But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “Don’t fear what they fear, neither be troubled.”
Parallel Translations
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But even if you should suffer for righteousness’ sake, you are blessed. “Don’t fear what they fear, neither be troubled.”
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Not withstondynge happy are ye yf ye suffre for rightewesnessis sake. Ye and feare not though they seme terrible vnto you nether be troubled:
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Notwithstanding blessed are ye, if ye suffer for righteousnes sake. Yea, feare not their feare, neither be troubled.
Cross-references (27)
Passages linked to 1 Peter 3:14 in the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge, ordered by reader-vote popularity; verse text shown in World English Bible.
- Matthew 10:28 Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
- 1 Peter 2:19-20 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.
- Matthew 5:10-12 Blessed are those who have been persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. “Blessed are you when people reproach you, persecute you, and say all kinds of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. For that is how they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
- Isaiah 41:10-14 Don’t you be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Yes, I will help you. Yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness. Behold, all those who are incensed against you will be disappointed and confounded. Those who strive with you will be like nothing, and shall perish. You will seek them, and won’t find them, even those who contend with you. Those who war against you will be as nothing, as a non-existent thing. For I, Yahweh your God, will hold your right hand, saying to you, ‘Don’t be afraid. I will help you.’ Don’t be afraid, you worm Jacob, and you men of Israel. I will help you,” says Yahweh. “Your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel.
- Isaiah 8:12-13 “Don’t say, ‘A conspiracy!’ concerning all about which this people say, ‘A conspiracy!’ neither fear their threats, nor be terrorized. Yahweh of Armies is who you must respect as holy. He is the one you must fear. He is the one you must dread.
- 2 Corinthians 12:10 Therefore I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, and in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then am I strong.
- 1 Peter 4:13-16 But because you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice, that at the revelation of his glory you also may rejoice with exceeding joy. 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 blasphemed, but on your part he is glorified. For let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evil doer, or a meddler in other men’s matters. But if one of you suffers for being a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God in this matter.
- Luke 6:22-23 Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude and mock you, and throw out your name as evil, for the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven, for their fathers did the same thing to the prophets.
- James 1:12 Blessed is a person who endures temptation, for when he has been approved, he will receive the crown of life, which the Lord promised to those who love him.
- Luke 12:4-5 “I tell you, my friends, don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you whom you should fear. Fear him who after he has killed, has power to cast into Gehenna. Yes, I tell you, fear him.
- Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, and whoever will lose his life for my sake will find it.
- John 14:1 “Don’t let your heart be troubled. Believe in God. Believe also in me.
- John 14:27 Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, I give to you. Don’t let your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful.
- Jeremiah 1:8 Don’t be afraid because of them, for I am with you to rescue you,” says Yahweh.
- Matthew 19:29 Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life.
- Mark 8:35 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever will lose his life for my sake and the sake of the Good News will save it.
- Mark 10:29 Jesus said, “Most certainly I tell you, there is no one who has left house, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or land, for my sake, and for the sake of the Good News,
- Isaiah 51:12 “I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you, that you are afraid of man who shall die, and of the son of man who will be made as grass?
- Jeremiah 15:15 Yahweh, you know. Remember me, visit me, and avenge me of my persecutors. You are patient, so don’t take me away. Know that for your sake I have suffered reproach.
- Matthew 10:18-22 Yes, and you will be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony to them and to the nations. But when they deliver you up, don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say. For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. “Brother will deliver up brother to death, and the father his child. Children will rise up against parents, and cause them to be put to death. You will be hated by all men for my name’s sake, but he who endures to the end will be saved.
- Matthew 10:31 Therefore don’t be afraid. You are of more value than many sparrows.
- Matthew 10:39 He who seeks his life will lose it; and he who loses his life for my sake will find it.
- Acts 18:9-10 The Lord said to Paul in the night by a vision, “Don’t be afraid, but speak and don’t be silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to harm you, for I have many people in this city.”
- 1 Peter 3:6 So Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, whose children you now are, if you do well, and are not put in fear by any terror.
- Acts 9:16 For I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake.”
- Philippians 1:29 Because it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer on his behalf,
- Ezekiel 3:9 I have made your forehead as a diamond, harder than flint. Don’t be afraid of them, neither be dismayed at their looks, though they are a rebellious house.”
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this verse (21 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain 14. Hence Peter adds, But if ye suffer for…
14. Hence Peter adds, But if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake The meaning is, that the faithful will do more towards obtaining a quiet life by kindness, than by violence and promptitude in taking revenge; but that when they neglect nothing to secure peace, were they to suffer, they are still blessed, because they suffer for the sake of righteousness. Indeed, this latter clause differs much from the judgment of our flesh; but Christ has not without reason thus declared; nor has Peter without reason repeated the sentence from his mouth; for God will at length come as a deliverer, and then openly will appear what now seems incredible, that is, that the miseries of the godly have been blessed when endured with patience.
To suffer for righteousness, means not only to submit to some loss or disadvantage in defending a good cause, but also to suffer unjustly, when any one is innocently in fear among men on account of the fear of God.
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Be not afraid of their terror He again points out the fountain and cause of impatience, that we are beyond due measure troubled, when the ungodly rise up against us. For such a dread either disheartens us, or degrades us, or kindles within us a desire for revenge. In the meantime, we do not acquiesce in the defense of God. Then the best remedy for checking the turbulent emotions of our minds will be, to conquer immoderate terrors by trusting in the aid of God.
But Peter no doubt meant to allude to a passage in the eighth chapter of Isaiah; [Isaiah 8:12-17;] for when the Jews against the prohibition of God sought to fortify themselves by the aid of the Gentile world, God warned his Prophet not to fear after their example. Peter at the same time seems to have turned “fear” into a different meaning; for it is taken passively by the Prophet, who accused the people of unbelief, because, at a time when they ought to have relied on the aid of God and to have boldly despised all dangers, they became so prostrate and broken down with fear, that they sent to all around them for unlawful help. But Peter takes fear in another sense, as meaning that terror which the ungodly are wont to fill us with by their violence and cruel threatenings. He then departs from the sense in which the word is taken by the Prophet; but in this there is nothing unreasonable; for his object was not to explain the words of the Prophet; he wished only to shew that, nothing is fitter to produce patience than what Isaiah prescribes, even to ascribe to God his honor by recumbing in full confidence on his power.
I do not, however, object, if any one prefers to render Peter’s words thus, Fear ye not their fear; as though he had said, “Be ye not afraid as the unbelieving, or the children of this world are wont to be, because they understand nothing of God’s providence.” But this, as I think, would be a forced explanation. There is, indeed, no need for us to toil much on this point, since Peter here did not intend to explain every word used by the Prophet, but only referred to this one thing, that the faithful will firmly stand, and can never be moved from a right course of duty by any dread or fear, if they will sanctify the Lord.
But this sanctification ought to be confined to the present case. For whence is it that we are overwhelmed with fear, and think ourselves lost, when danger is impending, except that we ascribe to mortal man more power to injure us than to God to save us? God promises that he will be the guardian of our salvation; the ungodly, on the other hand, attempt to subvert it. Unless God’s promise sustain us, do we not deal unjustly with him, and in a manner profane him? Then the Prophet teaches us that we ought to think honourably of the Lord of hosts; for how much soever the ungodly may contrive to destroy us, and whatever power they may possess, he alone is more than sufficiently powerful to secure our safety. Peter then adds, in your hearts. For if this conviction takes full possession of our minds, that the help promised by the Lord is sufficient for us, we shall be well fortified to repel all the fears of unbelief.
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 A most certain counsel in afflictions, be they never…
A most certain counsel in afflictions, be they never so terrible, to be of a constant mind, and to stand fast. But how shall we attain unto it? If we sanctify God in our minds and hearts, that is to say, if we rest upon him, as one that is Almighty, that loveth mankind, that is good and true indeed.
Be not dismayed as they are.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain 14 But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake,…
14 But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled;
Ver. 14. But and if ye suffer] q.d. Say you meet with such unreasonable men, made up of mere incongruities and absurdities, that will harm you for well doing, yet you shall be no losers, 2Th 3:3.
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 But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake; if…
But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake; if ye suffer unjustly, whether it be for the true profession of the gospel, or in the exercise of righteousness, being followers of that which is good, and walking in the practice of the duties before mentioned.
Happy are ye; both in the spiritual benefit you gain by sufferings, viz. your edification in faith, patience, humility, &c.; the glory which redounds to God, who supports you under and carries you through them; and the reward you yourselves expect after them, Mat 5:10, &c.
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And be not afraid of their terror; either be not afraid after the manner of carnal men, (as the prophet’s meaning is, Isa 8:12,13), or rather, (the apostle accommodating the words of the prophet to his present purpose), be not afraid of those formidable things wherewith they threaten you; or, be not afraid of themselves and their threatenings, whereby they would strike terror into you: and so here is a metonymy in the words; fear, the effect, being put for the cause; thus fear is taken, Psa 64:1; 91:5; Pro 1:26.
Neither be troubled; viz. inordinately, with such a fear as is contrary to faith, and hinders you from doing your duty, Joh 14:1.
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 As if the apostle had said, "Though following that…
As if the apostle had said, "Though following that which is good be, generally speaking, a sure and certain way to keep you from harm, yet should it so happen, that notwithstanding all your piety and prudence, you should suffer for well-doing, ye are happy and not miserable; therefore be not afraid of their terrors and threatenings, neither be ye troubled for what they can inflict upon you."
Note hence, 1. That to suffer affliction and persection for righteousness’ sake, doth not hinder, but further our happiness; If ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye, for so suffered your Saviour that went before you.
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Note, 2. That when God calls us forth to suffer for righteousness’ sake, we must fortify ourselves against all fear: no terrors must trouble us, no apprehended dangers or difficulties must dismay us: Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled.
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 But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake,.... For…
But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake,.... For the doctrine of justification by the righteousness of Christ, which was the great stumbling block to the Jews, and on account of which they persecuted the Christians; it being not after man, nor according to the carnal reason of men, and was contrary to the method they had fixed on, and what excluded boasting in them, and was thought to be a licentious doctrine; and for a righteous cause, for professing Christ and his Gospel; for vindicating both which, whoever did must expect to suffer persecution; and also for living soberly, righteously, and godly; for by a religious life and conversation the saints are separated from the world, and are distinguished from them, which in effect sets a mark of infamy and reproach upon them; and saints, by an agreeable life, reprove others, and condemn them; all which irritate and provoke them to hate and persecute them: now these words prevent an objection that might be made to what is before said; that none can, or will harm such as are followers of good; whereas it is a clear case, that saints for righteousness sake are hurt, and do suffer in their persons, characters, and estate; they are reproached and reviled, and often suffer confiscation of goods, imprisonment, and even death itself; to which the apostle answers, by granting it, and supposing that this should be the case, as it sometimes is; yet no hurt is done them, they are still happy persons: happy are ye; since suffering on such an account is a gift of God, even as believing in Christ itself is, and is a real honour done to a person, and to be so accounted; moreover, such generally enjoy much of the presence of God, and the comforts of his Spirit; the Spirit of God and of glory rests upon them; hereby the graces of the Spirit of God in them are exercised, tried, and proved, and shine out the brighter; the faith and hope of other Christians are strengthened, and God is glorified; and besides, the kingdom of heaven, the crown of life, and eternal glory, with which their sufferings are not to be compared, are theirs, and which they shall certainly enjoy: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; referring to a passage in Isa 8:12 and the meaning is either, be not afraid with the same sort of fear as wicked men are; with a worldly slavish fear of men, and of the loss of worldly things, and of life itself: or, afraid of them, as the Syriac version renders it; who inject fear into you; do not be afraid of their revilings and reproaches, of their threatenings and menaces, and even of death itself by them, which is the utmost they can do; do not be troubled at anything they say or do to you; since nothing can harm you, since God is on your side, Christ has delivered you from this present evil world, and saved you out of the hands of every enemy; and since the love of God, which casteth out fear, is shed abroad in your hearts, and you are encompassed with it, and nothing can separate you from it.
and the meaning is either, be not afraid with the same sort of fear as wicked men are; with a worldly slavish fear of men, and of the loss of worldly things, and of life itself: or, afraid of them, as the Syriac version renders it; who inject fear into you; do not be afraid of their revilings and reproaches, of their threatenings and menaces, and even of death itself by them, which is the utmost they can do; do not be troubled at anything they say or do to you; since nothing can harm you, since God is on your side, Christ has delivered you from this present evil world, and saved you out of the hands of every enemy; and since the love of God, which casteth out fear, is shed abroad in your hearts, and you are encompassed with it, and nothing can separate you from it.
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1 Peter 3:15
pe1 3:15
pe1 3:15
pe1 3:15But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts,.... Still referring to Isa 8:13 not by making him holy, which need not, nor cannot be, he being essentially, infinitely, and perfectly holy; but by declaring and proclaiming his holiness, as the seraphim in Isaiah's prophecy, and the four living creatures in the Revelation did; and by glorifying of him, praising and applauding all his perfections, and among the rest, this of his holiness, and giving thanks at the remembrance of it; which he has so much displayed in the works of creation, providence, redemption, and grace; hence the Arabic version renders it, bless the Lord God in your hearts: the Lord God is sanctified by his people externally, when they regard his commands, attend his ordinances, and call upon his name, and praise him; but here an internal sanctification of him, a sanctification of him in their hearts, is intended, and what is opposed to the fear of men, and unbelief, and lies in the exercise of the grace of fear upon him; see Isa 8:13 and which has for its object his goodness, and is a fruit of the covenant of his grace, and is a child like and godly fear; and in the exercise of faith upon him, upon his covenant and promises, his faithfulness, and power to help, assist, and preserve; whereby glory is given to him, a witness borne to his truth, and he is sanctified: some copies, as the Alexandrian, and one of Stephens's, read, sanctify the Lord Christ; and so read the Vulgate Latin and Syriac versions; and certain it is that he is intended in Isa 8:13 as appears from Pe1 3:14 compared with Rom 9:33.
and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear; by the hope that is in the saints, is not designed the grace of hope itself, which is given to them, and implanted in them in regeneration; the reason, ground, and foundation of which are, the love, grace, and mercy of God, through Christ, and his person, blood, righteousness, sacrifice, and redemption; but the Gospel, the whole Christian doctrine, the doctrine of faith, and which the Syriac version here calls the "hope of faith"; and the profession of Christianity, called in Heb 10:23, the profession of hope; in which persons profess their hope of eternal life and happiness through Christ, as doctrine of the Gospel directs them to. Now, a "reason" of this is to be given; not that they are to account for the Gospel, upon the foot of carnal reason; for that is not of men, nor according to the carnal reason of men; nor is it to be thought that every Christian should be capable of defending the Gospel, either in whole, or in part, by arguments and reasons, in a disputatious way, or to give a reason and argument for every particular truth; but that he should be well acquainted with the ground and foundation of the Christian religion; at least, with the first principles of the oracles of God, and be conversant with the Scriptures, and be able to point out that in them, which is the reason of his holding this and the other truth, though he is not able to give a gainsayer satisfaction, or to stop his mouth: and this is to be done with meekness and fear; with meekness, before men; in an humble modest way; not with an haughty air, and in a morose and surly manner, which serves only to irritate and provoke: and with fear; either of God, and so the Ethiopic Version renders it, with the fear of the Lord; considering the subject of the argument, and the importance of it, and how much the honour of God is concerned in it; and taking care lest the answer should be delivered in a light, trifling, and negligent manner, and that no part of truth be dropped or concealed, in order to please men, and be screened from their resentments; or with all due reverence of, and respect to men, to superiors, to the civil magistrates, who may ask the reason; for they are to be treated with honour and esteem, and to be answered in an handsome and becoming manner, suitable to the dignity of their persons and office; as the sanhedrim was by Stephen; and as Felix, Festus, and Agrippa, by the Apostle Paul: and this answer, or reason, is to be given to every man; that has authority to ask, and that asks in a modest manner, and with a reverence suitable to the subject; for the phrases, "with meekness and fear", may respect him that asks the reason, as well as him that gives the answer; for that which is holy is not to be given to dogs, to impudent persons, mockers and scoffers, nor are pearls to be cast before swine, filthy and irreverent persons; see Mat 7:6 the Alexandrian copy, and some others, and so the Vulgate Latin version, read, "but with meekness and fear"; for if it is not asked in such a way, there is no obligation to give an answer: and this is to be given "always"; whenever it is asked in such a manner, and by proper persons; when there is a necessity of it, and as opportunity offers: and saints should be always "ready to" give and therefore it becomes them daily and diligently to search the Scriptures, meditate on them, and get all the help and assistance they can, to lead them into an acquaintance with them, that they may be so; for though the apostles had extraordinary assistance promised them, and therefore were bid not to consider beforehand what they should say, when brought before kings and princes; yet this is not to be expected by ordinary persons, nor in ordinary cases. Agreeably to this is the advice of R. Eleazar (z),
"be diligent to learn the law, and know what thou shouldest answer to an Epicure,
or heretic: says R. Jochanan (a),
"in every place where the Sadducees object, their answer is at their side,
or ready; that is, in the same Scriptures on which they form their objections,
(z) Pirke Abot, c. 2. sect. 14. (a) T. Bab. Sanhedrin, fol. 38. 2.
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 But if ye should suffer - This is no…
But if ye should suffer - This is no harm to you, but a good. Fear ye not their fear - The very words of the Septuagint, Isaiah viii, 12, 13. Let not that fear be in you which the wicked feel.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain Verse 14. But and if ye suffer] God may…
Verse 14. But and if ye suffer] God may permit you to be tried and persecuted for righteousness' sake, but this cannot essentially harm you; he will press even this into your service, and make it work for your good.
Happy are ye] This seems to refer to Mt 5:10, c. Blessed or happy, are ye when men persecute you, c. It is a happiness to suffer for Christ and it is a happiness, because if a man were not holy and righteous the world would not persecute him, so he is happy in the very cause of his sufferings.
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Be not afraid of their terror] Τον δε φοβον αυτων μη φοβηθητε· Fear not their fear see Isa 8:12. Sometimes fear is put for the object of a man's religious worship; see Ge 31:42; Pr 1:26, and the place in Isaiah just quoted. The exhortation may mean, Fear not their gods, they can do you no hurt; and supposing that they curse you by them, yet be not troubled; "He who fears God need have no other fear."
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain 1Pe 3:14-16. But if you should suffer — If…
1Pe 3:14-16. But if you should suffer — If any should be so wicked as to endeavour to harm you when you are doing good; if your heathen rulers, or any others, should persecute you for righteousness’ sake; that is, upon the account of your religion, because you follow Christ, and believe and obey his gospel; this, properly speaking, will be no harm to you, but a good: yea, happy are you — In so suffering, in spite of all the malicious and outrageous efforts of your enemies; yea, your sufferings will be so far from lessening, that they will increase your happiness, and that in many respects. Be not afraid of their terror — Τον δε φοβον αυτων μη φοβηθητε, the very words of the Septuagint, Isa 8:12-13; Fear ye not their fear: the exhortation which Isaiah gave to the Jews when threatened with an invasion by the Assyrians. The words are a Hebraism; the meaning of which is, Be not affected with the fear which they endeavour to raise in you by their threatenings. Or, as some understand the expression, Let not that fear be in you which the wicked feel. But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts — Namely, by fearing him more than men, how many or powerful soever they may be; by believing all his promises; by trusting in his wisdom, power, and goodness; by acknowledging his justice in the punishments which he inflicts, and by patiently bearing all the trials he is pleased to appoint. By these dispositions, believers sanctify God in their hearts; they give him the glory of all his perfections. See on Isa 8:13. And be ready always — By a familiar acquaintance with the contents and evidences of your holy religion, and by that cheerfulness and presence of mind which arises from a consciousness of your practical regard to it; to give an answer to every man that asketh you — Either by virtue of his office, or for his own information; or when the defence of the truth requires it; a reason of the hope that is in you — Of eternal life; with meekness — For anger would hurt your cause, as well as your soul; and fear — A filial fear of offending God, and a jealous fear of yourselves, lest you should speak amiss. Having a good conscience — Keeping your consciences clear from guilt, that they may justify you when men accuse you; or conducting yourselves so that your consciences may not reproach you for dishonouring the gospel, by walking unsuitably to its holy precepts; that whereas, or wherein, they speak evil of you, as of evil-doers — And lay to your charge crimes of the most detestable nature; they may be put to shame, who falsely — Without any shadow of cause; accuse your good conversation — Your inoffensive, useful, and holy behaviour; in Christ — According to his doctrine and example.
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 But and if ye suffer for righteousness” sake -…
But and if ye suffer for righteousness” sake - Implying that though, in general, a holy character would constitute safety, yet that there was a possibility that they might suffer persecution. Compare the Mat 5:10 note; 2Ti 3:12 note.
Happy are ye - Perhaps alluding to what the Saviour says in Mat 5:10; “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness” sake.” On the meaning of the word happy or blessed, see the notes at Mat 5:3. The meaning here is, not that they would find positive enjoyment in persecution on account of righteousness, but that they were to regard it as a blessed condition; that is, as a condition that might be favorable to salvation; and they were not therefore, on the whole, to regard it as an evil.
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And be not afraid of their terror - Of anything which they can do to cause terror. There is evidently an allusion here to Isa 8:12-13; “Neither fear ye their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.” See the notes at that passage. Compare Isa 51:12; Mat 10:28. “Neither be troubled.” With apprehension of danger. Compare the notes at Joh 14:1. If we are true Christians, we have really no reason to be alarmed in view of anything that can happen to us. God is our protector, and he is abundantly able to vanquish all our foes; to uphold us in all our trials; to conduct us through the valley of death, and to bring us to heaven. “All things are yours; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come,” 1Co 3:21-22.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain But and if--"But if even." "The promises of this…
But and if--"But if even." "The promises of this life extend only so far as it is expedient for us that they should be fulfilled" [CALVIN]. So he proceeds to state the exceptions to the promise (Pe1 3:10), and how the truly wise will behave in such exceptional cases. "If ye should suffer"; if it should so happen; "suffer," a milder word than harm.
for righteousness--"not the suffering, but the cause for which one suffers, makes the martyr" [AUGUSTINE].
