Yes, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence; and in moral excellence, knowledge; and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control perseverance; and in perseverance godliness; and in godliness brotherly affection; and in brotherly affection, love. For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to not be idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.
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Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who have obtained a like precious faith with us in the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and virtue, by which he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust. Yes, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence; and in moral excellence, knowledge; and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control perseverance; and in perseverance godliness; and in godliness brotherly affection; and in brotherly affection, love. For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to not be idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins. Therefore, brothers, be more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble. For thus you will be richly supplied with the entrance into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Parallel Translations
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Yes, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply moral excellence; and in moral excellence, knowledge;
and in knowledge, self-control; and in self-control perseverance; and in perseverance godliness;
and in godliness brotherly affection; and in brotherly affection, love.
For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to not be idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
For he who lacks these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins.
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And hervnto geve all diligence: in youre fayth minister vertve and in vertue knowledge
and in knowledge temperancy and in temrancy pacience in pacience godlynes
in godlynes brotherly kyndnes in brotherly kyndnes love.
For yf these thinges be amonge you and are plenteous they wyll make you that ye nether shalbe ydle nor vnfrutefull in the knowledge of oure lorde Iesus Christ.
But he that lacketh these thynges is blynde and gropeth for the waye with his honde and hath forgotten that he was pourged from his olde synnes.
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Therefore giue euen all diligence thereunto: ioyne moreouer vertue with your faith: and with vertue, knowledge:
And with knowledge, temperance: and with temperance, patience: and with patience, godlines:
And with godlines, brotherly kindnes: and with brotherly kindnes, loue.
For if these things be among you, and abound, they will make you that ye neither shalbe idle, nor vnfruitfull in the acknowledging of our Lord Iesus Christ:
For he that hath not these things, is blinde, and can not see farre off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his olde sinnes.
Cross-references (103)
- Philippians 4:8 (v5) Finally, brothers, whatever things are true, whatever things are honorable, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever…
- Proverbs 4:23 (v5) Keep your heart with all diligence, for out of it is the wellspring of life.
- 2 Peter 3:18 (v5) But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be the glory both now and forever. Amen.
- Hebrews 6:11 (v5) We desire that each one of you may show the same diligence to the fullness of hope even to the end,
- 2 Peter 1:2-3 (v5) Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, seeing that his divine power has granted to us all…
Show all 100 cross-references
- Philippians 1:9 (vv5, 8) This I pray, that your love may abound yet more and more in knowledge and all discernment,
- Hebrews 10:36 (v6) For you need endurance so that, having done the will of God, you may receive the promise.
- 2 Peter 1:10 (v5) Therefore, brothers, be more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble.
- Romans 5:3-4 (v6) Not only this, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance; and perseverance, proven character; and…
- Hebrews 13:1 (v7) Let brotherly love continue.
- 2 Peter 3:14 (v5) Therefore, beloved, seeing that you look for these things, be diligent to be found in peace, without defect and blameless in his sight.
- Hebrews 11:6 (v5) Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder…
- Luke 21:19 (v6) “By your endurance you will win your lives.
- Ephesians 5:17 (v5) Therefore don’t be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.
- Colossians 2:3 (v5) in whom all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden.
- Psalms 119:4 (v5) You have commanded your precepts, that we should fully obey them.
- Ephesians 1:17-18 (v5) that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him,…
- 2 Peter 1:3 (v6) seeing that his divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by…
- Isaiah 55:2 (v5) Why do you spend money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which doesn’t satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat that…
- Romans 12:10 (v7) In love of the brothers be tenderly affectionate to one another; in honor preferring one another;
- Philippians 2:12 (v5) So then, my beloved, even as you have always obeyed, not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation…
- 1 Thessalonians 3:12 (vv7–8) May the Lord make you to increase and abound in love toward one another, and toward all men, even as we also do toward you,
- Titus 3:14 (v8) Let our people also learn to maintain good works for necessary uses, that they may not be unfruitful.
- John 15:2 (v8) Every branch in me that doesn’t bear fruit, he takes away. Every branch that bears fruit, he prunes, that it may bear more fruit.
- Hebrews 6:12 (vv6, 8) that you won’t be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and perseverance inherited the promises.
- Luke 24:21 (v5) But we were hoping that it was he who would redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happened.
- John 6:27 (v5) Don’t work for the food which perishes, but for the food which remains to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For God the…
- Colossians 3:16 (v8) Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; in all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs,…
- Hebrews 12:1 (v6) Therefore let’s also, seeing we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside every weight and the sin which so easily…
- 1 Corinthians 9:25 (v6) Every man who strives in the games exercises self-control in all things. Now they do it to receive a corruptible crown, but we an…
- Colossians 3:14 (v7) Above all these things, walk in love, which is the bond of perfection.
- John 13:34-35 (v7) A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. By this everyone will know…
- 1 Corinthians 14:20 (v5) Brothers, don’t be children in thoughts, yet in malice be babies, but in thoughts be mature.
- 2 Corinthians 6:4 (v6) but in everything commending ourselves, as servants of God, in great endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses,
- Galatians 5:23 (v6) gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
- Titus 2:2 (v6) that older men should be temperate, sensible, sober minded, sound in faith, in love, and in perseverance:
- 2 Peter 2:18-20 (v9) For, uttering great swelling words of emptiness, they entice in the lusts of the flesh, by licentiousness, those who are indeed escaping…
- 1 John 2:9-11 (v9) He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in the darkness even until now. He who loves his brother remains in the light, and…
- 1 Corinthians 15:58 (v8) Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in…
- 1 Thessalonians 4:1 (v8) Finally then, brothers, we beg and exhort you in the Lord Jesus, that as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, that…
- Titus 2:14 (v9) who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a people for his own possession, zealous for…
- Philemon 1:6 (v8) that the fellowship of your faith may become effective in the knowledge of every good thing which is in us in Christ Jesus.
- 2 Peter 1:2 (v8) Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,
- Revelation 14:12 (v6) Here is the perseverance of the saints, those who keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”
- Psalms 37:7 (v6) Rest in Yahweh, and wait patiently for him. Don’t fret because of him who prospers in his way, because of the man who makes wicked plots…
- Romans 2:7 (v6) to those who by perseverance in well-doing seek for glory, honor, and incorruptibility, eternal life;
- Romans 8:25 (v6) But if we hope for that which we don’t see, we wait for it with patience.
- 1 Corinthians 13:1-8 (v7) If I speak with the languages of men and of angels, but don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal. If I have the…
- Galatians 6:10 (v7) So then, as we have opportunity, let’s do what is good toward all men, and especially toward those who are of the household of the faith.
- Ephesians 5:26 (v9) that he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
- Colossians 1:9 (v5) For this cause, we also, since the day we heard this, don’t cease praying and making requests for you, that you may be filled with the…
- Colossians 1:11 (v6) strengthened with all power, according to the might of his glory, for all endurance and perseverance with joy,
- Titus 1:8 (v6) but given to hospitality, a lover of good, sober minded, fair, holy, self-controlled,
- James 5:7-10 (v6) Be patient therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord. Behold, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient…
- 1 Peter 1:22 (v7) Seeing you have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth through the Spirit in sincere brotherly affection, love one another from…
- 1 Peter 2:17 (v7) Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
- 1 John 1:7 (v9) But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses…
- 1 John 3:16 (v7) By this we know love, because he laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.
- 1 John 4:21 (v7) This commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should also love his brother.
- Luke 8:15 (v6) Those in the good ground, these are those who with an honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it tightly, and produce fruit with…
- Acts 24:25 (v6) As he reasoned about righteousness, self-control, and the judgment to come, Felix was terrified, and answered, “Go your way for this time,…
- Romans 6:1-4 (v9) What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any…
- Romans 6:11 (v9) Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
- 2 Corinthians 8:2 (v8) how in much proof of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded to the riches of their generosity.
- 2 Corinthians 13:5 (v8) Examine your own selves, whether you are in the faith. Test your own selves. Or don’t you know about your own selves, that Jesus Christ is…
- Philippians 2:5 (v8) Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus,
- Colossians 2:7 (v8) rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, even as you were taught, abounding in it in thanksgiving.
