduct of servants
I. Religion brought into the little things of life. It does not merely include duties unto kings, but duty towards lesser lords. We may learn from this-
1. That religion applies to all classes and conditions of men. Each state of life has its own little kingdom, its own little world.
2. That nothing is too insignificant to be brought under the power of Divine direction.
II. Principle superseding compulsion. In this verse the apostle establishes one of the most important principles of morality-that our obligations to relative duties are not to be gauged by the character of the person to whom they are performed.
1. It is not utility that should regulate our conduct. The will of the world is to discard that which is not useful or profitable.
2. It is not comfort that is to direct our lives.
3. It is not force that is to drive.
4. It is neither the fear nor the love of man that moves.
III. Obedience independent of circumstances. Masters, like kings, differ. Some are reasonable and kind, others are unreasonable and bitter. Is a servant only to serve them who are fair and kind? By no means. The reason is explained when we come to realise that the present is of very little moment to show who serve Christ. (J. J. S. Bird.)
Suffering wrongfully.-
Endurance of wrong
It may be asked whether the advice of St. Peter to submit quietly to wrong does not destroy manliness and force of character if it is acted on? Does it not tend to create a race of effeminate, spiritless men? This question involves another. In what does moral strength consist? It is sometimes taken for granted that moral strength must catch the eye, must inflict itself on the imagination; that it must be something bustling, demonstrative, aggressive; that it must at least have colour, body, muscle, to recommend it. This is not the ease. Moral strength, in its very finest forms, may be the reverse of all this; when it makes no show, and is passive, it is often at its best. Many a man who can act with great courage in moments of great personal danger, in a struggle with a brigand, or in a burning house, cannot go through an illness as bravely and patiently as a little girl. The hardest thing often is to do nothing, to await the approach of danger or of death, and yet not to lose nerve and self-possession. No moral strength in the whole history of mankind ever equalled that which was displayed on Calvary, where all that awaited Him was present from the first to the mind of the Divine victim, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously (1Pe_2:23). Nothing that has been said will be so greatly misconstrued as to be taken to imply that cruelty, tyranny, oppression, can be agreeable to the mind of God. He permits these things among men from time to time, just as He permits much else that is evil for His own wise ends. He brings good out of them, yet He condemns them. By and by He will punish them. Nowhere is it implied in the Bible that the systems involving the oppression of man by man have vested rights in the moral universe, or that the circumstances which permit it are even tolerable, unless they are perpetuated for very different purposes indeed. The days will come when Englishmen will look back to the abolition of the slave trade by the English Parliament as a greater title to glory than was Trafalgar or Waterloo; as among the very greatest in the course of our history. Wilberforce and Clarkson will rank even before those celebrated commanders, to whose courage and genius, under God, we owe the independence of our country. Among yourselves there are probably some who, for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully. There are no slaves, thank God, on English soil, but there are multitudes of persons in positions of dependence whose lives can easily be made miserable by the cruel ingenuity of their betters, and too often for no worse crime than that of obeying a higher sense of right. Every rank in society has its petty tyrants and its secret confessorships; to suffer wrongfully for conscience toward God is the monopoly of no one class. Here is a cadet of a noble family who will not consent to a transaction which he knows to be unjust, and he is cut off with a shilling. There is an apprentice or clerk in a large city house who will not abandon the duties or restraints of a Christian life in deference to pressure or abuse or ridicule from his companions, and he has a hard time of it. Yonder is a governess who has learnt a higher estimate of life and duty than her wealthy and ostentatious employer; or a clergyman who feels too keenly the real character of Divine revelation and the tremendous issues of life and death to acquiesce in some popular but shallow misrepresentation of the gospel which makes his people comfortable without bringing them nearer to God. These, and such as these, must, for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully. Law can do but little for them; the province of law lies outside the spheres of the heart and the conscience; the whole world of motive is beyond it. But religion can do much, or rather everything, by pointing to the crucified and risen Prince of that vast company in all ages who have cared less to avoid discomfort than to be true to known truth and duty; by pointing to the unapproached bitterness of His sorrow, and to the completeness and splendour of His triumph. (Canon Liddon.)
The blessings of injustice
Where shall we look for an explanation of Gods permission of prevalent injustice and wrongful suffering in the world? Some have sought an explanation in the circumstance that all have sinned, and therefore all deserve to suffer. This affirmation is undoubtedly true, yet it offers no kind of solution to the problem. Nor does the promise of the ultimate termination of all evil in the world, or the promise of the future reversal of all present injustices, or the final recompense of the righteous, offer a perfect solution of the mystery of present wrongful suffering. All these promises shed some light of comfort on the mystery; they also help the sufferers to endure their wrongful sufferings gloriously; but they do not explain why the patient endurance of such wrongful sufferings is permitted by, and especially acceptable unto, God. And perhaps no sufficient explanation is possible in our present darkened and limited condition of existence. And, for anything we know to the contrary, the present exercise of simple faith may be, through all eternity, of such unspeakable value to man that injustice and wrongful suffering may be permitted by God chiefly for the sake of the training and development of simple, victorious faith. There is, however, another blessing of injustice which lies within our ken and is perfectly manifest. It is the splendour of spiritual character, which is engendered by injustice and wrongful suffering; and which, as far as we can see, is never engendered in any other way. As the finest gold is the gold most heated in the furnace, so the finest souls are the souls whose furnace in life has been the hottest. Without burning and welding, human souls inevitably continue gross and feeble. If when we commit a fault and are buffeted for it we take it patiently, there is no glory in patience like that. The finest spiritual glory requires a furnace heated with injustice and wrong to make its splendour and its strength appear. The very injustice which is a curse to the soul of him who commits it is transfigured by patient endurance into a blessing and a glory to the soul of him who suffers it. Not those who merely suffer, but those who suffer wrongfully, have perfect fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. And the patient endurance of such sufferings, because of the strength and glory which it imparts to the souls of His greatest children, is acceptable and well-pleasing unto God. (Canon Diggle.)
Gratitude for wrongful suffering
The words imply-
1. That man has a conscience.
2. That conscience sometimes leads to suffering.
3. That sufferings that spring from the following out of a good conscience are reasons for gratitude. This is thank worthy.
I. Because they involve the highest moral triumph. It is a triumph-
1. Of the spiritual over the material.
2. Of the right over the expedient.
3. Of the Christly over the selfish.
II. Because they open up within the man the highest sources of happiness.
III. Because it identifies the sufferer with the illustrious men of all times. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Suffering wrongfully
A minister was asked by a Quaker lady, Dost not thee think that we can walk so carefully, live so correctly, and avoid every fanaticism so perfectly, that every sensible person will say, Thats the kind of religion I believe in? He replied, Sister, if thee had a coat of feathers as white as snow, and a pair of wings as shining as Gabriels, somebody would be found somewhere on the footstool with so bad a case of colour blindness as to shoot thee for a blackbird. (Kings Highway.)
Ye take it patiently.-
Patience
Patience is the endurance of any evil, out of the love of God, as the will of God. The offices of patience are as varied as the ills of this life. We have need of it with ourselves and with others; with those below and those above us, and with our own equals; with those who love us and those who love us not; for the greatest things and for the least; against sudden inroads of trouble, and under our daily burdens; disappointments as to the weather or the breaking of the heart; in the weariness of the body or the wearing of the soul; in our own failure of duty or others failure towards us; in everyday wants or in the aching of sickness or the decay of age; in disappointment, bereavement, losses, injuries, reproaches; in heaviness of the heart or its sickness amid delayed hopes, or the weight of this body of death, from which we would be free, that we might have no more struggle with sin within or temptation without, but attain to our blessed and everlasting peace in our rest in God. All other virtues and graces have need of patience to perfect or to secure them. Patience interposes herself and receives and stops every dart which the evil one aims at them. Patience is the root and guardian of all virtue; impatience is the enemy of all. Impatience disquiets the soul, makes her weary of conflict, ready to lay aside her armour and to leave difficult duty. Impatience, by troubling the smooth mirror of the soul, hinders her from reflecting the face of God; by its din it hinders her from hearing the voice of God. How does it shake faith to be impatient of evils, either in the world or in the Church, or those which befall a persons own self! How does impatience with others defects chill love, or impatience with even our own failings and shortcomings extinguish hope! To be impatient at blame is a blight to humility; at contradiction, destroys meekness; at injuries, quenches long suffering; at sharp words, mars gentleness; at having ones own will crossed, obedience. Impatience at doing the same things again and again hinders perseverance; impatience of bodily wants surprises people into intemperance or leads them to deceive, lie, steal. In patience, our blessed Lord tells us, possess ye your souls. By patience we have the keeping of our own souls; we command ourselves, anal our passions are subdued to us; and commanding ourselves, we begin to possess that which we are. Patience, then, is the guardian of faith, the fence of love, the strength of hope, the parent of peace. Patience protects humility, keeps meekness, is the soul of longsuffering, guides gentleness, strengthens perseverance. Patience makes the soul to be of one mind with God, and sweetens all the ills of life. It casts the light of heaven upon them and transforms them into goods. It makes the bitter waters sweet; the barren and dry land fruitful. Desolation it makes a loneliness with God; the parching of sickness to be the fire of His love; weakness to be His strength; wounds to be health; emptiness of all things to have things from Him; poverty to be true riches; His deserved punishments to be His rainbow of mercy; death to be His life. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Patience under oppression
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 great 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 knows also that 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 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. The precept to take it patiently is, in a word, objected to as effeminate and anti-social. Now, here it must be remarked, first of all, 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, etc. In His public teaching our Lord made much of patient submission to undeserved wrong. He pronounced those men blessed who suffered for righteousness sake. 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. They are to do good to them that hate them, to pray for their persecutors, etc. And in perfect harmony with this teaching is His own example. Well, it is this sinless being who is also the first of sufferers. Nothing was wanting, humanly speaking, to make patience impossible. The natural sensitiveness of His tender frame, the ingenious appliances of torture, such as a crown of thorns pressed down upon the head and the temples, the coarse brutality of His executioners, the vivid consciousness of the sufferer sustained from moment to moment, might well have exhausted patience. And what His mental sufferings must have been we may infer distantly from the agony in the garden. But St. Peter directs especial attention to the insults to which our Lord was subject, and which may have tried His patience even more than the great sorrows of His soul or the tortures of His body. When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but submitted Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. No complaint, properly speaking, escaped Him. Certainly, He asked the soldier who struck Him on the face for the reason of the act. He for a moment broke His majestic silence in His compassion to this poor mans insensibility to natural justice, and perhaps also in order to show that if when suffering more He did not complain, it was not because His feeling was dulled, but only what was due to patience. For Christians, then, I say, 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. And yet if, for Christians, the question is not an open one, the very authority which settles it enables us to see some reasons for the decision. Indeed, our Lord teaches us by His sufferings more than in any other way. By these He reveals to us the love of God: by these He points to the value of heaven. These sufferings are the measure of the gravity of our sins, of the miseries of hell, of the solemnity of life. But beyond this our Lord gives us lessons about pain. The existence of pain in the world is a fact which has from the earliest ages attracted and perplexed human thought. What is it in itself? It is a certainty both to feeling and to thought, and yet it is beyond analysis; and its inaccessibility to any real examination adds to its mysteriousness with all thoughtful minds, and increases the anxious interest with which it is regarded. It is ubiquitous: it is importunate: it meets us everywhere: it leaves us today only that it may return tomorrow. In this vast district of human experience deism sees, however reluctantly, an unexplained libel upon the character of God-atheism a hideous flaw, which, however bound up with the order of nature, impairs and disintegrates it. The Greeks talked much of a Divine Nemesis, a word which has played a great part in human thought; but Nemesis was not merely Divine justice overtaking human crime: it was also a malignant envy which grudged man his power or his good fortune, and which humbled him accordingly. Heathendom saw that there was a connection between pain and conscience. It had very indistinct ideas of the nature of this connection. What it was exactly revelation must say. Accordingly in the Old Testament there is one predominating aspect of the moral use of misfortune and pain. It is the punishment of sin. The righteousness of God is the great feature of the Jewish revelation of God. God is power; God is intelligent; but above all else God is righteousness. And it is in accordance with His righteousness-not, observe you, as the caprice of an arbitrary will, but in deference to the unalterable necessities of our self-existing moral nature-that He inflicts pain and misfortune as punishment for sin. This faith that pain justly follows misdoing, because God who governs all is righteousness and could not have it otherwise, runs through the Old Testament. It dictates the law: it is illustrated again and again in the history: it is the keynote to more than half the Psalms: it supplies the prophets with their greatest inspirations. But 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. Against this idea the Old Testament itself contains some very emphatic protests. Thus the Book of Job has for its main object to show theft Jobs misfortunes are no real measure of his sins. And when Psalmists could say, It is good for me that I have been in trouble, or The Lord hath chastened and corrected me, but He hath not given me over unto death, or All Thy waves and storms are gone over me, it is clear that already a new light was breaking upon the world. But it was by our Lord that the cloud was fully lifted from this great district of human experience, so that we are now able to map it out, and to discover its bearings, and turn it to practical account. Our Lord does not reverse what the old dispensation had taught as to the penal object of a great deal of human pain, but He also rules that much pain is strictly a discipline-a Fathers discipline of His children. Pain may thus be a token of favoured sonship; and, if so, then to pass through life without pain may be anything but an enviable lot. If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons, for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? Pain thus need not be an enemy: it may be a friend in disguise: at least it may become so. Why should it not be welcomed? This is the voice of Christian teaching. Why, like the natural elements, fire and water, should it not be taken in hand and conquered and made the most of? Why should we not get out of it all the disciplinary and purifying virtue that we can, and so turn the scourge into a blessing? 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. Here, then, is the answer to the criticism on St, Peters precept, to which I was referring just now. There may be cases in which the interests of truth and righteousness-the interests of others-may make resistance to oppression a duty. They are rare, indeed. As a rule, trouble and pain are to be taken patiently as coming from God, inflict them who may. The early Christians were men who felt they had nothing to do either with the legal government of the Roman Empire or with the moral government of the universe. All that they knew was that they had to suffer for being what they were, and for believing what they did believe. The only question with them was how to suffer. And as for society, society has been again and again purified, regenerated, saved, by the passive endurance, as distinct from the active struggles, of its very best members. And let me make two remarks in conclusion. 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. 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 Gods favour, as a pledge of glory. Depend upon it patient, cheerful acceptance of suffering is a great force which achieves more than many active energies that command the attention of mankind. 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. We live in an age of progress. The circumstances under which we pass life are being brought more and more under the control of man; but is there less suffering in the wend than there was a hundred years ago? Looking to the present state of the world, is there likely to be? I fear not. Even science, which does so much for us, shifts the scene of suffering, rather than diminishes its area. What is taken away by one hand is returned by the other. If disease is assuaged, life is prolonged under conditions which, in an unscientific age, would have been fatal to it, and which necessarily involve suffering. And human nature does not change. The same principles and passions and dispositions which, needlessly or intentionally, inflict suffering on others are at work now, although their operation is limited by improvements in human society. Some of us may be young and lighthearted, and may not yet know what real trouble and pain mean. We shall know in time. The lesson comes to most men early enough in life, whether inflicted by others or, as more frequently, direct from above. The important point is to be prepared for it when it does come, to see in it the hand of our Father in heaven, to thank Him for treating us thus as children, for punishing, for purifying us here, that He may in His mercy spare us hereafter. (Crown Liddon.)
The duty of patience under injuries
I. What is implied is this duty.
1. The not entertaining the impression of injuries with acrimony of thought and internal resentment.
2. The not venting any such resentment in virulent vindictive language.
II. Whence it is that this duty comes to be so exceedingly difficult.
1. From the peculiar provoking quality of ill language.
2. Because nature has deeply planted in every man a strange tenderness of his good name, which, in the rank of worldly enjoyments, the wisest of men has placed before life itself. For, indeed, it is a more enlarged and diffused life, kept up by many more breaths than our own.
III. By what means a man may work himself to such a composure and temper of spirit, as to be able to observe this great and excellent duty. And here, when we consider what obstructions are to be conquered and removed, we must acknowledge that nothing under an omnipotent grace can subdue the heart to such a frame. To discommend this, of returning railing for railing, slander for slander, both to our practice and affection, I shall fasten only upon this one consideration; namely, that it is utterly useless to all rational intents and purposes.
1. The first reason that would induce a man, upon provocation, to do a violent action by way of return, should be to remove the cause of that provocation. But the cause that usually provokes men to revile, are words and speeches; that is, such things as are irrevocable. Such a one vilified me; but can I, by railing, make that which was spoken, not to have been spoken? Are words and talk to be reversed? Or can I make a slander to be forgot, by rubbing up the memory of those that heard it with a reply?
2. Another end, inducing a man to return reviling for reviling, may be by this means to confute the calumny, and to discredit the truth of it. But this course is so far from having such an effect, that it is the only thing that gives it colour and credibility; all people being prone to judge, that a high resentment of a calumny proceeds from concernment, and that from guilt; which makes the sore place tender and untractable.
3. A third end for which a man may pretend to give himself this liberty is because in so doing he thinks he takes a full and proper revenge of him that first reviled him. But certainly there is no kind of revenge so poor and pitiful; for every dog can bark, and he that rails makes another noise indeed, but not a better. (R. South, D. D.)
Of patience
The word patience hath in common usage a double meaning, taken from the respect it hath unto two sorts of objects somewhat different. As it respecteth provocations to anger and revenge by injuries or discourtesies, it signifieth a disposition of mind to bear them with charitable meekness; as it relateth to adversities and crosses disposed to us by Providence, it importeth a pious undergoing and sustaining them. That both these kinds of patience may here be understood, we may, consulting and considering the context, easily discern.
I. Patience, then, is that virtue which qualifieth us to bear all conditions and all events by Gods disposal incident to us, with such apprehensions and persuasions of mind, such dispositions and affections of heart, such external deportments and practices of life as God requireth and good reason directeth. Its nature will, I conceive, be understood best by considering the chief acts which it produceth, and wherein especially the practice thereof consisteth; the which briefly are these:
1. A thorough persuasion, that nothing befalleth us by fate, or by chance, or by the mere agency of inferior causes, but that all proceedeth from the dispensation or with the allowance of God.
2. A firm belief that all occurrences, however adverse and cross to our desires, are well consistent with the justice, wisdom, and goodness of God.
3. A full satisfaction of mind that all (even the most bitter and sad accidents) do (according to Gods purpose) tend and conduce to our good.
4. An entire submission and resignation of our wills to the will of God, suppressing all rebellious insurrections and grievous resentments of heart against His providence.
5. Bearing adversities calmly, cheerfully, and courageously, so as not to be discomposed with anger or grief; not to be put out of humour, not to be dejected or disheartened; but in our disposition of mind to resemble the primitive saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, who accounted it all joy when they fell into divers tribulations.
6. A hopeful confidence in God for the removal or easement of our afflictions, and for His gracious aid to support them well; agreeable to those good rules and precepts: It is good that a man should both hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord; Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart.
7. A willingness to continue, during Gods pleasure, in our afflicted state, without weariness or irksome longings for alteration.
8. A lowly frame of mind (that is, being sober in our conceits of ourselves, sensible of our manifold defects and miscarriages; being meek and gentle, tender and pliable in our temper and frame of spirit; being deeply affected with reverence and dread toward the awful majesty, mighty power, perfect justice and sanctity of God; all this wrought by our adversity, effectually, according to its design, softening our hard hearts, mitigating our peevish humours.
9. Restraining our tongues from all discontentful complaints and murmurings, all profane, harsh expressions, importing displeasure or dissatisfaction in Gods dealings toward us, arguing desperation or distrust in Him.
10. Blessing and praising God (that is, declaring our hearty satisfaction in Gods proceedings with us, acknowledging His wisdom, justice, and goodness therein, expressing a grateful sense thereof, as wholesome and beneficial to us) in conformity to Job, who, on the loss of all his comforts, did thus vent his mind: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
11. Abstaining from all irregular and unworthy courses toward the removal or redress of our crosses; choosing rather to abide quietly under their pressure, than by any unwarrantable means to relieve or relax ourselves.
12. A fair behaviour toward the instruments and abettors of our affliction; those who brought us into it, or who detain us under it, by keeping off relief, or sparing to yield the succour which we might expect; the forbearing to express any wrath or displeasure, to exercise any revenge, to retain any grudge or enmity toward them; but rather even on that score bearing goodwill, and showing kindness unto them.
13. Particularly in regard to those who, by injurious and offensive usage, do provoke us, patience importeth-
(1) That we be not hastily, over easily, not immoderately, not pertinaciously incensed with anger toward them.