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happy--Not even can suffering take away your blessedness, but rather promotes it.
and--Greek, "but." Do not impair your blessing (Pe1 3:9) by fearing man's terror in your times of adversity. Literally, "Be not terrified with their terror," that is, with that which they try to strike into you, and which strikes themselves when in adversity. This verse and Pe1 3:15 is quoted from Isa 8:12-13. God alone is to be feared; he that fears God has none else to fear.
neither be troubled--the threat of the law, Lev 26:36; Deu 28:65-66; in contrast to which the Gospel gives the believer a heart assured of God's favor, and therefore unruffled, amidst all adversities. Not only be not afraid, but be not even agitated.
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 14. Suffer for righteousness’ sake—St. Peter drops the harm…
14. Suffer for righteousness’ sake—St. Peter drops the harm for the milder suffer, which, in the case supposed, is a blessing rather than an injury. The probable reference is to anticipated persecutions by authority of the magistrates. These were part of the inheritance on earth. Mar_10:30.
Happy—The Greek is the blessed of our Lord’s beatitudes, the eighth of which is clearly alluded to. Mat_5:10. In the dungeon and in the flame they would be happy, or, which is more and higher, blessed, in their innocence, in their Lord’s approval, and in the reward of eternal joy.
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Terror—Used objectively, and pointing to attempts by threats to frighten them into apostasy.
Neither be troubled—Be agitated by no fears or apprehensions.
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 14. But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake,…
14. But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye] Better, “But even if ye suffer, blessed are ye,” as reproducing more closely the beatitude of Mat_5:10.
be not afraid of their terror] The words are taken (as before, without any formula of citation) from the LXX. of Isa_8:12-13. “Terror” is here probably objective in its sense (as in Psa_91:5), and “their terror”=the terror which they, your enemies and persecutors, cause.
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 (14) But and if ye suffer.—The old-fashioned phrase would…
(14) But and if ye suffer.—The old-fashioned phrase would read more intelligibly thus: Nay, if ye should even suffer. So far are men’s attempts to “harm” us (by acts of malice to property or good name, &c.) from really injuring us, that even if it should come to be a matter of “suffering” we are to be congratulated. What he means by this “suffering,” which is so much more than being “harmed,” may be seen from 1Pe_2:21; 1Pe_3:17; 1Pe_4:1; 1Pe_4:15. He means the horrors of capital punishment. He does not speak of this as something that was already occurring, nor as though it were something immediately and certainly impending, but as a case well supposable. There had then as yet been no martyrdoms in Asia. The letter is therefore earlier in date than the Apocalypse (Rev_2:13). It is a noticeable point that in all St. Paul’s Epistles the word “to suffer” occurs but seven times, and nowhere twice in the same Epistle; whereas it comes twelve times in this one short Letter of St. Peter.
For righteousness’ sake.—Like the “suffering wrongfully” of 1Pe_2:19. It is not as suffering that it is valuable.
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Happy are ye.—Quite the right word: yet the use of it obscures the obvious reference to the Sermon on the Mount (Mat_5:10). The reference to it is all the clearer in the Greek from the significant way in which St. Peter leaves his sentence incomplete, merely giving the catchword of the beatitude. We might represent it to ourselves by putting “Blessed” in inverted commas, and a dash after it. He makes sure his readers will catch the allusion. There is no part of our Lord’s discourses which seems (from the traces in the earliest Christian literature) to have taken so rapid and firm a hold on the Christian conscience as the Sermon on the Mount.
Be not afraid of their terror.—Here the translators might with advantage have kept the same word, and said (as in the original passage from which St. Peter is quoting, Isa_8:12), Fear ye not their fear—i.e., the thing which makes them fear; do not regard with dread the same object as they do. In the original, the persons whose fears Isaiah and the faithful Jews are not to fear are those who were in dread of Syria and Israel. Here the persons are not named; but, of course, according to this interpretation, “they” cannot be the enemies who try to harm the Christians, but, if any one, those of the Christians who, for fear of man, were beginning to abandon Christianity. The intention, however, is not to press this clause for its own sake, but to throw greater force upon the clause which begins the next verse. It argues carelessness about the passage in Isaiah to interpret, “Be not afraid of the fear which your foes strike into you.”
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 But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake, happy…
But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake, happy are ye; better, but although ye should suffer. St. Peter knew that persecution was coming; he wished to prepare his readers for it. He recalls to their thoughts the eighth beatitude, almost reproducing the Lord"s words. (Mat_5:10) Such suffering (pascein, lenius verbum quam kakousqai," Bengel) would do them no real harm; nay, it would bring with it a true and deep blessing. "Righteousness" here seems synonymous with "that which is good" in the last verse. Christians had often to suffer, not only because of their confession of Christ, but because of the purity of their lives, which was a standing reproach to the heathen. Compare St. Augustine"s well-known saying, "Martyrem tacit non poena, sed causa." And be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. From Isa_8:12. The genitivemay be taken as objective: "Be not afraid of the terror which they cause;" or as subjective, "with the terror which they feel." The former view is more suitable here.
Vers. 14-17.
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Sufferers fortified.
There were providential reasons why the early Christians should have been exposed to many trials of faith, purity, and patience. This reason is obvious to us that thus opportunity was afforded for the administration of such fortifying and consolatory principles as are serviceable to the afflicted and the tempted in every age.
I THE TRIALS AND SUFFERINGS CHRISTIANS SHOULD EXPECT. These, of course, are many and various; but it is instructive to notice what those are which are here singled out and placed in prominence, doubtless by the wisdom of the inspired apostle.
1. Christians may expect to suffer for well-doing. That is, they will have to endure injustice from the world, which will not appreciate their character and their efforts for its good.
2. They may expect to be evil spoken of, as if evil-doers. That is, they will have to endure calumny from those who will take pleasure in detracting from their merits, magnifying their faults, misrepresenting their motives, and traducing their life.
II THE REFLECTIONS BY WHICH IN SUCH CASES CHRISTIANS MAY BE COMFORTED.
1. They should not forget that it is the will of God that his people should suffer, even wrongfully.
2. They should cherish the assurance that none can really harm them.
3. They should consider that their lot is compatible with happiness.
4. And they may even believe that some who have ill treated and slandered them may come to be ashamed of their sinful conduct.
III THE PRACTICAL PRINCIPLES BY WHICH CHRISTIANS MAY IN SUCH CASES FORTIFY THEMSELVES.
1. Let them sanctify in their hearts Christ as Lord.
2. Let them be prepared with a reasonable account of their hope, the hope which sustains and cheers the afflicted follower of Christ.
3. Let them discard all fear of their sinful adversaries, and confront them with boldness and cheerfulness. J.R.T.
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 But if ye suffer for righteousness sake.
1Pe_3:14-17
But if ye suffer for righteousness sake.
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The sufferings of Christians
I. Why Christians must expect to meet with persecution or suffering in the world.
II. Real Christians are happy even in the midst of their present sufferings. This will appear, if we consider the object, the nature, and the foundation of the Christians happiness.
1. His happiness is placed beyond the reach of accident, and the fear of change: a God reconciled through Jesus Christ is the supreme object of his happiness and desire.
2. As the object, so is also the nature of the Christians happiness, such as to justify the assertion that he is happy in the midst of external sufferings. Did the ultimate happiness or salvation of believers depend on any temporary frame or feeling, many of the most eminent saints might often be pronounced miserable. No! the Christians happiness is founded on the eternal purposes and love of God; and this constitutes at once its security and perfection. (Thomas Ross, LL. D.)
Suffering for righteousness
I. Suffering is supposed, notwithstanding righteousness, yea, for righteousness; and that, not as a rare accident, but as the frequent lot of Christians. Think not that any prudence will lead you by all oppositions and malice of an ungodly world. Many winter blasts will meet you in the most inoffensive way of religion, if you keep straight to it. Look about you, and see if there be any state of man or course of life exempted from troubles. The greatest are usually subject to the greatest vexations, as the largest bodies have the largest shadows attending them. Take what way you will, there is no place or condition so fenced but public calamities or personal griefs find a way to reach us. Seeing then we must suffer whatever Course we take, to suffer for righteousness is far the best. What Julius Caesar said ill of doing ill, we may well say of suffering ill, If it must be, it is best to be for a kingdom. But I shall prosecute this suffering for righteousness only with relation to the apostles present reasoning. His conclusion he establishes.
1. From the favour or protection of God. The eyes of the Lord being over the righteous for their good, and His ear open to their prayer.
2. For the other argument, that the following of good would preserve them from harm, it speaks truly the nature of the thing, what it is apt to do, and what, in some measure, it often doth; but considering the nature of the world, its enmity against God and religion, it is not strange that it often proves otherwise. But if thou knowest who it is whom thou hast trusted, and whom thou lovest, this is a small matter. What though it were deeper and sharper sufferings, yet still, if ye suffer for righteousness, happy are ye.
II. That a Christian under the heaviest load of sufferings for righteousness is yet happy, and that he is happier even by those sufferings.
1. All the sufferings of this world are not able to destroy the happiness of a Christian, nor to diminish it; yea, they cannot at all touch it; it is out of their reach. If all friends be shut out, yet the visits of the Comforter may be frequent, bringing glad tidings from heaven, and communing with him of the love of Christ and solacing him with that. Banishment he fears not, for his country is above; nor death, for that sends him home into that country.
2. But if in other sufferings, even the worst, the believer is still a happy man, then more especially in those that are of the best kind, sufferings for righteousness. Not only do they not detract from his happiness, but they give accession to it; he is happy even by suffering.
(1) It is the happiness of a Christian, until he attain perfection, to be advancing towards it; to be daily refining from sin, and growing richer and stronger in the graces that make up a Christian, a new creature; to attain a higher degree of patience, and meekness, and humility; to have the heart more weaned from the earth and fixed on heaven. Now as other afflictions of the saints do help them in these things, their sufferings for righteousness, the unrighteous and injurious dealings of the world with them, have a particular fitness for this purpose.
(2) Persecuted Christians are happy in their conformity with Christ, which is loves ambition. A believer would take it as an affront that the world should be kind to him, that was so cruel to his beloved Lord and Master.
(3) Suffering Christians are happy in the rich supplies of spiritual comfort and joy, which in times of suffering are usual; so that as their sufferings for Christ do abound, their consolations in Him abound much more.
(4) If those sufferings be so small that they are weighed down even by present comforts, and so the Christian is happy in them, how much more doth the weight of glory that follows surpass these sufferings! Now these sufferings are happy, because they are the way to this happiness and the pledges of it. (Abp. Leighton.)
The wrongful suffering of good men
I. The fact that good men often suffer for their goodness from their fellow men. Peter uses the phrase but and if, not because the suffering he describes is infrequent, but because it may not be absolutely universal, and because the reflections on which he is dwelling might seem to have made such suffering impossible For-
(1) It might seem as though the promised guardianship of God would have ensured security to good men. But, no. Or
(2) It might seem that an upright, benevolent life would have won the gratitude and kindness of ones fellows. But, no. If you would follow the Church in her history, it will be by the track of her blood; if you would see her, it is by the light of the fires in which her martyrs have been burned.
II. The inspired direction for men in such wrongful suffering.
1. Fearlessness.
2. Consecration to Christ.
3. Intelligent conviction.
4. Conscientiousness.
5. True triumph.
All may not be able to wield the sharp sword of argument, but all can wear the silver shield of innocent lives.
III. The lofty privilege of those who suffer for righteousness sake.
1. They are blessed.
2. Their suffering is better than that of those who suffer for wrong doing.
3. Their suffering brings them into intimate fellowship with the Man of Sorrows.
IV. The impossibility of men who in this spirit suffer wrongfully being really injured. To all wrongful treatment by the mean, envious, or malicious, the true Christian can say, You may embarrass my circumstances, undermine my health, filch my reputation, shorten my mortal life, but you cannot harm me. (U. R. Thomas.)
The causes of the worlds hatred of Christians
They are many and obvious.
1. For instance: The man of God should be an embodied conscience. The one endeavour of ungodly men is to drown the remonstrances of conscience. For this they plunge into gaiety, or business, or exploration; for this they hurry from scene to scene; for this they studiously avoid all that savours of God or His claims. But in a holy life they meet with a devout and constant recognition of those claims, coupled with a faithful endeavour to fulfil them. There is an embodiment of righteousness without them, which arouses into instant and unwelcome activity those convictions of their duty which they have done their best to quell.
2. The pride of heart which resents superiority in another. The envy which grudges the influence that goodness always attracts. The malice which broods over the contrast that purity presents to impurity, until the fact of its doing so bulks as a positive injury. All these strong passions of the unrenewed heart, like Pilate and Herod of old, become friends in their common antagonism to the saintliness which intrudes upon their privacy and menaces their peace.
3. Besides, there is always an aggressiveness in true Christianity which arouses strong resistance. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Happy are ye.
The blessedness of those who suffer for righteousness
I. The patient suffering for righteousness sake is the giving obedience to one of the commandments of Jesus Christ, and that upon the doing thereof depends the truth of their Christianity in this life, and their salvation in the next (Mat_10:37-38; Mat_16:21-25; Mar_8:31-38).
II. The cheerful endurance of those evils which befall the Christian in professing the truths of God and obeying His commandments, is an instance of the most heroic virtue, and a happy proof of the sincerity of his piety and faith. It is the most glorious victory over ourselves, our own passions and fears, and that natural inclination which prompts us to secure our life and the conveniences thereof.
III. The Christians being engaged in the state of persecution, and his valiant endurance of the same, is a happy indication of Gods special favour to him, and esteem of his fortitude and uprightness (Act_9:15-16; 1Pe_4:16; Php_1:28-29; Act_5:40-41).
IV. As God lovingly calls true Christians to the honour of suffering for His name, so he graciously reckons himself to be honoured by their religious courage and fidelity in the doing thereof (Joh_21:18-19; 1Pe_4:14).
V. The constant integrity of the good man, under all his sufferings for righteousness, creates in him that inward pleasure and peace of mind which is the constant and genuine effect of holiness and virtue, and of the souls being conscious to itself of its own innocence. And it likewise obtains for him these supernatural joys and assistances, which in the hour of temptation flow in from the Holy Ghost (2Co_1:3-5; 2Co_12:9-10; 1Pe_4:14).
VI. That which is a very considerable proof of the blessedness of those who endure in the spirit of patience and penitence, those sufferings which meet them in the way of their duty; they powerfully contribute to purify their souls from remaining corruption, and to perfect them into the highest degrees of holiness (Isa_27:9; Heb_12:10-11; 2Co_4:16).
VII. That which, without the possibility of a reasonable contradiction, clears and completes the evidence for the truth of the happiness of these pious ones, who suffer for righteousness sake, is: that they are secured of the blessedness of heaven, that though it be future, yet with respect to it St. Peter might very well say in the present tense, Ye are happy (Mat_5:10; Mat_19:29; Jam_1:12). Conclusion:
1. From the truth of the fore-said doctrine, viz., the happiness of those who suffer for righteousness sake, we see the lamentable ignorance and error of carnal and worldly minded men.
2. We learn from the evidence of this great truth, that it is our wisdom, as well as duty, to adhere unto righteousness and truth, even in the time of the most terrible threatenings and persecution.
3. The suffering Christian is taught hereby, that instead of repining against the Divine Providence on account of his sufferings, he ought rather to magnify God, that He graciously affords him the blessed opportunity and means of knowing his own sincerity, of promoting the Divine glory, of partaking of unspeakable spiritual joys, and of being advanced to the most eminent holiness in this life, and happiness in the next.
4. Serious reflection on the felicity of those who suffer for righteousness sake would be very useful to mitigate the sorrow of those whose dearest friends may at any time be involved in persecution for their keeping the faith and a good conscience.
5. The belief of this truth should stifle our revenge against our most malicious persecutors; seeing we know that, however evil their intention may be, yet the persecution itself through Gods grace, turns about in the end to our inexpressible advantage.
6. It is comfortable to observe that the happiness asserted of the sufferers for righteousness is not restricted to any particular instance either of righteousness or suffering.
7. The happiness of those who suffer for righteousness sake affords a very powerful motive and encouragement to patience and constancy, in the time of the hottest persecution. (David Ranken.)
Be not afraid of their terror.-This is commonly explained as the terror which their menaces might excite; but considering the undoubted reference to Isa_8:12-13, it seems probable that St. Peter means such terror as dismays those who do not fear God supremely. (Canon F. C. Cook.)
Unnecessary terror
The earthworm meets threatened danger in a most unphilosophic way. Directly it feels a slight shock in the earth it will hasten to the surface, because it attributes that to the proximity of its enemy the mole. The knowledge that the worm can easily be panic stricken has been acquired by the lapwings (Vanellus)
, and these birds use it for their own advantage and the destruction of their victim. The lapwings settle down on fields recently ploughed, where they can find an ample supply of worms, and striking against the ground with their feet, induce the worms to come to the surface under fear that the shock is caused by the mole. As fast as the worms come in fear to the surface they are snapped up by the lapwings. Thus by endeavouring to escape an imaginary danger, the worm encounters a real one. There are many creatures, far higher in intelligence than the poor worm, who follow exactly the same panic-stricken policy in the supposed presence of danger. All weak natures, in fact, ale naturally impelled to adopt it. Hence amongst mankind, for want of self-control and discretion, half our miseries, and often our doom, may be traced to acts caused by the dread of a danger which has existed only in our fears. (Scientific Illustrations.)
Be not afraid of their terror
I. Christian courage in not being sinfully afraid of those evils which men may threaten us with, for righteousness sake, is a duty frequently recommended to us in scripture, and timidity or irregular fear forbidden (Isa_8:11-12; Mat_10:28; Luk_12:5; Php_1:27-28; Jer_1:5-7; Eze_2:6; Rev_2:10; Rev_21:7; Rev_12:8).
II. The being sinfully afraid of persecution, or the wrath of man, is extremely unworthy of a Christian.
1. A Christian is the sworn soldier of Jesus, and Jesus has expressly obliged him by an unalterable statute to take up his Cross and follow Him through the most terrible dangers and inconveniences.
2. The Christian professes to believe in an Almighty God, the best friend and sorest enemy; and in Jesus Christ who cheerfully suffered the greatest evils for his sake; and that there is an everlasting life both of happiness and misery, to be bestowed upon men, according to their final constancy or apostasy.
3. The Christian may continually look upon the glorious example of Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; and upon the great cloud of witnesses or martyrs, who feared not the wrath of man, nor loved their lives unto the death.
III. Holy fearlessness and magnanimity is, under God, a strong guard to the Christians uprightness and piety; whereas fearfulness and pusillanimity do woefully endanger and betray them (Dan_3:16-18; Act_20:24; Act_21:13; Pro_29:25; Joh_12:42).
IV. The enemies of the Church of God are so entirely subjected to His providence, and the Church, upon the other hand, is so watchfully regarded by the same providence, that the Churchs enemies cannot injure it without the divine permission, or extend their persecutions against the righteous beyond the limits which God has fixed (Psa_37:32-33; Joh_19:10-11; Joh_7:30; Luk_22:52-53).
V. The highest pitch to which the malice of the most implacable and powerful adversaries of truth and piety can arrive is, to molest and ruin the faithful professors and friends of the same, in their outward, bodily and transitory state (Mat_10:28; Luk_12:4). Conclusion:
1. That we may attain to Christian fortitude and intrepidity in the time of persecution, it will be necessary for us with a humble importunity to make our addresses to God, that He would be graciously pleased to endue us therewith (Col_1:11).
2. If we would not be afraid of men, let us use our utmost endeavours to get our hearts possessed with the awful and holy fear of God; and then we will find by happy experience that the latter fear drives away the former.
3. They whose hearts are inflamed with the love of God, are strongly fortified against the impressions of sinful fear and cowardice, when wrathful persecutors either threaten or attack them (Son_8:6-7).
4. The exercising a lively faith about the glory and happiness which is provided in the world to come for those righteous persons, who valiantly endure all these persecutions, would inspire the Christian with invincible fortitude, fill his soul with a noble contempt of mens terror, and carry him forward triumphantly in the way of his duty, notwithstanding the fiercest opposition of enraged and powerful men (Heb_11:1-40).
5. They who would not be sinfully afraid of human terror, who would not for the fear of it deny any known truth, or neglect any known duty: let them entertain just sentiments concerning the good and evil things of this present world, the advantages and disadvantages, the honour and dishonour, the pleasures and pains thereof; taking care that they do not overrate them, and that they do not place their happiness in the enjoyment of the former, nor their misery in suffering the latter.
6. It would be very useful to the Christian, for preserving him from cowardice, that he had continually before his eyes the most glorious example of Jesus Christ, the Captain of our salvation, and the heroic bravery and patience of the saints. For then he would be ashamed basely and sinfully to turn his back upon these dangers, which not only his Lord and General, but also his fellow soldiers did boldly encounter and overcome. (David Ranken.)
One fear drives out another
There seems here a reminiscence on Peters part of words heard long before: Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. How may we obtain this lion heart, which knows no fear in the presence of our foes? There is but one answer possible. Expel fear by fear. Drive out the fear of man by the fear of God. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts. How often we see fear expel fear. The fear of being burnt will nerve a woman to let herself down by a water pipe from the upper storeys of a house in flames. The fear of losing her young will inspire the timid bird to throw herself before the steps of man, attracting his notice from them to herself. The fear of the whip will expel the horses dread of the object at which it has taken fright. Oh for that Divine habit of soul which so conceives of the majesty, and power, and love of God, that it dares not sin against Him, but would rather brave a world in arms than bring a shadow over His face. So did not I, said a sincere and noble man, because of the fear of God. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Neither be troubled.-
Deliverance from trouble
1. The ordinary causes of astonishment and perplexity of spirit in the time of adversity are these-
(1) When the evil a person lies under was wholly unexpected.
(2) When a man in his calamity is quite forlorn and destitute, has no friend to condole his misery, nor to support him under it.
(3) When the evil is lasting and invincible, such as the miserable patient can reasonably propose to himself no deliverance from.
2. These grounds of perturbation are not to be found in those afflictions which the righteous meet with for righteousness sake.
(1) Persecution of one kind or other is what the true Christian may expect, and so forearm himself (Luk_9:2; Joh_15:20; Joh_16:20; Joh_16:33; Mar_10:29-30; Act_14:22; 2Ti_3:12).
(2) The righteous, in the extremest heat of persecution, are not entirely forsaken; but even then they have a great and faithful friend, viz., the Almighty God, who commiserates their distress, bears the heaviest end of the burden, and encourages them under all their troubles (Psa_91:15; Isa_43:2; Isa_49:13-16; 2Co_4:9; Heb_13:5).