- 1 Thessalonians 1:3 (v6) remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labor of love and perseverance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, before our God and…
- 1 Thessalonians 4:9-10 (v7) But concerning brotherly love, you have no need that one write to you. For you yourselves are taught by God to love one another, for indeed…
- 2 Thessalonians 1:3 (v8) We are bound to always give thanks to God for you, brothers, even as it is appropriate, because your faith grows exceedingly, and the love…
- Hebrews 12:15 (v5) looking carefully lest there be any man who falls short of the grace of God, lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and many…
- James 2:14-26 (v9) What good is it, my brothers, if a man says he has faith, but has no works? Can faith save him? And if a brother or sister is naked and in…
- 1 Peter 3:7 (v5) You husbands, in the same way, live with your wives according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman, as to the weaker vessel, as also…
- 1 Peter 3:8 (v7) Finally, all of you be like-minded, compassionate, loving as brothers, tenderhearted, courteous,
- 1 John 3:14 (v7) We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. He who doesn’t love his brother remains in death.
- Revelation 2:2 (v6) “I know your works, and your toil and perseverance, and that you can’t tolerate evil men, and have tested those who call themselves…
- Luke 16:26 (v5) Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that no…
- John 15:6-8 (v8) If a man doesn’t remain in me, he is thrown out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them, throw them into the fire, and they are…
- Romans 12:11 (v8) not lagging in diligence; fervent in spirit; serving the Lord;
- 2 Corinthians 9:14 (v8) while they themselves also, with supplication on your behalf, yearn for you by reason of the exceeding grace of God in you.
- Galatians 5:6 (v9) For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision amounts to anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.
- Galatians 5:13 (v9) For you, brothers, were called for freedom. Only don’t use your freedom for gain to the flesh, but through love be servants to one another.
- 1 Thessalonians 5:15 (v7) See that no one returns evil for evil to anyone, but always follow after that which is good for one another and for all.
- Hebrews 9:14 (v9) how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without defect to God, cleanse your conscience from…
- 1 Peter 3:21 (v9) This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward…
- 2 Peter 1:4-7 (v9) by which he has granted to us his precious and exceedingly great promises; that through these you may become partakers of the divine…
- Mark 10:21 (v9) Jesus looking at him loved him, and said to him, “One thing you lack. Go, sell whatever you have, and give to the poor, and you will have…
- Luke 18:22 (v9) When Jesus heard these things, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell all that you have, and distribute it to the poor. Then you…
- John 9:40-41 (v9) Those of the Pharisees who were with him heard these things, and said to him, “Are we also blind?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind,…
- Romans 15:4 (v6) For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that through perseverance and through encouragement of the…
- 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 (v9) Even if our Good News is veiled, it is veiled in those who are dying, in whom the god of this world has blinded the minds of the…
- 2 Thessalonians 3:5 (v6) May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love, and into the perseverance of Christ.
- 1 Timothy 2:2 (v6) for kings and all who are in high places, that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and reverence.
- 1 Timothy 2:10 (v6) but with good works, which is appropriate for women professing godliness.
- 1 Timothy 5:13 (v8) Besides, they also learn to be idle, going about from house to house. Not only idle, but also gossips and busybodies, saying things which…
- 1 Timothy 6:6 (v6) But godliness with contentment is great gain.
- 1 Timothy 6:11 (v6) But you, man of God, flee these things, and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.
- 2 Timothy 3:5 (v6) holding a form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also.
- Hebrews 6:15 (v6) Thus, having patiently endured, he obtained the promise.
- 2 Peter 3:11 (v6) Therefore since all these things will be destroyed like this, what kind of people ought you to be in holy living and godliness,
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (103 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (26 sources)
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv5, 8, 9 5 And besides this. As it is a work…
5 And besides this. As it is a work arduous and of immense labor, to put off the corruption which is in us, he bids us to strive and make every effort for this purpose. He intimates that no place is to be given in this case to sloth, and that we ought to obey God calling us, not slowly or carelessly, but that there is need of alacrity; as though he had said, “Put forth every effort, and make your exertions manifest to all.” — For this is what the participle he uses imports.
Add to your faith virtue, or, Supply to your faith virtue. He shews for what purpose the faithful were to strive, that is, that they might have faith adorned with good morals, wisdom, patience, and love. Then he intimates that faith ought not to be naked or empty, but that these are its inseparable companions. To supply to faith, is to add to faith. There is not here, however, properly a gradation as to the sense, though it appears as to the words; for love does not in order follow patience, nor does it proceed from it. Therefore the passage is to be thus simply explained, “Strive that virtue, prudence, temperance, and the things which follow, may be added to your faith.”
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I take virtue to mean a life honest and rightly formed; for it is not here ἐνέργεια, energy or courage, but ἀρετὴ, virtue, moral goodness. Knowledge is what is necessary for acting prudently; for after having put down a general term, he mentions some of the principal endowments of a Christian. Brotherly-kindness, φιλαδελφία, is mutual affection among the children of God. Love extends wider, because it embraces all mankind.
It may, however, be here asked, whether Peter, by assigning to us the work of supplying or adding virtue, thus far extolled the strength and power of free-will? They who seek to establish free-will in man, indeed concede to God the first place, that is, that he begins to act or work in us; but they imagine that we at the same time co-operate, and that it is thus owing to us that the movements of God are not rendered void and inefficacious. But the perpetual doctrine of Scripture is opposed to this delirious notion: for it plainly testifies, that right feelings are formed in us by God, and are rendered by him effectual. It testifies also that all our progress and perseverance are from God. Besides, it expressly declares that wisdom, love, patience, are the gifts of God and the Spirit. When, therefore, the Apostle requires these things, he by no means asserts that they are in our power, but only shews what we ought to have, and what ought to be done. And as to the godly, when conscious of their own infirmity, they find themselves deficient in their duty, nothing remains for them but to flee to God for aid and help.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 8, 9 Supply also, and support or aid.
Supply also, and support or aid.
Having laid the foundation (that is, having declared the causes of our salvation and especially of our sanctification) now he beginneth to exhort us to give our minds wholly to the true use of this grace. And he beginneth with faith without which nothing can please God, and he warneth us to have it full fraught with virtue (that is to say) with good and godly manners, being joined with the knowledge of God’s will, without which there is neither faith neither any true virtue.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv5–9 5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to…
5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;
Ver. 5. And besides this] q.d. As God hath given you all things pertaining to life and godliness, and hath granted you exceeding great and precious promises, so must you reciprocate, by giving all diligence, or making all haste, that ye be not taken with your task undone. Acti agamus.
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Add to your faith] Faith is the foundation of the following graces; indeed they are all in faith radically. Every grace is but faith exercised. To faith must be added virtue, i.e. holy conversation; lest we be counted and called Solifidians. It was the counsel of Francis Spira to those about him, Learn all of me, to take heed of severing faith and obedience. I taught justification by faith, but neglected obedience; therefore is this befallen me.
And to virtue, knowledge] For the regulating of our obedience, that we go not blindling to work, that we may perform a reasonable or intelligible service. "For without knowledge the mind is not good; and he that (not understanding his way) hasteth with his feet, sinneth," Pro 19:2; the faster he runs, the further he is out. The Samaritans’ service was rejected, because they worshipped they knew not what. The Romans were full of goodness, because full of knowledge, Rom 15:14.
Add] Gr. επεχορηγησατε, Link them hand in hand, as virgins in a dance. Or, provide yourselves of this rich furniture; one grace strengtheneth another, as stones do in an arch.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv5–9 And beside this, giving all diligence: here the apostle…
And beside this, giving all diligence: here the apostle begins his exhortation, that since God had done so much for them, 2Pe 1:3,4, they would likewise do their duty; and that their care and diligence in improving the grace they had received, might be added to his bounty in giving it them.
Add to; or, minister unto; or it may be a metaphor taken from the ancient way of dancing, in which they joined hands one with another, thereby helping and holding up one another.
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Faith is here set forth as the first grace, and which (as it were) leads up, the rest following it, and attending upon it, yet all in conjunction one with another. Faith is set in the first place as the prime grace of a Christian, the foundation and root of all other, as being that without which nothing else can be pleasing to God, Heb 11:6. By
virtue he seems to understand universal righteousness, or a complication of all those graces by which faith is wont to work; and this being more general, he proceeds from it to others that are more special.