(2) That we do not in our hearts harbour any ill will, or ill wishes, or ill designs toward them, but that we truly desire their good, and purpose to farther it as we shall have ability and occasion.
(3) That in effect we do not execute any revenge, or for requital do any mischief to them, either in word or deed; but for their reproaches exchange blessings (or good words and wishes), for their outrages repay benefits and good turns.
14. In fine, patience doth include and produce a general meekness and kindness of affection, together with an enlarged sweetness and pleasantness in conversation and carriage toward all men; implying that how hard soever our case, how sorry or sad our condition is, we are not therefore angry with the world, because we do not thrive or flourish in it; that we are not dissatisfied or disgusted with the prosperous estate of other men; that we are not become sullen or froward toward any man because his fortune excelleth ours, but that rather we do rejoice with them that rejoice; we do find complacence and delight in their good success; we borrow satisfaction and pleasure from their enjoyments.
II. The example of our Lord was indeed in this kind the most remarkable that ever was presented, the most perfect that can be imagined; He was, above all expression, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; He did undertake, as to perform the best works, so to endure the worst accidents to which human nature is subject; His whole life being no other than one continual exercise of patience and meekness, in all the parts and to the utmost degrees of them. (Isaac Barrow, D. D.)
Patience in tribulation
I. The special beauty of Christian behaviour. This is the grace or beauty.
1. The disciple of Christ does not act from motives of expediency, but from principle.
2. The disciple of Christ does not pursue pleasure or ease, but duty.
II. The exciting motive which prompts the attainment of this character. He will know that he is pleasing God. He will realise that God is the avenger.
III. The natural argument to be specially considered. For what glory is it, etc. This is an urgent and important warning and caution. It urges discrimination and self-examination with regard to our sufferings. (J. J. S. Bird.)
Acceptable with God.-
Thanks from God
This is acceptable with God. And the Greek might bear such a rendering as this: God says, Thank you. Yes, so it is. If in some great house some poor servant, or if in a school some persecuted child, will dare, for Gods sake, to choke back the passionate outburst of indignation, and to endure grief, suffering wrongfully, there is a thrill of delight started through the very heart of God, and from the throne God stoops to say, Thank you. The hero explorer may be thanked by his country and his Queen, but the weakest and obscurest saint may receive the thanks of the Almighty. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Even hereunto were ye called.-
God has ordained his people to undergo troubles in this world
God has ordained that all His shall suffer troubles, therefore we are to look for them, and bear them patiently. Through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of heaven. God knows how ill we can bear prosperity, but are ready to surfeit thereof, as children do of sweetmeats. Standing waters gather mud. As the Israelites in their journey to Canaan suffered much, so must we in this tabernacle, before we come to heaven; thus is God pleased to exercise us for His own glory and our good.
Uses:
1. We must not think the worse of any because of their afflictions, or conclude them to be bad men and hypocrites, which was the fault of Jobs friends.
2. We must not think the better of ourselves for prosperity. God can afford the dogs the bones, the things of this world.
3. We must not dislike ourselves for our afflictions. It is an argument of Gods love, not of His hatred (Heb_12:6). To have afflictions and to profit thereby is the sign of a happy man.
4. We must prepare for afflictions, not dreaming for ease; they are the better borne when looked for.
5. We must bear them patiently, as being of God.
6. We must bear them thankfully, as whereby we are furthered in holiness.
7. We must bear them joyfully, in respect of the eternal happiness and immortal glory we shall be shortly brought to.
8. If the children of God get not to heaven but through many sorrows, what shall then become of the wicked and ungodly (1Pe_4:18; Jer_25:29; Jer_49:12)? (John Rogers.)
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example.-
Christs sufferings in Gethsemane
He suffered for us; it was during His agony in the garden that our Lord appears to have been most deeply penetrated with the sense of His afflictions.
I. The intensity of those sufferings which our Saviour experienced in the garden of Gethsemane; and,
II. What His conduct under those sufferings ought to teach us. There is, perhaps, no circumstance of the gospel at which our reason is so inclined to cavil, as the affliction which our Saviour then experienced. We cannot understand how it is possible that the Messiah, who is one with the Father, should be thus liable to grief, and thus deeply moved at the prospect of His approaching persecutions. Our difficulty here results from our utter inability of forming any notion of the infinite magnitude of the Divine power, We can understand that in the Majesty of the Deity, He should hold pain and sorrow as His subjects; but we cannot understand His rendering Himself subject to them. We are unable to conceive that exercise of His power by which He manifested Himself as entire a master of His own infinite attributes, and withdrew Himself, as it were, from the sustaining succours of His eternal Godhead, that, as a man, He might suffer for our redemption. Yet this is what our Saviour did. If we were merely to confine ourselves to temporal views, and exclude all consideration of the spiritual cause of our Lords sufferings, it may even then be with truth affirmed that such an accumulation of woes was never brought to bear at one moment on one man. He knew to a certainty that He had no deliverance to look for; that Judas, His companion, would betray Him; that the princes and rulers would condemn Him; that the people would reject Him and save Barabbas; and that His enemies would heap their persecutions upon Him to the last. In the mere anticipation of what He was about to undergo, our Redeemer had full cause for the agony which He experienced and expressed in the garden of Gethsemane. But, with such aggravations suggested by His own prophetic spirit as no other man ever knew, Jesus was cut off by the very sublimity and holiness of His character, from a source of succour which, under similar circumstances, has often afforded relief to other men. If they do not actually extract the sting of human suffering, they serve to divert the thoughts, and thus to allay the pain of it. But what are those passions? They are either a sullen pride which will not allow the afflicted under any circumstances to confess themselves subdued; or a fierce resentment which induces them to baffle the malice of their enemies by opposing a mask of obstinate insensibility to every attack; or an empty vanity which leads them in the lowest depths of wretchedness, and on the very borders of the grave, to angle for the applauses of the world by putting on a light appearance of unconcern. But whatever support such feelings might afford to others, they could have afforded none to Jesus in the hour of His agony. They are repugnant to the dispositions by which His gentle heart was animated. But it may be conceived that Jesus, under all His troubles, might still have found relief in the consciousness of His innocence. If there are occasions when this reflection may prove a source of secret comfort to the sufferer; there are others when it serves as the severest aggravation to his misery. If an elder brother who had mercifully interposed to save the children of their common parents from destitution, who had succeeded in placing them in a prosperous condition, should, after all, detect them conspiring with his enemies to malign and ruin him, would it be any consolation to reflect that he had not deserved such treatment at their hands? Even so must the consciousness of His innocence have affected the heart of Jesus. It must have been the most galling addition to the weight of those oppressions which were heaped upon Him by His countrymen. The consideration that they, who would be the authors of His oppressions, ought to have been bound together by the remembrance of His loving kindnesses, as His firm protectors, must have struck far deeper into His heart than ever the soldiers spear wound in His side could pierce. But not only on His own account: His compassionate nature would grieve for others; for His disciples, whom the profession of the faith in His name should render obnoxious to the enmity of their friends, and expose to persecution. But, as yet, we have only surveyed our Saviours agony in the garden as resulting from human feelings. We will now proceed to regard it as affected by those views which would have been suggested by the religious aim of His approaching passion. Our Saviour, by His death upon the Cross, was about to pay the price of the transgressions of the whole world. He was about to suffer for our sins; and those sins for which His death was demanded, would naturally engage His contemplations. He would now see before Him the multitude of those offences for which a sacrifice was to be offered; the heinousness of them; the outrage that they were against the majesty of God; the ruin, the destitution which they had spread over the face of the earth; and the weight of the punishment they deserved. The bare idea of any one of those wicked acts which are daily committed by the cruel or the impure, is hateful to every innocent mind. What horror then must necessarily have filled the soul of our Saviour when, not singly, but in their aggregate amount, those mortal offences were brought before His holy view, as He estimated the extent of the ransom which was due, and which He had Himself undertaken to discharge? But our Lord thus suffered for us, says St. Peter in my text, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. The lessons which His sufferings ought to teach us:
1. We should learn from them to submit ourselves in every condition of life with an unreserved obedience to the will of the Almighty.
2. We should learn from our Lords conduct never to despair of the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father, but to rely upon His unfailing goodness; to look to Him for succour and relief; and to feel assured that, if He see not fit to remove our cause of sorrow, He will, in His infinite mercy, answer our prayers for assistance, by vouchsafing to our souls the ability to support it.
3. We should learn humility from the example of our Saviours sufferings.
4. We should learn from our Lords example the extent of that Christian love which, as His disciples, we are bound to bear our fellow creatures. Our Lord suffered for us. He exhibited, in dying for us, the fulness of that brotherly charity with which our hearts should glow towards each other. He condemned every affection which emanates from a selfish and ungenerous source, by His willing immolation of Himself for the sins of the world that had condemned Him. His thus dying for us teaches us not only the value we ought to set upon our own salvation, but the value we ought to set upon the salvation of others. (W. Harness, M. A.)
Christ our example
The first reason for the gift of the Incarnate Son to a perishing world, is that He might be a sacrifice for its sin. The second reason is, that He might be an ensample of godly life to those who believe in Him. We sinners cannot invert the order, and say that He was given, first as our example, and secondly as our sin offering before God. For we cannot imitate Him until He has redeemed us from the power and guilt of sin; the first need of a sinner is pardon and moral freedom, the second, the ideal of a new life.
I. Why we need such an example at all. Let us ask ourselves what it is which makes human nature radically different from that of any of the creatures that surround us. The great characteristic of man is the possession of free will. The growth of the human body indeed is as little within mans control as is that of an animal. But human character, and so much of the bodily life as bears on character, is as much under our control as are the canvas and the colours under that of a painter. Our passions, our inclinations, our thoughts, our sympathies, our antipathies, our habits, are at the disposal of our wills; we are what we have gradually made ourselves. Man, then, is an artist. And as an artist he needs not merely the material out of which to mould some expression of thought, but an example, an ideal, to copy. It may indeed be asked whether it will not do as well to obey a precept as to copy an example. Example, it is said, is vague; precept is explicit. Precept is active; it seeks you out and addresses you. Example is passive; it lets you imitate if you will. Example merely says, This may be done because it has been done. Precept says, Do it. No, you especially who, as parents or masters, are responsible for influence on others; assuredly, no. Example goes further than precept. Precept leads us to the foot of a precipitous mountain, and it cries, Scale that height. But example whispers: Mark what I do, and then do it; it cannot be hard for you since it is easy for me, Look how I step over that crevice, and rest on this projecting foothold, and tread lightly and quickly along that insecure bit of the path. Watch me; keep close to me. Then all will be well in the end.
II. We do then need an example, and our Lord has satisfied this need of our nature and completely. In Him we have before us an example which is unique. He passed through life in the humblest circumstances: yet He belongs to the human race. He alone in the world is the universal man; He is the one man who corresponds to that ideal of humanity of which there are traces in the minds of all of us; He is the great example.
1. That which strikes us, first of all, in the example which He has left us, is its faultlessness. We are startled by His own sense of this. He never utters one word to the Father or to man which implies the consciousness of a defect. I do always those things that please the Father. The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me. Was this an illusion, or did it correspond with the fact? He was surrounded by jealous observers. He could reckon on no forbearance, no generosity, no equity, in His opponents. Yet He passed their criticism unscathed. Which of you, He could say, convinceth Me of sin? And there was silence. In this sinlessness He is, although our model, yet beyond our full reach of imitation. The best of men knows that in his best moments he is beset by motives, or thoughts, or inclinations, from which Christ was utterly free. But this does not destroy, it rather enhances, the value of our Lords example. In all departments of thought and work, the ideal is, strictly speaking, unattainable by man; yet man should never lose sight of it.
2. We are struck by the balance and proportion of excellences in our Lords 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. Our finite and fallen nature exhausts itself by an effort in a single direction; it would almost seem bound to atone for a temporary success by some compensating failure. Of this want of balance in excellence, of this exaggeration in particular forms of excellence which entails an accompanying defect, there is no trace in our Lord. Read His life over and over again, with this point in view; and nothing will strike you more than its faultless proportions. In so vast a field, take one illustration out of many: the balance which He keeps between severity and tenderness.
3. 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 contrivance or of aiming at effect. He takes the illustrations which come ready to His hand, or which meet His eye: the birds of the air, the rain, the red and lowering sky, the lily, the grain of mustard seed, the corn, the ruined tower of Siloam. On these He grafts this or that fragment of eternal truth. We cannot enrich His teaching by any additions. Our crude efforts could not but disfigure its incomparable beauty. As with His words, so is it with His actions. He acts with a view to the glory of God the Father, and with a view to nothing else. Hence a directness and transparency in His conduct, which we feel in every detail of it.
4. One further point to be remarked in our Lords example is the stress which it lays upon those forms of excellence which make no great show, such as patience, humility, meekness, 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. It is this side of His example of which St. Peter is thinking as being so useful to the Christian slaves to whom for the moment he is writing (verse23). Christ had before Him a purpose of infinite beneficence; that of recovering man to God and to endless happiness. Yet in carrying it out He met with scorn, resistance, hatred, persecution. Yet no unkind or impatient word falls from Him. He bears in silence the contradiction of sinners against Himself. He prays, Father, forgive them. He is obedient unto death. Leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps. Yes, it is said, it is a beautiful, a transcendental picture; and if Christ were merely man, we might perhaps imitate Him! But then He is God as well as man; and this seems to remove Him from the category of beings whom man can imitate. His theological glory in the fourth gospel is fatal to His moral value as a human model in the first three. The difference between Jesus Christ and ourselves is indeed infinite; it is the difference between the Creator and the creature. And yet He is also truly man; and for the purposes of imitation the truth of His manhood secures all that we require. For the purposes of imitation, He is practically not more out of our reach than is a father of great genius and goodness out of the reach of his child. Certainly we cannot imitate Jesus Christ when He heals the sick, or raises the dead. But we can enter into and cherish the spirit of those high works of mercy. We can do the natural kindnesses which are akin to them. And there are deeds and words of His which we can copy in the letter as well as the spirit. Indeed, the objection has been already solved by the experience of eighteen centuries. The imitation of Christ is the perpetual source of saintly effort in the Church of Christ. Generation follows generation, looking unto Jesus. One man says, I will imitate His patience; and another, I will copy His humility; and a third, I would practise, though afar off, His obedience; and a fourth, His love for men; and another, His simplicity; and another, His benevolence; and another, His perpetual communion with the Father; and another, His renunciation of His Own will. When one point is gained, others follow. Thus, little by little, Christ is formed, in the characters of His servants. This imitation of our Lord 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 conformity, there is no true note of predestination. A devoted layman of the Church of England said on his deathbed, that, on reviewing his life, the omission which he chiefly deplored was that he had not made a daily effort to study and imitate Jesus Christ as He is described in the gospels. Is not this a common omission even with serious Christians? Should we not do what we may, while yet we may, thus to follow in the footsteps of the Perfect Man? (Canon Liddon.)
The Christian ideal
The Christian is the noblest type of man, says our Christian poet; and, assuredly, if the Christian be, in any extent, a reflection of the spirit of Christ, this language must be true. Whatever the grace we seek to inculcate we may find in Him a perfect illustration. Amid all lifes trials, perplexities, temptations, and requirements we can have no law so suited to every occasion as this: Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.
I. An unconscious and indirect evidence of this is the frequent use of the term Christlike as an epithet descriptive of the noblest type of human character.
II. The essential difference between the morality which the world professes to honour and that of the gospel, is to be found in the endeavour of the latter to reflect the mind of Christ as it actually exists. I do not mean, of course, the morality of pure selfishness-if it be worthy the name of morality at all-which is all that numbers would acknowledge, but that which is cultivated by those who would develop a character higher than the Christian-the morality of the Religion of Humanity, and of those who hang on its outskirts, approaching more or less nearly to its ideas. What is it, and how does it differ from that which the Church of Christ commends to the acceptance of men? It is clear that up to a certain point there is no outward difference. The law of truth, righteousness, sobriety is common to both. Further, the morality outside the Church is different from that which was in the world before the gospel, in that it has incorporated with its precept that law of gentleness, mercy, self-forgetfulness which was first set before men in the life of the Lord Jesus. Here, then, is likeness so great, that there are some only too eager to conclude that they are the same. These are the graces for which we seek lofty aims, pure desires, gentle thoughts, loving deeds. What can Christianity do more? Alas! has it not failed even to do as much? Without entering at length into the controversy here, it is at all events clear to those who will look beneath the surface, that this is not Christianity. The characteristic of the Lord was that the zeal of Gods house had eaten Him up. In other words, the central idea of His life was to please God. It would be misleading in the very highest degree to describe a life out of which this ruling idea of the Saviours conduct, this inspiration of His whole being, was omitted as Christlike. The difference is an essential one. It goes to the root of the whole being, affects every motive, touches every principle, regulates the whole ambition of the soul.
III. One of the first and most frequent charges against the teaching of the Church is, that it encourages a selfish type of religion. A grave impeachment this, and one which, if sustained, certainly indicates a separation from the spirit of Christ. It is a mere truism to say that there is no feature more prominent in His entire ministry than that of unselfishness. The one ruling thought of His life on earth was the salvation of others, and the sacrifice of Himself for this end. And as with His life, so with His teaching; it was full of emphatic warnings repeated against selfishness. This certainly, is lost sight of in too many of the current representations as to the nature of salvation. How often is the stress of exhortation laid upon happiness, whether here or hereafter, rather than upon holiness as the supreme object of Christian endeavour! Nay, how often is the idea of salvation almost restricted to this one point of deliverance from the wrath of God and the sentence of the law!
IV. In the distinctness and prominence given to the thought, that the object of the Gospel is to change the condition of men only by a change amounting to an entire renewal of heart in the men themselves, is to be sought the true answer to the suggestion that the Church is only fostering a higher type of selfishness. Looked at thus, salvation is the richest blessing which can be conferred upon man. It means salvation from himself-from the evil heart of unbelief which makes him depart from the living God; but which also places him in selfish antagonism to his fellowmen; from the sway of passions which scorn all restraints of right and duty; from the curse of a restless, discontented, repining, ambitious heart. The effect of a work like that can be only to purify and ennoble the character. Its polar star is no longer happiness but duty, and duty defined for it by its understanding of the will of God.
V. The question which is of grave and critical importance, is whether the Church is earnestly working to this ideal, and seeking to enforce it upon men. It is not to be denied that there are those whose only desire is for safety, and who wish to secure even that at the least possible cost, and that they do very much to awaken the prejudices of men by the representation they give of Christian life. It is, in truth, little better than a ghastly caricature. They are not distinguished from others by nobility of character, generosity of spirit, tenderness of heart, active and sympathetic charity. They are not courageous in their assertion of principle, still less are they foremost in the exposure and condemnation of wrong. They have not keen instincts of justice, still less have they strong impulses of benevolence. If they try to reach the average standard of service, they never exhibit a spirit of self-denying devotion. Yet with all this there may be unctuous words on their lips, and occasionally an apparent spiritual excitement. But the conscience is not sensitive; the heart is not tender; perhaps there is not an intelligent conception of what religion ought to be. If we could probe their principles and motives, we should probably find that they had accepted the selfish conception of religion. They want to be sure for eternity, and they endeavour to obtain this assurance by a rigid conformity to their ideas of the Divine requirements. It is from professors of this type, who are not so uncommon as we should desire, that unbelievers take their conceptions of the Christian ideal. These, they would say, are your saints. In what are they better than those whom they would describe as sinners? They may seek a different kind of happiness, but the one class is as selfish in its views and aims as the other. If this be Christianity, there is in it nothing to awaken our reverence or constrain our faith. The only answer that can be found is the exhibition of a different spirit. It is for us to meet, by publishing the gospel of the kingdom that Christ died, rose, and lives again, that He may be the Lord both of the dead and living; that they only eat of the tree of life who keep His commandments; that the test of discipleship is obedience, conformity to the example He has given, that we may follow in His steps. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.)
The example of Christ
Christ came to give us a religion-but this is not all. By a wise and beautiful ordination of providence, He was sent to show forth His religion in Himself. Christianity is not a mere code of laws, not an abstract system, such as theologians frame. It is a living, embodied religion. It comes to us in a human form; it offers itself to our eyes as well as ears; it breathes, it moves in our sight. The importance of example who does not understand? The temptation is strong to take, as our standard, the average character of the society in which we live, and to satisfy ourselves with decencies and attainments which secure to us among the multitude the name of respectable men. On the other hand, there is a power in the presence, conversation, and example of a man of strong principle and magnanimity, to lift us, at least for the moment, from our vulgar and tame habits of thought, and to kindle some generous aspirations after the excellence which we were made to attain. I hardly need say to you, that it is impossible to place ourselves under any influence of this nature so quickening as the example of Jesus. This introduces us to the highest order of virtues. This is fitted to awaken the whole mind. There is one cause, which has done much to defeat this good influence of Christs character and example, and which ought to be exposed. It is this. Multitudes think of Jesus as a being to be admired, rather than approached. I wish to prevent the discouraging influence of the greatness of Jesus Christ, to show that, however exalted, He is not placed beyond the reach of our sympathy and imitation.