(3) The calamity with which the righteous are afflicted for righteousness sake is not past hope and remedy. No; they are fully assured of deliverance from it, if not after the manner which they desire, yet in the way which is best for them (Psa_34:19; Psa_91:14-16; 2Ch_1:9-10; 2Ti_4:16-18).
I. God can deliver His Church and people while they are in the extremest dangers and difficulties (2Pe_2:9).
II. In such cases He hath very often delivered them.
1. Some of these deliverances were accomplished, not by prodigious and amazing strokes of Divine power in suspending or transcending the force and course of natural causes, but by gentle and ordinary means, gloriously conducted by the wise providence of God (Exo_2:1-25; 1Sa_23:1-29; Est_6:1-14).
2. Whereas it is said that we are no more to look for miracles, I answer that it is presumptuous to limit the Holy One of Israel, peremptorily to set bounds to the infinitely wise and powerful God where He has not expressly set them to Himself.
3. Let this matter be as it may, yet I hope it will be granted that God is still the God of salvation; that His hand is not shortened that it cannot save, etc.; that He even is the Lover and Protector of truth and righteousness and the Helper of the helpless; that He can abate the pride, assuage the malice, and confound the devices of the Churchs enemies; and, finally, that He can raise up deliverers to the persecuted when and where it was least expected.
III. There are the strongest reasons for their believing that at length God will deliver them one way or other.
1. He will deliver them by a temporal deliverance, if that be most agreeable to His wise counsels, to the methods of His providence in governing the world and His Church, and to their true and greatest welfare.
2. If He think it not proper to remove sufferings from them, He will remove them from suffering.
IV. By hearkening to this counsel of St. Peter the Christian will exceedingly consult the peace of his own mind.
1. Excessive and irregular sorrow is of itself a very great calamity; it enfeebles the soul; at once it increases a mans affliction and disables him from bearing the same (Pro_15:13; Pro_18:14).
2. As for anxiety of mind, it distracts and disquiets those who are under its dominion after a most miserable manner.
3. Who can express the misery of those who, in the time of persecution, give way to anger, revenge, impatience, and murmuring? By their blustering passions they raise a perpetual storm within, and are like the troubled sea which cannot rest.
4. Whereas, if they who are persecuted for righteousness sake do wisely follow this direction; if, instead of abandoning themselves to immoderate grief and to pernicious impatience, they maintain a holy cheerfulness of spirit, patience, and contentedness of mind, and cast all their care upon God; then they will find, to their unspeakable comfort, that the blessed fruits of this prudent and religious practice are these: a reviving and supporting cordial to their hearts; an admirable and sweet repose within, while there is nothing but storm without; and that vigour of soul which will enable them bravely to bear up under the heaviest load of adversity.
V. Special motives and considerations for which the Christian should avoid any of those particular inward troubles or disorders of mind to which he is liable in the state of persecution, if he be not upon his guard and continually supported by the grace of God.
1. Anxious and disquieting thoughtfulness and sorrow are very expressly forbidden the Christians (Mat_6:25, etc.; Joh_14:1; Joh_14:27; Joh_16:33; Php_4:6; 1Pe_5:7).
2. An undisturbed, well-grounded, and governed quietness and alacrity of spirit under sufferings is the highest pitch of faith, and a signal honour done to the attributes and promises of God. Whereas dejecting sorrow and anxious perplexity of mind is too great a proof of the want or weakness of faith, and a tacit reproach to God.
3. This holy cheerfulness and tranquillity of mind does exceedingly become the servants of God, especially in the time of persecution, and the opposite temper of irregular sorrow and anxiety is extremely unsuitable.
4. The Christian will entertain a horror at immoderate sorrow and anxiety of mind when he seriously considers the dreadful spiritual inconveniences and evils which may follow thereupon, if they be not prevented by the singular goodness of God.
(1) Excessive sorrow and anxiety are apt to create in those over whom they prevail an indisposition to the exercise of several graces and duties, the exercise whereof is nevertheless highly necessary in the conjuncture of persecution and distress, viz., faith and dependence on God, resignation, prayer, thanksgiving, etc.
(2) Though the persecuted and afflicted Christian has much need of Divine consolations from the Word of God and the immediate influences of His Spirit, yet excessive sorrow and anxiety do exceedingly stand in the way of his partaking of these consolations.
(3) Immoderate sorrow and anxiety expose those over whom they prevail to many other dangerous evils and inconveniences. These sinful infirmities incline men to be weary and faint under the cross, to be over-desirous of shaking it off, and to hearken to sinful overtures for that effect. (David Ranken.)
Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.-
God sanctified in the heart
Sanctifying the Lord God means, not making Him holy, for He is already most holy, but regarding Him as holy, treating Him, the idea of Him, and all that is His, sacredly, and in a manner different from that in which we regard all other things and ideas. Then, further, it means treating Him as thus holy, not only in our outward deeds or words, but in our secret hearts, where men do not see us nor know what passes in us. And we must remember, moreover, that when the Apostle says, Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, he does not only give us a negative rule, as though he said, Think of God no otherwise than reverently, but he gives us a plain affirmative one, Ever have the thought of Him before your pure minds, and take care that it be a holy, reverent, and most sacred thought. To sanctify the Lord God in our hearts, therefore, is to keep up by every means in our power a holy regard of Him. And again, sanctifying the Lord God in our hearts must surely, as a Christian precept, have a more specific meaning, for not only do we believe that the great God is, from the very force and meaning of His Being and omnipotency, present always and everywhere, but we believe that the Deity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are in some more signal and more mysterious way present and indwelling in the hearts of those who have been made children of God and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven. This sanctifying of the Lord God in our hearts forms, as it were, the real safeguard and sanctification of our imaginations. It will serve to keep holy much within us which is very apt to run wild. For consider what a large portion of our lives there is of which we take little or no account at all, which we think little of as it passes, nor remember when it is past. Consider, for instance, in any day for what a small proportion of the hours we can give an account or recall the true and real occupation of our imaginations and feelings. It is in this respect, then, that the sanctifying of the Lord God in our hearts becomes so signally important. This we may maintain always. In activity and repose, by night and by day, in all seasons and circumstances, the sacred thought of God before us, God with us, will abash every thought and feeling which is at variance with His will. Is it of fear of men and their ill-treatment of us? How can such fear remain or be effectual with us if we habitually remember who and what He is, who is all-powerful and all-present? Is it a thought of unholiness or impurity? How can it stand and not perish from our minds if they are accustomed by constant effort to represent to themselves hourly the sanctity of God, who dwelleth in them? Is it a thought of unkindness, ill-opinion, disrespect? How, again, can it live in a heart which is continually recalling itself to remember that the Lord God, who is infinitely great and infinitely good, dwells within it? Is it a feeling of vexation or impatience when things do not go exactly as we would have them, or when bodily pain or distress assails us? How soon will that heart check and calm its impatience, which is habitually taking pains to keep the sacred thought of God before it-God in His sanctity, His majesty, God who dwelleth in our hearts! (Bp. Moberly.)
God reverenced in the heart
I. Sanctify the Lord God. He is holy, the fountain of holiness. It is He alone who powerfully sanctifies us, and then, and not till then, we sanctify Him. We sanctify Him by acknowledging His greatness and power and goodness, and, which is here more particularly intended, we do this by a holy fear of Him and faith in Him.
II. In your hearts. We are to be sanctified in our words and actions, but primarily in our hearts, as the root and principle of the rest. He sanctifies His own people throughout, makes their language and their lives holy, but first and most of all their hearts. It fears, and loves, and trusts in Him, which properly the outward man cannot do, though it does follow and is acted on by these affections, and so shares in them according to its capacity.
III. This sanctifying of God in the heart composes the heart and frees it from fears.
1. The fear of God overtops and nullifies all lesser fears: the heart possessed with this fear hath no room for any other. It resolves the heart, in point of duty, that it must not offend God by any means; yea, rather to choose the universal and highest displeasure of the world forever than His smallest discountenance for a moment.
2. Faith in God clears the mind and dispels carnal fears. It is the most sure help. What time I am afraid, says David, I will trust in Thee. It resolves the mind concerning the event, and scatters the multitude of perplexing thoughts which arise about that: What shall become of this and that? What if such an enemy prevail? No matter, says faith, though all fail, I know of one thing that will not; I have a refuge which all the strength of nature and art cannot break in upon or demolish, a high defence, my Rock in whom I trust. (Abp. Leighton.)
Sanctifying the Lord in the heart
What is meant by sanctifying the Lord? The phrase occurs elsewhere (Isa_29:23; Lev_10:3; Num_20:12; Eze_36:23). They sanctify Him who give Him His due, who treat His claims as real and absolute, who look away from all other powers, from all imagined resources or grounds of confidence, to Him as the origin and centre of their existence.
1. St. Peter was thinking immediately of apprehended suffering, and this at the hands of men, unconsciously acting as the instruments of a Master who saw fit thus to prove the patience and fidelity of His servants. But a great deal of actual suffering, apprehended or really imminent, comes apart from such instrumentality, or, at any rate, is only indirectly connected with human wills. For instance, suppose we learn that a severe outbreak of disease, infectious and perilous to life, is among us. Should we be likely then to be scared by the terror of such a prospect? or should we have faith enough to sanctify in our hearts, as Sovereign and Lord of all things, the Redeemer who healed sickness in others and accepted crucifixion for Himself? Could we suppress unworthy agitations, adopt all reasonable precautions, and make daily acts of faith in the spirit of Psa_91:1; Psa_91:6? But again, we know that very often our fears enormously exaggerate real evils, and very often we are haunted by fears which are altogether imaginary. Why not simply take the Lord at His own word, and put aside faithless anxiety about the morrow?
2. Remember, further, that the drama of spiritual life and death can be performed on a humbler stage, under conditions devoid of any impressive brilliancy. A youth, let us say, goes out from some quiet country home into an area which presents new tests to his moral and religious fidelity; the scene may be a college or a workshop, a messroom or house of business-it matters not; suppose he falls in with a bad set; suppose he is mercilessly laughed at if found to persevere in religious habits; suppose that he is accused of self-righteousness, or even of self-interest; suppose that, whether in rough or in polished phrase, the creed of his boyhood is called an obsolete delusion, fit only for those who are content to be tutored by the clergy; is there nothing here like a fiery trial? How will he stand it? Will he begin the downward course by assuming a vice although he has it not, affecting an indifference to religion beyond what he really feels? Suppose that, on the contrary, he retains that holy fear of God, and perseveres in his duty, just as he did aforetime (Dan_6:10): what will be said of him above? That, young as he is, he is playing the man; that he is responding to grace, and witnessing a good confession; that he is sanctifying Christ in his heart as Lord.
3. And once more: when we are depressed and anxious as to the prospects of the Church and of the faith; when unbelief is increasingly aggressive, confident of speedy success; when prejudices against that truth of which the Church is the pillar and ground work reappear in all their old force, unallayed by explanations or by conferences; when large masses of European society seem possessed with a spirit of revolutionary lawlessness, which fears God as little as it regards man; then the problem appears too hard, the task too onerous, the promised success past hoping for. But the history of the Church may remind us that as we certainly are not better than our fathers, so we are not undergoing trials from which they were wholly exempt. But as they could and did fall back, so must we fall back on the invincible conviction that the cause is Gods after all. Let the Most High look to it. (W. Bright, D. D.)
Be ready always to give an answer.-
The true Christian apologist
Some thirty years after this letter was written to the Christians, amongst others, of Bithynia, another letter was written about them from the Roman governor of Bithynia to his imperial master at Rome. The answer to that letter is also preserved. The magistrate asks advice, and the emperor gives it, as to the treatment of these Christians. Such questions as these were presenting themselves: Is the name itself of Christian to be a crime apart from any proof of accompanying offences? Is recantation to be accepted in exemption from punishment? Hitherto his practice has been to give time to reply to the interrogation. He has brought out the images, the emperors image among them; and if the accused would repeat after him a form of adoration of the heathen gods, and if he would add execration upon the name of Jesus Christ, he has dismissed them; if not he has ordered them for execution. Trajan replies that he entirely approves the course adopted. No search had better be made for Christians; if accused and convicted they must still be allowed the alternative of recanting, but in default of thus purging their crime they must take the consequences. Anonymous informations, he adds, as it were in a postscript, are not to be attended to; they are a bad precedent and quite out of date. I make no apology for recalling these few well known particulars of a famous letter, as giving great reality to the position of Christians in the age and even in the very region in which St. Peter here writes. It is quite plain that the account which St. Peter speaks of as likely to be demanded of them is a judicial proceeding, and that the answer which he bids them to have ready is the plea of guilty or not guilty when they are asked-and know too well what it means-How say you, are you Christians or not Christians? There are persons in this London to whom the straightforward dealing, creditable to them on the whole, of Pliny and Trajan with those Christians of Bithynia would have presented an alternative of intolerable embarrassment. Such direct demands for a Yes or a No, to the inquiry, Christian or no Christian? are out of date; they would make no allowance for the intellectual difficulties of the nineteenth century; they are too rough and peremptory for us; we are balancing, we are waiting to settle a hundred things ere we get to this. Of course we do not worship images, of course we shall utter no anathema of Jesus Christ, but to go to the stake for Him, to be sent to Rome to be executed for Him-no, no. You must not suppose us indifferent to the difficulties of the age; you must not suppose anyone undervalues the difficulties of believing or exaggerates the satisfactoriness of the evidence. It is not so. But neither can we consent to throw back or to throw forward the whole question of Christian or not Christian, as though we might live and die without settling it for ourselves either way. Be very glad that we do not incur the sharper alternative of the great first struggle between Heathenism and Christianity, that we find ourselves in days of public toleration and mutual civility imposing no condition of faith or speech upon those who would buy or sell in the market place or eat and drink at the banquet tables of the world. We will look into this; and we are struck before all else with the title given to our Christian possession. The account demanded of one of those Christians of the first age in Bithynia was not of their opinions, not of their doctrines, not even of their beliefs, it was of their hope. St. Peter, wishing to animate these Bithynians into a readiness to make answer at the bar of some emperor or proconsul, I am a Christian, goes to the root of the matter by calling their Christianity a hope. He says to them in that word, Remember Jesus Christ brought life and immortality to light by His gospel. Keep Him and you have a sure, a blessed hope through Him who loved you; part with Him, and you are thrown back at the very best upon the one guess among many of a heathen philosophy. That hope which was the secret of courage in days when to be a Christian was to be in danger of being a criminal under a capital charge is no less the one thing needful when the answer must be given with no penal consequences in the counting houses and drawing rooms of Christendom. It is the hope which attracts; it is the hope which animates; it is the hope which convinces and which persuades. It may be doubted whether hope occupies quite the place it ought to have in the Christianity of this generation. We hear much of duty, much of effort, much of work, much of charity, and something of self-denial; but these things are often found in almost absolute isolation from peace and joy in the good hope through grace; much time is given to controversial or speculative theology, little to the actual anticipating and foretasting of the powers and glories of a world to come. And this silence springs from the secret or half-avowed thought, it is out of date; it was the privilege, or it was the fancy of days gone by. These things ought not so to be. If a man would settle it with himself quite in the early days of his believing that he means to look for the life of the world to come on the definite ground of the atonement and promise of his Master and only Saviour Jesus Christ, and if he would have out this treasure every morning, handling, admiring, cherishing it, so that it should never be out of his thought or out of his heart and soul, and so that he should positively intend to carry it with him to and through the grave and gate of death, then there would beam in his very countenance such a light of hope as would make young men and old take knowledge of him that he knew Jesus Christ and was on his way to Him; ready always, such would be the result, to make his defence to every one that put him on his trial concerning the hope that is in him. Oh! be able to tell these unsatisfied questioners that you have a hope-a hope that serves as your anchor, a hope that keeps you steady amidst the swelling and surging waves of circumstance; a hope that makes you happy; a hope that quickens and concentrates energy; a hope which enters within that veil, which hangs and must hang here between the visible and the invisible! Be able to say and to mean this, and then you will be Christian apologists in the best of senses, not excusing the inquirer, which would be a fatal indulgence, one iota of definiteness which we feel regarding the personality and regarding the inspiration of the Saviour, but making him feel that there is a ready access and a joyous welcome for him to enter with boldness into the holiest by the blood of Jesus Christ. We end with the two words with which St. Peter ends this verse. Ready, he says, to defend your hope with meekness, to defend your hope with fear. Oh! what mischief has arisen to the acceptance of the gospel, and so to the salvation of souls, by the neglect of these two rules on the part of Christian apologists! Make answer, but let it be for a hope which is first in you, and let it be also with the meekness of one who knows himself dust and ashes, and with the reverence of one who feels God near, and sees in the man opposite to him a soul for which Christ died. (Dean Vaughan.)
A reason of the hope that is in you.-
The nature and reason of the Christians hope
I. What is the Christians hope? Hope is the desire of some attainment, attended with expectation or conviction that the object of desire is attainable. It is, therefore, an operation of the mind, which involves the action of reason and judgment. It is a mental state in contrast to despair, where all expectation of success is extinguished. But the Christians hope is distinguished from all other by its object and end. The object of the Christians hope is heaven, as a state of holiness and communion with God.
II. What is the reason of the Christians hope?
1. He has felt himself to be a lost sinner. Christ came to seek and to save them that were lost. Not against their will, but by their own consent. Therefore we see that provision is made for enlightening the mind, so that it may be led to an intelligent choice.
2. He feels that he has fled to Christ for salvation. He is a Saviour, and is embraced and loved and honoured as such.
3. The true Christian finds a third reason to encourage a hope that he is personally interested in the gospel plan of salvation, in the effects of this faith on his life. (R. H. Bailey.)
The true Christian defence
I. The need of a defence or apology. Religion is always the thing in the world that hath the greatest calumnies cast upon it, and this engages those who love it to endeavour to clear it of them. This they do chiefly by the course of their lives; yet sometimes it is expedient, yea, necessary, to add verbal defences, and to vindicate not so much themselves as their Lord and His truth, as suffering in the reproaches cast upon them. Christian prudence goes a great way in the regulating of this; for holy things are not to be cast to dogs. But we are to answer every one that asks a reason or an account, which supposes something receptive of it. We ought to judge ourselves engaged to give it, be it an enemy, if he will hear; if it gain him not, it may in part convince and cool him; much more should he be one who ingenuously inquires for satisfaction, and possibly inclines to receive the truth, but is prejudiced against it by false misrepresentations of it.
II. All that we have to give account of is comprised here under this-the hope that is in you. Many rich and excellent things do the saints receive, even in their despised condition here; but their hope is rather mentioned as the subject they may speak and give account of with most advantage, both because all they receive at present is but as nothing compared to what they hope for, and because, such as it is, it cannot be made known at all to a natural man, being so clouded with their afflictions and sorrows. And, indeed, this hope carries its own apology in it, both for itself and for religion. What can more pertinently answer all exceptions against the way of godliness than this, to represent what hopes the saints have who walk in that way? If you ask, Whither tends all this your preciseness and singularity? Why cannot you live as your neighbours and the rest of the world about you? Truly, the reason is this-we have somewhat farther to look to than our present condition, and somewhat far more considerable than anything here; we have a hope of blessedness after time, a hope to dwell in the presence of God, where our Lord Christ is gone before us; and we know that as many as have this hope must purify themselves even as He is pure. The city we tend to is holy, and no unclean thing shall enter into it. The hopes we have cannot subsist in the way of the ungodly world; they cannot breathe in that air, but are choked and stifled with it; and therefore we must take another way, unless we will forego our hopes and ruin ourselves for the sake of company.
III. The manner of this. It is to be done with meekness and fear; meekness towards men and reverential fear towards God. With meekness. A Christian is not to be blustering and flying out into invectives because he hath the better of it against any man that questions him touching this hope; as some think themselves certainly authorised to rough speech, because they plead for truth and are on its side. On the contrary, so much the rather study meekness for the glory and advantage of the truth. And fear. Divine things are never to be spoken of in a light way, but with a reverent grave temper of spirit; and for this reason some choice is to be made both of time and persons. The soul that hath the deepest sense of spiritual things and the truest knowledge of God is most afraid to miscarry in speaking of Him, most tender and wary how to acquit itself when engaged to speak of and for God.
IV. The faculty for this apology. Be ready. In this are implied knowledge and affection and courage. As for knowledge, it is not required of every Christian to be able to prosecute subtilties and encounter the sophistry of adversaries, especially in obscure points; but all are bound to know so much as to be able to aver that hope that is in them, the main doctrine of grace and salvation, wherein the most of men are lamentably ignorant. Affection sets all on work; whatsoever faculty the mind hath it will not suffer it to be useless, and it hardens it against hazards in defence of the truth. But the only way so to know and love the truth and to have courage to avow it, is to have the Lord sanctified in the heart. Men may dispute stoutly against errors, and yet be strangers to God and this hope. But surely it is the liveliest defence, and that which alone returns comfort within, which arises from the peculiar interest of the soul in God, and in those truths and that hope which are questioned: it is then like pleading for the nearest friend, and for a mans own rights and inheritance. This will animate and give edge to it, when you apologise, not for a hope you have heard or read of barely, but for a hope within you; not merely a hope in believers in general, but in you, by a particular sense of that hope within. (Abp. Leighton.)