Knowledge; by this may be meant spiritual prudence, which governs and directs other virtues in their actings; and it is called knowledge, because it consists in the practical knowledge of the will of God: see 2Co 6:6; 1Pe 3:7.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv5, 8 The apostle spends the former part of the chapter…
The apostle spends the former part of the chapter in comforting, this in exhorting; he told us before what God had done for us; he tells us now, what we must do for ourselves; it is not fit that heaven should take all the pains, and we none; we must give diligence, all diligence.
Besides this, that is, besides what God has given us, and done for us, let us take care to be daily adding to our stock and store.
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Adding to our faith, virtue; that is, all good works in general, without which faith is dead, or dying; and fortitude, or holy courage, in doing our duty in particular.
To virtue, knowledge: that is, a more exact knowledge of your duty, and a farther increase in it; for knowledge is the light, without which the Christian cannot see to do his work.
And to knowledge must be added temperance, which subdues the violence of our unruly passions and appetites, and does reduce those rebellious powers under the government and dominion of reason and religion.
And to temperance, patience under all wrongs and sufferings whatsoever; an impatient man under affliction is like a Bedlamite in chains, raving against God and man.
To patience, godliness, a conscientious regard to all the duties of the first table; let the fear of God restrain you from sin, the love of God constrain you to duty.
And to godliness, brotherly kindness, or a fervent love to all Christians, as being our brethren and fellow-members in Christ, and this for grace sake.
And to brotherly kindness, charity; that is, to all mankind, as proceeding from the same stock, having the same nature, and subject to the same necessities with ourselves; let there be found with you a desire and endeavour to do all the possible good you can to every one.
Learn and observe form the whole, That there is a concatenation both of graces and duties, they must not be separated, they will not live single; where there is one grace in sincerity, there is a constant care to secure all the rest; and where a Christian, for conscience sake, performs one duty, he will make conscience of all the rest; the duties of both tables are religiously observed, both as an argument of his sincerity, and as an ornament to his holy profession.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v5 In these words the apostle comes to the chief…
In these words the apostle comes to the chief thing intended in this epistle - to excite and engage them to advance in grace and holiness, they having already obtained precious faith, and been made partakers of the divine nature. This is a very good beginning, but it is not to be rested in, as if we were already perfect. The apostle had prayed that grace and peace might be multiplied to them, and now he exhorts them to press forward for the obtaining of more grace. We should, as we have opportunity, exhort those we pray for, and excite them to the use of all proper means to obtain what we desire God to bestow upon them; and those who will make any progress in religion must be very diligent and industrious in their endeavours. Without giving all diligence, there is no gaining any ground in the work of holiness; those who are slothful in the business of religion will make nothing of it; we must strive if we will enter in at the strait gate, Luk 13:24.
I. Here we cannot but observe how the believer's way is marked out step by step. 1. He must get virtue, by which some understand justice; and then the knowledge, temperance, and patience that follow, being joined with it, the apostle may be supposed to put them upon pressing after the four cardinal virtues, or the four elements that go to the making up of every virtue or virtuous action. But seeing it is a faithful saying, and constantly to be asserted, that those who have faith be careful to maintain good works (Tit 3:8), by virtue here we may understand strength and courage, without which the believer cannot stand up for good works, by abounding and excelling in them. The righteous must be bold as a lion (Pro 28:1); a cowardly Christian, who is afraid to profess the doctrines or practise the duties of the gospel, must expect that Christ will be ashamed of him another day. "Let not your hearts fail you in the evil day, but show yourselves valiant in standing against all opposition, and resisting every enemy, world, flesh, devil, yea, and death too." We have need of virtue while we live, and it will be of excellent use when we come to die. 2. The believer must add knowledge to his virtue, prudence to his courage; there is a knowledge of God's name which must go before our faith (Psa 9:10), and we cannot approve of the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, till we know it; but there are proper circumstances for duty, which must be known and observed; we must use the appointed means, and observe the accepted time. Christian prudence regards the persons we have to do with and the place and company we are in. Every believer must labour after the knowledge and wisdom that are profitable to direct, both as to the proper method and order wherein all Christian duties are to be performed and as to the way and manner of performing them. 3. We must add temperance to our knowledge. We must be sober and moderate in our love to, and use of, the good things of this life; and, if we have a right understanding and knowledge of outward comforts, we shall see that their worth and usefulness are vastly inferior to those of spiritual mercies. Bodily exercises and bodily privileges profit but little, and therefore are to be esteemed and used accordingly; the gospel teaches sobriety as well as honesty, Tit 2:12. We must be moderate in desiring and using the good things of natural life, such as meat, drink, clothes, sleep, recreations, and credit; an inordinate desire after these is inconsistent with an earnest desire after God and Christ; and those who take more of these than is due can render to neither God nor man what is due to them. 4. Add to temperance patience, which must have its perfect work, or we cannot be perfect and entire, wanting nothing (Jam 1:4), for we are born to trouble, and must through many tribulations enter into the kingdom of heaven; and it is this tribulation (Rom 5:3) which worketh patience, that is, requires the exercise and occasions the increase of this grace, whereby we bear all calamities and crosses with silence and submission, without murmuring against God or complaining of him, but justifying him who lays all affliction upon us, owning that our sufferings are less than our sins deserve, and believing they are no more than we ourselves need. 5. To patience we must add godliness, and this is the very thing which is produced by patience, for that works experience, Rom 5:4. When Christians bear afflictions patiently, they get an experimental knowledge of the loving-kindness of their heavenly Father, which he will not take from his children, even when he visits their iniquity with the rod and their transgression with stripes (Psa 89:32, Psa 89:33), and hereby they are brought to the child-like fear and reverential love wherein true godliness consists: to this, 6. We must add brotherly-kindness, a tender affection to all our fellow-christians, who are children of the same Father, servants of the same Master, members of the same family, travellers to the same country, and heirs of the same inheritance, and therefore are to be loved with a pure heart fervently, with a love of complacency, as those who are peculiarly near and dear to us, in whom we take particular delight, Psa 16:3. 7. Charity, or a love of good-will to all mankind, must be added to the love of delight which we have for those who are the children of God. God has made of one blood all nations, and all the children of men are partakers of the same human nature, are all capable of the same mercies, and liable to the same afflictions, and therefore, though upon a spiritual account Christians are distinguished and dignified above those who are without Christ, yet are they to sympathize with others in their calamities, and relieve their necessities, and promote their welfare both in body and soul, as they have opportunity: thus must all believers in Christ evidence that they are the children of God, who is good to all, but is especially good to Israel.
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II. All the forementioned graces must be had, or we shall not be thoroughly furnished for all good works - for the duties of the first and second table, for active and passive obedience, and for those services wherein we are to imitate God as well as for those wherein we only obey him - and therefore to engage us to an industrious and unwearied pursuit of them, the apostle sets forth the advantages that redound to all who successfully labour so as to get these things to be and abound in them, Pe2 1:8-11. These are proposed,
1. More generally, Pe2 1:8. The having these things make not barren (or slothful) nor unfruitful, where, according to the style of the Holy Ghost, we must understand a great deal more than is expressed; for when it is said concerning Ahaz, the vilest and most provoking of all the kings of Judah, that he did not right in the sight of the Lord (Kg2 16:2), we are to understand as much as if it had been said, He did what was most offensive and abominable, as the following account of his life shows; so, when it is here said that the being and abounding of all Christian graces in us will make us neither inactive nor unfruitful, we are thereby to understand that it will make us very zealous and lively, vigorous and active, in all practical Christianity, and eminently fruitful in the works of righteousness. these will bring much glory to God, by bringing forth much fruit among men, being fruitful in knowledge, or the acknowledging of our Lord Jesus Christ, owning him to be their Lord, and evidencing themselves to be his servants by their abounding in the work that he has given them to do. This is the necessary consequence of adding one grace to another; for, where all Christian graces are in the heart, they improve and strengthen, encourage and cherish, one another; so they all thrive and grow (as the apostle intimates in the beginning of Pe2 1:8), and wherever grace abounds there will be an abounding in good works. How desirable it is to be in such a case the apostle evidences, Pe2 1:9. There he sets forth how miserable it is to be without those quickening fructifying graces; for he who has not the forementioned graces, or, though he pretends or seems to have them, does not exercise and improve them, is blind, that is, as to spiritual and heavenly things, as the next words explain it: He cannot see far off. This present evil world he can see, and dotes upon, but has no discerning at all of the world to come, so as to be affected with the spiritual privileges and heavenly blessings thereof. He who sees the excellences of Christianity must needs be diligent in endeavours after all those graces that are absolutely necessary for obtaining glory, honour, and immortality; but, where these graces are not obtained nor endeavoured after, men are not able to look forward to the things that are but a very little way off in reality, though in appearance, or in their apprehension, they are at a great distance, because they put them far away from them; and how wretched is their condition who are thus blind as to the awfully great things of the other world, who cannot see any thing of the reality and certainty, the greatness and nearness, of the glorious rewards God will bestow on the righteous, and the dreadful punishment he will inflict on the ungodly! But this is not all the misery of those who do not add to their faith virtue, knowledge, etc. They are as unable to look backward as forward, their memories are slippery and unable to retain what is past, as their sight is short and unable to discern what is future; they forget that they have been baptized, and had the means, and been laid under the obligations to holiness of heart and life. By baptism we are engaged in a holy war against sin, and are solemnly bound to fight against the flesh, the world, and the devil. Often call to mind, and seriously meditate on, your solemn engagement to be the Lord's, and your peculiar advantages and encouragements to lay aside all filthiness of flesh and spirit.