1. I begin with the general observation, that real greatness of character, greatness of the highest order, far from being repulsive and discouraging, is singularly accessible and imitable, and, instead of severing a being from others, fits him to be their friend and model. Greatness is not a secret, solitary principle, working by itself and refusing participation, but frank and open hearted, so large in its views, so liberal in its feelings, so expansive in its purposes, so beneficent in its labours, as naturally and necessarily to attract sympathy and cooperation. It is selfishness that repels men; and true greatness has not a stronger characteristic than its freedom from every selfish taint. A superior mind, enlightened and kindled by just views of God and of the creation, regards its gifts and powers as so many bonds of union with other beings, as given it, not to nourish self-elation, but to be employed for others, and still more to be communicated to others. I know not in history an individual so easily comprehended as Jesus Christ, for nothing is so intelligible as sincere, disinterested love. I know not any being who is so fitted to take hold on all orders of minds; and accordingly He drew after Him the unenlightened, the publican, and the sinner. It is a sad mistake, then, that Jesus Christ is too great to allow us to think of intimacy with Him, and to think of making Him our standard.
2. Let me confirm this truth by another order of reflections. You tell me that Jesus Christ is so high that He cannot be your model; I grant the exaltation of His character. I believe Him to be a more than human being. But on this account He is not less a standard, nor is He to discourage us, but on the contrary to breathe into us a more exhilarating hope; for though so far above us, He is still one of us, and is only an illustration of the capacities which we all possess. This is a great truth. Let me strive to unfold it. Perhaps I cannot better express my views, than by saying that I regard all minds as of one family. When we speak of higher orders of beings, of angels and archangels, we are apt to conceive of distinct kinds or races of beings, separated from us and from each other by impassable barriers. But it is not so. There is no such partition in the spiritual world as you see in the material. All minds are essentially of one origin, one nature, kindled from one Divine flame, and are all tending to one centre, one happiness. I am not only one of the human race; I am one of the great intellectual family of God. There is no spirit so exalted, with which I have not common thoughts and feelings. That conception, which I have gained, of one universal Father, whose love is the fountain and centre of all things, is the dawn of the highest and most magnificent views in the universe; and if I look up to this being with filial love, I have the spring and beginning of the noblest sentiments and joys which are known in the universe. No greatness therefore of a being separates me from Him, or makes Him unapproachable by me. The mind of Jesus Christ and your mind are of one family; nor was there anything in His, of which you have not the principle, the capacity, the promise in yourself. This is the very impression which He intends to give. The relation which He came to establish between Himself and mankind, was not that of master and slave, but that of friends. We read too these remarkable words in His prayer for His disciples, I have given to them the glory Thou gavest Me; and I am persuaded that there is not a glory, a virtue, a power, a joy, possessed by Jesus Christ, to which His disciples will not successively rise. In the spirit of these remarks, the apostle says, Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ. I have said that, all minds being of one family, the greatness of the mind of Christ is no discouragement to our adoption of Him as our model. I now observe, that there is one attribute of mind, to which I have alluded, that should particularly animate us to propose to ourselves a sublime standard, as sublime as Jesus Christ. I refer to the principle of growth in human nature. Our faculties are germs, and given for an expansion, to which nothing authorises us to set bounds. The soul bears the impress of illimitableness, in the unquenchable thirst, which it brings with it into being, for a power, knowledge, happiness, which it never gains, and which always carry it forward into futurity. When I consider this principle or capacity of the human soul, I cannot restrain the hope which it awakens. The partition walls which imagination has reared between men and higher orders of beings vanish. I no longer see aught to prevent our becoming whatever was good and great in Jesus on earth. In truth I feel my utter inability to conceive what a mind is to attain which is to advance forever. To encourage these thoughts and hopes, our Creator has set before us delightful exemplifications, even now, of this principle of growth both in outward nature and in the human mind. We meet them in nature. Suppose you were to carry a man, wholly unacquainted with vegetation, to the most majestic tree in our forests, and, whilst he was admiring its extent and proportions, suppose you should take from the earth at its root a little downy substance, which breath might blow away, and say to him, that tree was once such a seed as this; it was wrapt up here; it once lived only within these delicate fibres, this narrow compass. With what incredulous wonder would he regard you. Such growth we witness in nature. A nobler hope we Christians are to cherish; and still more striking examples of the growth of mind are set before us in human history. We wonder, indeed, when we are told that one day we shall be as the angels of God. I apprehend that as great a wonder has been realised already on the earth. I apprehend that the distance between the mind of Newton and of a Hottentot may have been as great as between Newton and an angel. There is another view still more striking. This Newton, who lifted his calm, sublime eye to the heavens, and read, among the planets and the stars, the great law of the material universe, was, forty or fifty years before, an infant, without one clear perception, and unable to distinguish his nurses arm from the pillow on which he slept. Has not man already traversed as wide a space as separates him from angels? And why must he stop? There is no extravagance in the boldest anticipation. We may truly become one with Christ, a partaker of that celestial mind. Let us make Him our constant model. I know not that the doctrine, now laid down, is liable but to one abuse. It may unduly excite susceptible minds, and impel to a vehemence of hope and exertion, unfavourable in the end to the very progress which is proposed. To such I would say, hasten to conform yourselves to Christ, but hasten according to the laws of your nature. As the body cannot, by the concentration of its whole strength into one bound, scale the height of a mountain, neither can the mind free every obstacle and achieve perfection by an agony of the will. Continuous, patient effort, guided by wise deliberation, is the true means of spiritual progress. In religion, as in common life, mere force or vehemence will prove a fallacious substitute for the sobriety of wisdom.
3. The doctrine which I have chiefly laboured to maintain in this discourse, that minds are all of one family, are all brethren, and may be more and more nearly united to God, seems to me to have been felt peculiarly by Jesus Christ; and if I were to point out the distinction of His greatness, I should say it lay in this. He felt His superiority, but He never felt as if it separated Him from mankind, He saw in every human being a mind which might wear His own brightest glory. I insist on this view of His character, not only to encourage us to aspire after a likeness to Jesus; I consider it as peculiarly fitted to call forth love towards Him. With these views I feel that, though ascended to heaven, He is not gone beyond the reach of our hearts; that He has now the same interest in mankind as when He entered their dwellings; and that there is no being so approachable, none with whom such unreserved intercourse is to be enjoyed in the future world. I exhort you with calmness, but earnestness, to adopt Jesus Christ as your example, with the whole energy of your wills. Let not the false views of Christianity which prevail in the world, seduce you into the belief that Christ can bless you in any other way than by assimilating you to His own virtue, than by breathing into you His own mind. Do not imagine that any faith or love towards Jesus can avail you, but that which quickens you to conform yourselves to His spotless purity and unconquerable rectitude. Settle it as an immovable truth, that neither in this world nor in the next can you be happy, but in proportion to the sanctity and elevation of your characters. (W. E. Channing.)
Christ is our example
In these words, take notice-
1. Of one end of Christ in suffering: that He might leave us an example.
2. They were remarkable steps that Christ took when He was here in the days of His flesh. And among them all He did not take one wrong one.
3. The steps of Christ are to be followed. Our Lord did whatsoever became Him, and exactly fulfilled all righteousness (Mat_3:15).
4. Here is a special intimation of a Christians duty patiently to bear injuries, and to take up the Cross.
5. The sufferings of Christ and His example being joined together in the text, here is a signification that by His death He has purchased grace to enable us to follow His example.
I. Premise some things by way of caution.
1. Think not, as long as you remain in this world, to be altogether free from sin as Christ was.
2. Think not that Christ in all His actions is to be imitated. There are royalties belonging to Him, which none must invade. He alone is judge and lawgiver in Zion.
3. Think not that your obedience can be meritorious, as Christs was.
4. Think not that your greatest sufferings for the sake of righteousness are in the least expiatory of sin, as Christs were.
II. In what respects Christ is an example to be followed.
1. In His great self-denials (2Co_8:9; Rom_15:3; Joh_7:18).
2. In His patient enduring the worlds hatred, and the slights and contradiction of sinners (Joh_15:18-19; Heb_12:2; Mat_5:44).
3. In His resisting and overcoming the prince of dark ness (Mat_4:1-11).
4. In His contempt of the worlds glory, and contentment with a mean and low estate in it (Luk_4:5-6).
5. In His living a life so very beneficial, doing good being His perpetual business (Act_10:38; Eph_5:9; Tit_3:8).
6. In His most profitable and edifying communication (Psa_45:2; Luk_4:22; 1Pe_2:22-23; Mat_11:28).
7. In His manner of performing holy duties (Heb_5:7; Rom_12:11).
8. In His great humility and weakness (Mat_11:29; Pro_6:16-17).
9. In His love to God, great care to please Him, and fervent zeal for His name and glory (Joh_14:31; Joh_8:29).
10. In His sufferings and death (Heb_12:2).
III. Some arguments to persuade to the imitation of our Lord Jesus.
1. Consider the greatness of the person who gives you the example (Rev_19:16; Php_2:10).
2. Remember the relation wherein you that are saints do stand unto the Lord Jesus. You are members of His body (Eph_5:30). There fore you should grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ (Eph_4:15).
3. Consider that God did foreordain you that are believers m a conformity to the Lord Jesus (Rom_8:29).
4. Walking as Christ walked will make it evident that you are indeed in Him (1Jn_2:6; Gal_4:19).
5. Your following the example of Christ very much honours Him, and credits Christianity (Col_3:1).
6. Christ frequently speaks to you to follow Him, and observes whether and how you do it (Rev_1:14; Rev_2:23).
7. Follow Christs example, that you may enter into His glory (2Ti_2:11-12; Rev_3:21; Col_3:4).
IV. Some directions how you may be able to follow the example of our Lord Jesus.
1. Let your unlikeness to Christ be matter of your great humiliation.
2. Study more the admirable excellency and fairness of the copy which Christ has set you, and how desirable it is still to be growing up more and more into Him in all things.
3. Being sensible of your own impotency, live by faith on the Son of God (Isa_45:24; Joh_15:4-5).
4. Give up yourselves to the conduct of Christs own Spirit (Rev_2:7; Rev_2:11; Rev_2:17; Rev_2:29). (N. Vincent, M. A.)
Christ our example
I. The life of our blessed saviour is a most absolute and perfect pattern of holiness and goodness, complete and entire in all its parts, and perfect to the utmost degree, in the following whereof there is no danger of being misguided, whereas all other examples of mortal men are fallible and uncertain guides.
II. As the life of our blessed Saviour is a most perfect, so likewise it is a familiar and easy example. The Divine nature is the great pattern of perfection; but that is too remote from us, and above our sight; therefore God hath been pleased to condescend so far to our weakness, as to give us a visible example of those virtues He requires of us in His own Son, appearing in the likeness of sinful flesh, practised in such instances, and upon such occasions as do frequently happen in human life.
III. The life of our blessed Saviour is likewise an encouraging example. It cannot but give great life to all good resolutions and endeavours, to see all that which God requires of us performed by one in our nature, by a man like ourselves.
IV. It is an universal pattern. As the doctrine of our Saviour, so His example was of an universal nature and design, calculated for all times and places.
1. It is a pattern of the greatest and most substantial virtues: piety, obedience, purity and innocence, universal charity.
2. He was a pattern of the most rare and unusual virtues: sincerity, humility, contempt of the world, kindness and benignity.
3. The life of our blessed Saviour is likewise a pattern of such virtues as are most useful and beneficial to others. In His readiness to do good to all persons and all kinds; by instructing their ignorance, and supplying their wants, spiritual and temporal; by resolving their doubts, and comforting them in their sorrows. And then in His seeking opportunities for it, not content with those that offered themselves, and in His unwearied diligence in this work.
4. Our Saviour is likewise a pattern to us of such virtues as are most hard and difficult to be practised, such as are most against the grain of our corrupt nature, and most contrary to flesh and blood. Christ denied His own life, and gave up Himself wholly to the will of God (Joh_5:33; Joh_6:38; Mat_26:39; Mat_26:42). He denied His own will also in condescension to the prejudices and infirmities of men for their edification and good (Rom_15:2-3). He denied Himself, in the lawful pleasures and satisfactions, in the ease and accommodations of life: He lived meanly, and fared hardly. And He denied Himself likewise in one of the dearest things in the world, to the greatest minds, I mean in point of reputation: He made Himself of no reputation (Php_2:7). But that which I shall particularly take notice of, under this head, is His great meekness.
5. Our Saviour is likewise a pattern to us of the most needful virtues, and for the practice whereof there is the greatest and most frequent occasion in human life.
(1) The great humanity of His carriage and deportment, of which He gave manifold instances, in His free and familiar conversation with all sorts of people. He did not despise the meanest.
(2) Another very needful virtue, and for which our Lord was very eminent, was His disregard of the opinion of men, in comparison of His duty.
(3) Another virtue for which there is great occasion in human life, and for which our Lord was very remarkable, was His contentedness in a mean and poor condition; and such was His condition to the very lowest degree.
(4) The last virtue I shall instance in, and for the exercise whereof there is very great and frequent occasion in human life, is patience under sufferings, and such a perfect resignation of ourselves to the will of God, that whatever pleaseth Him should please us, how distasteful and grievous soever it be. And of this virtue our blessed Saviour was the greatest example that ever was.
V. Our Lords example is in the nature of it very powerful, to engage and oblige all men to the imitation of it. It is almost equally calculated for persons of all capacities and conditions, for the wise and the weak, for those of high and low degree; for all men are alike concerned to be happy. And the imitation of this example is the most effectual means we can use to compass this great and universal end; nay, it is not only the means, but the end, the best and most essential part of it. To be like our Lord, is to be as good as it is possible for men to be; and goodness is the highest perfection that any being is capable of; and the perfection of every being is its happiness. His life was even and of one tenour, quiet, and without noise and tumult, always employed about the same work, in doing the things which pleased God, and were of greatest benefit and advantage to men. Who would not write after such a copy. This pattern, which our religion proposeth to us, is the example of one whom we ought to reverence, and whom we have reason to love above any person in the world. Yet farther, it is the example of our best friend and greatest benefactor. (Abp. Tillotson.)
Christ our example
1. In the object of His life.
2. In the standard of His practice.
3. In His commerce and connection with the world.
4. In His condition of life.
5. In His sorrows and joys. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
Christs example is to be followed
1. Wholly.
2. Openly.
3. Fully. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
The necessity of a perfect model
1. It is worthy of observation that in the public services of our church we offer petitions for the literal granting of which we can scarcely dare took. We desire of God, for example, that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; and again, we beseech of Him to vouchsafe to keep us this day without sin; but there is not one of us who will presume to say that he ever passes a day without sin. It would argue the want of a real hatred of sin, and would therefore be highly dishonouring to God, to pray to be kept only from a certain degree of transgression, just as though any other degree might be allowed or overlooked. Besides, we cannot be ignorant that humility is at the root of all Christian graces, and that what encourages pride is most injurious to piety. Suppose, then, we were required to imitate a pattern which might be equalled, and is it not certain that as the resemblance seemed to grow, we should feel increasing self-complacency? The fine result of copying an imitable model is, that the vast distance at which we stand from perfection forbids our feeling proud of success. The advance appears nothing, when compared with the space which yet remains to be traversed. Oh! it is practically one of the most splendid things in Christianity, that it fixes our efforts on a model so immeasurably above us, that we have never time to calculate whether or not others are beneath us. We can never repose complacently on what we are; we must always find cause of humiliation in what we are not.
2. We have to go somewhat farther. You may say that whatever the evil consequences of erecting a low standard, there must be much that is disheartening in the copying a model which is confessedly inimitable. On the contrary, we argue, in the second place, that there is everything to encourage us in the fact that the standard cannot be reached; for it certainly is not essential to the suitableness of our example, that it is one whose excellence we may hope to overtake. This would be making our power of imitation, and not noble and beautiful qualities, the guide in selecting an example. It will not be questioned that a faultless work of art, if such there could be, can be only the best model for an artist, and yet the artist may not expect to produce what is faultless. Why is there to be introduced any different rule into the nobler science of moral imitation? Encouragement will depend mainly on the probability of improvement; and this probability being greater with a perfect than with an imperfect model, it follows that we have more cause to feel encouraged in imitating Christ, whom we cannot reach, than one of our fellow men, whom we might perhaps surpass. What the painter seeks is improvement in painting; what the orator seeks is improvement in oratory, and therefore each is anxious to study the prime master in the art. What the Christian seeks is improvement in spiritual graces, and he will gain more from copying Christ, in whom those graces were perfect, than by imitating any saint in whom they were necessarily defective. I know indeed what you may urge in objection to our statement. You may tell us that our illustrations are at fault; that the painter and the orator cherish a secret hope of equalling their models, and that hence they have an encouragement which is not afforded to the Christian. The Christian is not, then, sustained as is the painter or the orator, by the hope, however vague, of reaching, if not exceeding the standard; and the want, you say, of this stimulus, forbids our illustrating the one case by the other. But even if we allow that thorough accuracy of resemblance ought not at least to appear hopeless, we can still plead for the advantageousness of our being set to imitate Christ. Accuracy of resemblance is not hopeless. Beloved, said St. John, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. As, then, we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. So that as a Christian looks onward to the future he has more to encourage him than the dim possibility which you appeal to as stimulating the painter or the orator. His is the noble, the inspiring certainty, that however slowly, and however painfully goes forward now the imitative work, a day has to dawn, when, fashioned into perfect conformity to the model, he shall be presented unto God without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. He labours, therefore, as one who knows that his labour is not in vain in the Lord. We exhort you, then, to the imitation of Christ, assuring you, that the more you strive to acquire the resemblance, the more will you make sure of your calling and election, and the more frequent and delightful will be your foretastes of the joys which shall hereafter be awarded to the faithful. It is not indeed by your own skill or by your own energy that you may look to effect conformity to Jesus; but by the Holy Ghost, that Divine Agent whose special office it is to renew man after the lost image of his Maker. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The character of Christ
Christ suffered for us, and left us an example. There must be no division of the two. You must not regard the suffering on one hand, and the example on the other. You must not divide Christ. I love to contemplate the life of Christ as an example, and the death of Christ as an atonement for sin. If He were an atonement without being an example, He would have been no atonement. If He were an example and yet not an atonement, He would be no example. If I preach to you Christ as an atonement, but not an example, my doctrine would be immoral; and if I preach to you the example of Christ, leaving aside the atonement of Christ, my preaching would be worthless. The New Testament always couples the two elements in the life of Christ. The word example in the text, is synonymous with the word model, or the idea of design. I do not know of any system, or of any religion, which can place before men a life fit to copy, except that of Jesus Christ. In Him we have the model of a perfect character. In the next verse the apostle changes the figure. Here the apostle, after describing Christ as an example, proceeded to refer to Him as a Shepherd leading His sheep to the green pastures. The sheep followed the Shepherd. They had implicit reliance on Him. And Christ has left us an example which we may with equal certainty follow. It is devotion; it is worship; that is the sentiment which we cherish towards the Lord Jesus. It is not mere sentiment. Christ is not simply a hero-some one to wonder at, and strike men with astonishment. His life is something different, and something greater. His life is an example which all men might follow. No one in his senses would dream of living a life like Christ, so obscure and so self-sacrificing-no one would care to tread in His footsteps and stoop so low unless they looked at the whole plan, as a complete example, at the unity of aim, at the supreme objects to the attainment, by His life and death, of those distinguishing features which made the Lord Jesus Christ what He was. You will now see what the subject of the present discourse is-The Lord Jesus Christ as an example. What is a perfect example? How would you define the perfect man? There are four principal features in such a character.
1. A perfect example must be sinless. Christ is not a mere fragment of a man. Men have peered into the life of Christ, bringing microscopic criticism to bear upon its minutest details, but have failed to discover a single fault. Voltaire tried, and failed; Strauss has tried, and Renan. They have all failed, and many of them were men whose genius was sufficiently creative in its character to discover faults where there were no faults; but in the case of Christ they found no sin. And yet Christ was no recluse.