A reasonable hope
There is a play upon the words in the original which it is difficult to transfer into English. Be always ready to give a justification to those who ask you to justify the hope that is in you, or, to show a reasonableness of the hope that is in you to those that ask you a reason for it. The Bible is a book of hope. The gospel is a glad tidings of hope. The religion of Jesus Christ is preeminently a religion of hopefulness; it differs in this respect from other religions. Now and then a glimmer of light shines from ancient philosophy, as in the writings of Socrates; but, for the most part, the religions of paganism, though they may be religions of reverence and of duty and of fidelity and of conscience, are not religions of faith or of hope. Now, the message of Christ enters into the world bright with hope. It comes to men as a ship comes to shipwrecked mariners on a desert island; it comes as the bugle blast comes to men starving in a beleagured city; it comes with the same note of rescue in it that the besieged at Lucknow heard in the Scotch pibrochs sounding across the plains. Now, Peter, recognising that the Christian religion is a hopeful religion, and that the Christians are to walk through life with the brightness of hope shining in their faces-Peter says: You must have a reason for this hope; it must not rest merely in your temperament. You must have a reasonable ground for your hope; and when men who have not a hopeful temperament, and men who have a wider view of life than you have, and see the evils that infest society and life-when they come to you with their dark vision, and their dejected spirit, it is not enough for you to say, I am hopeful; it is not enough for you to say, Look on the bright side of things; you must be prepared to tell them what reason you have for hope, what is the ground of your hopefulness. Let us see what are the grounds for our hopeful ness for ourselves, our families, or nation, and the world. In the first place, then, we believe in God. We believe that He knew what He was about when He made the world; and that He made the world and made the human race because the product of that making was going to be a larger life, a nobler life, and therefore a more blessed and a more happy life; that in the very beginning, when He sowed the seeds, He knew what kind of harvest was going to grow out of it, and He was not one that sowed the seed of tares, but one who knew that the wheat would over balance the tares in the last great harvest. We believe that He is a God of hope. He understands life better than we do; He understands the tendencies that are at work in society and government better than we do. With all that understanding, with the clear vision of the dark side of things as well as the bright side of things, He has an invincible hope for the future, and we borrow our hope from His hopefulness, and, because of His hope, we, in our ignorance, hope also. He has given definiteness to this hope. He has put before us unmistakably in human history not only what He hopes, not only what He desires, but what He expects, and what He means the human race to be. We look upon humanity and we say, What is man? And we go down to the savage, and look at him: No, he is not man. And we go to the prison house: No, these are not men; they are the beginnings of men, they are men in the making, but they are not men. We look out upon society, with its frivolity and its fashion and its pride and its vanity and we say, No, this is not yet man. We look out into the industrial organisation, and see men hard at work for themselves and for one another, and we say, This is not our ideal of man. We go into statecraft, but we do not find our ideal of man in the politician and statesman. We look along the paths of history; it is not to be found in the general or the monarch. It is not even in the father and the mother, though we come nearer to it then. And finally we come to the New Testament, we come to the life of Christ, and we say, This Jesus of Nazareth was above all others the Son of Man. He stands as the ideal of humanity. He is the pattern and the type of what God means man shall be. And then we hear the voice of God saying, You also are to become as He was, sons of God; and from all the radiance of Christs face, and from all the glory of Christs character, we borrow inspiration and hopefulness, because this is what God hopes we shall become. Moreover, we see-dimly, it is true, and imperfectly, but we see-by faith, more and more, God entering into human life; we see Him moving upon human souls, and we see Him shaping them according to His ideal and according to His purpose. We look on human life, with its carnage, with its wrestling, with its battle, with its selfishness, with its corruption-ay, with its grave and its decay; we see civilisations perishing and literatures perishing, we see nations buried deep, and yet we say: This is but the carboniferous period; this is but the movement of the chaos; there is a God that is brooding on this chaos; there is a law in all this antagonism and battle of life; God is in human history, as God is in human hearts and lives; God is bringing order out of the chaos, and a new-created world will spring up at His command. Oh, our hope is not in princes or potentates, or leaders or politicians-it is in a God that is at work in humanity! Churches, creeds, nations may disappear, but human character will grow and grow, because God is begetting men and working out His own conception of manhood, because all these things are the instruments through which He is accomplishing a definite creation-not moulding men from without, but entering into men and fashioning them from within. And so we believe God is not only using all these outward instruments environing man, but He is entering into him and lifting him up, as the mother lifts the child, little by little. But this, you say, is hope for the world at large. How about myself personally? How about my little life? How about my baby and my cradle? I do not care so much about the universe, as I do about my cradle and my baby. There are no large things with God, and there are no little things with God. There are no large things in life, and there are no little things in life. It is a small rudder that directs the course of the ship. And we believe in a God that is not merely brooding over the whole globe, but that is determining the fall of every leaf and the shaping of every limb; in a God that not merely deals with nations in the mass, but that broods and watches above every cradle and every soul. Some one of you will say, How can you believe this? Looking out into life, and seeing what it is, can you escape the conclusion that many things are going wrong, and much is running to evil? Ah! I do not think you see what life is. You are just in one room of the great school; you are just watching one episode of the great drama. Can you tell me what are the resources of the Infinite Mercy? (Lyman Abbott, D. D.)
The Christians duty, to know the principles and reasons of his holy faith, and to own and adhere to them in the time of persecution
I. It is the duty of every Christian to use his most serious endeavours that he may understand the reasons and grounds of the Christian faith.
1. Scripture enjoins the exercise of our reason and judgment about religion (1Co_14:20; Col_1:16; Heb_6:11-12; Joh_5:31-40; 1Co_10:15; Act_17:11).
2. The sincere and humble performing of this duty would contribute very much to render our religion and the acts thereof acceptable to God; as being thereby more suitable both to His nature and ours, more fit for us to offer, and for Hint to receive (Mar_12:33; Deu_15:21; Joh_4:22-24).
3. That which should very much excite the Christians endeavours, to understand the principles and reasons of his holy religion is that his being ignorant of them would be a most shameful and ignominious thing. How extremely reproachful is it that men whom God hath adorned with judgment for the direction of their actions should be stupid children, or very brutes in their religion!
4. This ignorance is also extremely dangerous to the Christian, because it exposes him to all the attempts of the enemies of the truth, and makes him a cheap and easy conquest to persecutors and impostors.
5. The duty of inquiring into the reason of religion is particularly incumbent upon those who disclaim an infallible judge of controversies upon earth, and reckon it to be a Christian privilege and right to receive no articles of faith upon the sole credit of human authority.
6. The woeful divisions of Christendom in matters of religion, the high pretensions of each party to the truth, and our being surrounded not only with heresy and schism, but also with downright infidelity, do loudly call us to a most impartial inquiry into the grounds and principles of faith, that so we ourselves may be well instructed and confirmed therein, and be likewise ready to give an answer to those who ask us a reason of the hope that is in us.
7. Consider the most effectual methods for attaining the knowledge of the grounds and reasons of our holy religion, and our ability to vindicate and explain them to others as we shall have occasion.
(1) We must in all humility by frequent and importunate prayer apply ourselves unto God the Father of lights, the great Author of wisdom and knowledge (Eph_1:17-18; Jam_1:5; Col_1:9).
(2) We must make the Scriptures our continual and serious study (2Ti_3:15; 2Ti_3:17).
(3) We must exercise ourselves unto godliness (Psa_25:12-14; Psa_119:100; Pro_2:7; Pro_3:32; Joh_7:16-17; Joh_14:21).
(4) A devout and conscientious attending upon religious assemblies will be very profitable to the Christian in this affair (Eph_4:11-15).
II. The Christian is indispensably bound constantly to adhere to the truths and precepts of the gospel, and, when called thereunto, to confess the truths and observe the precepts thereof, even in the most discouraging junctures.
1. Our Lord has in the plainest and most peremptory terms, and with the most weighty sanctions, obliged all His followers constantly to adhere to His doctrines and precepts; and, when called thereunto, to confess the one and obey the other, when persecution threatens or attends the doing either of them (Mat_10:37-39; Mat_16:24-26; Luk_14:25-27).
2. The Christian is bound to the performance of this duty by the laws of the highest equity and justice; and the doing otherwise would involve him in the guilt of the most criminal iniquity and unrighteousness to his sovereign Lord (1Co_6:19-20).
3. The wilful and deliberate renouncing of the Christian faith, or any of the articles and precepts thereof, with a design to avoid persecution thereby, or to retain or acquire the advantages of this world, is at once an instance of the most horrible impiety, of the vilest falseness and dishonesty, and of the most abject cowardice. The apostate plainly declares that he fears weak man more than Almighty God, that he prefers the transient things of time to the infinite joys of eternity.
4. What in the most dangerous seasons ought to prevail with the Christian to be steadfast and firm in professing the truths, and obeying the precepts of his holy religion, is that his constancy would tend very much to the glory of God, the interest of religion, and the advantage both of the friends and enemies of truth and righteousness.
5. The disciples of Jesus Christ are both exceeding encouraged and obliged to a noble and bold adherence to the truth and their duty in the time of persecution, by His glorious example, and that of confessors and martyrs under the Old and New Testaments.
III. The qualifications which must accompany and adorn the Christian in the discharge of the duties contained in this injunction.
1. Calmness and patience of spirit, whereby the Christian may avoid exasperating the adversaries of the truth by wrath and passion while he vindicates the same.
2. A holy and religious fear, lest by an indiscreet and unwarrantable zeal, or any other sinful misbehaviour, he should offend God, or give just offence unto men, and particularly to his lawful governors.
3. A good conscience founded upon a blameless and Christian behaviour, by which he may be able to silence or refute the calumnious reproaches of heathens and infidels. (David Ranken.)
The Christian ready to account for his hope
I. The reliever may be questioned concerning his hope-l. By the infidel. To the mere scoffer the Christian is not required to reply. With such our only aim should be so to speak as to awaken the conscience, and arouse and touch the heart.
2. By the worldling. The hope of the believer will stand the severest scrutiny; while the worldling is often found to confess that the advantages of the present state are with him who is living under the influence of a hope that has respect to the future.
3. The sincere inquirer after truth may question him. One who has just been made sensible that he is a sinner against God, and needs pardon. His mind is full of anxiety; and he feels that he needs direction, instruction, and guidance.
II. The believer should be ready to answer those who inquire concerning his hope.
1. He should be ready to answer, not forward, but prepared, competent to reply.
2. The reply should be an answer. It should be to the point; adapted to the character, and appropriate to the circumstances of the questioner. A word fitly spoken, is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.
III. The disposition with which the inquiry should be answered.
1. With meekness. By a harsh manner of vindicating the truth, the enmity of the carnal heart against it may be increased.
2. With fear. With holy fear and jealousy of ourselves, that we may speak only that we have known, and testify only that we have seen.
Lessons:
1. Believers, aim to be intelligent Christians.
2. Be humble, meek disciples of your great Master.
3. Many of you may never while on earth be questioned concerning your hope. The day is fast coming when the fire will try every mans work of what sort it is. What will be the character of the worldlings hope then? (S. Steer.)
Christians required to be prepared to give a reason of the hope that is in them
I. That if we are true Christians, there is a hope that is in us. If we are true Christians, Christ is in us the hope of glory.
1. This hope may be distinguished from the hypocrites hope by its objects. It regulates all its expectations by the Word of God.
2. This hope may be farther distinguished by its basis. This is the inviolable truth of Gods promises, made to sinners through Christ.
3. This hope may be farther distinguished by its effects. It purifies the heart.
II. That there is a reason for this hope. It is a reason for this hope, that the Word of God, written by the inspiration of His own Spirit, correctly defines its objects. A true Christian can also give a reason for the ground of his hope. It is Christ. There is a reason for the hope that is in us, in the effects which we are conscious it has produced upon us. It has a holy tendency.
III. That we are to expect that men will ask us a reason of this hope. Some may ask a reason of the hope that is in us, from a sincere desire to know and to embrace the truth. But others may ask us a reason of the hope that is in us, from a wish to weaken our confidence, or to tear us away from the hope of the gospel.
IV. That we are to be prepared to give an account to those who thus ask, a reason of the hope. That is in us. Have I searched the Scriptures with becoming diligence, so as to know the evidence on which my faith rests? Have I been so convinced of the truth and power of the gospel by the Spirit of God, that I am prepared to defend it as the wisdom of God and the power of God?
V. That we are to be so prepared as to be able to do this with meekness and fear.
1. With meekness. We are to defend the gospel in the spirit of the gospel.
2. With fear. Not terror, but reverence.
Application:
1. If you are disposed to question the reality of the religion of the heart, it is not because there can be no proof given of it, but from an indisposition to believe it.
2. Be sure that nothing but a lively hope implanted within you will avail to the good of your soul, and that all profession without it will be ineffectual to your salvation.
3. Dread being the subject of a delusive hope.
4. If you have reason to fear that hitherto your hope has been a deceptive one, seek and pray to be made the subject of a good hope by the power of the Holy Spirit, that abandoning all other dependence, you may be led to Christ for salvation, on whose merits and righteousness you shall not depend in vain. (Essex Remembrancer.)
The Christians hope
I. All real Christians possess a hope peculiar to themselves. It is a hope in connection with Christ, a hope arising from the gospel. The hope of the Christian is called a living hope. It is a hope that sustains the spirit here, and embraces celestial happiness hereafter.
II. This hope rests on grounds the most solid and indubitable. This hope is generated in them by the resurrection of Christ. They have the testimony of all holy men in all ages, and they have their own experience.
III. This hope cannot be concealed, and ought not to be concealed. The Saviour commands that those who have this hope in them should confess Him.
IV. Those who have this hope in them may sometimes be questioned concerning it.
V. There are times when we are called upon to explain, to vindicate, and even to recommend the religion which brings us such a hope. There might have been Jews anxious to know what Christianity was; there might have been Gentiles doubting as to the truth of their systems, and desiring to be instructed in the doctrines of Christianity; and there may still be those with whom we have to do, who may be anxious for information, and it should be our delight to explain, to vindicate and to recommend the hope that we cherish.
IV. This vindication and recommendation of our hope ought always t o be done in a spirit becoming the seriousness of the subject. It is no light thing to deal with questions of this sort. Peter says, Be always ready-qualified, fitted for it. (R. Littler.)
Personal goodness
The words suggest four things in relation to religion.
I. Its prospectiveness. It is a hope. Personal religion is a great hope in a man.
II. Its sociality. Here is asking questions and answering them. Genuine religion excludes the anti-social and dissocialising element-selfishness.
1. It has a community of paramount interest. All religious souls have the same imperial concerns.
2. A community of leading aims. One grand purpose runs through all godly hearts.
III. Its reasonableness. Give a reason for the hope. Every godly man can give a reason for this hope. It does not require erudition or talent to enable him to do so. Ask him why does he hope to become good, and he could give such answers as these:
1. Because my nature was made for goodness
2. Because Christ came into the world to give me goodness.
3. Because God works to make me good.
4. Because the great struggle of my nature is to be good. These are good reasons, are they not?
IV. Its reverence. With meekness and fear. (Homilist.)
Reasons for our hope
I. The Christian hope? Why is the word hope used instead of that of faith? Usually it is faith that stands so conspicuously in the foreground in Christianity. Faith has mainly a reference to the hard dry facts of the intellect. Of course there is in Christianity a living, vital faith, and every Christian must possess this. But hope is a much softer word, and has to do more with the emotional part of human nature. Hope to be worth any thing must be based upon faith. Yet hope is the higher state of the two. The reason why St. Paul so often speaks of hope is twofold:
1. It had a reference to the early state of his people.
2. This hope was connected with something personal and future. Hope will, of course, differ according to the disposition of the man. The miser hopes for gold, the ambitious man for power, the vain man for applause. But we have to do with the Christians hope.
(1) The Christian has a hope in the purpose of his life. He has a mission in the world which God has planned, and he knows that whatever happens will be for the best. He allows all his arrangements to depend upon the Divine Will. In the most minute events of life, as well as in the most gigantic schemes that the human brain can evolve, God rules.
(2) The Christian has a hope in the trials and afflictions of life.
(3) The Christian has hope in death. The most brilliant human lives must end.
(4) The Christian has hope in the hereafter. This is the most glorious hope of all.
II. This hope has a rational basis. The hope of the Christian may be cheering and consoling, yet if it had not a rational basis it might after all be a delusion. But Christianity is as much in harmony with reason as it is with the emotional side of mans nature. And it is the only religion that has a rational foundation. The necessity for a revelation from God has been felt in all ages and amongst all peoples. And if such revelation has been made it must be found in the Bible, for it can be no where else. Then the evidences of the truth of Christianity are overwhelming. The resurrection of Christ is a fact established by conclusive evidence.
III. Every Christian should be prepared to defend his hope. Be always ready to give a reason for the hope that is in you. Each man is expected to be able to defend his faith. This reason must be-
1. Intellectual. Christians ought to study the evidences of the truth of their religion.
2. Moral. Every Christians life ought to be morally higher than that of others.
3. Spiritual. The Christian religion is an experimental religion. He that believeth hath the witness in himself.
IV. The spirit in which our reasons are to be given.
1. Meekness. There must be no self-sufficiency. Humility is a Christian virtue. A religion of love must be defended lovingly.
2. With fear. This means reverence to God and respect to man. He must take care that the great truths which he has to teach do not suffer from his ignorance or incompetency. We must each make this hope our own. Christianity is a personal matter. (George Sexton, LL. D.)
Ready to give an answer
The ability to state our convictions with clearness and completeness yields two benefits.
1. It makes our convictions respected. There is persuasion in the forceful putting of a thought, and in sentences sharply drawn and well considered. The effect of words, as of soldiers, can be trebled by their manner of marshalling. A word aptly chosen is an argument, and a phrase judiciously contrived a syllogism. And so Peter would have his readers study to state their hopes and the grounds of them in an orderly and intelligent manner, and procure for their convictions in this way a respect, at least, among those whose opinions differed or even antagonised.
2. Another benefit intended was the effect which the rational statement of an opinion has in giving to that opinion firmer establishment in our own minds. Our religious beliefs are sometimes irresolute, because we do not know with precision what they are, nor with definiteness why they are. We are established by feeling the grounds of our establishment. The boat drifts till it feels the pull of its anchor. We get a sense of stability by inspecting the means of our stability. If we are crossing a stream upon a bridge of ice or timber, even though assured of safety, we contemplate with earnest pleasure the massiveness of its icy or oaken beams. Even confidence loves to be reminded of the grounds of its confidence, and wins bravery from their review. The architect Jets the buttresses and the broadened courses of basal masonry as far as possible lie out in the light. Such a disposition of facts satisfies the eye because it satisfies the mind. We get a sense of stability by inspecting the means of stability. (C. H. Parkhurst, D. D.)
Ready to give an answer
Observe, they are not required to be always disputing about their hope, or obtruding it upon others, without regard to the proprieties of time, place, and person, but to be ready in their own clear apprehension of the subject, and ready also in a loving concern for the guidance and salvation of others; ready always on the humblest occasions, as well as the more public and formal; ready in the house, and by the wayside, and amidst the ordinary businesses of life, no less than when brought before the kings and judges of the earth; ready always for an answer, apology, vindication, defence, as when Paul spoke for himself on the temple stairs and before Agrippas throne; but, so far from waiting for rare opportunities of that sort, be ready always for an answer to every one, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, Greek or Jew, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free; what you have to say is of equal moment to one as to another, and they have all an equal claim on your benevolence; to every one, therefore, that asketh of you, and so manifests a degree of interest, greater or less, and howsoever awakened, in the topic so dear to yourselves; that asketh of you, not merely a reason of, but, in general, an account of, a statement concerning, the hope that is in you, its nature, ground, object, and influences. Tell him how you, too, like your heathen neighbours, were lately living without hope in the world-with no hope for eternity. Then speak to him of God our Savior, and Lord Jesus Christ, our hope. Open to him the glorious mystery of His person, and work, and death, and resurrection, and ascension. Explain to him, moreover, your own personal interest in all this through your living union by faith with this blessed Son of God, the worlds Redeemer, and the consequent indwelling and gracious witness of His Spirit with your spirit. (J. Lillie, D. D.)
The value of personal experience
There is a power in direct personal testimony which transcends all laboured argument. A skilled topographical engineer would be prompt to yield his convictions as to the lay of the land beyond him in a new country, if a trusty rodman or chainman of his party were to return from a scout in advance, and say that he had actually found a road or a stream which the engineer had been positive could not be there. So, also, it is in the higher realm of spiritual truth. He who has experienced the loving ministry and fellowship of Jesus, can carry more weight, in an interview with an unbeliever, by bearing his simple witness accordingly, than by any processes of skilful reasoning. If only this truth were more generally recognised, there would be less of arguing and more of witnessing, with better results to those who need to be convinced of the truth concerning Jesus.
With meekness and fear.-
Logic aided by good temper
Here our A.V., following the T.R., unfortunately omits the emphatic word but: of two Greek words so rendered, the more forcible is found here in all the best MSS. and ancient versions. St. Peter presses this condition most urgently; of all dangers that of angry, arrogant, and irreverent demeanour on the part of men closely, and often captiously, questioned, is the most common and subtle. Sweetness, coupled with awe, remembering whose cause is defended, will commend true reasoning, and they will be in themselves evidences calculated to impress and often to win opponents. The word fear may also include anxiety to avoid giving offence by inconsiderate or intemperate arguments, but it certainly does not mean fear of magistrates. The Christian is bound to submit to law, but is released from all fear of personal Consequences when put on his trial. (Canon F. C. Cook.)
Having a good conscience.-
A good conscience
I. The possession of a good conscience is possible for man.
1. A conscience that rules the entire man.
2. A conscience that is ruled by the will of God.
II. The possession of a good conscience does not protect from the tongue of calumny. The man who lives in a corrupt world, ringing out a good conscience in every tone of his voice, and radiating it in every action, has ever awakened the most antagonism amongst his contemporaries, and will ever do so.
III. The possession of a good conscience will utterly confound your enemies.
1. Slanderers of the good are often confounded now in courts of law.
2. Slanderers of the good will be overwhelmingly confounded one day in the moral court of the universe.
IV. The possession of a good conscience is vitally connected with a Christly life. (Homilist.)
A good conscience
I. Conscience is an essential attribute of personal being. It is that in which we are consciously bound in allegiance to the Great Supreme in truth, righteousness, and goodness. Its function is-
1. Prospectively, to incite to good and to restrain from evil; and-
2. Retrospectively, to fill with joy when the evil has been overcome and the good achieved, and to reprove and fill with shame and remorse when the good has been eschewed and the evil e done.
II. A good conscience is a most desirable possession.
1. It must he a conscience binding its possessor to the right and good. It is not always thus with conscience. It binds, indeed, to what the man judges to be right. But his judgment may be wrong (Joh_16:2; Act_26:9). It needs to be enlightened to see light in Gods light (2Co_4:3-6).
2. It must be a faithful conscience. Some consciences are insensitive, cauterized (Eph_4:17-19; Eph_5:7-14; 1Ti_4:1-2). A good conscience is faithful, and performs its proper function.
3. A good conscience is a peaceful conscience. If burdened with guilt and fear it is essentially an evil conscience. For such a conscience there is only one source of peace (Heb_9:13-14; 1Jn_1:7; Rom_5:1).
4. A good conscience is a self-approving conscience (2Co_1:12; Act_23:1). It involves the abiding consciousness of integrity.