2. The apostle proposes two particular advantages that will attend or follow upon diligence in the work of a Christian: stability in grace, and a triumphant entrance into glory. These he brings in by resuming his former exhortation, and laying it down in other words; for what in Pe2 1:5 is expressed by giving diligence to add to faith virtue, etc., is expressed in Pe2 1:10 by giving diligence to make our calling and election sure. Here we may observe, (1.) It is the duty of believers to make their election sure, to clear it up to themselves that they are the chosen of God. (2.) The way to make sure their eternal election is to make out their effectual calling: none can look into the book of God's eternal counsels and decrees; but, inasmuch as whom God did predestinate those he also called, if we can find we are effectually called, we may conclude we are chosen to salvation. (3.) It requires a great deal of diligence and labour to make sure our calling and election; there must be a very close examination of ourselves, a very narrow search and strict enquiry, whether we are thoroughly converted, our minds enlightened, our wills renewed, and our whole souls changed as to the bent and inclination thereof; and to come to a fixed certainty in this requires the utmost diligence, and cannot be attained and kept without divine assistance, as we may learn from Psa 139:23; Rom 8:16. "But, how great soever the labour is, do not think much of it, for great is the advantage you gain by it; for," [1.] "By this you will be kept from falling, and that at all times and seasons, even in those hours of temptation that shall be on the earth." When others shall fall into heinous and scandalous sin, those who are thus diligent shall be enabled to walk circumspectly and keep on in the way of their duty; and, when many fall into errors, they shall be preserved sound in the faith, and stand perfect and complete in all the will of God. [2.] Those who are diligent in the work of religion shall have a triumphant entrance into glory; while of those few who get to heaven some are scarcely saved (Pe1 4:18), with a great deal of difficulty, even as by fire (Co1 3:15), those who are growing in grace, and abounding in the work of the Lord, shall have an abundant entrance into the joy of their Lord, even that everlasting kingdom where Christ reigns, and they shall reign with him for ever and ever.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv5–9 And besides this, giving all diligence,.... "Or upon this",…
And besides this, giving all diligence,.... "Or upon this", as the Syriac and Arabic versions read, bestow all your labour, diligence, and care; namely, on what follows, and that from the consideration of what goes before; for nothing can more strongly animate, and engage to the diligent exercise of grace and discharge of duty, than a consideration of the high favours, and free grace gifts of God, and the exceeding great and precious promises of his Gospel:
add to your faith virtue; or "with your faith", so the Arabic version renders it, and the like, in the following clauses. They had faith, even like precious faith with the apostles, not of themselves, but by the gift of God, and which is the first and principal grace; it leads the van, or rather the "chorus", as the word rendered "add" signifies; and though it is in itself imperfect, has many things lacking in it, yet it cannot be added to, or increased by men; ministers may be a means of perfecting what is lacking in it, and of the furtherance and joy of it, but it is the Lord only that can increase it, or add unto it in that sense, and which is not the meaning here: but the sense is, that as it is the basis and foundation of all good works, it should not stand alone, there ought to be virtue, or good works along with it, by which it may be perfected, not essentially, but evidentially, or might appear to be true and genuine; for by virtue may be either meant some particular virtue, as justice towards men, to which both the grace and doctrine of faith direct; and indeed pretensions to faith in Christ, where there is not common justice done to men, are of little account; or, as others think, beneficence to men; and so the Ethiopic version renders it, "proceed to bounty by your faith"; and faith does work by love and kindness to fellow creatures and Christians; but this seems rather designed by brotherly kindness and charity, in Pe2 1:7 or boldness, courage, constancy, and fortitude, which ought to go along with faith. Where there is true faith in Christ, there should be a holy boldness to profess it, and constancy in it, and courage to fight the good fight of faith, and firmness of mind to stand fast in it, notwithstanding all difficulties and discouragements; or virtue in general here meant, not mere moral, but Christian virtues, which are the fruits of the Spirit of God, and of his grace; and differ from the other, in that they spring from the grace of God, are done in faith, by the assistance of the Spirit of Christ, and by strength received from him, and in love to him, and with a view to the glory of God; whereas moral virtues, as exercised by a mere moral man, spring from nature, and are performed by the mere strength of it, and are destitute of faith, and so but "splendida peccata", splendid sins, and proceed from self-love, from sinister ends, and with selfish views:
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and to virtue, knowledge; not of Christ, mentioned Pe2 1:8 and which is included in faith, for there can be no true faith in Christ, were there not knowledge of him; but of the will of God, which it is necessary men should be acquainted with, in order to perform it; or else though they may seem zealous of good works, their zeal will not be according to knowledge; they ought to know what are virtues or good works in God's account, and what are the nature and use of them, lest they should mistake and misapply them; or of the Scriptures of truth, and of the mysteries of the Gospel, which should be diligently searched, for the increase and improvement of knowledge in divine things, and which has a considerable influence on a just, sober, and godly living; or by knowledge may be meant prudence and wisdom, in ordering the external conversation aright towards those that are without, and in showing good works out of it, to others, by way of example, and for the evidence of the truth of things, with meekness of wisdom.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv5–9 For this very reason - Because God hath given…
For this very reason - Because God hath given you so great blessings. Giving all diligence - It is a very uncommon word which we render giving. It literally signifies, bringing in by the by, or over and above: implying, that good works the work; yet not unless we are diligent. Our diligence is to follow the gift of God, and is followed by an increase of all his gifts. Add to - And in all the other gifts of God. Superadd the latter, without losing the former. The Greek word properly means lead up, as in dance, one of these after the other, in a beautiful order. Your faith, that "evidence of things not seen," termed before "the knowledge of God and of Christ," the root of all Christian graces. Courage - Whereby ye may conquer all enemies and difficulties, and execute whatever faith dictates. In this most beautiful connection, each preceding grace leads to the following; each following, tempers and perfects the preceding. They are set down in the order of nature, rather than the order of time. For though every grace bears a relation to every other, yet here they are so nicely ranged, that those which have the closest dependence on each other are placed together. And to your courage knowledge - Wisdom, teaching how to exercise it on all occasions.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv5–9 Verse 5. And beside this] Notwithstanding what God hath…
Verse 5. And beside this] Notwithstanding what God hath done for you, in order that ye may not receive the grace of God in vain;
Giving all diligence] Furnishing all earnestness and activity: the original is very emphatic.
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Add to your faith] επιχορηγησατε. Lead up hand in hand; alluding, as most think, to the chorus in the Grecian dance, who danced with joined hands. 2Cor 9:10.
Your faith - That faith in Jesus by which ye have been led to embrace the whole Gospel, and by which ye have the evidence of things unseen.
Virtue] αρετην. Courage or fortitude, to enable you to profess the faith before men, in these times of persecution.