2. It was not sufficient that the life be a sinless one-difficulties must be overcome; that must be a characteristic of the perfect man, the great example of humanity. Now, there are the angels. An angel is perfect, but has not overcome difficulties. Could anyone conceive of any combination of circumstances in which the anguish could be so keen, in which the suffering could be so intense, difficulties so insuperable as those which Christ experienced and overcame?
3. A perfect example must be more than an example: it must hold out pardon for the past. We cannot forgive ourselves. Our past is so sinful that we falter before it. Robertson has said that man can afford to forgive himself if Jesus Christ can afford to forgive him! That is right; that is true. It is possible to break the links connecting the man with the old life and to restart in a heavenly direction by the aid of the Holy Spirit of God.
4. The Christ of the gospel is a living Christ. That is the foundation of the gospel. It would not pay me to preach philosophy to you, if I could do so. I would not preach poetry without a living Christ; I would not preach doctrine to you without a living Christ. The Bible would not be worth anything for the purpose of preaching but that it contains a living Christ. The atonement would be valueless except for a living Christ. (T. C. Edwards.)
Christ an example in His sufferings
I. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were an illustration of His innocence.
II. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were a display of patience and magnanimity.
III. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were a display of piety.
IV. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were a display of good affections. (G. Hill, D. D.)
On the example of Christ
The example of Christ-is it not an effort beyond humanity? Can the example of purity and perfection be urged upon frail creatures, whose passions and infirmities place them forever beyond the hope of such attainments? In the first place, then, let it be remarked that imitation is not attainment-that our professing to follow an example is a plain confession of our inferiority to what we propose-and that men might be engaged, as they are in science, in a perpetual progress of improvement, useful and consoling, though they can never flatter themselves with the hope of arriving at a point beyond which there is no further improvement, But it may be said the example of Christ, a model of sinless purity, is unfit for beings who neither possess His nature nor hope for His perfections. Here let us mark the plain distinction between the office of the Divine legislator and the duties of the man: the latter all are called on to fulfil, the former none but He could execute, Even in the most exalted parts of His character-those that seem most remote from human agency-there are many things the spirit of which may be transfused into our conduct, and make the disciple not unworthy of his Master, It is not for us to march in triumph to Jerusalem, while those that went before and those that followed cried, saying, Hosanna; but it is for us to mark the progress of His grace in our hearts and those of His faithful followers. We cannot, like Him, raise the dead to life, banish the infirmities of nature by a word, and heal disease by a touch; but we can watch in patience by the bed of sickness, and by patience, and gentleness and spiritual consolation turn the visitation into a blessing. But it is not alone to the public character of Christ that we are to look for objects of imitation; they may be found in every part of life, for all the declivities of life He humbled Himself to tread. (C. R. Maturin.)
On the example of Christ
Let us begin with observing, in general, the great superiority of this to every other example. Here are to be found all the graces and virtues collecting their strongest heat and spreading their brightest lustre, to fire the soul with a virtuous ardour, to enlighten and direct the path of life. It is another obvious advantage of this example that it is calculated to extend its influence to all the world. Christ appeared not in those affluent circumstances in which there may be little opportunity of the exercise of the most substantial and, at the same time, the most difficult graces, or in which the benefit of His pattern would have been confined to the smallest part of the world, but in those more mean and humble scenes of life which constitute the general lot of men, where His example might have the most extensive influence, and suit most effectually the present condition and necessities of human nature. Let us now proceed to select from the numerous graces which adorned the character of our Redeemer a few of the most important. And here it will surely be unnecessary to observe that it is not every branch of that character which we are required to imitate. His supernatural operations were the displays of essential perfection, peculiar to the Deity Himself, incommunicable to His creatures. The great line in which we are to follow the Author and Finisher of our faith is in the practice of those distinguished virtues which adorned His character, and which constituted it the standard of moral excellence.
1. The first feature of this kind which we take notice of is His piety to God. His temper was ever calm and peaceful, such as might naturally be expected within a mind rejoicing in those blessed exercises whose natural effect is not to sour and corrupt the heart, but to improve its most excellent feelings, to mould it to the image and likeness of that God whom we adore, to render it merciful, and generous, and humane, like Him who is the great source of love.
2. Another very capital feature in the character of the Redeemer was His contempt of the pomp and vanities of life. Put on His humility, and it shall clothe thee.
3. Another most important feature in this illustrious character was the ardour of His benevolence. From Him no calamity departed unrelieved, no suppliant who did not receive the requested boon.
4. The last feature of His great character which we take notice of at present was His meekness and patience. If His character is not distinguished by those specious and dazzling qualities which are often most dangerous and detrimental to the world, but which excite the wonder of unthinking men, it exhibits ornaments infinitely more real, and recommends to our imitation qualities more truly great and generous. (John Main, D. D.)
The perfect ideal
I. Christ the perfect ideal of submission, amidst the most appalling conflicts of life.
II. Christ the perfect ideal of obedience to duty, amidst the strongest counter influences.
III. Christ the perfect ideal of unselfish love, amidst intensest selfishness. The mother, pale with incessant vigils by the bedside of a sick child, exhibits unselfish love. Howard, dying of fever caught in dungeons where he was following after his Divine ideal, presents to us a picture of love. But it would be easier to measure the heavens with a span, or weigh the mountains in scales, than to fully portray Christs love. (Homilist.)
The imitation of Christ
I. Mistakes made connected with it. Imitating the out ward actions only. Failing to see the essential connection between the outward act and the inward principle. What is visible is but a portion of the deed. Some try to imitate Christ to procure a justifying righteousness. Others endeavour to imitate Christ to become like Him. To walk in Christs steps we must be possessed by Christs spirit.
II. Imitate him is the renunciation of self.
III. Imitate him in his consecration to God.
IV. Imitate him in his dependence upon his father. (E. H. Hopkins.)
Christ our copy
I. The text fixes the absolute standard for the Christian life. Christ is the Christians example. The word translated example, found nowhere else in the New Testament, means, first of all, a writing copy such as is given to a child learning to write. The standard for the measurement and aim of the Christian life is therefore-
1. Christ, and not the best human life.
2. Christ, and not distorted representations of Him. Christ as revealed in the simple clearness of the Gospels.
3. Christ, and not the high tide mark of present day Christianity. A subtle evil, into which all are in danger of falling, is to feel that to be as good as others is to be good enough.
II. The text points out the practical meaning of Christs life for us. The word example-copy-appeals to the universal faculty of imitation. A great factor in all education. Christ did not live for the purpose of winning admiration or applause. To imitate is more than to adore.
III. Strength for and progress in this imitation of Christ will come to those who are constantly in His presence. Where the child puts its copy before it, there we may put Christ. In His presence we get strength to become like Him. Things in contact assimilate, the stronger predominating. Things in touch are reliant, the weaker on the stronger. (J. D. Thomas.)
Copying but a fragment of the Christ
Nothing is more striking to a close observer of human life than the almost infinite variety of character which exists among those who profess to be Christians. No two are alike. Even those who are alike revered for their saintliness show the widest diversity in individual traits, and in the cast and mould of their character. Yet all are sitting before the same model, all are imitators of the same blessed life. There is but one standard of true Christian character-the likeness of Christ. Why, then, is there such variety of character and disposition among those who aim to follow the same example?
1. One reason for this is that God does not bestow upon all His children the same gifts, the same natural qualities. Life is not minted as gold is. Grace does not transform Peter into a John, nor Paul into a Barnabas, nor Luther into a Melancthon. It makes them all like Christ in holiness, but it does not touch those features which give to each his personal identity. You drop twenty different seeds in the same garden bed, and they spring up into twenty different kinds of plants, from the delicate mignonette to the flaunting sunflower. In like manner each believer grows up into his own peculiar self. Regeneration neither adds to nor takes from our natural gifts.
2. Another reason for this diversity among Christians is because even the best and holiest saints realise but a little of the image of Christ, have only one little fragment of His likeness in their souls. The reason is that the character of Christ is so great, so majestic, that it is impossible to copy all of it into any one little human life; and again, each human character is so imperfect and limited that it cannot reach out in all directions after the infinite character of Christ. It is as if a great company of artists were sent to paint each one a picture of the Alps. Each chooses his own point of observation, and selects the particular feature of the Alps he desires to paint. They all bring back their pictures; but lo! no two of them are alike. The truth is, the Alps as a whole are too varied, too vast, for any one artist to take into his perspective, and paint upon his canvas. The best he can do is to portray some one or two features-the features his eye can see from where he stands. And Christ is too great in His infinite perfection, in the many sidedness of His beauty, for any one of His finite followers to copy the whole of His image into his own little life. The most that any of us can do is to get into our own soul one little fragment of the wonderful likeness of our Lord. (J. R. Miller, D. D.)
Christ our ideal
These are words which betray their authorship. As we read our thoughts fly back to the upper room in Jerusalem, when, on the eve of His approaching sacrifice, during supper our Lord left His place at the head of the table where He was reclining, laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself, and, pouring water into a basin, proceeded to wash His disciples feet, and wiped them with the towel wherewith He was girded. All of them wondered: one of them, Simon Peter, remonstrated with Him, but He would not be stayed in His strange work. And when He had resumed His place, He answered their questioning looks and told them what it meant. I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you. Can we wonder that the scene, the words, were cut so indelibly into the memory of St. Peter that years after, just as though it all happened yesterday, he writes, Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye should follow His steps. It is in its adaptation to the necessities of mankind the secret of the power of Christianity consists. This is why it lives on, ever fresh, ever vigorous. It is made for man as he is, apart from the mere outward circumstances and environment of his life it is as suited for man today in his advanced civilisation as it was in the crude days of past centuries. For it gives man what his higher nature wants to have, it tells man what his spiritual being yearns to know, it meets in man the God-implanted instincts of his inner self, and therefore it claims for itself the admiration and reverence and love of all men. What, then, is the great need which is alluded to here? It is this. Man wants an ideal which shall call forth his enthusiasm and awaken his energies. He must have one. It is a necessity of his being, for every man is made up of two selves-there is the self of the man as he is, and there is the self of the man as he would be or ought to be. All through life this need makes itself felt. As soon as the childs mind begins to open and the little one commences to observe and think for itself, it all unconsciously looks round for an ideal; and if it has a loving mother, it finds what it wants in her. The child becomes the boy, and for a time, at any rate, his father is his ideal of strength and wisdom. The boy goes to school, and some schoolfellow skilled in games, or clever in learning, or born to rule his fellows becomes his ideal. The youth passes into manhood, but even in the full maturity of his developed power, even in the consciousness of his self-reliance, he seeks an ideal still, the embodiment of strength, or wisdom, or industry, or success. Ay, and not only is this ideal a deep necessity, but it is a real force. It moulds the character; it influences the actions; it shapes the life; it fills with enthusiasm. It is a great motive power. And the one man to be despaired of is the man without an ideal. See, then, how Christianity steps in and meets this yearning. It puts before man the only ideal which will satisfy his needs and meet his necessities. For it has to be borne in mind that if an ideal is to be a power it must possess certain characteristics and qualities.
1. An ideal must be definite. Many men mistake an idea for an ideal. And many lives are wasted because they are lived running after ideas which evade their grasp, and slip from their hold, and lack definiteness.
2. An ideal must be universal. This is what humanity craves. An ideal ought to be a bond of union. Alas! too often an ideal separates. Men choose each his own ideal and go their way, too busy to think of, or care for, or help their struggling comrades.
3. An ideal must be perfect. It is in this the danger of ideals consists. The man must have an ideal, and in his haste and lack of right judgment he oftentimes selects that which is unworthy. What is the consequence? It drags down the man.
4. And therefore an ideal, just in proportion as it possesses these qualifications, must be final. The restlessness within the man is calmed down and dies away before such an ideal.
And in the Christian ideal all these requirements are found brought together. Is it not so?
1. The Christian ideal is definite. It stands out like a snow-capped mountain against the blue sky, its outline distinctly defined, each peak and crag, each chasm and precipice clearly mapped out. The life of the Christ has been lived before men. It is beautifully portrayed for us in the four Gospels. Each inspired artist has viewed it from a somewhat different aspect; each dwells on that part which comes most closely home to him; each puts the Christ before us as he best knew and understood Him. But there is no contradiction. Christ is a reality, not a fancy, a history, not a fiction, a substance, not a shadow. His deeds are familiar to us; His words are recorded for us. Now it is holiness-Like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living. Now it is charity-Walk in love, as Christ also loved you. Now it is patience-Consider Him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against Himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls. Now it is self-denial-Let each one of us please his neighbour for that which is good, to edifying, for Christ pleased not Himself. Now it is Forgiveness-Forbearing one another and forgiving each other, even as Christ forgave you.
2. The Christians ideal is universal. It is not an esoteric religion, such as is the fashion of the day, whose chief recommendation is that it is unintelligible to the many, suited only to the select few, a small circle; it is for all, not for some. Christ is the ideal of all nations. But no people was ever so strong in this sense of nationality as the Jew. And Jesus was a Jew, born of a Jewish mother, brought up in a Jewish home; His environment all through His life was Jewish. Take the picture out of its Jewish frame, place it in Gentile surroundings, and though the frame is changed, the picture is just as attractive and soul inspiring. He is the ideal for all. He is the universal pattern as He is the universal Saviour. Christ is the ideal for all men. He lived the ordinary life of ordinary men and women. Christ is the ideal for all sorts and conditions of men. He was rich-yea, who so rich as He? He was poor, for though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor-yea, He had not where to lay His head. He was learned above the most intellectual of men, for He was the Wisdom of the Father, and they who heard Him were astonished, for He taught as one having authority. He was unlearned, for did they not say of Him, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Christ is the ideal for all men in all circumstances of life. We see Him in solitude, in the home, in society. Christ is the ideal for all ages. The child, the boy, the young man just entering lifes arena, the matured in body and mind, all find in Him their ideal.
3. The Christian ideal is perfect. Where else shall we find an ideal that can pretend to lay claim to perfection? Not in the heroes of classic times. Not in Socrates, with his grave moral blemishes, Cicero, with his childish vanity, Seneca, with his miserable avarice and cowardice. We shall not find it among the great and good men of Old Testament times. He is perfect, for all virtues are concentrated in Him. He is perfect. This is the well nigh universal testimony of men. And therefore the Christians ideal is final. We cannot sum it up better than in the pithy words of Renan, After Jesus there is nothing more but to fructify and develop, or, as a great lay writer says of it, It comprehends all future history. The moral efforts of all ages will be efforts to realise this character and make it actually as it is potentially universal. Humanity as it advances in excellence will only be approximating to the Christian type. Any divergence from that will not be progress, but debasement and corruption. How shall we explain this perfection? What does this character of the Christ mean? Let these men solve the difficulty if they can, who while they bear witness to His perfection refuse to accept His teaching, or else explain away His words. Our answer rings forth in the words of the Nicene Creed, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, or as we sing, Perfect God and perfect man. This, then, is the Christians ideal. It is the Christians duty and privilege to follow and imitate Christ. It is hard, for no mere external resemblance will suffice. Christ is not a model, but an ideal, as has well been said. If He were a model it might be enough for us to copy its outline; but if He be an ideal we must imitate His spirit. It is hard, for the ideal is perfect, and therefore far above out of our reach. The higher we climb, the further the summit seems to be lost in the clouds of eternal perfection. It is hard, but it is not impossible. We can walk in the steps of our great example. How shall this likeness be ours? Little by little, through patience and perseverance. Little by little, for it is nothing less than the formation of character, and the formation of character is always slow and gradual. It is like the growth of a tree with its hard knots, its twisted branches, its smooth twigs. How gradually it has become what it is! How slow the process by which the twig of one year becomes the branch of next year! How shall this likeness be ours? Answer me another question and I will tell you. What is the lever power of the world? It is love, you say. And has love no place in the Christians efforts to be like Christ? Surely, yes. Think again of that pale, anxious student. He is copying a lifeless face. From the picture there comes no power to inspirit him in his toil. But we are imitating a living, loving Christ. Gaze on His features. Remember He is our sacrifice as well as our ideal. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.)
Reviled not again-
Equanimity under reproach
A person expressing to Bengel his sympathy for him at being so virulently written against, he replied, You will not regret this when I tell you that such very trials teach me only the better how to gather up and strengthen the testimony of my conscience. I have learnt a good method of cheerfully enduring reproach. I think of the reproachings and revilings which the Son of God has been receiving from the Jews for 1,700 years, and of His wonderful long suffering with them all this while. Thus I learn not to fret at a few relics of the same which may be thrown at me. (Bengels Life.)
Who did no sin, neither was guile found.-
Christ without sin
The apostles of our Lord notice with much complacency the individual virtues which dignified or adorned His character, just as the Evangelists have related the actions in which they were displayed, with much unaffected simplicity. But while they mention particular virtues, they do not lose sight of the effect which they may collectively produce in illustrating the merit of Him in whose deportment they appeared.
I. The moral perfection here attributed to Christ. Christ did no sin. This phrase, according to its original conception, means nothing more than harmlessness; and is not understood to comprehend any positive or superior excellence. But as applied to Christ it means a great deal more; and, indeed, it should in every case mean a great deal more, considering what the Divine law prescribes, and what sin is in reference to it. Sin essentially consists in transgressing or refusing obedience to the Divine law. And the law does not merely prohibit many things which we are accustomed to call sinful, it also enjoins many things which we are accustomed to call holy. The injunctions are as much a part of the law as the prohibitions. He who will not relieve the distress of his neighbour when he has it in his power, is as really a sinner as he who wantonly inflicted the injury which called for this expression of kindness. It is only when a moral agent performs every deed which is commanded as well as abstains from every deed which is forbidden, that he can properly be said to have done no sin. Now, it is in this strict and elevated sense that Christ did no sin. All the requirements of the law were fulfilled in His character. Nor can the eye of the most scrutinising observer discover in it one feature of nonconformity, or one act of opposition to the will of Him who ruleth over all. There may be particular virtues, or particular modifications and degrees of virtue, of which His life will afford you no instance. These are wanting, however, only for this reason-that in the execution of His appointed work, and in the peculiar sphere in which He was destined to move, no opportunities occurred for practising them. The path of obedience which was assigned to Him was a long and a rugged one, and He walked in it with undeviating steady fastness, and He walked in it to the very end-manifesting from the very commencement to the very termination of His progress an unreserved acquiescence in the demands of Gods law. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals, we are generally necessitated to fix upon some one leading virtue by which they have distinguished themselves; but with regard to Christ we perceive all the virtues adorning His character, and we feel at a loss in determining to which of them we should give the preeminence. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals we are frequently obliged to dwell upon the excellence of their external conduct, and to conceal the principles and motives by which they were influenced. But with regard to Christ, so far as they have been developed to us, the principles on which He proceeded were as Divine, and the motives which impelled Him as disinterested and worthy as the actions themselves. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals we must always accompany our eulogium with certain exceptions to their disadvantage-certain shortcomings which detract from the splendour or from the value of the good qualities for which we commend them, or certain vices which counterbalance them and render our commendations less cordial. But with regard to Christ we can discern no such imperfection or demerit. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals we are always supposed, even when our laudatory language is most unbounded, to allow that we wish not to be strictly apprehended, and to leave it to be understood that there is need for that charity which seeks not to detect the failings of humanity, and tries to cover them when they are known: but with regard to Christ this charity has no room to operate. Nor is this moral perfection either an imaginary or an exaggerated attribute of Christ. As certainly as we know that He lived and died, so certainly do we know that in His life and in His death He was without sin. For this we have every degree of evidence of which the case admits, or which can be desired to satisfy our minds.