III. The virtue of a good conscience. It is a precious possession.
1. For the man himself. It makes him strong to toil, contend, endure, die. It ensures continual victory and final triumph (Rom_5:3-6; Rom_8:35-39; Heb_11:1-40).
2. For the Church and the world. A church made up of such members, of meal firmly holding faith and a good conscience, must be a mighty power amongst men; putting to silence the ignorant and foolish (1Pe_2:15); and lending the observant to glorify God in the day of visitation.
Conclusion:
1. By penitent faith in Jesus secure a good conscience.
2. By obedient faith in Jesus keep a good conscience. (W. Tyson.)
What is a good conscience
Conscience is that faculty of the human mind by which rational creatures endeavour to form an estimate of their own principles and practices, so as to determine whether they are good or evil. It is universally admitted to be one of the most valuable of those powers which our all-wise and ever-gracious Creator has been pleased to impart to us. But it, like every other faculty of the mind, has been exposed to all the baneful effects of the Fall. It is by nature-in common with the human heart-ignorant, and perverse, and polluted. It must, before it can fully accomplish the purposes for which it is intended, be instructed, and purified by the Holy Spirit.
I. Mistaken views on this subject are, it is to be lamented, very common.
1. Natural amiableness of disposition is sometimes mistaken for a good conscience. How many a friend, whose heart is desperately wicked in the sight of God, still cherishes the strongest earthly friendship! How many an individual, whose heart never entertained any just sense of the enormity of sin as perpetrated against a holy God, has yet sighed and cried over the miseries of mankind, and has done what he could to alleviate human wretchedness! But these emotions are no proof whatever of the conscience being right. Guilty, indeed, must that conscience be which can resist so much natural tenderness.
2. Partial contrition on account of sin is sometimes mistaken for a good conscience. Who experiences at times greater anguish than the drunkard? but who returns so readily or so speedily as he to his wonted practices?
3. Limited abstinence from evil is sometimes mistaken for a good conscience. Many are to be found who cautiously shun some sins, while they confidently rush upon others. All such partial turning from sin, or abstinence from evil, must prove that the conscience is not right before God.
II. What, it may now be asked, is, in the scriptural sense of the term, a good conscience?
1. It is a conscience renewed by Divine grace.
2. It is a conscience regulated by the holy Scriptures. Even after holy principles are implanted within us, the conscience is liable to err unless a standard is provided by which its decisions may be governed. That standard the Word of God supplies. To it we must appeal in every situation in which we are placed. From it we must derive all that instruction in righteousness which we need. (Alex. Reid.)
The conscience
The word conscience does not occur often in the Bible. It does not occur once in the Old Testament, but the thing conscience is in the Bible from first to last. Why was it that our first parents, when they had eaten the forbidden fruit, were ashamed to look in each others faces; and why was it that they hid among the trees? That was conscience. Or take the very next story in the Bible-the death of Abel. Why did Cain hear a voice rising from his brothers blood to heaven, and why did he flee from it, a fugitive and a vagabond? That was conscience. Conscience, in fact, is everywhere in the Bible. Without conscience there would be no religion. But let us define clearly what conscience is, and what it does. Conscience has been called the moral sense. Now, what does that mean? It means this: that as by the sense of taste we distinguish what is sweet and what is sour, and by the sense of hearing we distinguish what is harmonious and what is discordant, and by the other bodily senses we discriminate the qualities of material things, so in the soul there is a sense which distinguishes right from wrong, and that is the conscience. There have been many nations who have never seen the Ten Commandments, and yet they have known quite well that to lie, and to steal, and to kill are wrong. How did they know that? St. Paul seems to tell us when he says, in one of the profoundest passages of his writings, When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, etc. In opposition to this sceptical philosophers have pointed to the barbarities which have claimed the sanction of conscience, and from these undeniable facts they have drawn the inference that conscience knows no more and no better than custom; but the power resident in human nature of rising out of superstitious practices, and seeing the better life when it shows itself, appears to prove that behind such mistakes there is a power of discerning whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, etc. The conscience is the categorical imperative. That is a name given to it by the German philosopher Kant. I suppose it is too big a name. It brings out a second feature. As soon as it is ascertained that one course is right and the opposite one wrong, the conscience commands us to follow the one course and avoid the other. Thus it is imperative; and it is a categorical imperative-that is to say, it accepts no excuse. The course which conscience commands may apparently be contrary to our interests; it may be dead against our inclinations; it may be contrary to all we are advised to do by friends and companions; but conscience does not on that account in the least withdraw its imperative. We must obey. We may yield to temptation, or be carried away by the force of passion; but we know that we ought to obey. It is our duty, and that is the grand word of conscience. It is conscience that tells us what duty is. I am sure you all remember in the Heart of Midlothian how Jeanie Deans, with her heart bursting with love for her frail sister, yet refuses to deviate one hairs breadth from the truth, although her falsehood would save her sisters life. But such scenes do not occur merely in fiction. Perhaps the grandest scene of modern history is the appearance of Luther at the Diet of Worms, when, facing the hostile powers of all Europe, he said, It is neither safe nor honest to do anything against conscience. Here stand I; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God. There is never an hour passes but in the secrecy of some mans soul or in the obscurity of business life some one, putting aside the promptings of self-interest and the frowns of power, pays the same tribute to conscience by doing right and taking the consequences. Conscience has often been compared to a court of justice, in which there are the culprit, the judge, the jury, and the witnesses; but, strange to say, these all are in every mans own breast. Ay, and the executioner is there too who carries out the sentence. There is not one of us who does not know in some degree both the pain and horror of a condemning conscience, and the pleasure of an approving conscience. A habitually approving conscience gives even to the outward man elasticity and courage, while a habitually condemning conscience gives to a man a look of confusion and misery. One of the great writers whom I have already quoted has a wonderful passage in which the two characters are put in contrast. I wish I could quote it all, but I will quote a few of the most significant sentences. Here is first the picture of a very good man, with a habitually approving conscience: He was sleeping peacefully, and was wrapped up in a long garment of brown wool, which covered his arms down to the wrists. His head was thrown back on the pillow in the easy attitude of repose, and his hand, adorned with the pastoral ring, and which had done so many good deeds, hung out of bed. His entire face was lit up by a vague expression of satisfaction, hope, and beatitude-it was more than a smile, and almost a radiance. There was almost a divinity in this unconsciously august man. And here is the opposite picture. The burglar, on the contrary, was standing in the shadow with his crowbar in his hand, motionless and terrified by this luminous old man. He had never seen anything like this before, and such confidence horrified him; and then he adds, The moral world has no greater spectacle than this-a troubled, restless conscience, which is on the point of committing a bad action, contemplating the sleep of a just man. In all ages the higher imaginative literature has found its best resources in depicting the horrors of a guilty conscience. The ancient Greeks represented these terrors by the Furies, who with shadowy, silent, but remorseless steps, pursued the criminal until they pulled him down; and in such dramas as Macbeth and Richard III Shakespeare is dealing with the same theme. You all remember how, when King Duncan was murdered, a paralysing and agonising terror fell on his murderer; and how, in Richard III, on the night before the battle in which the tyrant received the reward of his deeds, ghosts of the victims of his tyranny passed one by one through his tent, summoning him to meet them on the battlefield, until the man, streaming with perspiration, sprang from his bed, crying-
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
But observe this, that not only does a mans own conscience pass sentence on his conduct; but the consciences of others, if they chance to be acquainted with it, do so too, and to this may be due a great intensification either of the pleasure or the pain which conscience causes. For instance, a man may have committed a crime and suffered for it in his conscience, but gradually time assuages his pain, and he is forgetting it. Well, suddenly it is found out, and the conscience of the public is brought to bear on him. He is put out of respectable society, and feels now for the first time the full enormity of what he has done. The conscience is an intuition of God. We have seen that as soon as the choice is made and the deed done, conscience inflicted immediate reward or punishment. But it has another function. It hints unmistakably at reward and punishment yet to come, and from another source. You remember how Hamlet expresses this when contemplating the crime of suicide:
The dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourne
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have,
Than fly to others that we know not of.
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.
In the Egyptian book of the dead, which has just been published in Europe, but is many centuries older than the Christian era, two hundred and forty figures are represented as meeting the soul when it enters the other world. These are virtues, and to each of them the soul has to answer how far it has practised these virtues in this life; and besides this strict inquiry, up in the corner of the picture God is represented weighing the heart. Analyse your own consciousness when conscience is acting, and see if it does not inform you that God is looking on. For instance, when you have done something wrong, and are feeling ashamed and horrified, are you not aware that God is near you, and that it is from His hand that retribution is to come? Will you permit me to say a word about the cultivation of the conscience? Conscience is the foundation of character. Does a man listen to the voice within him? Can he look himself straight in the eyes? That is the most important question you can ask about any man. There are some men and women that would almost as soon meet a tiger in the jungle as meet themselves in solitude. But if a man is accustomed day by day to bring his conduct under the survey of his own conscience, and if he is moved with joy and sorrow according to the sentences which conscience pronounces, that man is safe. He will not need to mind much what the opinion of other people is about him. Yet conscientiousness is not everything. It may be only a petty and self-satisfied pharisaism. There are few things that astonish me so much as to find how many people there are whose final judgment on themselves is this, that they have never done anyone any harm, and they have not much to reproach themselves with. That betrays an unenlightened conscience. The conscience requires to be made observant and sensitive by acquaintance with the law of God, as revealed in His Word, and especially as expounded by Christ Himself, when He taught that even when the outward conduct is correct the law may be broken, in the secret thoughts and wishes. (J. Stalker, D. D.)
The conscience of a Christian
Wherever a man acts consistently on higher principles than are generally current, his very example is a silent rebuke which worldly society is apt to resent. It cannot reconcile his conduct with its own generally received maxims. It cannot rise to a conception of his loftier principles. What is the consequence? Surely this, that society will impute to him lower principles, will fix a bad name upon him, hypocrite, bigot, and the like, and so seek to justify itself, and put him in the wrong. Against this power of prejudice, deepening often into malice, the power of a Christians conscience informed by faith and enlightened by the Holy Spirit, is his great resource. Let us see how it operates.
1. By making him feel directly the presence of God, the conscience of the Christian becomes an organ of the Holy Spirit. Greater is He that is with us, than he that is in the world, is his constant thought. He feels thus: I have the moral power of the universe on my side. Truth must prevail, with God to back it, in the end.
2. A good conscience sets a man free from all unworthy motives. Whether those around him persecute or approve, to him matters little. He does not derive his principles of belief and conduct from any censure or approval of theirs. He feels that he need conceal nothing. He can afford, in every sense, to walk in the light. How much anxiety and inward disquietude is saved by this; how much perilous manoeuvring is made needless!
3. As a consequence of this, a directness of aim and simplicity of character distinguishes the man. He will not flatter, he will not violently condemn. How different this from seeking human applause as an object, and then bribing for it in its own base coin, by adulation, by trimming to prejudices, by adopting false views and echoing mere popular cries. (H. Hayman, D. D.)
The man inside
I cannot do this, said a Christian merchant, in reference to some business operations in which he was asked to take part-I cannot do this. There is a man inside of me that wont let me do it. He talks to me of nights about it, and I have to do business in a different way! Oh! those talks of night about the business of the day, when the man inside has our ear and there is no escape from the judgment he pronounces! Thrice blessed is he who is able to hear it in peace!
A good conscience
It is a conscience which is purged from dead works (Heb_9:14), sprinkled with the blood of Christ (Heb_10:22), borne witness to by the Holy Ghost (Rom_9:1), whilst a joy, which is full of glory, wells up within it (2Co_1:12), and as a calm, unruffled lake of peace it reflects the cloudless heaven of Gods good pleasure above. Such a conscience is a good companion for our days, and a good bed fellow for our nights. Every effort should be made to preserve its integrity. And when life is moulded by such an inward influence, it will live down all misrepresentation and slander, it will outshine all the mists of envy and malice which have obscured its earliest beams, it will falsify false reports. Detractors shall be ashamed at the triumphant answer made to their accusations by the unblemished beauty of a holy Christian life; whilst those that love God shall take heart. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain 14. If ye should suffer. Ye may be called…
14. If ye should suffer. Ye may be called to suffer for Christ. That is the lot of Christians, but instead of calling this an evil, blessed are ye. See Matt. 5:10. Great is the reward. It is only sowing in tears to reap in joy. Fear not with their fear. Revision. With the fear of the wicked when danger comes, nor be troubled because you are persecuted.
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 1Pe_3:15. Lord God.—Probably better, “Lord Christ.” “To sanctify Christ…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1Pe_3:15. Lord God.—Probably better, “Lord Christ.” “To sanctify Christ or God was to count His name as holy above all other names, His fear as the only fear which men ought to cherish, and therefore as the safeguard against all undue fear of men.”
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1Pe_3:17. Suffer for well-doing.—Notice how prominent this idea is in the epistle. There must have been some precise circumstances to which the advice bore direct relation.
1Pe_3:18-22. This passage is fully treated in the Homiletic Notes. Here only certain meanings of terms need be dealt with.
1Pe_3:18. Read “Christ also suffered,” not “hath suffered.” For the unjust.—“OR behalf of,” not “in the place of.” Spirit.—Refers, not to the Holy Spirit, but to Christ’s own spirit. He became alive again in a spiritual sense.
1Pe_3:19. For “by which” read “in which.” In His spiritual, as distinct from His fleshly life. Spirits in prison.—Now in prism, because they were disobedient to the message of the spiritual Christ delivered by Noah. It makes no point in St. Peter’s persuasion against failing from the Christian profession if we think of Christ going to preach in Hades. The disobedient antediluvians are a warning example, and the salvation of obedient Noah is an inspiring example.
1Pe_3:21. Which also.—R.V., which water of the Flood, represented in baptism. Like figure.—“After a true likeness.” The apostolic use of Old Testament Scripture is very different to that of modern times.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Pe_3:14-22
Power Gained through Suffering for Well-doing.—In order to understand, and to feel the force of, the points made in St. Peter’s epistle, it must be kept in mind that he wrote to persons who were placed in circumstances of disability, and even exposed to suffering and persecution, on account of their faith in Jesus as Messiah and Saviour, and on account of the Christian lives they were living. The great purpose of the apostle is to afford them consolation, and to strengthen them to bear and persevere. The most difficult passage now before us is greatly relieved of its difficulty when we clearly see that its object is not, primarily, any doctrinal teaching, but comforting, assuring, moral strengthening; and that its characteristic is rather illustration and persuasion than any forth-setting of doctrinal truths. The distinction we fully recognise in our own pulpit-work. Sometimes we are teachers, but sometimes we are preachers, persuaders, comforters; we illustrate and impress known truths; we show the relation known truth bears to existing conditions of difficulty and trial. St. Peter here is reminding the disciples of what they knew, rather than unfolding anything new to them. In the paragraph we may find—
I. A possibility.—“But and if ye should suffer for righteousness’ sake.” It is but as a possibility for all; it was a realised fact for some. But when men are brought into suffering, their first idea is that there must be some wrong of which it is the punishment. The friends of Job, in trying to convict him of sin, do but represent the commonplace first explanation of all suffering. What we have to admit is, that a man may suffer who is righteous, and may even have to suffer because of his righteousness. That, indeed, is the fact for all ages, but it is the fact which comes out most clearly in these Christian times, because it is the fact so sublimely exhibited in the representative man, Christ Jesus; who “did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He hath put Him to grief.” This is surely a suggestive ground of consolation to the afflicted and persecuted. There is at least the possibility that they are suffering for righteousness’ sake, even as their Divine Lord had done. And Christian suffering is precisely that sort of suffering. Righteousness may be high principle, standard right, or the Christian profession.
II. Suffering for righteousness is to be accepted as for Christ.—“Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.” Not as Lord in any general or abstract way, but precisely as Lord of those who suffer for righteousness’ sake. He is their head, leader, representative; their living leader, whose actual present grace rests on all those who take the same suffering way, and bear their disabilities as loyalty and service to Him. Christ Himself suffered in the same way, “leaving you an example that ye should follow His steps.” And it should be a most comforting relief under persecution and distress, to feel that we are but “filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ in our body,” or in our circumstances. The sting is gone when we know that we are suffering for Christ’s sake.
III. We must not let suffering silence our witness for Christ.—Precisely that would be the temptation of those early Judaic Christians. When they saw that their witness for Christ brought them misunderstanding and persecution, their first idea would be to save themselves from the trouble by ceasing to make the witness. They would think to keep disciples, but would judge it to be altogether wiser to become silent and secret disciples. This is a most subtle form of temptation, which assails God’s people in every age. The psalmist felt it, and resisted it, for he says, “I have preached righteousness in the great congregation; lo, I have not refrained my lips, O Lord, Thou knowest. I have not hid Thy righteousness within my heart; I have declared Thy faithfulness and Thy salvation” (Psa_16:9-10). And St. Paul is almost intense in his demand that confession of Christ shall always go with belief in Christ. “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as Lord, and shalt believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Rom_10:9). The charm of St. Stephen’s example lies in his heroic persistence in rendering his witness for Christ, even in face of hatred and death. And St. Peter here urges these persecuted Christians not to let their troubles silence either the quiet witness of their lives, or the outspoken witness of their lips. Suffering, or not, let them be “ready always to give answer to every man that asketh you a reason concerning the hope that is in you, yet with meekness and fear.”
IV. Power to witness, and to suffer, depends on keeping a good conscience.—What makes trouble unbearable is the fear that it is deserved. A man is always soul-master of all circumstances, even the most distressing, when he has no conscience of wrong. We see this in its perfection in Christ. He felt suffering acutely, but He bore it nobly, because none could convict Him of sin, nor could His own conscience. “Keep conscience as the noon-tide clear,” and you can go through a midnight darkness, and a world of woes unspeakable. “Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?” St. Paul stands calmly before the raging Sanhedrin that longed for his blood because he could say, “Brethren, I have lived before God in all good conscience until this day” (Act_23:1). So St. Peter urges upon the persecuted disciples that they should have and keep “a good conscience, that, wherein ye are spoken against, they may be put to shame who revile your good manner of life in Christ.”
V. Christians should find the model of their sufferings in the sufferings of Christ.—“Because Christ also suffered for sins once.” Yes, “for sins,” but not His own. He suffered, “the righteous for the unrighteous” And His sufferings are a model of ours in two ways.
1. They came upon Him through the malice and wickedness (sins) of men; and
2. They came on Him through His under taking to deal with the sins of men, to deliver men from their penalties and dominion. Christians are in the world to do what Christ did, and they must fully expect to have to suffer in the doing, even as Christ did.
VI. Christians should find the suggestion of what their sufferings might enable them to do, in what Christ’s sufferings enabled Him to do.—St. Peter’s point here is this: Christ’s suffering in well-doing unto death, brought Him altogether unique spiritual power; and he suggests that just what the noble endurance of their troubles would bring those persecuted Christians was a unique spiritual power. To set forth this he uses an illustration, taken from a popular idea then prevailing in the Christian community, which was afterwards embodied in a strange and fantastic legend, known as the “Gospel of Nicodemus.” The 1Pe_3:19-21 are properly an illustrative parenthesis, intended to illuminate the declaration that Christ, after His bodily suffering, was “quickened in the spirit “to become, what He has become ever since, an unique spiritual power; such a power as He could only become through the experience of suffering in well-doing; such a power as we only can gain through the same experience. The “baptism” of 1Pe_3:21 is not the rite of baptism on confession of faith, but the baptism of suffering which the disciples were undergoing, and the reference is to the baptism of suffering which Noah underwent through all the long years of waiting, in which he was scorned and persecuted, but through which he was kept and saved. Noah kept a good conscience all through. His discipline was no “putting away of the filth of the flesh.” You, too, should keep a good conscience; then you would see that your sufferings, like Noah’s, and like your Lord’s, were no mere discipline, but were that sublimest of sublime things, vicarious ministry.
VII. Christians should find the suggestion of what their sufferings will result in in what Christ’s sufferings resulted in.—Taking out the parenthesis, the point St. Peter would impress comes fully into view. “Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ; Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.” When Christ’s bodily sufferings in well doing reached even to the extremity of death, they proved to be but the way in which spiritual power was quickened and developed, and to that spiritual power, free for the largest, noblest service, the highest, holiest trusts and authorities are now committed. “Suffer on, then,” St. Peter would say, “suffering in well-doing, well borne, can but have such results for us as we see in the case of our Divine and blessed Lord.”
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1Pe_3:15. A Reason for our Hope.—The word is literally an apology, but that word is now used in the sense of an excuse, so that the rendering of our version is correct—a reason; and that every one should be able to give for his hope, readily and whenever he is asked for it. Not that we are bound, as Christians, to answer any scoffer that may assail our faith; but if any one comes to us and asks us on what we are resting our hope, what ground we have for it, or how we can defend it, we should be prepared to give a reply; yet, as Luther says, “not with proud words or with violence, but with such fear and humility as if we stood before the judgment-seat of God.” But can an unlettered Christian be expected to do this, especially in such times as these, when the Christian faith is assailed at every point in the most subtle manner, and with the greatest skill? Yes; for though he may not be able to answer all the objections of the sceptic, yet, inasmuch as his hope is a matter of experience, he can easily give such reasons for it as a candid mind would accept. And how many, who have been perfectly ignorant of the learning of the schools, perfectly unacquainted with the arts of disputation, have been able, in a few words, to put to silence those who have called their hope in question! But only those can do this who have a good conscience—a conscience void of offence before God and before man. He who keeps a good conscience is in possession of a good hope, and can defend that hope with good reasons which the world around him will not be able to gainsay. Of our hope we need never be ashamed, for we have answers for it ready—not far to seek; and if those who question us about it are not satisfied with them, we can maintain it still, assured that it will not fail us when we are anticipating its fruition. But there are times when silence is our best answer, and when it will have greater weight than all the assertions we can make, and all the arguments we can use.—Thornley Smith.
The Reason of Hope.—There is here a play upon the words in the original Greek which we fail to see in our versions. In seems in English as if there were a contrast between the “giving the answer” and the “reason,” when, in fact, they are the same. We might read it: “Be ye ready always to give a justification to every one who would require you to justify the hope that is in you.” St. Peter, realising that the Christian religion is a hopeful religion, says to the strangers scattered abroad, to whom he writes, “You must have a reason for the hope that is in you. You must not be content to look only on the bright side of things and shut out the dark side, to hear only pæans of peace and not to notice the sounds of battle. You must have a reason for this hope in times of darkness and trial, as well as in seasons of sunshine and joy.” Let us try to answer this question: What are the Christian’s reasons for hope—hope for ourselves, for our families, and for our nation?