Knowledge] True wisdom, by which your faith will be increased, and your courage directed, and preserved from degenerating into rashness.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv5, 6, 8, 9 2Pe 1:5. And besides this — Besides your renouncing…
2Pe 1:5. And besides this — Besides your renouncing the corruption that is in the world, you must increase in all the graces of God’s Spirit, and in the virtues to which they naturally lead. Or, as αυτο τουτο is rendered by some learned critics, (the particle εις being supposed to be understood,) for this purpose, or for this very reason, namely, because God hath given you such great blessings; giving all diligence — Or, showing all earnestness, and making all haste, as σπουδην πασαν implies. The word παρεισενεγκαντες, rendered giving, literally signifies, bringing in by the by, or over and above; implying that God works the work, but not unless we are earnest and diligent. Our earnestness and diligence must follow the gift of God, and will be followed by an increase of all his gifts. Add to — And in, or by, the promises of God, and his other gifts, the graces here mentioned: superadd the latter without losing the former. The Greek word επιχορηγηαστε properly means, lead up as in a dance, one of these graces in, by, or after the other in a beautiful order. Add to (εν, in, or by) your faith that evidence of things not seen, termed before, the knowledge of God and of Christ, the root of all Christian graces; virtue — Or, courage; amidst all the difficulties, dangers, trials, and troubles you meet with, exercise that courage, or fortitude, whereby you may conquer all enemies and oppositions, and execute whatever faith dictates. In this most beautiful connection, each preceding grace leads to the following: each following tempers and perfects the preceding. They are set down in the order of nature, rather than the order of time: for though every grace bears a relation to every other, yet here they are so nicely ranged, that those which have the closest dependance on each other are placed together.
The propriety of the apostle’s exhorting those to whom he wrote, to add courage to their faith, will more clearly appear, if we recollect that, in the first age, the disciples of Christ were frequently accused before the heathen magistrates of being Christians, and that, “on such occasions, it was incumbent on them to acknowledge it, notwithstanding they exposed themselves thereby to every species of persecution; because, by boldly professing their faith, they not only encouraged each other to persevere in their Christian profession, but they maintained the gospel in the world. Accordingly Christ solemnly charged all his disciples to confess him before men, and threatened to inflict the severest punishment on those who denied him, Mat 10:32-33.” — Macknight. And even in the present state of the world, true and vital religion will always, more or less, meet with opposition from the carnal and wicked, and will frequently expose those who possess it to no little persecution, especially in some countries; if not to imprisonment, and the spoiling of their goods, yet to contumely, reproach, revilings, and various insults; so that it is still necessary, if we would prove ourselves the genuine followers of Jesus, that we should add to our faith courage, or fortitude and firmness of mind, that we may stand in the evil day, and war a good warfare. And to your courage, knowledge — Wisdom, teaching you how to exercise it on all occasions. The word may include also a general knowledge of the doctrines, precepts, and promises of the gospel, and of the whole nature and design of Christianity; as also an acquaintance with the principal evidences of its truth and importance: for, without a full persuasion of these, our courage must want its proper support, and will desert us in the day of trial.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv5–9 And beside this - Καὶ αὐτὸ τοῦτο Kai auto…
And beside this - Καὶ αὐτὸ τοῦτο Kai auto touto. Something here is necessary to be understood in order to complete the sense. The reference is to 2Pe 1:3; and the connection is, since 2Pe 1:3 God has given us these exalted privileges and hopes, “in respect to this,” (κατὰ kata or διὰ dia being understood,) or as a “consequence” fairly flowing from this, we ought to give all diligence that we may make good use of these advantages, and secure as high attainments as we possibly can. We should add one virtue to another, that we may reach the highest possible elevation in holiness.
Giving all diligence - Greek, “Bringing in all zeal or effort.” The meaning is, that we ought to make this a distinct and definite object, and to apply ourselves to it as a thing to be accomplished.
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Add to your faith virtue - It is not meant in this verse and the following that we are to endeavor particularly to add these things one to another “in the order” in which they are specified, or that we are to seek first to have faith, and then to add to that virtue, and then to add knowledge to virtue rather than to faith, etc. The order in which this is to be done, the relation which one of these things may have to another, is not the point aimed at; nor are we to suppose that any other order of the words would not have answered the purpose of the apostle as well, or that anyone of the virtues specified would not sustain as direct a relation to any other, as the one which he has specified. The design of the apostle is to say, in an emphatic manner, that we are to strive to possess and exhibit all these virtues; in other words, we are not to content ourselves with a single grace, but are to cultivate all the virtues, and to endeavor to make our piety complete in all the relations which we sustain. The essential idea in the passage before us seems to be, that in our religion we are not to be satisfied with one virtue, or one class of virtues, but that there is to be.
(1)A diligent cultivation of our virtues, since the graces of religion are as susceptible of cultivation as any other virtues;
(2)That there is to be progress made from one virtue to another, seeking to reach the highest possible point in our religion; and,
(3)That there is to be an accumulation of virtues and graces - or we are not to be satisfied with one class, or with the attainments which we can make in one class.
We are to endeavor to add on one after another until we have become possessed of all. Faith, perhaps, is mentioned first, because that is the foundation of all Christian virtues; and the other virtues are required to be added to that, because, from the place which faith occupies in the plan of justification, many might be in danger of supposing that if they had that they had all that was necessary. Compare Jam 2:14, following In the Greek word rendered “add,” ἐπιχορηγήσατε epichorēgēsate there is an allusion to a “chorus-leader” among the Greeks, and the sense is well expressed by Doddridge: “Be careful to accompany that belief with all the lovely train of attendant graces.” Or, in other words, “let faith lead on as at the head of the choir or the graces, and let all the others follow in their order.” The word here rendered “virtue” is the same which is used in 2Pe 1:3; and there ks included in it, probably, the same general idea which was noticed there. All the things which the apostle specifies, unless “knowledge” be an exception, are “virtues” in the sense in which that word is commonly used; and it can hardly be supposed that the apostle here meant to use a general term which would include all of the others. The probability is, therefore, that by the word here he has reference to the common meaning of the Greek word, as referring to manliness, courage, vigor, energy; and the sense is, that he wished them to evince whatever firmness or courage might be necessary in maintaining the principles of their religion, and in enduring the trials to which their faith might be subjected. True “virtue” is not a tame and passive thing. It requires great energy and boldness, for its very essence is firmness, manliness, and independence.
And to virtue knowledge - The knowledge of God and of the way of salvation through the Redeemer, 2Pe 1:3. Compare 2Pe 3:8. It is the duty of every Christian to make the highest possible attainments in “knowledge.”
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv5, 9 Join with your faith, virtue: think not that faith…
Join with your faith, virtue: think not that faith alone will save you without the practice of virtues and good works. By abstinence or temperance, is understood that virtue which helps to moderate the inordinate love of sensual pleasures, and to govern all disorderly passions and affections. (Witham)
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv5–9 And beside this--rather, "And for this very reason," namely,…
And beside this--rather, "And for this very reason," namely, "seeing that His divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness" (Pe2 1:3).
giving--literally, "introducing," side by side with God's gift, on your part "diligence." Compare an instance, Pe2 1:10; Pe2 3:14; Co2 7:11.
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all--all possible.
add--literally, "minister additionally," or, abundantly (compare Greek, Co2 9:10); said properly of the one who supplied all the equipments of a chorus. So accordingly, "there will be ministered abundantly unto you an entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Saviour" (Pe2 1:11).
to--Greek, "in"; "in the possession of your faith, minister virtue. Their faith (answering to "knowledge of Him," Pe2 1:3) is presupposed as the gift of God (Pe2 1:3; Eph 2:8), and is not required to be ministered by us; in its exercise, virtue is to be, moreover, ministered. Each grace being assumed, becomes the stepping stone to the succeeding grace: and the latter in turn qualifies and completes the former. Faith leads the band; love brings up the rear [BENGEL]. The fruits of faith specified are seven, the perfect number.
virtue--moral excellency; manly, strenuous energy, answering to the virtue (energetic excellency) of God.
and to--Greek, "in"; "and in (the exercise of) your virtue knowledge," namely, practical discrimination of good and evil; intelligent appreciation of what is the will of God in each detail of practice.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv5–9 5. And besides this—Rather, Even for this very reason.
5. And besides this—Rather, Even for this very reason.
Giving—The Greek means, bringing in by the side of. God has done his part, as shown in 2Pe_1:3-4; now do you do your part in bringing your own diligence into action by the side of what he has done.