II. Let us now make our application of this truth. It is applicable, as we formerly stated, to various useful purposes.
1. And it serves to confirm our belief in the truth of Christs mission. This effect is produced in some degree simply by viewing Christ in the light of a person of good principle and of excellent character. He holds Himself out as a witness. It is to the truth of revelation that He gives His testimony, or rather it is His own Divine origin and embassy that He certifies. And therefore in proportion to the confidence that we repose in His general worth will be the credit that we give to what He says respecting Himself, and to the message which He brings from heaven. But the argument comes still closer to us than this. Had the Author of Christianity been an impostor, it is impossible to conceive that He should have been of such holy and unblemished character as we find Him to have been. The depravity of heart which gave birth to such a system of artifice, as in this view He must be supposed to have contrived and published, could not fail to have given birth also to a great variety of crimes and vices. On the supposition that Christ was an impostor, it was no ordinary or harmless deception that He was playing off upon mankind. It was founded on the assumption of Divine power; it pretended to aim at the Divine glory; it affected to promulgate the Divine will; it invoked a solemn and visible manifestation of the Divine presence. And while it thus blasphemed against God, it trifled with the understanding and the affections of man. It called upon him to believe what was not true. Now I ask you if it be possible to reconcile such impiety towards God, and such unfeelingness towards men, with that reverence for God, and that tender compassion towards men by which our Lord was so eminently characterised in every other instance? I ask you, if such light and such darkness, such righteousness and such unrighteousness could possibly dwell together, and operate together, in the mind and in the conduct of the same individual? The answer to all these questions must necessarily be in the negative. Christ cannot be a deceiver as to His gospel, and yet in all other respects without sin. You must either give up the one proposition or the other. There is yet another view to be taken of this point. Christ did more than hold Himself out as a Divine messenger-He held Himself out as standing in a peculiar relation to God, as being His only begotten Son, as having the attributes of Deity, as being one with the Father. With these pretensions His sinfulness, even His commission of one sin, would have been completely inconsistent, and would have rendered them utterly false and groundless. His perfect freedom from sin, therefore, is essential to the proof of His Divine mission. It does hot prove that He was God, for He might have been a creature and yet have been preserved from all unrighteousness by Gods almighty power. But as He claimed the honour and asserted the possession of supreme Deity, it was necessary that no unrighteousness should cleave to Him. I have still further to observe that the sinlessness of Christ is to be viewed as a miracle, which establishes the truth of His mission as much as any of the miracles which are usually resorted to for this purpose. And it was not possible for Him to be thus sinless, except by the special interposition of heaven. The laws which govern human nature and human condition were here suspended, as it were, for producing that effect. A person wearing the form of fallen humanity exhibited not a vestige of the weakness and the wickedness by which, in every other case, fallen humanity has been characterised.
2. Let us apply the subject for the purpose of encouraging our dependence upon Christ as the foundation of our hope. The law of God has demands upon us that must be fully satisfied before we can obtain His forgiveness and enjoy His favour, and be admitted into His heavenly presence. It demands punishment, and it demands obedience; and we must suffer the one and yield the other, either in our own persons or by a substitute. We are very apt indeed to trust in our own strength for the justification of which as sinners we stand in need. But a little consideration of what our own strength is, and of the achievement to which we propose to apply it, must satisfy us that such a trust is vain. Our only refuge, then, is in a substitute; and it is the great business of the gospel to reveal this substitute as both willing and able to do for us what we are incompetent to do for ourselves. Now, in order that our faith in Him as our surety, who is to redeem us by His vicarious obedience, may be justified, we must have clear demonstrations of His sufficiency for sustaining that important character. It is with this view especially that Christ is represented so distinctly, and declared so frequently, to be without sin. For supposing Him to have been otherwise, then our belief in His adequacy to the undertaking He had engaged in would have been shaken or destroyed. Let this truth be always present to your minds when you think of Christ as the ground of your acceptance; and especially when you look to His death as the sacrifice of atonement which He offered up for your iniquities, and as the finishing act of that obedience which in your stead He rendered to the law of God. Be not faithless but believing. Let not a sense of your unworthiness and guilt fill your souls with desponding fears and apprehensions. But place unlimited confidence in the holy one and the just. His sacrifice is faultless. His merit is infinite. His work is perfect.
3. Finally, let us apply the subject for one direction in that course of life which we must pursue as candidates for heaven. Though Christ by His unspotted sacrifice and perfect obedience has renewed our title to life and immortality, yet it is still true that without personal holiness we cannot see the Lord. This character is pointed out to us by the precepts and maxims of the gospel. But we have the additional advantage of having it illustrated and enforced by the example of our Saviour. The exhibition of this example was one, though a subordinate, purpose of His incarnation. He has left it upon record expressly and authoritatively, that we should follow His steps. (A. Thomson, D. D.)
Sinless and guileless
I. His conduct. Did no sin.
1. Though tempted severely and continually.
2. Though surrounded by sinful men.
3. Though exposed to poverty of the deepest kind.
4. Though wearing a body subject to infirmities.
II. His converse. Neither was guile found.
1. He never disguised His abhorrence of falsehood.
2. He did not promise more than He intended to perform.
3. He did not hide from His followers the consequences of their position.
Application:-
1. The purity of Jesus in word and deed should be sought by us.
2. Hereafter we shall be as He was and is.
3. This purity can never be congenial to us until our hearts are regenerated. (R. A. Griffin.)
Bore our sins in His own body.-
The sin bearer
This wonderful passage is a part of Peters address to servants; and in his day nearly all servants were slaves. If we are in a lowly condition of life, we shall find our best comfort in thinking of the lowly Saviour bearing our sins in all patience and submission. If we are called to suffer, as servants often were in the Roman times, we shall be solaced by a vision of our Lord buffeted, scourged, and crucified, yet silent in the majesty of His endurance. We ourselves now know by experience that there is no place for comfort like the Cross. Truly in this case like cures like. By the suffering of our Lord Jesus our suffering is made light.
I. The bearing of err sins by our Lord. Jesus did really bear the sins of His people.
1. How literal is the language! Words mean nothing if substitution is not stated here.
2. Note how personal are the terms here employed! Who His own self bare our sins in His own body. It was not by delegation, but His own self, and it was not in imagination, but in His own body. Observe also the personality from our side of the question, He bare our sins, that is to say, my sins and your sins. As surely as it was Christs own self that suffered on the Cross, so truly was it our own sins that Jesus bore in His own body on the tree.
3. This sin bearing on our Lords part was continual. The passage before us has been forced beyond its teaching by being made to assert that our Lord Jesus bore our sins nowhere but on the Cross, which the words do not say. The tree was the place where beyond all other places we see our Lord bearing the chastisement due to our sins; but before this He had felt the weight of the enormous load. The marginal reading, which is perfectly correct, is Who His own self bare our sins in His own body to the tree. Our Lord carried the burden of our sins up to the tree, and there and then He made an end of it.
4. This sin bearing is final. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, but He bears them now no more. The sinner and the sinners Surety are both free, for the law is vindicated, the honour of government is cleared, the substitutionary sacrifice is complete.
II. The change in our condition, which the text describes as coming out of the Lords bearing of our sins. That we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.
1. We are henceforth legally dead to the punishment of sin. What a wonderful deliverance for us! Bless the Lord, O my soul!
2. But Peter also means to remind us that, by and through the influence of Christs death upon our hearts, the Holy Ghost has made us now to be actually dead to sins: that is to say, we no longer love them, and they have ceased to hold dominion over us. The newborn life within us has no dealings with sin; it is dead to sin. The Greek word here used cannot be fully rendered into English-it signifies being unborn to sins. We were born in sin, but by the death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit upon us, that birth is undone, we are unborn to sins.
3. But our Lords sin bearing has also brought us into life. Dead to evil according to law, we also live in newness of life in the kingdom of grace. Our Lords object is that we should live unto righteousness. Not only are our lives to be righteous, which I trust they are, but we are quickened and made sensitive and vigorous unto righteousness; through our Lords death we are made quick of eye, and quick of thought, and quick of lip, and quick of heart unto righteousness. Certainly, if the doctrine of His atoning sacrifice does not vivify us, nothing will.
III. The healing of our diseases by this death. We were healed, and we remain so. It is not a thing to be done in the future; it has been wrought. Peter describes our disease in the words which compose verse 25. What was it, then?
1. First, it was brutishness. Ye were as sheep. Sin has made us so that we are only fit to be compared to beasts, and to those of the least intelligence. We were as sheep, but we are now men redeemed unto God.
2. We are cured also of the proneness to wander which is so remarkable in sheep. Ye were as sheep going astray, always going astray, loving to go astray, delighting in it. We wander still, but not as sheep wander; we now seek the right way, and desire to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. If we wander it is through ignorance or temptation. We can truly say, My soul followeth hard after Thee.
3. Another disease of ours was inability to return: Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned. Dogs and even swine are more likely to return home than wandering sheep. But now, though we wandered we have returned, and do still return to our Shepherd. Our soul cries, Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. Thus, by the virtue of our Lords death an immortal love is created in us, which leads us to seek His face, and renew our fellowship with Him.
4. Our Lords death has also cured us of our readiness to follow other leaders. Faith in Jesus creates a sacred independence of mind. We have learned so entire a dependence upon our crucified Lord that we have none to spare for men.
5. Finally, when we were wandering we were like sheep exposed to wolves, but we are delivered from this by being near the Shepherd. We were in danger of death, in danger from the devil, in danger from a thousand temptations, which, like ravenous beasts, prowled around us. Having ended our wandering, we are now in a place of safety. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Death for sin, and death to sin
I. Our Lords death for sin. And here, ere we approach to behold the great sight, let us put off our shoes from off our feet, and bow down in lowliest reverence of repenting grief, for, remember, if Jesus had not died for sins, we must have died, and died eternally too. Oh, the bitterness of our souls had we been in such a state!
1. There was a substitution for our sins, and by that substitution believers are saved. It was not merely a transfer of punishment from one to another, but there was a transfer of sin in some deep sense, or else the Scripture speaketh not what it meaneth: He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.
2. Now I want you to pause, having noted the fact of substitution, to consider the substitute. He His own self bare our sins. And who was He? I want you to feel a personal love to our dear Lord and Master. I want your souls at this moment to realise the actual character of His existence and His true personality. Though thus God over all, He became a man like unto ourselves. And He, in that double nature but united person, was Jesus, Son of God and Son of the Virgin; He it was who bare our sins in His own body on the tree.
3. Here we call to your remembrance the fact stated in the text so positively, that the substitution of Christ was carried out by Him personally, not by proxy. The priest of old brought a substitution, but it was a lamb. He struck the knife and the warm blood flowed adown it, but our Lord Jesus Christ had no substitute for Himself, He His own self bare our sins in His own body.
4. Notice, also, that the substitution of Christ is described in our text in a way which suggests consciousness, willinghood, and great pain. He His own self bare our sins. They were upon Him, they pressed Him. The Greek word for bare suggests the idea of a great weight, He bare our sins-stooped under them, as it were; they were a load to Him.
5. And He bore those sins manifestly. I think that is the mind of the Spirit; when He says in His own body, He means to give vividness to the thought. We are so constituted that we do not think so forcibly of mental and spiritual things as we do of bodily things; but our Lord bare our sins in His own body. His visage was more marred than that of any man, and His form more than the sons of men. Remember another text-Yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God. Mark the tree or Cross for a moment with much attention.
(1) It was the place of pain. No death could be more full of agony than that of crucifixion. Blessed be Thy love, O Jesus, that Thou couldest bear pain and death for us.
(2) But the Cross was not the place of pain merely; it was the place of scorn. To be fastened to the Cross! Why, they would not put the meanest Roman thereon, though he committed murder; it was a death for slaves and menials. To be laughed at when you suffer is to suffer sevenfold.
(3) But more, it was the place of the curse, for cursed is every one that hangeth on the tree, and the Word has told us that He was made a curse for us.
(4) Last of all, it was the place of death.
II. Our death to sin. That we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. Now, observe right well that we are dead to the condemning power of sin. Henceforth I have nothing to do but to live as a righteous man, accepted in the Beloved, to live by His righteousness and rejoice in it, blessing and magnifying His holy name. As many of you as have looked to Jesus Christ bearing your sins in His own body on the tree, are dead to sin as to its reigning power.
1. Dead, first, because we have seen its detestable nature. It had its charms, but now we have perceived its hypocrisies. The false prophet Mokanna, who wore the silver veil upon his brow, deceived many, for he said that should that veil be lifted, the light which would gleam from under it would strike men blind, the glory was so great; but when one had once perceived that the man was leprous, and that on his brow instead of brightness there were the white scales of a leper, nobody would become his disciple; and so, O sin, at the Cross I see thy silver veil removed, and I mark the desperate leprosy that is on thee. I cannot harbour thee in my heart.
2. We are dead to sin, again, because another passion has absorbed all the forces of our life.
3. And yet again, sin appears to us now to be too mean and trivial a thing for us to care about. We have lost now, by Gods grace, the faculty which once was gratified with these things. They tell us we deny ourselves many pleasures. Oh, there is a sense in which a Christian lives a self-denying life, but there is another sense in which he practises no self-denial at all, for he only denies himself what he does not want, what he would not have if he could. If you could force it upon him it would be misery to him, his views and tastes are now so changed. Let these eyes be forever sightless as the eyes of night, and let these ears be forever deaf as silence, rather than sin should have a charm for me, or anything should take up my spirit save the Lord of love, who bled Himself to death that He might redeem me unto Himself. This is the royal road to sanctification. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Burden bearers
I dont like this idea of somebody else bearing my burden, said an objector to the atonement recently. The reply was, Friend, somebody else has been bearing your burden ever since you came into the world. So is it with us all. Our mothers bore the burden of our infancy. The sailor bears the burden that brings us good news from afar. The miner bears the burden that warms our dwelling, and the reaper bears the burden that gives us bread. That we, being dead to sins.
Dead to sin by Christs death
Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour that it makes the soul like Him, assimilates and conforms it to His death, as the apostle speaks. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true in a spiritual sense of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer; it takes the very print of His death by beholding Him and dies to sin, and then takes that of His rising again, and lives to righteousness. (Abp. Leighton.)
Dead to sin: living to righteousness
A legend of the Jews relates that the Prophet Ezekiel once raised a number of his countrymen from the dead, but the miracle was so far imperfect that the resuscitated men ever after retained the complexion of corpses, and their garments the smell of the sepulchre. Some believe it is after this fashion that the Lord Jesus raises us from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. So far, at least, as this world is concerned, we must expect to retain the blemishes and scent of moral corruption. We have not so learned Christ. (W. L. Watkinson.)
By whose stripes ye were healed-
On the diseases and health of the soul
I. Consider sin as destroying the health of the soul.
1. Bodily distempers are very often conveyed by descent from others. So the sin of our first parents has spread a fatal corruption through the whole human race. Man is not only liable to many bodily distempers from inheritance, he brings many upon himself by imprudence and by sinful gratifications. In like manner, besides what is called original sin, we are chargeable with many actual transgressions.
2. Having spoken of the origin of sin, let us now trace the manner of its progress.
(1) Vices, like diseases, steal upon us by slow degrees. Their first attack is often imperceptible.
(2) As bodily distempers are frequently most dangerous when the patient is least sensible of them, so it is a bad symptom of the soul when it has not a just sense of the evil of iniquity.
3. Having considered sin as to its source and progress, we shall also take a view of its effects.
(1) Sickness weakens the body, debilitates the nerves, and unfits mankind so long as it continues for enjoying and discharging the affairs of human life. Sin also enfeebles the mind by curbing and confusing the reasoning powers.
(2) Nor is this the only effect; for as sickness often brings much pain, so sin also is accompanied, or will be followed, by sorrow and sufferings.
(3) As diseases produce the death of the body, so sin, if unpardoned and unremoved, will destroy the soul.
II. The nature of the remedies prescribed, and the capacity of the Physician who directs and also applies them.
1. Jesus Christ is the Physician, and the means prescribed are His Word, His ordinances, and His providences, made effectual by the Spirit.
(1) His Word is medicinal. A text of the Bible, well applied and directed to the heart by the Holy Spirit, has produced very valuable effects.
(2) The ordinances of Christ, under which are included all acts of worship, prayer, praise, and the Lords Supper, are designed to increase our hatred of sin and love for holiness.
(3) All events are in the hand of God. Providential dispensations are employed to reclaim and reform sinners. Sometimes more awful, sometimes more mild exertions are requisite.
(4) The office of the Holy Spirit is another of the means promised and prescribed by the mercy of God for the recovery of the health of souls. He is the Divine Agent who gives efficacy to the other means.
2. The character and capacity of Jesus Christ, our glorious Physician, shall now be a little considered.
(1) His knowledge and capacity are infinitely great.
(2) Our blessed Saviour is not only able and skilful, He is also friendly and compassionate.
(3) Our blessed Redeemer is very humble and condescending.
(4) The Son of God is a Physician to whom you may have access in all places and at all times.
Application:
1. As we derive by our birth a weak and depraved nature, and are daily increasing the number of our offences, what strong reasons are these, not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, but to think soberly!
2. The progress of vice, as above considered, should excite in us the greatest jealousy and circumspection.
3. The effects of sin, formerly mentioned, show that vice is, of all evils, the most formidable to mankind.
4. It is our duty to follow exactly the prescriptions for spiritual health which Jesus Christ has been pleased to direct.
5. Remember that it is by a believing reliance on the blood of Jesus Christ that the remedies in the gospel prove means of spiritual health. (Robert Foote.)
The stripes of Jesus
There is much that is mysterious about disease, and probably much that will always remain so, even after human industry and skill have done their best to fathom its secrets. But in ancient times, when medical science was almost if not altogether unknown, the causes that produced it seemed to be impenetrable. Its progress was fitful and capricious. In the same way the process of healing was equally uncertain. A few simple remedies were used for simple ailments, and if these were futile, men were helpless. Their pharmacy was exhausted. Nothing was left but to submit to the inevitable. And we can well understand how in such circumstances disease was felt to be an appropriate symbol of moral evil which was enveloped in similar mystery, and seemed to be as little amenable to control. But the fact that disease was recognised as so appropriate a symbol of moral evil rested on something more than external resemblance. In some cases it was known to be the penalty of a moral offence. Sin produces and is succeeded by suffering in obedience to the same law by which the fruit is developed from the blossom, or the organism from the germ. And hence, when Scripture speaks of us as needing healing, this is not merely a figure, it is a reality. Sin contains suffering, as an essential element in itself. We have, then, to consider what this conception of sin as a disease is intended to teach, and the aspect under which its cure is presented by the apostle.
I. First, this conception of sin reminds us that it is something abnormal or unnatural. It is an infliction that has disturbed the harmony of our nature and thrown it out of gear. In the case of disease this is shown by the fact that we invariably protest against it, and endeavour to throw it off. When we fail to do this, it is either owing to our being unconscious of its presence, or to its having reached such an advanced stage in its development that it has paralysed our powers of resistance. It is the same also with sin. The religions of the world, with their crude and often revolting methods of sacrifice, bear pathetic witness to the unrest of conscience, and the conviction that something is wrong between man and the powers above him. And wherever the instincts of human nature have been healthiest, and the moral sense has been most widely awake, the efforts made to pacify the offended Deity have been most earnest and sustained. And there are the same attempts to avert a menacing future, not, it may be, by the offering of sacrifice, but by more refined and subtle efforts at atonement-the religion of many dissolving itself into a mere lifelong effort to put themselves right with God. And how are we to explain this dislocation? What has been its cause? What, but that we have all violated the eternal law of righteousness, and placed ourselves at variance with God? And no one can break that law and remain unreconciled to Him without suffering. It would be infinitely worse for us if we could.
II. Secondly, disease disables us by impairing our strength. What we can undertake in health we cannot undertake when health has failed. Some things we must give up entirely; others we can only do partially, if we do them at all. Perhaps we hardly realise the enormous waste for which sin is responsible, and how far short humanity falls of its possible attainments. Our proudest and most brilliant achievements, what are they but solitary and occasional flowers which show what the wilderness might have been?