I. We believe in a God of hope.—We believe that God created the world, that He is a God of foresight and love, that He knew what He was about when He made life, and that He will bring out of our imperfect life here a nobler and a better one. We believe that when He sowed the seed He knew that there would not be a gathering in of tares, but that the wheat would overbalance the tares in the last great harvest. We believe He is a God of hope, and that He understands human nature better than we can. He saw the darkness, but yet He hopes; and so we can hope. Again, He has given a definiteness to the hope. We look at the savage in his degradation; he is not the true man; he is only the beginning of man. We look at Society and we say, This is not God’s ideal of man. We come to the New Testament and we see the life of Christ, Jesus of Nazareth. He was the type of true manhood. In Him we see what God meant man to be. He represents what you and I are to be if we fulfil God’s plan. As we look at this pattern we hear the voice of God saying, You also are to be the sons of God. So we gather inspiration from the thought that this is what God intends man shall be. How shall man become this? I look at an acorn. It says to me, By-and bye I shall be a great tree; by-and-bye the birds will nest in my branches; by and-bye I shall be a shelter to those who dwell under my roof; by-and-bye I shall carry many over the great Atlantic. But, I say to the acorn, “Can you be all this?” “Yes, God and I!” So man will be like the great Pattern; for it is God and man. We see by faith, more and more, that God is doing this. We see Him moving and shaping man more and more in accordance with His purpose. If we could have seen the world in its first stage of creation, in its chaotic condition—“without form and void”—and if, then, any one could have said to us that this was to become a place where man should dwell in happiness and glory—that from all this should come order and beauty—we should have scoffed at the idea, unless we could have seen that God was there, that His Spirit was brooding over the water, and bringing out this great result. So we look on humanity, in its defects and imperfections, and we say: This is but the chaotic state; God is at work; He can change all to beauty. God is in human history and is bringing order out of chaos. But there are limitations of our hope. We must be willing to look at the dark side sometimes. Some hopes may be disappointed. Our desires may not be realised. We have hope for America; but Egypt, Babylon, Greece, Rome, and other great civilisations, have perished. We are not sure what plan God is to work out in this our beloved nation. But whether the nation perishes or lives, we know that humanity will still move on. God’s purposes are sure. We know that we love purity and truth all the more because there are some in our own dear land who are working against them. We are not sure of religious organisations. We are not sure that Congregationalism was the apostolic church. Congregationalism is not the great thing, but humanity. All things that mould human life may change, but man lives on. The tools are nothing, but the building; and that which God is building is manhood. The battle of the Reformation has passed, but the conception of the Reformation—that God is mercy as well as justice—remains. To-day we are debating on probation and a future life, as if we knew all about them, when how little we know! Churches, creeds, nations, may disappear, but human character will grow and grow, because God is begetting man, and working out His ideal manhood. These things are but His instruments. The seed enters the ground, and out of it comes the tulip, the lily, because God is working in it. Because we believe that God is working within man we have a sure hope of the future; for God knows what He is doing. This, you say, is a large outlook, but how about myself? I don’t care so much about the race as my own individual life. There are no large things with God and no little things with God. It is not a strange declaration of Christ’s that the hairs of our heads are numbered, and that not a sparrow falls to the ground without His notice. The little things are the determining things. It is the small rudder that guides the great ship. We believe in a God who not merely deals with nations or with masses, but One who looks on every cradle, on every soul. We have a true hope, that cheers our hearts and is with us in darkness as well as in light. We believe in One whoso mercy is “from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him.” In closing I want to turn to a second text: “Without hope in the world.” Atheism is hopeless. Can there be a nation without God? Do you write over that precept, “Put not your trust in princes,” put your trust in politicians? Without God there is no hope for a nation. There is no hope for a Church if there be not an open door to take in the love of God. What is your hope for your children? If there is no God to guide, you might as well attempt to lead them through the great wilderness of Sahara as to hope to guide them safely through this life, fraught with its many dangers. What is your hope for yourself? Do you carry God to your work, to your store, in society? Do you live with God? Our hope rests in God. We believe that there is One working in humanity who is shaping all according to His wise purpose. This is the reason of our hope.—Lyman Abbott, D.D.
Rationalism.—This term is usually employed to describe an attitude of the mind adverse to religion, and especially adverse to the belief in Christianity. But this is incorrect and unfair. Christianity claims to be a rational religion. It sprang from the most rational, perhaps one might say the only rational, religion of the old world, the religion that protested against polytheism, and idolatry, that taught men to believe in God, and not to worship the hosts of heaven, nor to deify the forces of nature, nor to bow down to images graven by art and man’s device. The Israelites, so far as they were faithful to their religion, were the rationalists of their time; and Christianity claims to be a rational religion. This claim is distinctly made for it by Peter in our text, and as distinctly by Paul, when he speaks of the Christian’s presenting himself to God a living sacrifice as a “reasonable service.” Taking the whole of Christ’s teaching as recorded in the gospels, we can truthfully say of it that, while it contains much that is above our comprehension, and much that we may think hard in the way of precept, still it is a teaching distinguished by its reasonableness. The Reformers were, to a remarkable extent, rationalists. They found Christianity so corrupted in doctrine, in morals, in ritual, as to have become almost an irrational religion. Against such corruptions they uttered their protest, and argued the whole case in a highly rational manner. They did much towards substituting a sober and reverential reason for blind submission to ecclesiastical authority. Looking at rationalism as the application of reason to the investigation of religion, what has it done?
1. It demanded, and secured, the right of all men to possess and read the Scriptures.
2. It has done much towards the destruction of belief in many degrading superstitions.
3. We owe to it the cessation of all persecution for religious opinions and practices.
4. The spirit of rationalism being largely of a practical and utilitarian character, it has done much toward bringing to the front the ethics of Christianity, to make less of religious dogma, and more of religious conduct. There have been times when conduct has counted for little, but orthodoxy in creed was everything. Rationalism has taught men to be less positive and dogmatic in regard to the unseen, the infinite, the unknowable, and has turned the current of religious thought and feeling and life more into the channel of moral and spiritual utility.
5. It has compelled Christians to consider and to set forth the reason or reasons they have for the hope that is in them. I am far from saying that rationalism has done no harm. It has affected very many minds with much painful, much agonising doubt; it has wrenched from many their Christian faith and hope. If rationalism has brought into prominence the practical, useful, beneficent characteristics of Christianity, it has, on the other hand, acting on less worthy minds, made men proud, and vain, and impious, and, in regard to all beneficent work, indifferent, scaptical, cold, and dead. It has in many instances enlightened the intellect, at the terrible cost of stunting the affections; it has given men broader views, but has in proportion narrowed their sympathies; it has fed their minds, but starved their hearts. Whatever be the successes of rationalism, it has its failures, and very grievous failures. It fails in unity. There are rationalists and rationalists. The name does not indicate just one clearly-defined class or sect. If there be anything in the argument against Christianity, on the ground of diversity of opinion held by its professors, the same objection may be urged against rationalism. It fails, too, in not furnishing clear and definite rules for the conduct of life. It is not provided with any high and powerful motive to influence men for good, to lead them to exercise self-denial, to cause them to devote themselves to the welfare of society or of any portion of it. It cannot deal with the sense and conviction of sin; and it fails us just where we most need help and guidance: it may accompany us to the end of our earthly journey, casting much light over our path, instructing us, interesting us, and proving of great advantage to us in many things of a secular character; but the end of the journey is reached, and rationalism can go with us no farther, and its light goes out. Mr. Lecky says of rationalism, “Utility is perhaps the highest motive to which reason can attain.” And he laments the discouragement given by rationalism to disinterestedness, to generosity, to self-sacrifice, to true moral heroism. These defects, which are inherent in its very nature, and cannot be made up for by any other perfections, however valuable, will probably in time form a check to rationalism, and cause it to be rejected, as so many other systems have been rejected. And rationalism, now in all the height of its greatness and its strength, may turn out to be only a passing wave of thought, over which the ark of God’s covenant of grace will float with safety, thus giving another witness to its unchangeable strength, to the wisdom of Him who guides it, and to the security of those who have fled to it for refuge.—H. Stowell Brown.
1Pe_3:17-18. The Secret of True Greatness.—There is a marked difference between the standard by which we measure the men of our own day and the men of a past age. When we study a past epoch, we are neither blinded by our interests nor our prejudices, nor are we dazzled by merely outward shows. We now delight to honour only the men who have uttered great thoughts, wrought great deeds, lived great lives; and these are often men who made no great noise in their day. Two classes all men select for reverence, and rank among the great—at least, when their day is past.
1. Those who, possessed of large natural gifts, cultivated them wisely, and devoted them to the public good. In proportion as these men have suffered in and for their endeavours to enlighten or benefit the world, the world has taken them to its very heart, and they have assumed heroic proportions in the eyes of all subsequent generations.
2. Those who have been able to frame for themselves an heroic conception of duty, and to live by it. Any good historian, any competent judge, would affirm that the nation was to be accounted great which was capable of an heroic self-devotion, which had men and women who could dare and endure all things for a noble cause. And in this class, too, those whom the world honours most are still those who have endured most and most bravely, those who have suffered most for the sake of others, who have been animated by the most generous and disinterested spirit. That which touches and moves men, till they grow ashamed of their own useless and self-pleasing lives, is the courage that dares and endures, the love which conquers selfishness, and is ready to fling away life itself if only others can thus be served or saved. This is the true greatness, the true heroism. Why, then, when the man Christ Jesus does a deed of this very kind—the kind which all men admit to be most noble and heroic, a deed which differs from that of other men only in being incomparably more heroic, more noble, more unselfish—why does not the world admire Him, and take Him to its heart? He suffered for us; suffered an agony which we cannot so much as conceive—a passion of which the cross is a pathetic but utterly inadequate symbol—that He might bring us back to life and freedom, health and peace. Are we not, then, bound to love Him, and to devote our life to His service? The text contains and enforces the secret of true greatness when it bids us carry well-doing to the suffering point. Have we not here a most welcome side-light thrown on that great mystery, the function and purpose of evil? How should we suffer in and for well-doing if there were no evil in and around us? In the last resort, all our miseries, all our sufferings, spring from sin. The invincible ignorance, the obstinate prejudices, the persistent selfishness of our fellows, their enmity to the truth, which cuts their prejudices against the grain, and to the righteousness which rebukes their vices, or imposes a check on their passion—all these come of evil. It is from these that men suffer when bent on doing well; it is by these that they are hindered, thwarted, and at times driven back in apparent defeat. So that, after all, it would seem that to creatures such as we are, in such a world as this, what we call “evil” is necessary to our education and discipline in goodness, to our culture in impersonal and unselfish habits and aims; to the development, in fine, of the very elements and qualities in our nature, which are universally confessed to be the noblest and best. This line of thought yields a glimpse into the mystery of the Incarnation. Any man—any theist, at least—will acknowledge it to be of the first importance that we should come to know and love God. But we cannot find Him out to perfection, whether by the searching inquest of reason, or by the more vital and gracious intuitions of the heart. If we are to know Him as we need to know Him, He must reveal Himself to us. He must limit Himself. He must speak to us in our language, since we cannot understand His. But He must use our noblest language, that which most intimately appeals to our conscience and heart, that which can be apprehended by all the kindreds of this divided earth. Our noblest language, that which all can apprehend and admire, which touches and moves all races and all classes with a common emotion, to a common enthusiasm, is, as we have seen, the language of noble deeds, of a noble life—the language of that heroic greatness which is content to suffer for doing well, and able to draw from its sufferings new life and vigour for the spirit. This, then, is the language which God must deign to use, if He would in very deed reveal Himself to us. And this is the language in which the gospel of Christ is written. Christ suffered for us. God has spoken, He has shown Himself to us, if only we believe that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. This line of thought also supplies us with a noble incentive to a noble life. One kind of greatness is beyond our reach. No man can make himself a great statesman, a great poet, or even a great theologian. We must accept our natural capacities and gifts, whatever they may be. But the highest kind of greatness, that which most deeply moves the hearts of men, is open to us all. Well-doing is not a close profession; it is open to us, and to all men. When St. Peter sets before us the example of Christ, and stimulates us to a self-effacing devotion to duty and conviction by reminding us how He once suffered for our sins that He might bring us to God, then surely He supplies us with the keenest, the most pathetic and constraining of all motives, of all incentives, to a great and noble life. For we cannot be followers of Christ and not follow Him; nor can we follow Him save as we take the way of the cross.—S. Cox, D.D.
1Pe_3:18. The Power of Suffering Innocence.—“Because Christ also suffered for our sins once.” This passage is found in the midst of very practical counsels. It is an instance of the characteristic New-Testament advice urged by the example of Christ, or by directly Christian motives. It should ever be borne in mind that the religion of the Lord Jesus Christ is an inspired morality; its key-note is “righteousness.”
I. The practical lesson which the apostle is here urging.—Compare 1Pe_3:13-14, with 1Pe_3:17. Describe the particular circumstances of difficulty and strain in which the early Church was placed, dwelling especially on the slandering and misrepresentation to which the Christians were subject, and even the actual persecution which they were called to endure. St. Peter says there is a kind of happiness they should have in being called to suffer innocently, for righteousness’ sake, even as their Divine Lord and Master had to suffer. That suffering innocence God makes to be the very highest moral force in His world of humanity. In every sphere of life the truth is true, that he who can suffer—undeservedly, and in the spirit of heavenly Divine charity—can save. Suffering for evil doing says nothing, and does nothing; it has to be borne, and there is nothing more to be said about it. Suffering for well-doing sublimely exhibits faith in God, self-restraint, power of character, and a measure of likeness to the Lord Jesus.
II. The example of Christ by which this lesson is urged.—
1. In Him was a fellowship with us in suffering. Both He and we share together the common sufferings which belong to humanity, and the special sufferings which come to men whenever they resist the tendencies of the world around them in the spirit of loyalty to God.
2. His suffering was throughout suffering innocence, the suffering that comes through persistent well-doing.
3. And His suffering was caused by the wrong, the sin of others. It might be the result of prejudice, or misunderstanding, or false notions of loyalty to God, but it was always, in some form, man’s waywardness, wilfulness, self-pleasing, that brought round bitterness, distress, and suffering, to Christ.
III. The influence that such suffering innocence has on human hearts.—It “brings men to God.” It may be difficult, with our spiritual apprehension of the Divine Fatherhood, for us to state clearly the way in which God needs to be reconciled to man. We cannot know our hearts without having the deepest conviction that we need reconciling to Him. Now, the spectacle of suffering innocence is the most moving thing on earth. And when that suffering innocence is seen to be directly related to our sin, and borne in the power of a self-sacrificing love to us, it makes us hate the sin, and feel drawn to the sufferer. And we may be sure that our suffering in righteousness will be a moral power on others, even as Christ’s was, and is, upon us.
The Man-side of the Redemption.—“That He might bring us to God.” It is generally recognised that there are two sides to the great redemptive work. But its relation to the government and righteousness of God must always be to us a mystery only partly comprehended. We can form doctrinal systems, based on what revelations of the being and nature of God we have been able to receive, but there is always this uncertainty: if we knew God more perfectly, we might have to modify our system. We are on clearer, safer ground when we try to understand how the redemption bears relation to us, removes the hindrances that keep us from God, bears a gracious influence on us, so as to fit us for coming to God, and actually brings us to Him, and keeps us in gracious relations with Him. St. Paul set forth the manward side of redemption in a very forcible way in his famous passage (2Co_5:19-20), “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” “We beseech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled to God.”
Dean Plumptre’s Exegesis of 1Pe_3:18-20.—The train of thought which leads the apostle to refer to the “descent into hell,” is, at first sight, far from clear; but it is clearer by far on the assumption that this is what he has in view, than on the supposition that he is thinking of a work done by Christ as preaching in the days of Noah to the spirits that were afterwards in prison. The assignment of such a work to Him as the Christ is at all events entirely foreign to the cycle of apostolic thought and language. Let us examine the passage on the other assumption, and see how it bears the test. The analogy of 1Co_7:34, Col_2:5, as regards the use of the case of Rom_1:4, 1Ti_3:16, as regards the antithesis between the “flesh” and “spirit” of our Lord’s human nature, compels us to alter the rendering of the Authorised Version. The dative is not that of the instrument in either clause, but that of “the sphere to which a general predicate is to be limited.” To take it as having one force in the first clause, and a different one in the second, is to do violence to the natural structure of the sentence. The authority of all the great uncial MSS. and of all recent editions, is against the insertion of the article before “spirit” and without it, as the sentence stands, the reference of the second clause to the agency of the Holy Spirit cannot be supported. We have therefore to take the words as meaning that Christ was “put to death in the flesh, but quickened, endowed with a new power of life, in His spirit.” They connect themselves with the death-cry on the cross, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.” That moment of outward death to the body was the entrance of the spirit into a higher life. That thought is what the apostle is anxious to impress on those who were exposed to persecution, suffering, death. Let men do their worst, if they “armed themselves with the mind of Christ,” death would be to them gain, not loss, would bring with it freedom from sin and an increase of spiritual energy. He goes on to speak of the nature of that new energy. “In” [not “by”] “which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison.” The “flesh” was placed in the tomb, but He, in that other element of His nature, went where go the “spirits” of other men. Almost as if consciously guarding against the distortions of the plain meaning of the words which take their place among the monstrosities of exegesis, St. Peter repeats the word which he uses here [“having gone”] when he comes to speak, in 1Pe_3:22, of Christ’s ascension [“having gone into heaven “]. In both cases there was, as measured by his thoughts, a local motion. As in Eph_4:9-10, the ascent involved a descent. And there he “preached.” That word had been familiar to the apostle’s ear during his Lord’s ministry on earth. It had become familiar to the Church through the oral or written narratives of the gospel history. Taken by itself it would suggest, naturally, not to say inevitably, a continuance of the work that had been done on earth, a “preaching” of like nature with that which had been heard in Galilee: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” And to whom did He thus preach? The answer is, “To the spirits in prison,” to human spirits like His own, who were in that Hades which was for them a prison-house, in which they were in ward, awaiting a yet future judgment. So far his words were general. But he has in his mind one representative class of all those spirits of the dead to which his Lord’s teaching had once and again led his thoughts (Mat_24:37; Luk_17:26). Never in the history of the world, as told in the Hebrew records, had there been so vast and terrible a judgment, sweeping off so many myriads, following upon such slighted “long-suffering.” That, if any, was a crucial instance of the extent of the redeeming work of Christ. The whole history, as he goes on to show, was as a parable in its inner meaning. The Church of God was as the ark; the water of the Flood in which the world was, as it were, born again to a new stage in its life, answered to the baptism which saves men now. Then the disobedient died, and were swept away, but the suffering once for all of Christ for sin, the just for the unjust, availed in its retrospective action to bring to God some at least of those who had thus disobeyed. Much more would His resurrection and ascenssion, after that triumph over “authorities and powers,” avail to rave these who suffered as He suffered, and for whom baptism was not merely the “putting away the filth of the flesh, but the enquiry of a good conscience after God.” The connexion between the words “for this cause was the gospel preached also to them that are dead” (1Pe_4:6), and that “preaching to the spirits in prison” is very close. We have to follow the thoughts of the apostle, as, with that aspect of the descent into Hades present to his mind, he was led on to speak of Christ as of Him that “is ready to judge the quick and dead.” Not only to those of whom he had before spoken, the “disobedient” in the days of Noah, but to the “dead” generally, had the gospel, in some way or other, been preached. In what way he does not think it necessary to add. But to what end, with what intention, was that gospel so preached to them? He gives the answer in words which remind us of the antithesis between “flesh” and “spirit” in 1Pe_3:18. As Christ was there said to have been “put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit,” so of those he says, that the gospel was preached to thorn “that they might be judged alter the manner of men, as men in the flesh, but live according to God, as He wills, in the spirit.” κατὰ θεόν, as in Rom_8:27; 2Co_7:9; Eph_4:24.
Quickened in the Spirit.—But in His spirit He was quickened, or brought again to life. His spirit never died; but, as to it, He was made alive again, that spirit re-entering the body on the morning of the third day, are it saw corruption, and thus giving it the victory over death and the grave. He has a body now, but it is a spiritual, and not a fleshly one; and that body has passed into a state of inconceivable glory, such as, in His Divine nature, He had with the Father before the world began (Joh_17:5).—Thornley Smith.
Sketch of the “Gospel of Nicodemus,” by Dean Plumptre.—The starting point of the narrative is that two sons of Simeon (the Simeon of Luke 2), Karinus, and Leucius, were among those who had risen from their graves at the time of the resurrection, and had appeared to many (Mat_27:57). They tell the tale of what they had seen and heard in the world of the dead. They were with their fathers in the thick darkness, when suddenly there shone upon them a bright light as of the sun. Adam and the patriarchs and prophets exulted at its coming. Isaiah knew it to be the light that should shine upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death. Simeon saw that it was the light to lighten the Gentiles, over which he had rejoiced in his Nunc dimittis. The Baptist doing there also the work of the forerunner, came to prepare the way and announce the coming of the Son of God. Seth narrated how Michael the archangel had told him, as he prayed at the gates of Paradise, that one day, after five thousand five hundred years, the Son of God would come to lead his father Adam into Paradise, and to the tree of mercy. Meantime Hades (here personified as an actor in the drama) and Satan held counsel with each other, and were full of fear. He who had rescued so many of their victims upon earth, who had raised Lazarus from the grave, was now about to invade their kingdom, and to set free all who were shut up in prison, bound with the chain of their sins. And as they spoke there was a cry like as of thunder: “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in.” Hades sought in vain to close the gates, and to set fast the bars. David and Isaiah uttered aloud the prophecies in which they had foretold this victory. Death and Hades trembled, and owned themselves conquered. They saw that One had come to set free those who were fast bound with the evil of their nature, to shed light on those who were blinded with the thick darkness of their sins. Hades and Satan wearied themselves in vain murmurs and recriminations. Adam and his children were rescued from the power of Hades; Satan and his hosts were left to take their place. Then the Lord stretched forth His hand and said, “Come unto Me, all My saints who have My image and similitude.” Adam and the saints rose up from Hades with psalms of jubilant thanksgiving; prophets burst out into cries of joy. Michael the archangel led them all within the gates of Paradise. There they were met by Enoch and Elijah, who had not tasted death, and were kept there till they should return to earth before the coming of Antichrist. There, too, was the repentant robber, bearing on his shoulders the cross to which he owed his entrance within the gates. The cross on which the redemption of mankind had been achieved was left, according to another version of the legend, in Hades itself, as a perpetual witness of the victory thus gained, that the ministers of Death and Hades might not have power to retain any one whom the Lord had pardoned. All this, of course, is wildly fantastic; the play of an over-luxuriant imagination, seeking to penetrate into the things behind the veil. But a mythus of this kind pre-supposes the existence of the belief of which it is the development, and is, therefore, so far as its date can be ascertained, an evidence as to its antiquity.