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Add to your faith—Rather, furnish in your faith; that is, in the exercise of your faith furnish, besides it, virtue. The verb originally means to furnish the musicians and equipments of a chorus. In this choir of Christian graces each added one, as Bengel suggests, prepares for the next, and corrects and perfects that which precedes. Faith is already in possession, (2Pe_1:1;) but faith may become feeble or antinomian. Therefore, in its exercise, furnish virtue, or all moral excellence, especially courage to do and suffer. Lest virtue, unguarded, should be impulsive or rash, furnish in it knowledge of God, truth, self, and duty.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–9 5. and beside this, giving all diligence] Better, on…
5. and beside this, giving all diligence] Better, on this very account. The Apostle does not contemplate the elements of Christian holiness which he proceeds to specify as additions to our participation in the Divine Nature, but rather dwells on that very fact, as a reason for pressing onward in the Christian life with all diligence (better, perhaps, earnestness). The use of the word in Jdg_1:3 should be noticed as a parallelism. The Greek for “giving” (literally bringing in by the side of) is an unusual word, not found elsewhere in the New Testament, and seems chosen to express the thought that men, though rejoicing in God’s gifts, were yet to bring in collaterally, as it were, their own activity (comp. Php_2:13).
add to your faith virtue] The Greek word (epichorêgein) is a compound form of that which had been used in 1Pe_4:11 (see note there as to its meaning and history) and furnishes an addition to the list of words common to the two Epistles. In the LXX. it occurs but once (Sir_25:22), and it may be noted that this is the only passage (unless Gal_3:5 be another instance) where it is used of man’s activity and not of God’s. Thus taken, the more accurate rendering would be with and by your faith supply virtue, with virtue knowledge, and so on. The Greek cannot possibly bear the meaning of “adding to,” though the fact is of course implied. What is meant is that each element of the Christian life is to be as an instrument by which that which follows it is wrought out.
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knowledge] The word is the simpler gnosis, placed here in its right relation to the fuller epignosis (see note on 2Pe_1:2), to which it leads. The context is decisive against our taking it in the sense of a speculative apprehension of doctrinal mysteries, and we must think of the Apostle as meaning the moral discernment of those who “understand what the will of the Lord is” (Eph_5:17), who “have their senses exercised to distinguish between good and evil” (Heb_5:14). This kind of knowledge is to be gained, as the Apostle teaches, by the practice of virtue.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv5–9 (5) And beside this.—Rather, and for this very reason.…
(5) And beside this.—Rather, and for this very reason. The Authorised version is quite indefensible, and is the more to be regretted because it obscures a parallel between this and 1 Peter. There also we are exhorted to regulate our conduct by God’s (1Pe_1:15; 1Pe_2:1; 1Pe_2:5). [In the Notes on 2Pe_1:5-8 use has been made of addresses On some Traits in the Christian Character. Camb. 1876.]
Giving all diligence.—Literally, bringing in all diligence to the side of God’s gifts and promises; making your contribution in answer to His. He has made all things possible for you; but they are not yet done, and you must labour diligently to realise the glorious possibilities opened out to you.
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Add to your faith virtue.—Rather, in your faith supply virtue. The error comes from Geneva; all other English versions are right. The interesting word inadequately translated “add” occurs again in 2Pe_1:11, and elsewhere only in 2Co_9:10; Gal_3:5; Col_2:19. Everywhere but here it is translated “minister.” Sufficient explanation of the word will be found in Notes on 2Co_9:10 and Gal_3:5. The notion of rendering a service that is expected of one in virtue of one’s position fits in admirably here. God gives; His blessings and promises come from His free undeserved bounty; man renders, supplies, furnishes, that which, considering the benefits which he has received, is fairly required of him. Note that we are not told to supply faith; that comes from God (Eph_2:8), and the Apostle assumes that his readers possess it. “Virtue” is that which is recognised by all men as excellent; the excellence of man as man. Heathen moralists had drawn a noble picture of what man ought to be; the gospel gave the command to realise a yet nobler ideal, and also gave the power by which it could be realised.
And to virtue knowledge.—As before, and in your virtue [supply] knowledge—i.e., in the virtue which each of you possesses. Virtue for each individual is the excellence corresponding to the talents committed to him. The word for “knowledge” here is not the compound used in 2Pe_1:2-3, but the simple substantive. It means, therefore, knowledge that still admits of growth, not yet ripe or complete. It is worth noting that the word for absolute knowledge, epistêmê, does not occur in the New Testament. By “knowledge” here is probably meant spiritual discernment as to what is right and what is wrong in all things; the right object, the right way, the right time.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv5–9 And beside this, giving all diligence; rather, but for…
And beside this, giving all diligence; rather, but for this very cause also. Aujto touto is frequently used in this sense in classical Greek, but in the New Testament only here. It refers back to the last verse. God"s precious gifts and promises should stimulate us to earnest effort. The verb rendered "giving" means literally "bringing in by the side;" it is one of those graphic and picturesque expressions which are characteristic of St. Peter"s style. God worketh within us both to will and to do; this (both St. Paul and St. Peter teach us) is a reason, not for remissness, but for increased exertion. God"s grace is sufficient for us; without that we can do nothing; but by the side (so to speak) of that grace, along with it, we must bring into play all earnestness, we must work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. The word seems to imply that the work is God"s work; we can do very little indeed, but that very little we must do, and for the very reason that God is working in us. The word (pareisenegkantev) occurs only here in the New Testament. Add to your faith virtue; literally, supply in your faith. He does not say, "supply faith;" he assumes the existence of faith. "He that cometh unto God must believe." The Greek word (ejpicorhghsate) means properly to "contribute to the expenses of a chorus;" it is used three times by St. Paul, and, in its simple form, by St. Peter in his First Epistle. (1Pe_4:11) In usage it came to mean simply to "supply or provide," the thought of the chorus being dropped. So we cannot be sure that the idea of faith as leading the mystic dance in the chorus of Christian graces was present to St. Peter"s mind, especially as the word occurs again in verse 11, where no such allusion is possible. The fruits of faith are in the faith which produces them, as a tree is in its seed; they must be developed out of faith, as faith expands and energizes; in the exercise of each grace a fresh grace must issue forth. Virtue is well described by Bengel as "strenuus animi tonus et vigor;" it is Christian manliness and active courage in the good fight of faith. The word "virtue" (ajreth), with the exception of Php_4:8, occurs in the New Testament only in St. Peter in this chapter three times, and in 1Pe_2:9, thus forming one of the kinks between the two Epistles. And to virtue knowledge. St. Peter here uses the simple word gnwsiv, discretion, a right understanding, "quae malam a bono secernit, et mali fugam docet" (Bengel) This practical knowledge is gained in the manly self-denying activities of the Christian life, and leads on to the fuller knowledge (ejpignwsiv) of Christ (verse 8).
Vers. 5-11.
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Exhortation to earnest effort.
I OUR DUTY.
1. To use all diligence. God"s Divine power is with us; he has granted us all necessary helps. But this, says the apostle, is the very reason why we should work all the more strenuously. It would be heartless work, if we had not the great power of God to help us; but he hath endued his Church with power from on high. This gift of power is the very ground on which
2. the apostle bases his exhortations; the great argument, not for remissness and security, but for persevering, self-denying labour. God"s power is fighting for us; we are told to bring in by the side of that almighty aid all our earnestness. It may seem strange to be bidden to put our weak trembling endeavours by the side of the strength of God; the two things are incommensurate: how can the Infinite and finite work together? But it is the teaching of Holy Scripture; the saints have proved its value in their daily lives. The work is God"s work; he hath begum it; he will perform it unto the day of Jesus Christ; but just on that very ground we must work too, with fear and trembling indeed, but in trustful faith, out of love and adoring gratitude.
3. To go on from grace to grace. The first great gift of God is faith, that precious faith of which St. Peter speaks so warmly. Faith, St. Augustine says, is the root and mother of all virtues; St. Peter says the same. He tells us that in the life of faith, in the active energy of faith, we must furnish the attendant chorus of graces. The word which he uses implies that we must spare no effort, no expense; the Christian must be willing to spend and to be spent in order to provide that fair train of graces which is the meet adornment of the temple of the Holy Ghost. Faith, the first gift of God, cannot remain alone; it must work, and out of its active energies must issue virtue.
(1) Virtue is manliness, the holy courage which enables Christians to quit themselves like men in the service of the Captain of our salvation. In the midst of the assaults of temptation we need a resolute determination to do what is right in the sight of God, a steadfast strength of will to choose always the good part. This is the virtue of the Christian warrior, and this is acquired in the active work of faith; faith ever working, ever energetic, strengthens the soul: who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth? Hence faith leads on to virtue.