III. In the third place, we know that the natural end of disease is death. It can be checked. Its violence can be reduced. It may be entirely overcome. But treat it as though it did not exist, and allow it to take its way, then, however trifling its beginnings and fitful its progress, it will set up a trouble and disturbance in the whole system that will certainly lead to its ultimate destruction. So the wages of sin is death. There can be no doubt about this. The connection between the two is invariable. And as every sickness can be most easily cured in its initial stage, or, at least, before neglect has complicated the symptoms, so it is with sin. Trifle with it, indulge it, let it go on, and it will rivet its hold, and infect your moral nature till the will is hopelessly enslaved and the only termination is death. And what is the death that comes as sins terrible wages? Is it the death of the body? Is it exhausted and done with when the last debt of nature has been paid? No. For sin is not resident in the body, so that we can lay it aside when we shuffle off this mortal coil. It is a spiritual act, the result of a certain spiritual condition. And this spiritual condition is not changed by the mere fact of physical death. That, indeed, separates the soul from the body, and hands over the latter to the powers of dissolution. But the former remains as it was. And if it has not renounced its sin, and been quickened by the life that wages a perpetual warfare against it, death will not sever it from its ruinous ally. It will simply introduce it to that final and hopeless separation from God which is the essence of spiritual death. For it will no longer be surrounded by what here alleviates and conceals the awfulness of such a state. We have now to consider the aspect under which the removal of sin is here presented. It is described as a healing or making whole, and it is effected by the stripes of Christ. By His stripes we are healed. That is, by what Christ suffered our sufferings are brought to an end; their source or fountain is staunched. But how are we to understand this? It is true in a sense that all suffering, when it becomes severe, can only be cured by the suffering of others. It imposes this penalty to some extent on those who undertake to relieve it. The strength and skill of the physician are often heavily taxed to save his patient. And the same remark is true in a still higher degree in the treatment of moral evil. To check even venial faults, so as to help the defaulter to renounce them, requires a patient tact and affection which are rarely found combined. There can be no doubt that in dealing with us Jesus suffers in this way infinitely more acutely than we do, in proportion to His deeper hatred of sin and deeper love of holiness. But however great the sufferings of Christ in this sense may have been and still are, it is not to such the apostle here refers. He is thinking not of what Christ may still endure from the perversity and faithlessness of men, but of something which He endured once, and endures no longer. The very word he uses leads us in this direction. It neither suggests the suffering involved in the doing of good, nor the strain which a loving sympathy has to bear in sharing the sorrows of its fellows. Stripes are imposed by some one else. They indicate the infliction of a pain which is not the direct consequence of our own action, but to which we are subjected by the action of others. Moreover, they necessarily suggest the idea of punishment. They are a chastisement, and mark the man who receives them as obnoxious to justice and dealt with accordingly. Now, it is by the sufferings of Christ so understood the apostle says we are healed. They were stripes. And they were stripes, not for His own sin, because He had none, but for ours. He was made sin for us, who knew no sin. By His stripes we are healed. Yes, by His stripes. For all sin is due to our separation from God. It marks the ebb of life, the lowering of vital force, the feverishness that ensues from this fatal severance. And what hinders the healing of the breach is just the fact that this sin is the violation of a righteous law which refuses to be at peace with us till its claims are satisfied. And these claims are met by the sacrifice of Christ. God was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses. The streams of life have begun to flow into its wasted framework, and wherever they reach the ravages of sin are checked. Peace comes in place of restlessness, content for dissatisfaction, hope for despair, and the spectre of fear is banished. Slowly but surely the love of goodness is developed. And Christs healing relieves from a pain and apprehension that can scarcely be uttered. It triumphs over an unworthiness that is deeper than words. It brings a hope and gladness that transfigures life, and opens a fountain of new inspiration. What labour is then too great, what enterprise too forlorn, when His grace has healed us, and bound up our painful wounds? There was no foe which could not be conquered, no misery which could not be relieved. The tide had turned. The watchword was, Forward!-forgetting the things that are behind. Messengers of peace and goodwill hastened abroad. Right struggled to subordinate the power of might, and has never given up the fight. Philanthropy arose, and the echo of her footsteps was heard in the waste and desolate places of the earth. And what is our magnificent array of modern Charities, our agencies of help that reach out a hand of succour to every soul depressed below the general level of comfort or advantage? What are the labours of the economist, the statesman, the physician, as they push their way into the problems before them with a sure triumphant conviction of ultimate victory, but the fruits of that great healing of Christ that has turned darkness into light, and the dull wretchedness of despair into bright and keen-eyed hope? By His stripes we are healed. Have you received this healing of Christ? (C. Moinet, M. A.)
Healed by Christs stripes
The slaves whom the apostle was addressing understood full well the meaning of stripes. The Greek word means the weal left by a stripe. From the grave the Saviour came, bearing the weals of many stripes, wound marks in hands and feet and side; but those bruises and wounds tell a story which makes our hearts leap with joy. When the Great Shepherd, raised through the blood of the everlasting covenant, met His timid followers in the upper room, He bade them behold the print of the nails and the scar in His side. Then were the disciples glad. And as we consider the Lamb, as it had been slain, and discern those precious memorials of His finished work on our behalf, we too may break forth into new songs, like those in heaven. Those stripes are the price of our redemption, the evidence of our purchase, the sign manual of pardon. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Salvation, what it cost
Mamma, said a little child to her mother when she was being put to bed at night-mamma, what makes your hand so scarred and twisted, and unlike other peoples hands? Well, said the mother, my child, when you were younger than you are now, years ago, one night, after I had put you to bed, I heard a cry, a shriek, upstairs. I came up, and found the bed was on fire, and you were on fire; and I took hold of you, and I tore off the burning garments, and while I was tearing them off and trying to get you away I burned my hand, and it has been scarred and twisted ever since, and hardly looks any more like a hand; but I got that, my child, in trying to save you. I wish today I could show you the burned hand of Christ-burned in plucking you out of the fire; burned in snatching you away from the flame. Aye, also the burned foot, and the burned brow, and the burned heart-burned for you. By His stripes we are healed. (T. De Witt Talmage.)
Ye were as sheep going astray.-
The former and present state of believers contrasted
I. Let me, then, call upon believers in Christ seriously to review their former condition, when they, as well as others, were as sheep going astray. The fitness of this similitude to exhibit the natural state of mankind may justly be inferred from the frequent use that is made of it in the sacred writings. Thus a sheep that has forsaken the good pasture and strayed into the barren wilderness presents to us, in the most affecting light, an emblem of indigence, perplexity, and disappointment. Again, this figurative representation denotes a state of danger as well as of indigence and dissatisfaction. Few animals are beset with more enemies than sheep; and perhaps none are possessed of less cunning to elude or of less courage to resist them. With what awful precision doth this part of the similitude exhibit to us the state of unconverted sinners! Their spiritual enemies are both numerous and mighty. Once more: though sheep are not the only creatures that are prone to wander, yet they of all others discover least sagacity in finding the way back to the place from whence they strayed; so that in them we likewise behold a most descriptive emblem of mans helpless state by nature, and of his utter inability by any efforts of his own to regain his primeval happiness and glory. But still there remains one other ingredient in mans apostasy from God to which the similitude, comprehensive as it is, cannot be extended; the fatal ingredient I mean is guilt. A sheep gone astray is an object of pity rather than of blame. Mans apostasy was the effect not of weakness, but of wilfulness; the guilt that lieth upon us is nothing less than proud and obstinate rebellion-rebellion blackened with the vilest ingratitude.
II. Ye are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls. Ye are returned to Him who came from heaven to earth to seek and to save that which was lost; who, though infinitely offended by your criminal apostasy, hath Himself made atonement for your past wanderings, and expiated your guilt with His own precious blood. Ye are returned to Him who will henceforth watch over you with peculiar care, and guard you as His property which He purchased with His blood. Ye are returned to Him who hath not only almighty power to guard you against danger, but infinite compassion likewise to sympathise with you in all your distresses, and to comfort you in all your sorrows.
III. What they were by nature, and what they are by grace may suffice to direct us to that temper of heart with which we ought to approach the table of the Lord. And it is obvious-
1. That we should do it with the deepest humility. Are we sanctified? once we were impure. Are we found? once we were lost. Are we made alive? lately we were dead; it was God who quickened us, and not we ourselves. Surely, then, pride was not made for man.
2. We should perform this service with the warmest emotions of gratitude and love, giving thanks to the Father who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him to be a sacrifice and sin offering for us.
3. Godly sorrow for past offences, and holy purposes to offend no more, should likewise attend us to the table of the Lord.
4. These purposes must ever be accompanied with a sense of our own weakness, and of our absolute need of aid from above. Even after we are returned to the Bishop of our souls, if left to ourselves we should quickly stumble and fall.
5. This diffidence of ourselves ought always to be qualified with a steadfast trust, an unsuspecting confidence in the power and faithfulness of our great Redeemer. (R. Walker.)
Men as sheep
Amongst all the varied tribes of nature there could not be selected a more perfect type of a life liable to wander. The passage bird is never lost. High over the waves of the Atlantic it strikes a right path to its home a thousand leagues away. With unerring certainty the creature of the forest finds a right path to its cave; but the sheep has no such sure accuracy of self-direction; it is in its nature a helpless and dependent tiling, and but for its shepherd would lose its path to the final shelter. Just as helpless and dependent is your soul. If you travel in the right path it is not because you have an unerring instinct, or an unerring reason, or an unerring sense of right, but because you have an unerring Leader. (C. Stanford, D. D.)
Are now returned.-
The new life
The Israelites were a pastoral people. For although in the time of the apostle the pastoral life had largely given way to the agricultural, yet all their history, all those elements which excited their imagination and rejoiced their patriotism, were of the pastoral character. It went into their poetry, and the agricultural and pastoral figures exceed in number, and certainly equal in exquisite beauty, any others that are to be found in the whole range of not only the Bible, but of universal literature. This is eminently seen in the Old Testament, but the New Testament is not without a trace of such a feeling. Here we are called wanderers. Men that are converted are the men that have wand: red away from the right ideals of life, and have been brought back again; they were wanderers. We are represented as going astray from right dispositions, and from right actions, and from right directions. Our aims, our conduct, and our character are malformed. Religion in the soul is what the right use of the organs is to the body. When all the organs of a mans body are carried on according to the laws of nature you have health. So when a man has gone astray, he has lost nothing, except the right use of himself. He has not lost will power; he has not lost intellectual power. And when a man is recalled from wandering, and it is said he is born again, we mean that from his wrong use of himself he turns toward the right use of himself. He is brought to recognise a higher standard of living, body, mind, and soul, and enters upon that better understanding. Then we say he has been recalled by his shepherd; he has returned. Every organ of the body is, according to the design of God in nature, good. It is wrong use that produces evil. Every faculty of the human mind and soul is right and needful to the body and soul, to social relations and universal truth. But the wrong use of right things is sinfulness. It may be in a single act, or in a continuity of acts until they become habit; then it is character; and character is nothing but an automatic practice of wrong uses induced by individual acts of sin. Now, on the other hand, when a man is called of God, here is the one grand ideal: Love is the fulfilling of the law. He who carries his whole nature obediently to the grand law of love and all its interpretations in Gods Word, that man has been restored to himself, and in so far to his God. Conversion, then, is the beginning, under inspirations teaching, an example of the reconstruction of a mans voluntary life. It is the beginning of rebuilding character and conduct, on the basis of love. It is the beginning. It is no more than the beginning. The Church is not, then, an assembly of saints. It is a school with all manner of instruments that are designed to help men. Merely being in the Church does not save men. It is an assembly of men beginning, mostly, and certainly the incoming into any Church is of men that have been lost, wandered, gone out of pasture, gone away, and they are called back again. A man coming into the Christian Church is coming into right conditions in which be may learn how to rectify the aberrations of his conduct, and, so far as his nature has been positively made morbid, rectify his nature. A man has found out that the way of his life, the way of selfishness, of pride and evil passions is the bad way; it is contrary to God and nature-the best nature-contrary to the welfare of society, of the family, and of the individual. He is so convinced of it that in covenant, in his secret thought with God he says, If Thou wilt help me, I will from this hour undertake to re-educate myself into the Christ spirit. If you want to know whether you are sinful or not, just take any of these great characteristic commands of Jesus Christ; take any point of example in Himself, any conduct, anywhere, and try it on. How shall a man know whether his clothes fit or not? He goes into a store and says to his tailor, Look here, how do 1 know what size I want? He looks at him a moment, then takes a boys coat and says, Try that on, if you please. He gets one arm half way down, and he cant find any armhole on the other side. Oh, that is a world too small for me. I cant get into that. Try moral qualities in the same way. You have one text that leads to this very analogy or figure, Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, as a garment. Put it on your con science. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ as an element of love. Put on the saving and helping of men, instead of hating men. Try on each one of these Christian graces, and see whether they fit you, or whether you can get them on. A person should come into the Church of Christ joyfully, yet not so much on account of attainment, but because he has put himself now in the way of attaining, and may hope to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ unto the end. (H. W. Beecher.)
The return of the flock
It is well to look back sometimes.
I. Estrangement. For ye were as sheep going astray. All we like sheep have gone astray. There is a depth of meaning in the expression going astray which very fittingly represents the condition of man with regard to Divine things. It implies-
1. A state of dissatisfaction. Neither men nor animals, as a rule, leave that which gives them satisfaction and enjoyment. With regard to man and God the word very far from expresses the real state. Man is more than dissatisfied. He abhors the necessities which the Divine fold entails. He hates the restraint, the associations, the duties.
2. A state of unrest. It is a constant wandering; a going hither and thither without a settled purpose; a drifting on the sea without an aim; going whither chance or the whim of the moment may lead.
3. A state of danger.
II. Reconciliation. But are now returned. There is something very pleasant in the word return. It speaks of old associations renewed, severed connections reunited. It means something so different to a new breaking of the ground. The reunion with old familiar places, persons, or things has a charm which has in itself the spirit of poetry and the reality of prose. The sheep returning to the fold goes back to the familiar ways, familiar surroundings, and the familiar voice of the shepherd. And so the soul going to God is only returning to its normal condition. Dont let us forget that the coming to the fold of Christ is a return. An important point concerning this return is that it is not natural. It is not easy or pleasant to retrace our steps, to acknowledge our folly.
III. Safety. Return to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. Here is ample protection, security, and supply. (Homilist.)
The Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.-
The Shepherd and Bishop of souls
There is no symbol upon which the early Church seems to have dwelt with more delight than that of Christ as the Good Shepherd, bringing home to the fold the lost sheep. It was engraved on gems; it furnished the legends of seals; it gives today an almost fabulous value to fragments of broken glass; it was painted upon the chalice of the Holy Communion, it was carved upon the tomb of martyrs in the catacombs. In the text there is presented to us a two-fold truth.
I. The first is the aspect of infinite love, as revealed in the office and function of a shepherd; and the second is the weakness and helplessness of human souls, as revealed in the figure of a flock. And these are expanded by the additional idea of our Lords episcopate as the Bishop of souls, and the implied necessity of a fold where there is a flock. And then, as the shadow of sin must ever rest upon our brightest hope, and the wail of penitence mingle with our highest song of praise, there is the reminder of the fact, that from the care of this eternal Shepherd, and the safety of this Divine fold, there are those who are going astray. What, then, does this word teach us of Christs care for His people? Now, the vocation of a shepherd has always been the symbol of the most tender and vigilant watchfulness. The ruling idea of the shepherds vocation was that he was the appointed defender of his flock, and their safety was committed to him. When the lion and the bear came upon the flock which the youthful David was tending, he slew them both, and delivered the lamb, even at the peril of his own life. And yet, bold as the shepherd was to all that would assail his flock, to the flock itself he was the embodiment of tenderness and care. His authority was the power of love. His only emblem of authority was the pastoral crook; the well-known tones of his voice were the guiding power; and, going before his flock, he led them through green pastures, calling them all by their names, and carrying the lambs in his bosom. In this day of intenser activities, we can hardly appreciate all that is meant by such a metaphor. But these are the hints which the symbol gives us, of the tender watch care of the great Shepherd of souls over His flock, as He first rescues them from the devil going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and then folds them safely within the sacred enclosure of His Church, and then watches over them in every pathway of their daily life. The symbol of a flock suggests the complementary truth, and teaches us the lesson of trust and reciprocal duty. For it defines our relation to Him, and the obligations involved in that relation. Within the fold of Christ we are not compared to cattle, to be driven by force or fear; we are not as swine, to wallow in the mire and filth of sin; but we are sheep, to follow a Divine Shepherds voice. If the tenderness and love of Christ be not a sufficient power to make us obedient, He will use no force. If the constraining power of the Cross fails to guide our wayward feet, then we will not be guided by Him at all. And the severest penalty of our disobedience will be our own going astray; our self-exclusion from the fold of Christ; our loss of His watchful care, and our exposure to the power of the adversary. And then, as if to interpret for all time the fulness of this office of our Lord, another word is added, whose meaning was destined to be permanently fresh in every age. The pastoral life of Oriental lands might lose its meaning when transplanted to other lands and centuries; but the office and function of a bishop is preserved forever from oblivion by its inherent position in the organisation of the Church. And this word the apostle places side by side with the other word of local significance, that both might go down the ages together, and each interpret the meaning of the other. And so the Good Shepherd is also the Bishop of souls. The title, in its comprehensive significance, lifts our thoughts to that Divine episcopate whose cathedral is the temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; whose diocese is the universe of souls, and whose affairs are administered today from the right hand of the Majesty on high. The collective pastorate of the Church on earth, acting in His name, is but the representative of the infinite care and ominiscient watchfulness of the great Shepherd above. (W. A. Snively, D. D.)
The Guardian of souls
I. That men have souls. First, the fact is the most demonstrable fact to man.
1. All the evidence that we have both for the existence of matter and mind is derived from phenomena. The essence of both is hidden.
2. The essence whose phenomena come most powerfully under consciousness is most demonstrated.
3. The phenomena of mind come far more powerfully under consciousness than that of matter. Thought, feeling, volition, we are conscious of these. Secondly, the fact is the most important fact to man. Consider the capacities, relations, influence, deathlessness of a soul. Thirdly, the fact is the most practically disbelieved fact by man. Most men profess to believe it, but few men really do so.
II. That mens souls require a guardian; an ἐπισκοπος, an overseer. This is clear from three things. First, from the natural fallibility of souls. No finite intelligence, however holy and exalted, can do without a guardian. Secondly, from the fallen condition of souls. They have gone astray. Look at the mistakes they make about the chief good, worship, etc. Thirdly, from the natural instincts of souls. Souls through all ages have been crying out for guardians.
III. That Christ is the one guardian of human souls. He is the Bishop. What should be the qualification of him who can take care of human souls? He that would do so should at least have four things. First, immense knowledge. He should know the nature of souls, the moral situation of souls, the right way of influencing souls. Secondly, unbounded love and forbearance. The waywardness, the insults, the rebellion of souls would soon exhaust any finite amount of love and patience. Thirdly, ever increasing charms. Souls are to be drawn, not driven. Fourthly, inexhaustible power. Power to extricate from present difficulties, to guard against future, and to lead on through interminable ages. Christ has all these qualifications, and more. Let Him, then, be my overseer. (Homilist.)
The great Shepherd
I. The individual soul has a Shepherd who knows it and cares for it.
II. The sinful soul has a Shepherd who seeks its rescue even by his own death.
III. The restored soul has a Shepherd who is filled with divine satisfaction at its recovery.
IV. The lonely soul has a Shepherd who will meet all the necessities of its nature.
V. The loyal soul has a Shepherd who will provide for all its wants. (U. R. Thomas.)
Wandering sheep
In these words we have a brief and yet clear representation of the wretchedness of natural conditions and of our happiness in Christ. It imports indeed the loss of a better condition, the loss of the safety and happiness of the soul, of that good which is proper to it, as the suitable good of the brute creature here named is safe amid good pasture. That we may know there is no one exempt in nature from the guiltiness and misery of this wandering, the prophet is express as to the universality of it: All we like sheep have gone astray. Yea, the prophet adds, We have turned every one to his own way. We agree in this, that we all wander, though we differ in several ways. Truth is but one; error endless and interminable. Thy tongue, it may be, wanders not in the common path road of oaths and curses, yet it wanders in secret calumnies, in defaming of others, or, if thou speak them not, yet thou art pleased to hear them. It wanders in trifling away the precious hours of irrecoverable time, with vain unprofitable babblings in thy converse; or, if thou art much alone, or in company much silent, yet is not thy foolish mind still hunting vanity, following this self-pleasing design or the other, and seldom and very slightly, if at all, conversant with God and the things of heaven, which, although they alone have the truest and the highest pleasure in them, yet to thy carnal mind are tasteless and unsavoury? Men account little of the wandering of their hearts, and yet truly that is most of all to be considered. It is the heart that hath forgotten God, and is roving after vanity: this causes all the errors of mens words and actions. A wandering heart makes wandering eyes, feet, and tongue: it is the leading wanderer that misleads all the rest. But are now returned. Whatsoever are the several ways of our straying, all our wandering originates in the aversion of the heart from God, whence of necessity follows a continual unsettledness and disquiet. The mind tumbles from one sin and vanity to another, and finds no rest; or as a sick person tosses from one part of his bed to another, and perhaps changes his bed in hope of ease, but still it is further off, thus is the soul in all its wanderings. But shift and change as it will, no rest shall it find until it come to this returning. But is not that God in whom we expect rest incensed against us for our wandering? and is He not, being offended, a consuming fire? True; but this is the way to find acceptance, and peace, and satisfying comforts in returning: come first to this Shepherd of souls, Jesus Christ, and by Him come unto the Father. There be three things necessary to restore us to our happiness, whence we have departed in our wanderings.
1. To take away the guiltiness of those former wanderings.
2. To reduce us into the way again.
3. To keep and lead us in it.
Now all these are performable only by this great Shepherd.
1. He did satisfy for the offence of our wanderings, and so remove our guiltiness.
2. He brings them back into the way of life-Ye are returned. but think not it is by their own knowledge and skill that they discover their error and find out the right path, or that by their own strength they return into it. Men may have confused thoughts of returning, but to know the way and to come, unless they be sought out, they are unable. This is Davids suit, though acquainted with the fold, I have gone astray like a lost sheep; Lord, seek Thy servant.