1Pe_3:18-22. Christ’s Sufferings Influencing the Unseen World.—Point: Better to suffer for well-doing, since Christ suffered thus. In 1Pe_2:21 Christ’s example, of suffering is prominent. Here note the advantage which accrued from the suffering.
I. Christ’s sufferings.—
1. Suffered once.
2. Suffered for sin.
3. Suffered vicariously.
4. Put to death in the flesh, made alive in the spirit.
II. The effect of these sufferings on the unseen world.—Who are meant by the “spirits in prison”? Those who, before the Flood, resisted the grace of God in Noah’s time. The judgment came, and they were hurried into the unseen world, not hell; and their doom was not finally fixed. There must be millions more such. The hopeless condition of those who have rejected Christ we know, but there are millions who have never heard of Christ. Two suggestions:
1. Christ preached of old to them by His spirit in Noah.
2. Christ went to the abode of the dead, and preached to them in His disembodied spirit.—Thornley Smith.
Webster and Wilkinson’s Notes on 1Pe_3:19.—This is given as the most careful setting of the explanation which finds reference to a preaching of Christ to the antediluvians through the agency of Noah. τοῖς ἐν φυλακῇ πνεύμασι. Possibly, “to the spirits in safe keeping” (2Pe_2:4; 2Pe_2:9; Jud_1:6). ᾅδης, the invisible mansion of departed spirits, is where the righteous are preserved till the season shall arise for their advancement to future glory; in the other division, Tartarus, or Γεέννα, the souls of the wicked are reserved unto the judgment of the great day (Luk_16:23). The abode of the blessed is a place of custody, though not of penal confinement. “It is a place of seclusion from the external world, a place of unfinished happiness, consisting in rest, security, and hope, rather than enjoyment. It is a place which the souls of men never would have entered had not sin introduced death, from which there is no exit by any natural means for those who have once entered. The deliverance of the saints from it is to be effected by the Lord’s power” (Bishop Horsley). πορευθεὶς ἐκήρυξεν. When was this? and in what manner? Some think that the πνεῦμα of Christ between His death and resurrection went to the place where the antediluvian sinners were in confinement, and proclaimed that He had offered the sacrifice for their redemption. This announcement would give fresh animation of joy to those who through faith had embraced the Redeemer, and would set forth the justice of God in condemning those who neglected the way of escape. Others, again, consider that the proclamation refers to the offers of mercy made to them during their earthly existence, by the agency of Noah, the δικαιοσύνης κήρυξ (2Pe_2:5). If we consider the purpose for which this fact is mentioned here, we shall see reason to adopt the latter view, and to conclude that those to whom Christ is said to have preached were the antediluvian sinners in the time of Noah. Clearly the object of the apostle is to show that Christ acted for the salvation of men, in the administration of the Spirit, in former and ancient times, even as He now does, since His passion and resurrection. A gospel of grace and righteousness, of faith and obedience, was preached to them as to us, by which the obedient lived as now, but under which the unbelieving and disobedient perished (1Pe_4:6). There is a striking resemblance between this passage and Heb_3:7 to Heb_4:11, where the example of the ancient Israel is introduced for the same purpose as that of the antediluvians, lost and saved, is introduced here. The apostle represents Christ as having gone and proclaimed a gospel of grace and faith to the spirits now in prison when they were in their state of earthly existence. The expression πορευθεὶ σἐκήρ., as applied to Christ preaching by Noah, may be compared with Eph_2:17, ἐλθὼν εὐηγγελ. εἰρ. ὑμῖν, which applies to His preaching by the apostles. Christ preached in Noah’s preaching, and that preaching was without effect, except for the souls of Noah and his household.
Other Views.—Other interpretations of the passage divide into two classes:
(1) Those which accept the words as referring to a descent into Hades, and
(2) those which give them an entirely different interpretation. Under
(1) we have—(a) the view that the preaching was one of condemnation, anticipating the final judgment. (b) The view that Christ descended into Hades to deliver the souls of the righteous, (c) A modification of this view has found favour with some writers, such as Estius, Bellarmine, Luther, Bengel. They limit the application of St. Peter’s words to those who had lived at the time of the Deluge, and they make the preaching one of pardon and deliverance, but, under the influence of the dogma that “there is no repentance in the grave,” they assume that the message of the gospel came to those only who turned to God before they sank finally in the mighty waters. Under
(2) we find the denial that there is any reference at all to the descent into Hades. Christ went in spirit, not in flesh—i.e., before His incarnation—and preached to the spirits who are now in prison, because they rejected the warnings and teachings of Christ’s spirit through Noah.
1Pe_3:18-22.—An Exegetical Study—In seeking to ascertain the meaning of an obscure passage in any writing, close attention must be given to three things:
1. The exact language of the passage.
2. The manifest teachings of plain portions of the same writing; and
3. The line of thought, if any such be discoverable, in the preceding and succeeding contexts. In the present paper it is proposed, by means of the strict application of these rules, to seek the meaning of this much-discussed passage in the first epistle of St. Peter. There is a distinct line of thought running through both the preceding and succeeding contexts. It can be easily traced up to the passage before us, and, passing over the passage, it can be easily picked up again at its close. This being the case, the natural inference is that that line of thought somehow or other runs through the passage itself, and that a true interpretation of the passage will reveal it. St. Peter has been urging the Christians of the Dispersion to lead holy and beneficent lives. He presents various motives to induce them to live such lives.
1. By so doing they will place themselves under the protection and gracious providence of Almighty God. “For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous,” etc. (1Pe_3:12).
2. If they live such lives, few will molest them. “And who is he,” etc. (1Pe_3:13).
3. Should they even suffer for such a life, they will be happy. “But and if,” etc. (1Pe_3:14). The mention of this possibility leads to a brief digression. Resuming his argument, he maintains that suffering for righteousness ought to bring happiness, because it brings success. “For it is better,” etc. All recognise the fact that it is well to suffer for evil-doing; but it is even better, if wills the will of God (mark the condition), to suffer for well-doing. This position he justifies by the experience of Christ. “For Christ also hath once suffered,” etc. (1Pe_3:18). Then follows a statement respecting the sufferings of Christ. It is a very suggestive statement, and contains an admirable summary of Christian soteriology. It presents in the briefest form the great features of Christ’s redemptive sufferings. They were penal, “for sins”; vicarious, “for the unjust”; propitiatory, “to bring us to God.” But the richness and suggestiveness of the passage in the domain of soteriology should not be permitted to prevent a clear recognition of its place in the apostle’s argument. It is not the uniqueness of the sufferings of Christ which the apostle has now specially in mind, but the fact that they were sufferings for well-doing, and as such were wondrously beneficent. We must keep this fact clearly and constantly in mind, if we would follow the apostle in his argument. It is true that actually, as viewed in the light of the accomplishment of God’s purpose of redemption, Christ suffered for sins. It is true also that ostensibly, in the light of the judicial sentence under which the extreme measure of these sufferings was inflicted, He suffered for sins; but it is yet true that it was only vicariously that He so suffered. He was personally innocent of all the crimes laid to His charge. His whole life was holy, and His whole work gracious in its purposes and beneficent in its results. And yet He suffered—suffered to the death; but with what result? In its rendering of the apostle’s statement in this regard the Authorised Version is very seriously defective. It translates, “Being put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit.” It spells “spirit” with a capital S, and so indicates that the thought is, that He was put to death in the flesh, but was made alive again by the Holy Ghost. Thus translated, the passage asserts the facts of Christ’s death and revivification, and reveals the agent by whom this latter was effected; but this introduces an idea entirely foreign to the apostle’s thought, and states a fact which is wholly irrelevant to his argument. Literally the expression is: “Being put to death in flesh, ἐν σαρκί, but quickened in spirit, ἐν πνεύματι. The contrast is between Christ’s physical nature, on the one hand, and His spiritual nature, on the other. His physical life was terminated, but His spiritual life was intensified. And now this assertion is to be substantiated. Then follows the passage which is to be considered in this study. This being the case, it is manifest that whatever may be its specific meaning, the purpose of the passage is to justify the apostle’s assertion that the physical death of Christ has resulted in the spiritual quickening of Christ. It is manifest that the only way in which it can be shown that the sufferings of Christ intensified the spiritual life of Christ is by comparison of the vigour of that life prior to His sufferings with its virility subsequently. If such comparison reveals increased vigour subsequently to His sufferings, there comes then the further question, Is this increased vigour the result and reward of these sufferings? By the terms of argument just this is the task which Peter sets himself to accomplish in the passage before us. The passage, literally rendered, reads as follows; “Being put to death, indeed, in flesh, but quickened in spirit; in which, going He preached also to the spirits in prison, disobedient sometime when the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, in which few—that is, eight—souls were saved through water; which, in a like figure, now saveth us also, even baptism—not the putting away the filth of the flesh, but the stipulation toward God of a good conscience; through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject unto Him. Evidently two things, at least, are here asserted:
1. That the unembodied spirit of Christ preached.
2. That those to whom He preached were antediluvian sinners. This much is plain; but when was this preaching done? An increasingly popular answer to this question is substantially this: it was done in the interval between the crucifixion of Christ and His resurrection. A cursory reading of the passage seems to justify this answer, but close attention to his language reveals the fact that the apostle does not specifically. designate the time. All he says is that Christ, in His unembodied spirit, preached to the antediluvians, and that His going to them preceded His preaching to them; but he says nothing directly about the time of His going. It is to be noted, however, that these spirits were disobedient in the days of Noah. He does not say that those to whom Christ, in His unembodied spirit preached, were the spirits of men who were disobedient in the days of Noah. They were spirits who in the days of Noah were disobedient. This would seem to indicate that the preaching was in the days of Noah, and that the disobedience consisted in rejecting it. He further describes those to whom Christ’s spirit preached as being spirits in prison. The word is of frequent occurrence in the New Testament, and in thirty-six instances out of forty-seven denotes a place of primitive safe-keeping. Only here, however, and in Rev_20:7—where it is applied to Satan—is it used in connection with spiritual beings. The thought seems to be that when the bodies of the antediluvians perished in the Flood, their spirits were put in safe-keeping—“prison”—till the judgment. And now the question is, was this their condition when Christ’s spirit preached to them? The current answer to the question is an affirmative one. Is that answer the true one? In attempting to determine the point, let us remember the third principle of interpretation with which we started. In accordance with it, the right answer must unfold the apostle’s argument and manifest conclusiveness. The point the apostle is seeking to establish is that the sufferings of Christ’s flesh intensified the power of His spirit. It can only be established by comparison. If this preaching by Christ’s spirit to the spirits in prison was to the disembodied spirits of those who perished in the Flood, it must have been preceded by a preaching to these spirits in their embodied condition in the days of Noah. That there was such preaching may be accepted as a historic fact. In Gen_6:3 we are told that God said, “My spirit shall not always strive with man.” This implies that God’s spirit had been striving with man and striving ineffectually. This being the historic fact, it is certainly legitimate to claim that this striving included the preaching of Christ’s spirit to the spirits of the antediluvians. This answer, then, meets the first requirement of the apostle’s argument. It supplies a first preaching by Christ’s spirit to the antediluvians, with which a subsequent preaching can be contrasted. Was there a subsequent preaching? If so, when did it occur, and what were its results? The current interpretation answers the first of these questions also affirmatively, and holds that this second preaching was that described in our passage, and that it occurred in the interval between Christ’s crucifixion and His resurrection. Does this meet the requirements of the apostle’s argument? It must be remembered that he is seeking to prove that the sufferings of Christ quickened the spirit of Christ. If so, the second preaching must be more effective than the first. In the first instance the mass of the antediluvians were disobedient to the gracious message addressed to them. What evidence does our passage furnish that the preaching to these disembodied and imprisoned spirits by Christ’s disembodied spirit was more effectual? It is not necessary to resort to a critical examination of the passage to secure an answer, for the reason that the advocates of this view themselves frankly admit that it furnishes none. “What was the intent of that preaching, and what its effect, is not here revealed; the fact merely is stated.” (Alford, Greek Testament, in loco.) So also Archdeacon Farrar: “Of the effect of the preaching nothing is said.” (“Early Christianity,” p. 93). This interpretation, then, fails to make clear and conclusive the argument of the apostle, and hence, for that reason alone, if there were no other, is to be rejected. But besides this, the interpretation is liable to another objection. It presents a doctrine not elsewhere found in the writings of St. Peter. More than this. It teaches a doctrine which seems to be excluded by other plain teachings of the apostle. In his second epistle the apostle refers again to the destruction of the antediluvian world. He does so in connection with two other signal illustrations of the power and justice of God. One of these is the punishment of the fallen angels, and the other the destruction of the cities of the plain. In two of these three cases there was signal illustration of God’s grace, as well as of His justice; and hence to both features of His providence attention is called in the general conclusion drawn from a consideration of the whole series of providences. That conclusion is thus expressed: “The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished” (2Pe_2:9). The Revision renders better: “And to keep the unrighteous under punishment unto the day of judgment.” The words “under punishment” are the translation of the present passive participle of the verb “to punish.” It means literally “being punished.” The thought seems to be that as God’s punishment overtook these objects of His wrath, His power grasped them and holds and will hold them in unchanged condition till the Day of Judgment. This is evidently the idea in the expression “in prison.” The spirits of these antediluvian sinners remain fixed in the condition in which they were when God’s justice overtook them and destroyed their bodies. They are in prison—that is, in the custody, primitive safe-keeping of Divine justice. And there they are to remain until the Day of Judgment. This being the case, there is no room in the theology of St. Peter for a gracious visit to the spirits of the antediluvians on the part of Christ, and an offer to them of salvation An interpretation, then, which thus explains this passage is to be rejected for the two reasons:
1. That it fails to meet the requirements of the apostle’s argument, and
2. That it is at variance with his theology. An interpretation of the passage, meeting all the requirements of the case, is obtainable through identification of this preaching to the spirits with the historical striving of God’s spirit with the antediluvian contemporaries of Noah. And such identification is justifiable.
1. It is a historic fact that God’s spirit strove with the antediluvians St. Peter here affirms that Christ, in His unembodied spirit preached to their spirits. It is not necessary to suppose that this striving consisted solely of this reaching. It is enough to believe that it included it, and that in his assertion about Christ’s preaching St. Peter had reference to it.
2. God’s striving with the antediluvians was ineffectual. So, on this assumption, was the preaching of Christ’s spirit to their spirits. It is upon this that St. Peter dwells. They were disobedient. In consequence of disobedience they are in prison. The mass of the antediluvians perished. Only eight entered the ark graciously provided for them, and so were saved.
3. The historic reason for the failure of this striving was the fact that God’s spirit was unembodied, while the antediluvians were embodied spirits. “My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh” (Gen_6:3). Pure spirit cannot successfully strive with incarnated spirit; and hence God will not always attempt it. Man has body as well as spirit, and is to be reached through the senses as well as the perceptions; hence a being must be incarnate in order to successfully influence him. It is worthy of notice that even Satan, the great tempter of mankind, succeeded in seducing our first parents and alienating them from God, only by assuming a physical form, and so enforcing his suggestions to the mind of Eve by appeals to her senses. Now all this is in closest keeping with the apostle’s line of thought. He is endeavouring to justify his assertion that Christ’s endurance of the extremest degree of physical suffering has resulted in His spiritual quickening. And his proof is furnished by contrast between the power of the pre-incarnate and the post-incarnate, risen, glorified Christ.
4. The historic failure indicates the line of present and current success. “The like figure whereunto,” etc. (1Pe_3:21). Lit. “Which you also the antitype now saves—baptism.” In other words, St. Peter affirms that salvation to day through baptism is analogous to—literally, antitypical of—salvation by water through the ark in the days of Noah. It is not likely that St. Peter meant to say that the waters of the Flood were a type of that of baptism in the modern technical sense of the term. In fact, the current theological signification of the term does not seem to be its scriptural one. The word is used but twice in the New Testament—in Heb_9:24 and here. In the passage in Hebrews its meaning is clear. The tabernacle to be constructed by Moses was to be a copy—antitype is the word in the original—of that shown him in the mount. So here; the plan of salvation to-day is modelled after that of the days of Noah. This being the case, there is opportunity to contrast the effectiveness of the two plans, and this opportunity St. Peter embraces. But how does he do it in such way as to prove that the sufferings of Christ quickened the spirit of Christ? He does so
(1) By declaring that the water of baptism is more graciously effective than the waters of the Flood. The latter saved eight souls; the former is saving you. St. Peter is not exactly mathematical. The number saved in the Flood is historic. He gives that. The number being saved now is known only to God; but no matter. It includes those Christians of the Dispersion. That was enough for them. They were at least greatly more numerous than those in the ark; and yet, however numerous they were, they were being saved by baptismal water. Left unqualified, this declaration of the apostle would inevitably be used to prove the extremest doctrine of baptismal grace; hence he explains that he has reference to real and not to ritual baptism, to the formal and sacramental response of the loyal soul to God, and not the external application of water to the body.
(2) By declaring that the efficacy of baptismal water is owing to the resurrection of Christ (1Pe_3:21). But resurrection implies death. The sufferings of Christ, then, as leading to the resurrection of Christ, have wondrously increased the gracious power of Christ. Nor is this all. Not only have the sufferings of Christ wondrously increased the efficacy of His present as compared with His former method of salvation—baptism now saving multitudes while the ark saved but eight; they have also secured for Him wondrously increased facilities for the accomplishment of His purposes of grace. As the risen, triumphant Redeemer, He has gone into heaven, and is now on the right hand of God, and has control of the entire host of heaven, “angels and authorities and powers being subject to Him” (1Pe_3:22). It thus becomes evident that the passage under consideration does present proof of the apostle’s assertion that suffering for good, when God’s will wills it, is promotion of good. That proof is furnished by the contrasted results of two methods of salvation. Our race has twice been exposed to destruction. Once it was exposed to temporal destruction by a flood. Now it is exposed to eternal ruin by the punishment of sin. In both instances God has sought to avert the peril, and save the race. In the case of the antediluvians He wrought simply as spirit. The effort failed. Now God works upon a different plan. Christ has become incarnate. Having become incarnate, He has suffered and died and risen again. The result is a wondrous increase of His saving power. Of this fact those to whom the apostle wrote were themselves grateful witnesses. In the light, then, of their own experience of the gracious power of their risen Saviour, the apostle urges those to whom he wrote to arm themselves with the same mind, and seek, through similar patience under sufferings, a like increase of gracious power. “Forasmuch, then, as Christ hath suffered … arm yourselves,” etc. (1Pe_4:1). Thus interpreted, the passage becomes the logical as well as the textual nexus connecting 1Pe_3:7 with 1Pe_4:1. Not only so, but as thus interpreted its teaching is in harmony with the analogy of faith, and present no strange or doubtful doctrine for Christian acceptance.—D. F. Bonner, D.D.
1Pe_3:19-20. The Disobedient Spirits.—We can quite understand that there would be much speculation in the Early Church concerning the place and occupation of the spirit of Christ, between the death and the resurrection; and such speculations must fit into the strange and confused notions of the day concerning Hades, the abode of disembodied spirits. It needs to so seen clearly that direct teaching concerning the spirit of man when it is liberated from the body is no part of Divine revelation. The fact of continuity, immortality, is asserted, but there revelation stops. Much is suggested by figures and parables, but even those who had died, and whose human lives were restored for awhile, brought no news whatever of the after life. St. John recognises the blank when he says, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” Absolutely nothing whatever is known concerning the time between Christ’s death and resurrection. According to the thought of His day—not according to the Bible, which is silent on the matter—there was a general place of confinement for all disembodied spirits, and speculation divided this general region into two parts; the one, called Paradise, receiving the good, and the other, Gehenna, receiving the bad, and involving them in some kind of torture. The speculations of the Early Church imagined Christ as passing at death into this general region of Hades, and then went on to represent Him as preaching to both those on the Paradise side and those on the Gehenna side; but it should be fully recognised that all this was speculation of men, and not revelation from God. Strangely enough, the floating speculations gained one precise form, and Christ was represented as having preached to the antediluvian sinners; but what He preached, and with what result He preached, the speculators did not declare. These floating speculations were familiar to the early disciples, and were embodied, later on, in the apocryphal work known as the “Gospel of Nicodemus.” Now, St. Peter and St. Jude seem to have been very greatly influenced by the speculative and imaginary ideas of their age, and they did not hesitate to use them for strictly illustrative purposes in their writings; and St. Peter has in mind the common idea of his time when he thus refers to Christ’s preaching to the “spirits in prison.” If we take the passage as illustrative, its difficulties are lightened. If we take it as authoritative teaching, its difficulties are overwhelming. There is no other reference in all God’s Word to “spirits in prison.” And there is no conceivable reason why, if Christ preached to old-world sinners, He should limit Himself to those who lived before, and died in, the Flood. There is simply a passing allusion to the unauthorised talk of the day, in order to introduce the case of Noah as an illustration of the safety and the power that can be gained by persistent suffering for righteousness’ sake. Because we, too, persist in speculating con corning the place and condition of disembodied spirits, we so readily grasp at every passing allusion in the New Testament, from which inferences—and they are usually vague, ill-grounded, and worthless—can be drawn. We are strangely unwilling to recognise, what is certainly the fact, that the world to come, the world of spirits, is no subject of Divine revelation; and that concerning the spiritual Being, Christ, we only know, and can only know, what He is in relation to that work of redemption which He has undertaken for the individual and for the world. The “Larger Hope,” the doctrine of “Purgatory,” etc., are simply speculations, with more or less ground in inferences from casual expressions of God’s Word. What St. Peter teaches is that Jesus was put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit through the resurrection; and in His spiritual life now, angels and authorities and powers—the symbols of all moral and spiritual forces—are made subject to Him, so that He can use them all for carrying through His work in the redemption and sanctification of humanity.