(2) With virtue comes knowledge. Courage and firmness may do harm unless they are directed by knowledge: true Christian virtue will lead on to knowledge. Irresolute men, double-minded and undecided, waver between right and wrong; they are constantly tempted into dangerous compliances with evil; they profess to hate sin, but they have a lingering love for it; and so they do not attain to that keen perception of good and evil which can be developed only in the active resolute conflict against the world, the flesh, and the devil. That holy discretion grows from Christian virtue, and it guides and informs the virtue from which it springs.
(3) Temperance. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil has its dangers. There is need of discretion to form a right judgment, and of virtue to remain steadfast in that judgment. The union of virtue and knowledge will bring in temperance, or self-control, which enables a man to govern his appetites, and to keep them under the sovereign rule of conscience. Without that self-control there is no unity of purpose. The Christian must strive, like St. Paul, to devote his energies to the one thing needful; and to do that he must keep under his body and bring it into subjection; he must check the tumult of earthly desire by the light of knowledge and the strength of virtue.
(4) Patience. Side by side with self-control comes patient endurance; he who controls his appetites will learn to endure hardness. Some of God"s people have to wait for him in patient endurance, some to work for him in active labour. Both may serve him with equal faithfulness. It is not outward work in itself, but inner faithfulness of spirit, that wins the praise of God: the suffering Church of Smyrna is commended; the active Church of Ephesus is blamed. (Rev_2:1-11)
(5) Godliness. Faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, must help to strengthen and develop godliness. Godliness is the spirit of reverence, the holy fear of God. The godly man sets God always before him; the thought of God controls his whole life; his effort is to do all things in the name of the Lord Jesus, to live unto the Lord, to seek his glory only. This holy reverence for the felt presence of God can only be maintained in the life of faith and self-control; in the worldly life of mere pleasure and business it cannot flourish. God is the center of the devout life, the life of godliness; and to fix the eye of the soul on him we must learn the great lesson, "love not the world.
(6) Brotherly kindness. Out of godliness must flow the love of the brethren; for Holy Scripture tells us that "if a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" God"s elect are knit together in one communion and fellowship; all loving their Father in heaven, they must for his love"s sake love all who in virtue of the heavenly birth are made the children of God. There is no love truer and holier than that which lives in the communion of saints; the nearer they draw to the heavenly Father, the Fountain of all holy love, the more fervently out of a pure heart they love one another.
(7) Charity. Christian love must not be confined within the limits of the Christian Church. It is specially due, indeed, to those who are of the household of faith; but it cannot stop there. For it comes from God, who is Love, whose love is without limits in range and in intensity; and that love which his children learn of him must be, in its poor measure, like his love it must not be cribbed and confined within conventional boundaries; itmust continually increase in depth, and as it increases in depth it must increase also in extent. It will do so, if it is real and true; for it is a living thing, nay, the very life of the soul with God, and that life which it has of God involves the necessity of constant growth. Love is free, spontaneous, full of life and energy and warmth. All Christian graces meet in it; for it is the crown and center of the Christian character, the golden link that hinds together into one glorious whole all the fair adornments of those holy souls that have been created anew after the image of Christ.
II REASONS URGING US TO THE ZEALOUS PERFORMANCE OF OUR DUTY.
1. The positive reason. If only we give all diligence, we must succeed, for the Divine power is with us; and when, by the help of that power working in and with us, those precious graces are made our own, they will not let us be idle or unfruitful. Love, the crown of all the rest, is not a mere sentiment; it is a force, an energy; it will not allow the Christian to be idle; it must work, and in its working it will bring us ever nearer to the full blessed knowledge of Christ, that knowledge which is eternal life, in comparison with which all the good things of this world are as dross, as very dung.
2. The negative reason. Without those graces men are blind; for faith, the first of them, out of which all the others spring, is the eye of the soul. He that hath not faith is spiritually blind; he is not blind to the outward objects which lie close around him, those he can see; but the things that belong to his peace are hidden from his eyes. He cannot discern the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ; he cannot see the awful realities of the eternal world; he cannot discern the spiritual powers that are working even now in the Church the Lord"s body that is offered to the faithful in the Holy Communion, (1Co_11:29) the grace of the Holy Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. (1Co_12:13) Through that spiritual blindness he has incurred forgetfulness of the cleansing from his old sins; and it is not the outward washing of baptism that saves us, but the inquiry of a good conscience after God. He will not inquire after God who has received the grace of God in vain; his baptism will not profit him, for he is fallen from grace. Then let us give all diligence not to be idle or unfruitful, but to seek earnestly after those special graces which by the mighty working of the Divine power we may obtain of God.
III FURTHER ENFORCEMENT OF THAT DUTY.
1. For present safety. St. Peter again urges us to earnest diligence, to the active use of the blessed means of grace. He uses the language of entreaty: "brethren," he says, in tones of affectionate appeal. He knows how hard it is to persevere, how much need we all have of encouragement and exhortation. God"s exceeding great gifts, the danger of misusing them, the profit to be gained by faithfully using them, all this, he says, should urge us on to continually increasing diligence. Such diligence, brought in by the side of the Divine power (verse 5), working with that Divine power which alone is the source of our salvation, will tend to make our calling and election sure. While we are diligent in working out our own salvation, we feel God"s working in us; doubts arise if we relax our energies. Satan suggests from time to time that miserable doubt, "If thou be a child of God.
If we listen to him and cease to trust in our Father"s care, labouring more for the meat that perisheth than for that which endureth to everlasting life; or if we indulge visions of spiritual pride, and tempt God by putting ourselves into perilous positions to which he has not called us, then the doubts increase and vex the soul. But humble, earnest work for God deepens the Christian"s assurance of God"s love and choice. "I follow after," said the holy apostle St. Paul, "if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus;" and again, "I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should he a castaway." Therefore give diligence; that very diligence is a sign of God"s election. "No man can come to me, said the Lord, "except the Father which hath sent me draw him;" and it continually deepens our trustfulness in that electing grace. If we are bringing forth the sevenfold fruit which issues out of the root of faith, we may be sure that our faith is true and living. And we must try to live as men called of God and chosen unto everlasting life should live, in trustfulness and thankfulness, in the abiding sense of God"s presence, in the persevering effort to please him in all things. The life of obedience and spiritual diligence tends to deepen continually the consciousness that the Divine power is with us, giving us all things needful for life and godliness, and so to make our calling and election sure. While we live thus we shall not stumble; for the godly consideration of our election in Christ doth not only "greatly establish and confirm the faith of eternal salvation to be enjoyed through Christ," hut doth also "fervently kindle love towards God; therefore Christian men, while by God"s grace they are enabled to keep the faith of their election in Christ steadfastly before their eyes, must walk religiously in good works, and will not fall unto sin. "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." So long as we abide in the grace of that heavenly birth, in the faith of our election unto everlasting life, so long we cannot sin. It is when we are off our guard, when we are not "as men waiting for their Lord," that we fall away. Then all the more we ought to "give diligence to make our calling and election sure.
2. For future blessedness. The entrance into Christ"s eternal kingdom shall be richly furnished to those who use all diligence to make their election sure. While we are preparing our hearts by his gracious help, while we are striving to furnish the fair train of Christian graces to make that heart ready for him, we know that he is preparing a place for us in heaven, interceding for us, praying that where he is there we may also be. That entrance shall be richly furnished; with glory and with triumph shall the Christian soul enter into the golden city; there are the true riches riches of blessedness beyond the reach of human thought, riches of knowledge, riches of holiness and joy and love in the unveiled presence of God, who is rich in mercy, rich in power and glory and majesty, rich in tender and holy and unspeakable love for his elect.
LESSONS.
1. God"s bounty should stir us to show our thankfulness in our lives. Hisgifts are great, so ought our diligence to be great.
2. Our hearts are the chosen temple of God; we must furnish that templerichly with Christian graces its proper decorations.
3. By that holy diligence we are bidden to make our calling and electionsure.
4. Let us earnestly strive to do so, looking forward in faith to the greatreward.
Vers. 5-11.
Personal diligence needed for sanctification.
The former verses say that God gives the knowledge of himself in the Word of promise, as the means by which grace and peace are to be multiplied; these verses say, to that must be added by you "all diligence.