3. He keeps and leads us on in that way into which He hath restored us. He leaves us not again to try our own skill, whether we can walk to heaven alone, being set into the path of it, but He still conducts us in it by His own hand, and that is the cause of our persisting in it and attaining the blessed end of it (Psa_23:3). Are we led in the paths of righteousness? Do we delight ourselves in Him and in His ways? Can we discern His voice, and does it draw our hearts so that we follow it? The Shepherd and the Bishop. It was the style of kings to be called shepherds, and is the dignity of the ministers of the gospel to have both these names. But this great Shepherd and Bishop is peculiarly worthy of these names as supreme. (Abp. Leighton.)
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The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v18 Chapter 8
Chapter 8
CHRISTIAN SERVICE
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1Pe_2:18-25
THE Gospel history shows very clearly that during our Lords lifetime His followers were drawn largely from the ranks of the poor. It was fitting that He who had been proclaimed in prophecy as "the servant of the Lord" should enter the world in humble estate; and, from the lowly position of the Virgin Mother and her husband, the life of Jesus for thirty years must have been spent in comparative poverty and amid poor surroundings. The major part of His chosen disciples were fisher-folk and such-like. And though we read of the wife of Herods steward among the women who ministered unto Him, and of the richer Joseph of Arimathaea as a secret disciple, these are marked exceptions. To the poor His Gospel was preached, and among the poor it first made its way. The question of the chief priests, "Hath any of the rulers believed on Him, or of the Pharisees?" {Joh_7:48} tells its own tale, as does also the significant record, "The common people heard Him gladly". {Mar_12:37}
It need not therefore much surprise us if St. Peter, now that he begins to classify his counsels, addresses himself first to "household servants": "Servants, be in subjection to your masters, with all fear." We have, however, to bear in mind, as we consider the Apostles exhortation, that most of those whom he addresses were slaves. They had no power of withdrawing themselves, though their service should prove burdensome and grievous. St. Paul, in writing to the same class, nearly always employs the word which means "bondservants." Yet his counsel agrees with St. Peters. Thus he exhorts that their service be "with fear and trembling"; {Eph_6:5} in Col_3:22, "Obey in all things them that are your masters." And to Timothy and Titus it is given as a part of their charge to "exhort servants to be in subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing to them in all things". {1Ti_6:1 Tit_2:9}
When St. Peter and St. Paul wrote, this slave population was everywhere very numerous. Gibbon calculates that in the reign of Claudius the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of the Roman world; Robertson places the estimate much higher. These formed, then, a very large share of the public to which the first preachers had to appeal, and we can understand the importance to the Christian cause of the behavior of these humble, but doubtless most numerous, members of the society. Their lives would be a daily sermon in the houses of their masters. Hence the very earnest exhortations addressed to them that by their conduct they should adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things; that they should count their masters worthy of all honor; that the name of God and of the doctrine be not blasphemed; that they should be in subjection with all fear. Everything in the New Testament concerning slaves goes to show that they were a most important factor in the early Christian societies.
Men wonder nowadays that there is so little said by any of the Apostles about freeing slaves from their bondage. The best men in those times and long before appear to have regarded slavery as one of the institutions with which they were bound to rest content. It flourished everywhere; it was countenanced in the Scriptures of the older dispensation. Eleazar was Abrahams slave, and the Law in many passages contemplates-the possession by Israelites of persons who were bought with their money. Hence we find no remonstrance against slave-holding in the New Testament writings, only advice to those who were in such bondage to cultivate a spirit which would render it less galling and to strive that by their behavior the cause of Christ might be advanced. St. Paul represents the ideas of his age when, writing to the Corinthians, he says, "Wast thou called being a bondservant? Care not for it; but if thou canst be made free, use it rather". {1Co_7:21} Freedom was worth having, but any heroic effort to get rid of the yoke is not encouraged in the Epistles. Yet it must have been a lot which called for the exercise of much moral strength to make it bearable. Even from the house of the Christian Philemon the slave Onesimus found cause to run away. But St. Paul in his letter admits no right on the slaves part to take this course. With the Apostle there is no question that the first duty is to go back to his master. All that he urges is that the common profession of Christianity by slave and master ought to, and doubtless would, alleviate the conditions of servitude. There were in Christianity, as time has shown, germs which would fructify, a spirit which some day would strike off the chains of slaves. But the vision of such a time had not dawned either for St. Paul or St. Peter. Christ has overcome the world in many other matters beside slavery. It is only that Christians are so tardy in awaking to the fullness of His lessons.
So in apostolic days the rights and claims of slave-masters were looked upon as indisputable. Be subject, "not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward." There is to be no resistance, no lapse in duty. About service rendered to good masters there might be little apprehension, but even here St. Paul finds occasion for warning. "They that have believing masters," he says, "let them not despise them because they are brethren." {1Ti_6:2} Christian freedom was not without its dangers in many forms, especially to minds wherein liberty was a strange idea. But froward masters are to be faithfully served likewise, and care is to be taken withal to remove every occasion for their frowardness. The apostolic lesson is to make suffering endurable, noble, acceptable to God, by seeing that it be always undeserved. How strange a doctrine his in the eyes of the world! The rule of purely human conduct would be just the opposite. If wrong be undeserved, rebel at once. Christianity supplies a motive for the contrary course: "conscience toward God." The worlds spirit is not His spirit, and to have praise with Him should be the Christians single aim. Men can at times be patient when rebuke is deserved, but the world sees that that deserves no credit. "What thank have ye?" they cry. But they give no praise for the bearing of unmerited rebuke.
The world counts such conduct weakness, and is still far from comprehending the Divineness of the virtue of yielding patiently to wrong. God has long been teaching the lesson, but it has been slowly learnt. He chose the milder, timid Jacob rather than the fiery Esau. Both had faults in multitude. With the world Esau is oft the favorite. At a later day he stamps with approval the noble mercy of David in sparing Saul, while round Daniel and his companions in Babylon there gathers something of a halo of New Testament sanctity by reason of the noble confession which they made under persecution. These are chapters in the Divine lesson-book. Such lives marked stages in the preparation for the Servant of the Lord. Men, if they would have hearkened, were being trained to estimate such a character at Gods value. Now Christs example is before us, and we are bidden to follow it.
"For hereunto were ye called." Strange invitation to be dictated by love, a call to suffering! And yet the Master at first promises nothing else to His followers: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me". {Mat_16:24} And what can a Christian wish for but to be like Christ? And the very reason given ought to make us love the cross. We are called unto suffering because Jesus suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. He has trodden the hard road, the winepress of the wrath of God, alone and for men. At this point the Apostle begins to apply to Christ Isaiahs description of the suffering "Servant of the Lord," "who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth". {Isaiah 53} But soon the memory of the scenes he had witnessed is present with him; and his words, though holding to the spirit of Isaiahs picture, become a description of what he himself had seen and heard when Jesus was taken and crucified: "Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously." How the brief words sum up and recall the dark history-Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod; the mockery, the scourging, the railing crowd, the dying Jesus, and the parting prayer, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."
So far the Apostle speaks of the example of Christ, which, though far above and beyond us, we are exhorted and called on to follow. And there are many who will go with him thus far who value our Lords work only for its lofty example. Indeed, it is characteristic of those who deny the mediatorial office of Christ to be loudest in magnifying the grandeur of His character. To His good works, His love for men, His spotless life, His noble lessons, they accord untiring praise, as though thereby they would atone for denying Him that office which is more glorious still. But St. Peter stops at no such half-way house. He knows in whom he has believed, knows Him for the Son of the living God, a Teacher with whom were the words of eternal life. So in pregnant words he sets forth the doctrine of the Atonement as the end of Christs suffering: "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness." He bare our sins. The words tell of something beyond our powers to comprehend; but some light is shed on them by a kindred passage, {Mat_8:17} where the Evangelist applies to the work of Jesus those other words from Isaiah 53, "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The narrative in the Gospel has just recorded how Jesus wrought many miracles. First, a leper was healed, then the centurions servant, next Simons wifes mother, and afterwards many sick and demoniacs beside. There is no record here of the effect produced on Jesus Himself by these exhibitions of miraculous power, but from other passages in the Gospels we do find that He was conscious in Himself of a demand on His power when such cures were wrought. Thus we are told, at the cure of the woman with the issue, that Jesus perceived in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth; {Mar_5:30} and again when many were cured, that "power came forth from Him and healed them." {Luk_6:19} Of the woman Jesus says expressly, "Thy faith hath made thee whole"; and the manifestation of eagerness to touch Jesus is a sign of the faith of the others whom the Divine power blessed with health.
The Bible recognizes everywhere the analogy between sin and sickness. May we not trace some analogy between the Lords works of healing and that mightier deliverance from sin won by Christ upon the cross, an analogy which may help, if but a little, to give meaning to the bearing by Christ of human sins? A power went forth when the sick were healed; and through that imparted power they were restored to health, faith being the pathway which brought the Divine virtue to their aid. Thus Jesus bore their diseases and took them away. Look through this figure on the work of our redemption. Christ has borne the burden of sin. He has died for sin that men may die from sin, that sin may be slain in us, the fell disease healed by the power of His suffering. We cannot comprehend what was done for the sick when Christ was on earth, nor what is wrought for sinners by His grace in heaven. Those alone who reap the blessing know its certainty; and they can but say, as the blind man whose sight was restored, "One thing I know: that, whereas I was blind, now I see". {Joh_9:25}
To this teaching, that Christs suffering wrought mans rescue, St. Peter adds emphasis by another quotation from that chapter of Isaiah which he has so much in mind: "by whose stripes ye were healed." Christ was stricken, and God grants to His sufferings a power to heal the souls of those whom He loves because they strive to love Him. Healing through wounds! Soundness through that which speaks only of injury! Mysterious dispensation! But long ago it had been foreshadowed, and shown also how little connection there was to be, except through faith, between the remedy and the disease. Those who were bitten of the serpents in the wilderness gazed on the brazen serpent, and were healed. In the dead brass was no virtue, but God was pleased to make of it a speaking sacrament; so has it pleased Him to give healing of sins to those who by faith appropriate the sacrifice on Calvary. Christ has claimed the type for Himself: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself". {Joh_12:32}
And now, as is so often his wont, St. Peter varies the figure. The wounded sinner finding cure becomes the wandering sheep that has been brought back into the fold: "for ye were going astray like sheep, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls." But the message, the teaching, the love, is all the same. He who before was the great Exemplar, whose footsteps we should follow, is now the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, who goes before His sheep. This Shepherd has been a Sufferer, too. He has given Himself up as prey to the wolves that His flock might be saved. Now, with a voice of love, He calls His sheep by name; and hearing, they follow Him.
But He is more than this. Brought within the fold, the sheep still need His care; and it is freely given. He is the Bishop, the Overseer, the Watchman for His peoples safety, who, having gathered them within the fold, tends them with constant watchfulness. The figure passes over thus into the reality in the Apostles closing words. The cure which the great Healer desires to accomplish is in the souls of men. For them His care is bestowed, first to bring them safe out of the way of evil, then forever to keep them under the sheltering care of His abundant love.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv18–20 18–20. Servants. Compare Eph. 6:5, and Col. 3:22. The…
18–20. Servants. Compare Eph. 6:5, and Col. 3:22. The Greek word here is not that of the former passages which means slaves. This may mean hired servants. Be subject. That is the duty of the relation. Nor is a faithful obedience due to good masters only, but to the froward. The perverse.
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 On v18 1Pe_2:18. Servants.—Slaves. Many of the early Christians came from…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1Pe_2:18. Servants.—Slaves. Many of the early Christians came from the ranks of slaves, or freedmen. And their freedom in Christ made their bondage to an earthly master specially irksome. Perhaps “the οἰκέται here addressed are domestic servants, who were more exposed to the bad temper of their masters than the servants in the field.” Froward.—Crooked. One who is unreasonably exacting, capricious, and cross-grained.
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1Pe_2:19. Conscience toward God.—Better, “consciousness of God.” This essentially belongs to the new life. Conscious of God’s presence as seeing, judging, helping, His servants. Wrongfully.—Without having given just occasion.
1Pe_2:20. Buffeted.—Cuffed with the hand, or smitten with the stick, as servants then were. Acceptable.—Same word as “thankworthy,” in 1Pe_2:19.
1Pe_2:21. Were ye called.—Or, “this is involved in your call.” Example.—Of patience in bearing suffering, with the inward assurance of innocence. The Greek word suggests a drawing which the student is to copy.
1Pe_2:24. Bare our sins.—See Isa_53:12. Our sins, not His own. The Hebrew word may mean either to carry, or to lift or raise. It is not clear which precise meaning St. Peter intends. On the tree.—Cross. R.V. “upon the tree”; marg. “up to the tree.” Stripes.—Prophetic reference, Isaiah 53; historic reference, our Lord’s scourging by command of Pilate.
1Pe_2:25. Shepherd and bishop.—Episcopos, guardian, protector. See Eze_34:11-12. Alford thinks that the apostle transfers the well-known name of the elders of the Churches, ἐπίσκοποι, to the great Head of the Church, of whom they were all the servants and representatives.
NOTE ON 1Pe_2:19.—Dr. R. W. Dale translates thus: “For this is acceptable, if through consciousness of God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.” He holds that the Greek word which Peter used has sometimes the meaning “consciousness” and sometimes that of “conscience.” In this passage the former meaning is much more appropriate, and Dr. Dale uses it very effectively to prove that the knowledge or consciousness that Christians have of God becomes an effective force in the moral life. Such a knowledge is open to every Christian, for Peter here writes to slaves when he says, “This is acceptable if, through consciousness of God, a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.”
MAIN HOMILETIGS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Pe_2:18-25
The Example of Suffering.—However general may be made the applications of this paragraph, it is well-to observe that its counsels, and arguments, and persuasions, are directly addressed to “slaves,” and that, in their form, they are precisely adapted to such persons. The “servants” of the New Testament are not persons who offered free service upon fixed wage terms, but individuals whose personal liberty was lost, who were the property of some other man, and whose powers of body and mind—whose lives, indeed—were absolutely at their masters’ command. We need not associate African, West Indian, or American slave-horrors with the ancient slave-system, though it is true that Roman and other Pagan slaves often had the bitterest of bitter lots in other ways. The term that is here translated “servants” points to “domestic slaves”—those sustaining household relations, and occupied in household duties; and we have to think of the kinds of suffering which they would have to endure, more especially when they had become converts to the faith of Christ, as so many of this class had in those early days. We know enough of the difficulties which our servants have to endure now, when they are amongst ungodly and scornful fellow-servants, and in pleasure-loving, self-indulging families, to be able to imagine what burdens, and what trials, a Christian slave in an ancient Pagan family might have to bear. It was most fitting that the apostle should directly address these kindly, reassuring, and inspiring messages to them. A large proportion of the early Christian converts are known to have belonged to this class. It has been noticed that nearly all the names given in Romans 16, and many of those of other members of the Church, are found in the Columbaria, or Catacombs of Rome, as belonging to slaves or freedom. Conscious of a new and higher life, and of thoughts and hopes altogether transcending their human lot, these slaves could not fail to fret under their humiliating conditions; and they might easily fail to meet their daily responsibilities, and unduly repine under disabilities which now seemed to be overwhelming. Indeed, the question often came up before the regenerate slave, “Ought I to remain in this degrading servitude I Ought I not, at any cost, to strike for personal liberty?” If such an one took his question to the apostles, we know that they would have bidden him keep his place, and serve Christ, by fitting nobly into his position, and living before his fellow-servants and the family in the most attractive Christian spirit. “Let every man wherein he is called, therein abide with God” is the apostolic principle applied to the slaves of that day. But St. Peter seems to know enough of the actual lot of these slaves to take them as types of the kind of suffering which Christians were then called to endure. He is not, it should be carefully noticed, dealing here with the sufferings which come from the accidents, disasters, or calamities of life, nor with those which belong to the inroads of disease, or to bodily infirmities, or to the action of heredity. He has in mind the sufferings which come out of our various relations with others, and especially the sufferings which attend on our endeavour to live out our Christian principles in those relations. The force of the Christly example, which he presents, is only seen when its sphere is thus circumscribed. It is quite true that our Lord is, in a general and comprehensive sense, our example; but here St. Peter does but present Him as an example of suffering, and of precisely such suffering as these slaves were called to endure. If these remarks seem, at first, to unduly limit the applications of this familiar passage, it will be found, on further examination, that it opens up detailed applications, within the limitations, which give fresh point to the apostolic advice. For it will be found to-day that most of our serious sufferings come in connection with our human relationships. Precisely what these Christian slaves felt was the bitterness of being punished when they were innocent. And this they often were, in the anger, or the tyranny, or the malice, of their masters. They also felt the difficulty of keeping patient under peculiar aggravations, and the apparent uselessness of their most heroic efforts to serve well; for they constantly failed to alter the conditions under which they so grievously suffered. This is St. Peter’s message to them: “For hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps.” Jeremy Taylor has a suggestive illustration of the help we may find by following the example of our Lord’s sufferings. “St. Wenceslaus, the Bohemian king, one winter night, going to his devotions in a remote church, barefooted, in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice, his servant, Redevivus, who waited upon his Master’s piety and endeavoured to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold, till the king commanded him to follow him, and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him. The servant did so, and either fancied a cure or found one, for he followed his prince, helped forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the forming footsteps in the snow. In the same manner does the blessed Jesus; for, since our way is troublesome, obscure, full of objection and danger, apt to be mistaken, and to affright our industry, He commands us to mark His footsteps, to tread where His feet have stood, and not only invites us forward by the argument of His example, but He hath trodden down much of the difficulty, and made the way easier and fit for our feet.”
I. The Christly example of suffering is the example of suffering innocence.—“Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” This is precisely adapted to St. Peter’s declaration to the slaves: “For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endure griefs, suffering wrongfully.” St. Peter is not intending to make any general declaration here concerning the sinlessness of Jesus. He has no doctrine about it. He says, “Take any case of our Lord’s suffering; take the supreme case of His suffering the death of shame;—you will always find this to be true: He never suffered for a fault; His suffering could never be thought of as punishment for wrong-doing.” See what sympathy with Jesus the poor slaves would feel, when it was thus brought right home to them that their Divine Lord also “suffered wrongfully”—suffered in innocence. Even we may find how wonderfully near that brings the Lord Jesus to us. For the thing that sometimes almost overwhelmingly oppresses us is the thought of how much we had, and have, to bear in life, which has no relation whatever to our own wrong-doing, or even to our mistakes or negligences, and over which we have had, and can have, no sort of control. Our Lord felt the same oppressive burden. “He did no sin, … yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him: He hath put Him to grief.” There is our example of suffering innocence. It may not have been straightforwardly presented to us, that suffering which is the proper recognition of wrong-doing and sin is not Christian suffering. It is the proper lot of moral beings—there is nothing distinctively Christian about it; and Christ offers us no example of bearing the punishment of sin in that sense. There is much good advice to be given to those who suffer for their wrong-doing. But Christ’s example cannot be offered to them for their inspiration, since it does not in any way concern them. Keeping loyalty and obedience; walking in righteousness; preserving the “vessel of your body in sanctification and honour”; meeting nobly all your earthly obligations, nevertheless, is the fact for you that life brings round to you sufferings and distresses? White-souled with Christ are you, and is it nevertheless the fact that, along with Christ, you are misunderstood, maligned, illtreated, persecuted, turned out, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”? Then the inspiring, comforting example of Christ is precisely for you.
II. The Christly example of suffering is the example of suffering patience.—“Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” It will at once be seen how precisely this example fits into the persuasion and argument which St. Peter addresses to the slaves. “For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” And concerning precisely this you have the helpful example of Christ. We are led in thought to the Palace of the High Priest; to the Prætorium; to Herod’s Judgment Hall; to thorn-crowned Calvary. There is scorn, accusation, smiting, mockery, howling, scourging, taunt, and cruelty; and all this strain made it a poor, exhausted victim that at last they hung mid earth and heaven, as if He were unfit for either. And no resistance was offered by Him, no reproach was made—“a silent Man amid His foes.” “Taken as a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep dumb before the shearers.” And there was the sublimest triumph—moral triumph—earth has ever witnessed. There is, for slaves, or for us, the entrancing example of suffering patience. It is Christian suffering when we suffer in innocency. It is yet more truly Christian suffering when, so suffering, we suffer silently, with the heroism of a patient endurance. Buffeted for nothing, as Christ was; taking it patiently, as Christ did;—this is acceptable with God. But could any’ example be presented to us that could be so searching and so humbling as this is? It reveals our supreme life-failures. Just what “we seem never able to do is to suffer innocently, and at the same time to suffer patiently. Oh how ready we are to proclaim our wrongs! Oh the bitter things we say of those who do us wrong! Oh the frettings and the chafings under the wrongs which seem to us so wholly undeserved! See once again how He stands, calm and silent, dressed in the mock royal robes. See how restrainedly He bears the cruel scourge. See how He submits when the nails are driven through the living flesh. He, with His holy example, shames us into the dust. We can scarcely dare to look upon His holy example and by it appraise our conduct “When He suffered He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously.” Christly suffering is suffering patiently. And that is something for us yet to win.