1Pe_3:20. The Disobedient Spirits in Prison.—The “spirits in prison” cannot well mean anything but disembodied souls, under a greater or less degree of condemnation, waiting for their final sentence, and undergoing meanwhile a punishment retributive or corrective. Had the apostle stopped there we might have thought of the preaching of which he speaks as having been addressed to all who were in such a prison. The prison itself may be thought of as a part of Hades contrasted with the Paradise of God, which was opened, as in Luk_23:43; Rev_2:7, to the penitent and the faithful. The words that follow, however, appear to limit the range of the preaching within comparatively narrow boundaries. The “spirits” of whom St. Peter speaks were those who had “once been disobedient”; the once being further defined as the time when” the longsuffering of God was waiting in the days of Noah.” We naturally ask, as we read the words
(1) why the preaching was confined to these; or
(2) if the preaching itself was not so confined, why was this the only aspect of it on which the apostle thought fit to dwell? The answer to the first question cannot be given with any confidence. It is behind the veil which we cannot lift. All that we can say is, that the fact thus revealed gives us at least some ground for seeing in it a part of God’s dealings with the human face, and that it is not unreasonable to infer an analogous treatment of those who were in an analogous condition. The answer to the second question is, perhaps, to be found in the prominence given to the history of Noah in our Lord’s eschatological teaching, as in Mat_24:37-38; Luk_17:26-27, and in the manifest impression which that history had made on St. Peter’s mind, as seen in his reference to it both here and in 2Pe_2:5; 2Pe_3:6. It is a conjecture, but not, I think, an improbable or irreverent one, that the disciple’s mind may have been turned by our Lord’s words to anxious inquiries as to the destiny of those who had been planting and building, buying and selling, “when the Flood came and took them all away,” and that what he now states had been the answer to these inquiries. What was the result of the preaching we are not here told, the apostle’s thoughts travelling on rapidly to the symbolic or typical aspect presented by the record of the Flood; but 1Pe_4:6 shows that his mind still dwelt upon it, and that he takes it up again, as a dropped thread, in the argument of the epistles. It will be noted, whatever view we may take of the interpretation of the passage as a whole, that it is the disobedience, and not any after repentance at the moment of death, of those who lived in the days of Noah, that is here dwelt on. Such is, it is believed, the natural and true interpretation of St. Peter’s words. It finds a confirmation in the teachings of some of the earliest fathers of the Church—in Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, and Athanasius, and Cyril of Alexandria. Even Augustine, at one time, held that the effect of Christ’s descent into Hades had been to set free some who were condemned to the torments of hell, and Jerome adopted it without any hesitation. Its acceptance at an early date is attested by the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus, nearly the whole of which is given to a narrative of the triumph of Christ over Hades and Death, who are personified as the potentates of darkness. It tells how He delivered Adam from the penalty of his sin, and brought the patriarchs from a lower to a higher blessedness, and emptied the prison-house, and set the captives free, and erected the cross in the midst of Hades, that there also it might preach salvation. Legendary and fantastic as the details may be, they testify to the prevalence of a widespread tradition, and that tradition is more naturally referred to the teaching of St. Peter in this passage, as the germ out of which it was developed, than to any other source. As a matter of history, the article, “He descended into hell,” i.e. into Hades, first appeared in the Apostles’ Creed at a time when the tradition was almost universally accepted, and when the words of the Creed could not fail to be associated in men’s minds with the hope which it embodied.—Dean Plumptre.
1Pe_3:21. Noah’s Baptism of Suffering.—It appears to be at once assumed that “baptism” here can only refer to the initial rite of the Christian profession. But there are two things which need to be taken into careful consideration.
1. St. Peter is not in any way dealing with the beginnings of Christian profession, but with the persecutions and troubles which are found always to attend the persistent effort to live the Christian life. In no natural way could any reference to the rite of baptism be suggested to his mind.
2. The term “baptism” is not used only of the initiatory rite; it is employed as a figure for providential dispensations of a disciplinary character, under which men are brought. In Heb_6:2 the word is used in the plural, as if it was fully recognised that there were different sorts of baptisms. And St. Peter could not fail to have in cherished memory the figurative words of his Divine Master: “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!” (Luk_12:50). Christ had a disciplinary experience of suffering in well-doing to pass through. And on another occasion St. Peter’s Lord had said, “Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink? or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” evidently, in this figurative way, referring to the experience of suffering that was before Him. In this sense Noah experienced a baptism of suffering in well-doing. Those years of working at the ark, and waiting for the judgment of God, were years of strain and suffering, a time of hard experience, when he was scorned and persecuted by godless neighbours. But he found what Christ found, and what Christ’s people always have found, that if they persistently suffer in well-doing they gain the highest power for service, moral and spiritual power; and they are in the special keeping and care of God, and are even permitted to save others. Noah’s suffering in well-doing enabled him to preach to the antediluvians—it was preaching to them; it secured his personal safety when the judgment fell, and it brought him the right of saving seven persons beside himself. “Baptism doth now save you.” Not the rite of baptism—that does not save anybody: and there would be no point in that applied to Christian disciples who were called to suffer for righteousness’ sake. It was their baptism of providential discipline that St. Peter had in mind; and what he would impress on them is, that they must not think of it as merely corrective of evil; it was not designed merely to secure “the putting away of the filth of the flesh.” It was sent to give them that kind of spiritual power for witness and service which can only come when a man can suffer, keeping a good conscience. And that is the kind of suffering which brought Christ His unique spiritual power. Job is the Old Testament illustration of suffering that was not sent for the “putting away of the sins of the flesh,” but for that kind of spiritual testing of integrity—of a good conscience—which made Job a witness to the ages of the fact, that disinterested love to God is possible, and such confidence in the Divine wisdom as enables a man to trust God, though He slays. It is not possible without undue strain to connect the “interrogation of a good conscience toward God” with the resurrection of Christ, so as to think of it as “through the resurrection”; but if we understand the parenthesis to close with the words “conscience toward God,” then “through the resurrection “connects with” quickened in the Spirit” of 1Pe_3:18, and the two points of St. Peter’s persuasion come fully into view. Christ having suffered in well-doing, even unto extremity, even unto death—physical death—has gained a free, large, spiritual power, and the trust of supreme spiritual authority. And St. Peter would urge on these persecuted disciples that they may well endure their baptism of suffering for righteousness’ sake, in the confidence that it would be over-ruled for sublime issues, and they would be absolutely safe under every form of stress and strain. The apostolic use of Old-Testament illustrations, and the peculiar typical manner in which Old-Testament incidents and characters were treated, is very familiar to the Bible student. It is a manner which the Western mind finds exceedingly difficult to understand or appreciate.
Baptism.—We enter upon this question—whether we have a right to claim to be sons of God or not? And if so, on what grounds? In virtue of a ceremony, or of a certain set of feelings? Or in virtue of an eternal Fact—the fact of God’s Paternity.
I. The apparent denial of original sin in asserting the paternity of God. The text declares that baptism saves us. But it declares that this can only be said figuratively: “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us.” Original sin is an awful fact. It is not the guilt of an ancestor imputed to an innocent descendant, but it is the tendencies of that ancestor living in his offspring, and incurring guilt. Original sin can be forgiven only so far as original sin is removed. He who would deny original sin must contradict all experience in the transmission of qualities. It is plain that the first man must have exerted on his race an influence quite peculiar; that his acts must have biassed their acts. And this bias or tendency is what we call original sin. Now, original sin is just the denial of God’s paternity, refusing to live as His children, and saying we are not His children. From this state Christ redeemed. He revealed God as the Father, and as the Spirit who is in man, “lighting every man,” moving in man his infinite desires and infinite affections. This was the Revelation. The reception of that revelation is Regeneration. There are two ways in which that revelation may be accepted.
1. By a public recognition called baptism.
2. By faith. “We are saved by faith”; “baptism saves us.”
II. But if baptism is only the public recognition and symbol of a fact, is not baptism degraded and made superfluous?
1. Baptism is given as a something to rest upon; nay, as a something without which redemption would soon become unreal; which converts a doctrine into a reality, which realises visibly what is invisible. For our nature is such that immaterial truths are unreal to us until they are embodied in material form. God’s character—way, God Himself—to us would be nothing if it were not for the creation, which is the great symbol and sacrament of His presence. So baptism is a fact for man to rest upon, a doctrine realised to flesh and blood.
2. Baptism is the token of a church, of an universal church, not the symbol of a sect.
3. Baptism is an authoritative symbol, but not an arbitrary symbol. The authoritativeness is the all in all which converts baptism from a mere ceremony into a sacrament. It is no conventional arrangement; it is valid as a legal, eternal truth, a condensed, embodied fact. Is this making baptism nothing? I should rather say baptism is everything. Take your stand upon the broad, sublime basis of God’s Paternity. God created the world—God redeemed the world. Baptism proclaims separately, personally, by name to you—God created you, God redeemed you. Baptism is your warrant—you are His child. And now, because you are His child, live as a child of God; be redeemed from the life of evil which is false to your nature into the life of light and goodness, which is the truth of your being.—F. W. Robertson.
1Pe_3:22. Christ’s Spiritual Rights and Spiritual Powers.—“Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.” It is now fully recognised by all thoughtful and intelligent persons that there is a growth and development in the teachings of our Lord’s brief ministerial life. That He grew in wisdom during the thirty years of His private life at Nazareth is expressly declared. That He grew in wisdom and apprehension of truth, and spiritual insight and teaching skill, during the three years of practice and experience in active ministry is plain to all who, without prejudice, compare His earlier and later teachings. It is but the affirmation of His true humanity to declare that He grew in the apprehension of His own mystery, and the meaning of His own mission. But however difficult it may be to receive this fact, or even to state it with due precision, limitations, and qualifications, we are on perfectly safe grounds when we say that the apostles grew in the spiritual apprehension of the person of their Lord, the incidents of His career, and the doctrinal mysteries that centred in His person and work. It was long before they really understood their Lord Himself. They accepted Him as the national Messiah. By-and-bye they saw in Him the Son of God, and Saviour from sin. At first they were simply overwhelmed by their Lord’s death, which seemed an unendurable disgrace, and an irreparable loss. By-and-bye they saw in it the necessary self-sacrifice of Him who would deliver humanity from sin. At first they could make little or nothing of their Lord’s resurrection. It was even more a mystery than a joy. He was with them again, but He was not with them as He had been. And it was a long time before they could fully realise that His presence with them in His spiritual, resurrection, heavenly life was better, every way better, to them than His presence within bodily limitations. Each of the apostles gained some special and characteristic thought of the present mission of the Risen and Living One. It is to one of the thoughts of St. Peter that attention is now directed. It represents what he most deeply felt after he had thought for long years about it. That resurrection brought to Christ the kind of trust—spiritual trust; the kind of power—spiritual power, which God always has given, and always does give, to those who suffer in the flesh for righteousness’ sake. And it is a kind of power and trust which can. be given on no other conditions, can be attained in no other way. The apostle Paul gives us the same apprehension of the Resurrection in a different form of words. “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even unto death; yea, the death of the cross. Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and gave Him the name which is above every name.” And if we put St. Peter’s words together without confusing them with his parenthesis, what he says is this: “Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit through His resurrection. Who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.” This is fully intelligible, and this is entirely in harmony with the teaching of the other apostles. In His resurrection life Jesus has gained spiritual power and spiritual authority, and these He is using now in the completing of His great redemptive work for humanity. Christ has no longer a sphere of redemptive ministry in bodily relations. Christ has now a sphere of redemptive ministry in spiritual relations. For the fulfilment of that spiritual ministry He is entrusted with spiritual rights, and endowed with spiritual powers. On these points we may suggestively and profitably dwell. Christ has no longer a sphere of redemptive ministry in bodily relations. Once He had! He came into human spheres that He might deal illustratively with the human physical woes that are attendant upon and illustrative of sin. He could say, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.” He could send this message back to the anxiously inquiring Baptist: “Go and show John again those things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” But all that illustrative redemptive work in bodily sufferings and disabilities was ended. That was finished. That was never to be resumed. Jesus never opened a blind eye, or cleansed a leper, or cast out a devil, during His resurrection life. He was “put to death in the flesh.” We see clearly that His cross ended His human life; we need to see as clearly that the cross ended His illustrative redemptive ministry in physical scenes and relations. We shall not properly apprehend what He does if we fail to apprehend what He once did, but now and for ever has ceased to do. The illustrative redemption is done; the redemption which was illustrated is now being wrought by Him who is quickened in the spirit through His resurrection.
CHAPTER 4
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.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain 1 Peter
1 Peter
HALLOWING CHRIST
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1Pe 3:14-15.
These words are a quotation from the prophet Isaiah, with some very significant variations. As originally spoken, they come from a period of the prophet’s life when he was surrounded by conspirators against him, eager to destroy, and when he had been giving utterance to threatening prophecies as to the coming up of the King of Assyria, and the voice of God encouraged him and his disciples with the ringing words: ‘Fear not their fear, nor be afraid. Sanctify the Lord of Hosts Himself, and let Him be your fear, and let Him be your dread, and He shall be for a sanctuary.’ Peter was in similar circumstances. The gathering storm of persecution of the Christians as Christians seems to have been rising on his horizon, and he turns to his brethren, and commends to them the old word which long ago had been spoken to and by the prophet. But the variations are very remarkable. The Revised Version correctly reads my text thus: ‘Fear not their fear, neither be troubled, but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.’
I. We have first to note the substitution, as a matter of course, without any need for explanation or vindication, of Jesus Christ in place of the Jehovah of the Old Testament.
There is no doubt that the reading adopted in the Revised Version is the true one, as attested by weighty evidence in the manuscripts, and in itself more probable by reason of its very difficulty. The other reading adopted in Authorised Versions is likely to have arisen from a marginal note which crept into the text, and was due to some copyist who was struck by Peter’s free handling of the passage, and wished to make the quotations verbally accurate.
Now, if we think for a moment of the Jew’s reverence for the letter of Scripture, and then think again of the Jew’s intense monotheism and dread of putting any creature into the place of God, we shall understand how saturated with the belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ, and how convinced that it was the vital centre of all Christian teaching, this Apostle must have been when, without a word of explanation, he took his pen, and, as it were, drew it through ‘Lord God’ in Isaiah’s words, and wrote in capitals over it, ‘Christ as Lord.’
What does that mean? Some of us would, perhaps, hesitate to say that it means that He who was all through the growing ages of brightening revelation of old, named ‘Jehovah,’ is now named Jesus Christ. I believe that from the beginning He whom we call, according to the teaching of the great prologue of John’s Gospel, the ‘Word of God,’ was the Agent of all Divine revelation. But whether that be so or no, whether we have the right to say that the same Person who was revealed as ‘Jehovah’ is now revealed as ‘Jesus Christ,’ the ‘Word made flesh,’ or no, we distinctly fail to apprehend who and what Jesus Christ was to the writer of this epistle, and fail to sanctify Him in our hearts, unless we say: ‘To Thee belongeth all that belongs to God.’ That is the first great truth that comes out of these words, and I would commend it to any of you who may be hesitating about that Christian fact of the true divinity of Jesus Christ. You cannot strike it out of the New Testament, and if you try to do so you tear the book to pieces, and reduce it to rags and tatters.
Further, mark here what the Apostle means by the Christian sanctifying of Christ.
That is a strange expression. How am I to sanctify Jesus Christ? Well, it is the same word that is used in the Lord’s Prayer, and perhaps its use there may throw light on Peter’s meaning here. ‘Hallowed be Thy name’--explains the meaning of hallowing Christ as Lord in our hearts. We sanctify or hallow one who is holy already, when we recognise the holiness, and honour what we recognise. So that the plain meaning of the commandments here is: set Christ in your hearts on the pedestal and pinnacle that belongs to Him, and then bow down before Him with all reverence and submission. Be sure that you give Him all that is His due, and in the love of your hearts, as well as in the thinkings of your minds, recognise Him for what He is, the Lord. Let us take care that our thoughts about Jesus Christ are full of devout awe and reverence. I venture to think that a great deal of modern and sentimental Christianity is very defective in this respect. You cannot love Jesus Christ too much, but you can love Him with too little reverence. And if you take up some of our luscious modern hymns that people are so fond of singing, I think you will find in them a twang of unwholesomeness, just because the love is not reverent enough, and the approaching confidence has not enough of devout awe in it. This generation looks at the half of Christ. When people are suffering from indigestion, they can only see half of the thing that they look at, and there are many of us that can only see a part of the whole Christ: and so, forgetting that He is judge, and forgetting that He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and forgetting that whilst He is manifested in the flesh our brother He is also God manifest in the flesh, our Creator as well as our Redeemer, and our Judge as well as our Saviour, some do not enough hallow Him in their hearts as Lord.
Peter had heard Jesus say that ‘all men should honour the Son as they honoured the Father.’ I beseech you, embrace the whole Christ, and see to it that you do not dethrone Him from His rightful place, or take from Him the glory that is due to His name. For your love will suffer, and become a mere sentiment, inoperative and sometimes unwholesome, unless you keep in mind Peter’s injunction.
But, further, there is included in this commandment, not only what Isaiah said, ‘Let Him be your fear and your dread,’ but also a reverent love and trust. For we do not hallow Christ as we ought, unless we absolutely confide in every word of His lips. Did you ever think that not to trust Jesus Christ is to blaspheme and profane that holy name by which we are called; and that to hallow Him means to say to Him, ‘I believe every word that Thou speakest, and I am ready to risk my life upon Thy veracity’? Distrust is dishonouring the Master, and taking from Him the glory that is due unto His name.
Then there is another point to be noted: ‘Sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord.’ That is Peter’s addition to Isaiah’s words, and it is not a mere piece of tautology, but puts great emphasis into the exhortation. What is a man’s heart, in New Testament and Old Testament language? It is the very centre-point of the personal self. And when Peter says, ‘Hallow Him in your hearts,’ he means that, deep down in the very midst of your personal being, as it were, there should be, fundamental to all, and interior to all, this reverential awe and absolute trust in Jesus Christ--an habitual thought, a central emotion, an all-dominant impulse. ‘Out of the heart are the issues of life.’ Put the healing agent into it, the fountain-head, and all the streams that pour out thence will be purified and sweetened. Deep in the heart put Christ, and life will be pure.
Now, in another part of this letter the Apostle says, ‘Ye are a spiritual house.’ I think some notion of the same sort is running in his mind here. He thinks of each man’s heart as being a shrine in which the god is enthroned, and in which worship is rendered. And if we have Christ in our hearts, then our hearts are temples; and if we ‘hallow’ the Christ that dwells within us, we shall take care that there are no foul things in that sanctuary. We dishonour the indwelling Deity when into that same heart we allow to come lusts, foulnesses, meannesses, worldlinesses, passions, sins, and all the crew of reptiles and wild beasts that we sometimes admit there. If we hallow Christ in our hearts, in any true fashion, He will turn out the money-changers and overturn the tables. And if we desire to hallow Him in our hearts, we too, must by His Spirit’s help, purge the temple that He may enter and abide.
And so I come to the next point, and that is the Christian courage and calmness that ensue from hallowing Christ in the heart.
The Apostle first puts his exhortation: ‘Be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled,’ and then he presents us an opposite injunction, obedience to which is the only means of obeying the first exhortation. If you do not sanctify Christ in your hearts, you cannot help being afraid of their terror, and troubled. If you do, then there is no fear that you will fall into that snare. That is to say, the one thing that delivers men from the fears that make cowards of us all is to have Christ lodged within our hearts. Sunshine puts out culinary fires. They who have the awe and the reverent love that knit them to Jesus Christ, and who carry Him within their hearts, have no need to be afraid of anything besides. Only he who can say, ‘The Lord is the strength of my life’ can go on to say, ‘Of whom shall I be afraid?’ There is nothing more hopeless than to address to men, ringed about with dangers, the foolish exhortations: ‘Cheer up! do not be frightened,’ unless you can tell them some reason for not being frightened. And the one reason that will carry weight with it, in all circumstances, is the presence of Jesus.
‘With Christ in the vessel
I smile at the storm.’
The world comes to us and says: ‘Do not be afraid, do not be afraid; be of good courage; pluck up your heart, man.’ The Apostle comes and says: ‘Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts; and then, and only then, will you be bold.’ The boldness which fronts the certain dangers and calamities and the possible dangers and calamities of this life, without Christ, is not boldness, but foolhardiness. ‘The simple passeth on, and is punished,’ says the book of Proverbs. It is easy to whistle when going through the churchyard, and to say, ‘Who’s afraid?’ But the ghosts rise all the same, and there is only one thing that lays them, and that is--the present Christ.
In like manner the sanctifying of Jesus Christ in the heart is the secret of calmness. ‘Fear not their fear, neither be troubled.’ I wonder if Peter was thinking at all of another saying: ‘Let not your heart be troubled; neither let it be afraid.’ Perhaps he was. At any rate, his thought is parallel with our Lord’s when He said, ‘Let not your heart be troubled. Believe in God, and believe in Me.’ The two alternatives are possible; we shall have either troubled hearts, or hearts calmed by faith in Christ. The ships behind the breakwater do not pitch and toss. The little town up amongst the hills, with the high cliffs around it, lies quiet, and ‘hears not the loud winds when they call.’ And the heart that has Christ for its possession has a secret peace, whatever strife may be raging round it.
‘Be not troubled; sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.’ Peter leaves out a clause of Isaiah’s, though he conveys the idea without reiterating the words. But Isaiah had added a sweet promise which means much the same thing as I have now been saying, when he went on to declare that to those who sanctify the Lord God in their hearts, He shall be for a sanctuary. ‘The sanctuary was an asylum where men were safe. And if we have made our hearts temples in which Christ is honoured, worshipped, and trusted, then we shall dwell in Him as in the secret place of the Most High’; and in the inner chamber of the Temple it will be quiet, whatever noises are in the camp, and there is light coming from the Shekinah, whatever darkness may lie around. If we take Christ into our hearts, and reverence and love Him there, He will take us into His heart, and we shall dwell in peace, because we dwell in Him.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain (See Scofield "1Jn 3:7")
righteousness
(See Scofield "1Jn 3:7")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 3:14-15 or be afraid of their threats: See Isa…
3:14-15 or be afraid of their threats: See Isa 8:13, where God exhorts the prophet to fear nothing except the Lord. • worship Christ as Lord: By fearing Christ, they will be free from fear of their human persecutors.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.