III. The Christly example of suffering is the example of suffering love.—This indeed explains how the patient bearing became possible. Christ was sustained by a cherished purpose—a purpose of love. He could so calmly endure, He could be so restrainedly patient, because His sufferings were vicarious. “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” He so endured in the inspiration of this most loving purpose, “that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.” All was borne so well in the persuasion of service to others. We have reached at once the point of the example, and the power of the example. That suffering was borne, not for sin; not as accident, or necessity; but in the purpose of redeeming love—love to us. “For love of us He bled, for love of us He died.’ Christly suffering, suffering after the pattern and example of Christ, is vicarious suffering; suffering, not because we ought; not because we must; but suffering endured because we want to serve—and he alone can serve and save his brother who can suffer for him. Let the slave suffer for the Master’s sake. Let us see that if we follow the example of Christ, we present an example to others for Christ; and our suffering may be our bearing of sins, that those whom we love may die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. We shall never suffer well, never suffer after the Christly example, until we rise into a vicariousness of suffering like our Lord’s. When we take up somebody’s burden on our own hearts we can go on to our cross as calmly, as sweetly, as patiently, as Jesus went on to His. Look once again at what alone is Christian suffering—suffering after the example of Christ’s sufferings. You have much to suffer as a consequence and penalty of your sin. Christ never bore any such suffering, for He “did no sin.” You have much suffering to bear from circumstances altogether beyond your control—hereditary disabilities, natural calamities, social distresses, insidious diseases; and in all that natural sphere of suffering your Lord shared with you. But only because He shared with you in being a man. There is nothing specifically Christian in the suffering which belongs to the common human lot. But you have sufferings which come to you for somebody’s sake; which belong to your effort to serve others; which follow upon your whole-hearted purpose to serve Christ, in His purpose to save men. You suffer as mothers suffer for their children’s sake. You suffer as deliverers suffer who rescue the imperilled from flood and fire. You suffer by bearing somebody else’s woes upon your own mind and heart and life. You suffer in absolute loyalty of witness to Him who is for you the king of righteousness. You suffer as the martyr suffers rather than bring dishonour upon the “Name that is above every name.” Then you know what Christian suffering is. You know—and you may recall to mind what you know—that the Christly suffering is suffering innocence, and suffering patience, and suffering love. It is bearing somebody’s sin, or somebody’s woe, or somebody’s recovery, or somebody’s well-being, in your own body, on some tree of agony or shame. It is this: you suffer, because you want somebody to “die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Pe_2:19. Suffering.—St. Peter is writing here to one particular class of Christians—to household slaves. “Slaves,” he begins, “be subject to your masters.” As St. Peter thinks over his Jewish flock of converts, he remembers that multitudes of them are Christian slaves in Pagan households. He 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 understood.
2. The suffering must be for conscience toward God.—This is it which makes pair at once bearable and bracing, when the conscience of the sufferer can ask the perfect Moral Being to take note of it. Mere suffering, which a man dares not offer to God, though borne patiently 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 into moral victory. There are two questions raised by our text.
I. Why did not the apostles denounce slavery as an intolerable wrong?—By advising slaves to honour and obey their owners, they seem to sanction it indirectly. Nothing can well be more antipathetic than the spirit of the gospel and the spirit of slavery. The gospel proclaims the unity of the human race, and the equality of all its members before God. But the business of the apostles lay rather with the other world than with this—with this just so far as it bore upon the other. And the exact question for them to consider was whether slavery ruined the prospects of the human soul.
II. Does not the advice of me apostle to submit quietly to wrong destroy manliness and force of character if acted on?—Moral strength, when at its best, is generally passive and unobtrusive. No moral strength ever approached that which was displayed on Calvary, when all that was before Him was present from the first to the mind of the Divine Victim, “who when He was reviled, reviled not again.”
III. This truth, announced by St. Peter, is always applicable in every age and country.—Among ourselves there are many who endure grief for conscience toward God. It is no monopoly of any one class. Every rank in society has its petty tyrants. Law can do but little for these sufferers, but religion can do much, by pointing to the Crucified.—Canon Liddon.
1Pe_2:21. The Imitableness of Christ’s Character.—Christ came to give us a religion. By a wise and beautiful ordination of Providence, he was sent to show forth His religion in Himself. Christianity is not a mere code of laws, nor an abstract system such as theologians frame. It is a living, embodied religion. It comes to us in a human form; it offers itself to our eyes as well as ears; it breathes, it moves in our sight. It is more than precept; it is example and action. The importance of example, who does not understand? And it is impossible to place ourselves under any influence so quickening as the example of Jesus. This introduces us to the highest order of virtues. This is fitted to awaken the whole mind. Nothing has equal power to neutralise the coarse, selfish, and sensual influences amidst which we are plunged, to refine our conception of duty, and to reveal to us the perfection on which our hopes and most strenuous desires should habitually fasten. It is possible, however, so to present the greatness of Jesus as to place Him beyond the reach of our sympathy and imitation. This needs to be carefully dealt with.
1. Real greatness of character, greatness of the highest order, far from being repulsive and discouraging, is singularly accessible and imitable. Greatness of character is a communicable attribute; I should say, singularly communicable. It has nothing exclusive in its nature. I know not in history an individual so easily comprehended as Jesus Christ, for nothing is so intelligible as sincere, disinterested love. I know not any being who is so fitted to take hold on all orders of minds; and accordingly He drew after Him the unenlightened, the publican, and the sinner. It is a sad mistake, then, that Jesus Christ should be presented as too great to allow us to think of intimacy with Him, or to think of making Him our standard.
2. Though so far above us, as at once man, and other than man, Christ is still one of us, and is only an illustration of the capacities which we all possess. All minds are of one family. When we speak of higher orders of beings, of angels and archangels, we are apt to conceive of distinct kinds and races of beings, separated from us and from each other by impassable barriers. But it is not so. There is no such partition in the spiritual world as you see in the material. All minds are essentially of one origin, one nature, kindled from one Divine flame, and all are tending to one centre, one happiness. This truth mingles, unperceived, with all our worship of God, which uniformly takes for granted that He is a mind having thought, affection, and volition, like ourselves. It is also demonstrable from the consideration that Truth, the object and nutriment of mind, is one and immutable, so that the whole family of intelligent beings must have the same views, the same motives, and the same general ends. All souls are one in nature, approach one another, and have grounds and bonds of communion with one another. I am not only one of the human race; I am one of the great intellectual family of God. There is no spirit so exalted, with which I have not common thoughts and feelings. No greatness of a being separates me from him, or makes him unapproachable by me. Christ never holds Himself up as an inimitable and unapproachable being, but directly the reverse.
3. There is one attribute of mind that should particularly animate us to propose to ourselves a sublime standard, as sublime as Jesus Christ. It is the principle of growth in human nature. We were made to grow. Our faculties are germs, and given for expansion, to which nothing authorises us to set bounds. The soul bears the impress of illimitableness, in the thirst, the unquenchable thirst, which it brings with it into being, for a power, knowledge, happiness, which it never gains, and which always carry it forward into futurity. When I consider this principle or capacity of the human soul, I cannot restrain the hope which it awakens. I no longer see aught to prevent our becoming whatever was good and great in Jesus on earth.—W. E. Channing, D.D.
Of Patience.—In these words two things appear especially observable: a deity implied (the duty of patience), and a reason expressed, which enforceth the practice of that duty the example of Christ). We shall, using no more preface or circumstance, first briefly, in way of explication and direction, touch the duty itself, then more largely describe and urge the example. The word patience hath, in common usage, a double meaning, taken from the respect it hath unto two sorts of objects, somewhat different. As it respecteth provocations to anger and revenge by injuries or discourtesies, it signifieth a disposition of mind to bear them with charitable meekness; as it relateth to adversities and crosses disposed to us by providence, it importeth a pious undergoing and sustaining them. That both these kinds of patience may here be understood, we may, consulting and considering the context, easily discern: that which immediately precedeth “If when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable to God” relateth to good endurance of adversity; that which presently followeth “who when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered He threatened not” referreth to meek comporting with provocations: the text therefore, as it looketh backward, doth recommend the patience of adversities; as forward, the patience of contumelies. But seeing both these objects are reducible to one more general, comprising both—that is, things seeming evil to us, or offensive to our sense—we may so explicate the the duty of patience as to include them both. Patience, then, is that virtue which qualifieth us to bear all conditions and all events, by God’s disposal incident to us, with such apprehensions and persuasions of mind, such dispositions and affections of heart, such external deportments and practices of life, as God requireth and good reason directeth. Its nature will, I conceive, be understood best by considering the chief acts which it produceth, and wherein especially the practice thereof consisteth.
1. A thorough persuasion that nothing befals us by fate, or chance, or the mere agency of inferior causes; but that all proceeds from the dispensation, or with the allowance, of God: quotations on this point from holy writ.
2. A firm belief that all occurrences, however adverse and cross to our desires, are consistent with the justice, wisdom, and goodness of God; so that we cannot reasonably complain of them.
3. A full satisfaction of mind, that all, even the most bitter and sad accidents, do by God’s purpose tend and conduce to our good, according to those sacred aphorisms, “Happy is the man whom God correcteth,” etc.
4. An entire submission and resignation of our wills to the will of God, with a suppression of all rebellious sentiments against his providence.
5. Bearing adversities calmly, cheerfully, and courageously, so as not to be discomposed with anger or grief, not to be dejected or disheartened; but to resemble in our disposition of mind the primitive saints, who were as grieved, but always rejoicing, etc.
6. A hopeful confidence in God for the removal or alleviation of our afflictions, and for His gracious aid to support them well, agreeably to Scripture rules and precepts.
7. A willingness to continue, during God’s pleasure, in our afflicted state, without weariness or irksome longings for alteration, according to the wise man’s advice: My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, etc.
8. A lowly frame of mind, sensible of our unworthiness and manifold defects; deeply affected with reverence towards the awful majesty of God,” etc.
9. Restraining our tongues from all discontented complaints and murmurings, all profane and harsh expressions, importing displeasure or dissatisfaction in God’s dealings with us, or desperation and distrust in Him.
10. Blessing and praising God (that is, declaring our hearty satisfaction in God’s proceedings with us, acknowledging His wisdom, justice, and goodness therein, expressing a grateful sense thereof, as wholesome and beneficial to us), in conformity to Job, who, on the loss of all his comforts, did thus vent his mind: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
11. Particularly in regard to those, who, by injurious and offensive usage, do provoke us, patience importeth—
(1) That we be not hastily, over-easily, not immoderately, not pertinaciously incensed with anger toward them, according to those Divine precepts and aphorisms: “Be slow to wrath.” “Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools.” “Give place to wrath” (that is, remove it). “Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice.” “Cease from anger, let go displeasure, fret not thyself in anywise to do evil.”
(2) That we do not in our hearts harbour any ill will, or ill wishes, or ill designs toward them, but that we truly desire their good, and purpose to further it, as we shall have ability and occasion, according to that law (even charged on the Jews), “Thou shalt not bear any grudge against the children of thy people; but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;” and according to that noble command of our Saviour, “Love your enemies; pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.”
(3) That in effect we do not execute any revenge, or for requital do any mischief to them, either in word or deed; but for their reproaches exchange blessings (or good words and wishes), for their outrages repay benefits and good turns, according to those evangelical rules: “Do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you.” “Bless them that persecute you; bless and curse not.” “See that none render evil for evil.” “Be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing.” “If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink.” “Say not, I will do to him as he hath done to me; I will render to the man according to his work.” “Say thou not, I will recompense evil, but wait on the Lord, and He shall save thee.” In fine, patience doth include and produce a general meekness and kindness of affection, together with an enlarged sweetness and pleasantness in conversation and carriage toward all men; implying that how hard soever our case, how sorry or sad our condition is, we are not therefore angry with the world, because we do not thrive or flourish in it; that we are not dissatisfied or disgusted with the prosperous estate of other men; that we are not become sullen and froward toward any man, because his fortune excelleth ours, but that rather we do “rejoice with them that rejoice”; we do find complacence and delight in their good success; we borrow satisfaction and pleasure from their enjoyments.—Dr. Isaac Barrow.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2
1Pe_2:15. Silencing the Foolish.—To a young infidel who was scoffing at Christianity because of the misconduct of its professors, the late Dr. Mason once said, “Did you ever know an uproar to be made because an infidel went astray from the paths of morality?” The infidel admitted that he had not. “Then do you not see,” said Dr. Mason, “that by expecting professors of Christianity to be holy you admit it to be a holy religion, and thus pay it the highest compliment in your power?” The infidel, of course, had no reply to make.
1Pe_2:17. “Honour all Men. Love the Brotherhood.”—When we speak of the larger class, “Honour all men,” it is as if we should say “all waters,” comprehending those that are in the sea, in the earth, and in the air; the salt and the fresh, the pure and the impure; absolutely and universally, all waters. When we speak of the smaller class, “Love the brotherhood,” it is as if we should say “all the clouds.” These are waters, too; these waters were once lying in the sea, and lashing themselves into fury there, or seething, putrifying under the sun in hollows of the earth’s surface; but they have been sublimed thence, they are now in their resurrection state, and all their impurity has been left behind. They are waters still, as completely and perfectly as any that have been left below. But these waters float in the upper air, far above the defilements of the earth and the tumults of the sea. Although they remain essentially of the same nature with that which stagnates cm the earth, or rages in the ocean, they are sustained aloft by the soft, strong grasp of a secret, universal law. No hand is seen to hold them, yet they are held on high. As the clouds which soar in the sky to the universal mass of waters, so are the brotherhood of God’s regenerated children to the whole family of man. Of mankind these brothers are in origin and nature, but they have been drawn out and from the rest by an unseen, omnipotent law. Their nature is the same, and yet it is a new nature. They are men of flesh and blood, but they have been eleyated in stature and purified in character. They are nearer God in place, and liker God in character. They are washed, and justified, and sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Besides the command, “Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate,” which they have heard and obeyed, the promise has been fulfilled in them, “Ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”—Rev. William Arnot.
1Pe_2:21. In the Footsteps of Christ.—Many seem to think that to go to Jerusalem and tread literally upon the ground He trod is following the footsteps of Christ; as if one, when showed a tree bearing delicious and wholesome and nourishing fruit, should neglect the fruit and try to feed on the leaves or bark: or as if, when he had received a package of most valuable goods, he should lay them by and make no use of them, but wear with much pride the canvas wrapper in which they were packed up.—Archbishop Whately.
Footsteps as a Copy.—He left His footsteps as a copy, so the word in the original imports, to be followed by us. Every step of His is a letter of this copy, and particularly in this point of suffering He wrote us a pure and perfect copy of obedience, in clear and great letters, in His own blood. His whole life is our rule; not, indeed, His miraculous works—His footsteps walking on the sea, and such like—they are net for our following; but His obedience, holiness, meekness, and humility are our copy, which we should continually study.—Leighton,
Looking unto Jesus.—The soldier whose officer says not “Go on,” but “Come on,” has tenfold the spirit for entering the battle. The mowers who mow in line have much more heart during the burden and heat of the day when their scythes sweep through the grass, keeping time to the stroke of a fellow-workman in front. Even walking along the roads ourselves, we know that we can walk better and continue longer if we be following some one that is a little way ahead. We have One always to look to, and we can most go out of ourselves when we look at Him.
CHAPTER 3
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.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv19–20 this is thankworthy
this is thankworthy
Grace (imparted). 1Pe 3:7; Rom 6:1; 2Pe 3:18.
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v18 The submission of slaves:
The submission of slaves:
v. 18. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.
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v. 19. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.
v. 20. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.
Having shown the proper relation of the citizens to their government, the apostle here delineates the attitude which God, according to the Fourth Commandment, expects from slaves, the majority of the members in the Asiatic congregations apparently belonging to this class: Servants, be in subjection in all fear to your masters, not only to the good and lenient, but also to the perverse. The word used by the apostle, "domestics, family servants," is not SO harsh as the plain "slaves," and it intimates that in many cases the masters granted to their slaves privileges which made them almost members of the family. Such Christian servants were not to be influenced by a false idea of Christian liberty and refuse to do their work, but they were, in free obedience, to be in subjection, in submission to their masters, and with all fear at that, Eph 6:5. They should feel a fear or dread of doing anything which might be contrary to the will of their masters, rather show all care and diligence in performing the work of their calling. And this was to be the case not only when the masters were good, kind, gentle, lenient, but also when they were of a perverse, morose disposition, when they were hard to please, when they were tyrannical.
This latter demand, which properly distinguished the Christian slaves from the unbelievers, the apostle substantiates: For this is grace, if on account of conscience toward God one patiently bears afflictions, suffering unjustly. There is no special distinction or praise in doing one’s work cheerfully and conscientiously if the master or employer is uniformly kind and lenient. But that is grace, that is pleasing and acceptable to God, that is a mark of His favor in granting the ability, that is a fine, excellent work in which God delights, if a person in that station, that of a slave, a servant, bears the afflictions of in justice, abuse, with patient endurance, if he takes upon himself even the unjust treatment administered by the temper of the master The Christian will put aside all provocation and not permit anger to get the better of him under such adverse circumstances, simply because he is conscious of the fact that it is the Lord who sends or permits such tribulations to come upon him, and because his conscience tells him that he owes it to God, his heavenly Father, to show patient endurance under such circumstances.
That a Christian servant will in just this way give evidence of his Christianity the apostle shows in a question which he now proposes: For what praise is it if you sin and then endure a beating patiently? But if you do right and then endure suffering, this is grace before God. There is no special credit in enduring beating, stripes, punishment, with a great show of patience if such punishment was soundly deserved on account of some willful defection, some wrong-doing. It is different, however, if a servant does right, does his work faithfully in every respect, and then is obliged to suffer, receives beatings, even though he does what he knows to be right and good before God. To endure patiently in a case of this kind, that is pleasing and acceptable to God, that can be done only by a gracious dispensation of strength on His part, that is a fine, excellent work. Mark: Although these words are addressed primarily to Christian slaves, their admonitions may well be heeded by all employees and servants everywhere; for a Christian will be faithful in his work and ready to endure even injustice, knowing that the good pleasure of the Lord rests upon him.
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 On v18 General Information:
General Information:
Peter begins to speak specifically to people who are servants in people's houses.
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the good and gentle masters
Here the words "good" and "gentle" share similar meanings and emphasize that such masters treat their servants kindly. AT: "the very kind masters" (See: Doublet)
the malicious ones
"the cruel ones" or "the mean ones"
it is praiseworthy
"it is deserving of praise" or "it is pleasing to God"
endures pain ... because of his awareness of God
Possible meanings of the original passage are 1) that this person accepts suffering because he knows he is obeying God or 2) that this person is able to endure unjust punishment because he knows that God knows how he is suffering.
For how much credit is there ... while being punished?
Peter asks this question to emphasize that there is nothing praiseworthy about suffering for doing something wrong. AT: "For there is no credit ... while being punished." (See: Rhetorical Question)
while being punished
This can be stated in active form. AT: "while someone punishes you" (See: Active or Passive)
you suffer while being punished
This can be stated in active form. AT: "you suffer while someone punishes you" (See: Active or Passive)
translationWords
servant
subject
lord
endure
suffer
just
God
sin
punish
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v18 2:18-20 The slave was legally bound and could not…
2:18-20 The slave was legally bound and could not change his or her master, whereas the modern employee has the right to stop working for a cruel employer. Of course, some employees may not be able to change their situation, in which case Peter’s advice to slaves is very applicable to employees today.
2:18 Many slaves in the Roman Empire held responsible positions and had a decent income, but most were harshly treated and all were deprived of legal status and rights. • with all respect (literally with all fear): Peter might be calling on slaves to fear God (see 2:17; cp. 1:17) or the master’s punishment, but he often speaks this way about the respectful attitude Christians must have toward others (3:16).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.