I WE HAVE HERE AN ENUMERATION OF CERTAIN GRACES OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. It begins with "faith" and ends with "love," and between these are two or three words which need attention. Next to "faith," "virtue" is mentioned; but "virtue" includes the whole group of graces, whereas Peter is thinking of something distinct. The classical meaning of the word is "manliness courage; so if we paraphrase it thus, we shall probably have the right idea. So with "knowledge," which is a different word to that rendered "knowledge" in the eighth verse, and here refers to "practical knowledge" or "prudence." "Temperance" is literally "self-control," and "godly reverence" is the idea in the word "godliness." "Faith, courage, prudence, self-control, patience, godly reverence, love of the brethren, love, that is the list.
1. These are all subsequent to faith. Faith is supposed. The Epistle is addressed to those who "have obtained like precious faith through the righteousness of God and our Saviour;" and these excellences come after faith, and in the Christian have a character of their own, which nature cannot produce, and are, indeed, as much above nature as Jesus was above the sons of men.
2. Many try to be holy without saving faith; it is a useless effort; only fromfaith can those spiritual graces spring whose crown is love to all.
1. Every grace needs to be supplemented by another. No grace can stand alone; the text seems to urge that. The word "add is the same as in the eleventh verse, where it is translated "minister." Each grace needs to be ministered to by another. There is not one which, if it be alone, will not speedily become an evil. One grace is to wait on, to supplement, to protect, to perfect another. For instance, to faith ministers courage courage to confess the Christ believed in; to courage ministers prudence, for if
2. courage be not discreet, it is destructive. Beware of being men of one grace.
3. The believer is not to be contented till he has acquired all the graces. What a list this is! The leading features of a perfect character; and Scripture gives a plain command to the Christian to acquire these. And nothing can be more assuring than this command, for God does not call us to impossibilities; and he is prepared to supply what is needed for its attainment.
II WE HAVE HERE A DEMAND FOR DILIGENCE TO POSSESS THESE GRACES. Diligence is the burden of the passage: "Giving all diligence, add;" and in the tenth verse, "Give diligence.
1. Diligence implies that spiritual increase requires personal effort. Speedy and spontaneous sanctification is what we should prefer, but that idea is not encouraged in Scripture. It is true growth is the law of life life naturally increases to maturity, as Peter says, "Grow in grace;" but he also says, "Giving all diligence, add." If we cherish the idea that sanctification is given immediately, as pardon is given, by one surrender of the will, as it is said, this passage ought to disabuse us; it clearly affirms that sanctification is progressive, and demands constant endeavour.
2. Diligence is encouraged by the fact that God hath given unto us all things that pertain to life and godliness. The previous verses are, "His Divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises," etc.; when the next clause reads, "And for this very cause "(as the Revised Version has it), "giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue," and so on, we see what lies behind the diligence, what spurs it on, what sustains it. Sanctification is not human work, as it is sometimes supposed to be, when the need of effort is enforced, as though, redeemed by Christ, we have to sanctify ourselves it is of God; yet it is through us, into our effort he will inspire his own Divine and victorious energy.
3. Diligence also involves that the increase of Christian graces comes from the personal culture of each. If the text were not in Scripture, but simply part of a sermon, it would be said to be mechanical and formal. It is to be feared the prominent features of our Christian character are often merely the result of natural disposition, or early training, or of circumstances beyond our control. Now, this passage claims that we do not leave it to accident what graces we shall have; it lays down a list of what is required of us, and bids us give all diligence to culture each. This is a discriminating, hourly, lifelong work.
III WE HAVE HERE STRONG REASONS FOR THE PUTTING FORTH OF THIS DILIGENCE. Three reasons urged from the eighth verse to the eleventh, and they refer to past, present, and future.
1. The graces (which are the result of diligence) are the necessary means to spiritual wealth. The particular meaning in the eighth verse of the word "in the knowledge is shown in the Revised Version, where it reads, "unto the knowledge," and thus throws great light on the expression. The graces which come from a knowledge of Christ lead to a still greater knowledge of him that is it. All the care we give to the culture of Christian graces leads, not only to the wealth of possessing them, but to the greater wealth of knowing Christ better.
2. The graces (which are the result of diligence) are the least that can be expected from one who is purged from his old sins. "He that lacketh these things is blind. having forgotten that he hath been delivered from his old sins." That takes us back to the cross. It pleads our obligation to Christ, who laid down his life that we might be holy. The assurance of pardoned sin is the strongest stimulus to piety.
3. These graces are the only ground of assurance of entrance into heaven. Without them we may well doubt our election of God. Where calling and election are sure, ye shall never fall; but how can we be sure that we are among the called? Only by the fact that that to which they are called is being wrought in us. If we have a title to heaven, the spirit of heaven is already begun. C.N.
Vers. 5-7.
True Christian character.
This notable passage, growing very evidently out of what precedes and into what follows, has a wealth of instruction.
I True Christian character CONSISTS OF MANIFOLD ELEMENTS. Here is a chain no link of which may be omitted, a structure no stone in which may be lacking, a body no member of which may be wanting.
1. Whether the general order is to be insisted on or not, it is certain that faith is the primary essential of the whole character. It is the root out of which all grows, the foundation on which all rests. To aim at the rest first, and this afterwards, is to stand a pyramid on its apex instead of its base. Belief is great, is life-giving.
2. E ach of the other elements of character demands careful contemplation. "Virtue, manly vigour, making it impossible for the charge to be sustained that the devotional man is not necessarily a virtuous man. It is an element of character that will save a man from being a chameleon, catching the hue of every surrounding, or a moral mollusk with no backbone. "Knowledge, discernment, intelligence. "Thou shalt love with thy mind." "Temperance, all self-restraint; as Jeremy Taylor says, "reason"s girdle as well as passion"s bridle: "Patience, the silver side of the shield whose iron side is temperance, endurance, meekness, continuance in well-doing. "Godliness, not the whole of piety, but fellowship with God, walking with God, being the "friend of God." "Brotherly kindness, the duty of equals to equals simple, constant kindness. "Charity, better the great king-word, the dear home-word, "love;" the sunshine on the whole landscape of character, the Shechinah in the temple of character.
II THE CULTIVATION of these manifold elements of character is AN URGENT CHRISTIAN DUTY. "Giving all diligence add," etc.
1. They will not come as a matter of course.
2. They may be attained.
1. The methods of attaining them.
1. Study of models.
2. Exercise.
3. Fellowship with those that possess them, especially with the Christ. U.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 On vv5, 8, 9 Giving all diligence.
2Pe_1:5-7
Giving all diligence.
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Christian diligence
It is not fit that heaven should take all the pains to bring earth to it; earth must do somewhat to bring itself to heaven. Gods bountifulness is beyond our thankfulness; yet thankfulness is not enough; there is matter of labour in it. If the lord of a manor have given thee a tree, thou wilt be at the charges to cut it down and carry it home. He who works first in thy conversion hath in wisdom made thee a second. Thou seest Gods bounty; now look to thine own duty.
I. Diligence. Here, first, for the quality. There is no matter wherein we hope for God in the event, accomplished without diligence in the act. He that expects a royalty in heaven must admit a service on earth. The good man is weary of doing nothing, for nothing is so laborious as idleness. Satans employment is prevented when he finds thee well employed before he comes. It is observable that albeit the Romans were so idle as to make idleness a god, yet they allowed not that idle idol a temple within the city, but without the walls. There are four marks and helps of diligence:
1. Vigilance. A serious project, which we can hardly drive to our desired issue, takes sleep from our eyes.
2. Carefulness (Ecc_5:1).
3. Love. This diligence must fetch the life from affection, and be moved with the love of virtue.
4. Study (2Ti_2:15).
II. Give diligence. Not a pragmatical business in others affairs; but rectify thy diligence, confining it principally to thyself. Dress thine own garden, lest it be overrun with weeds.
III. All diligence. Here is the quantity--all.
1. The working up of salvation is no easy labour; thereto is requirable all diligence. Such a diligence respects so great an object, and such an object requires so great a diligence. Refuse no labour for such a reward. The best things are the hardliest come by (Mat_11:12). Spare no invention of wit, no intention of will, no contention of strength about it. Will we adventure our estates, our lives, to find out new lands where may be gold, and spend no diligence for that where we are sure there is gold, and such as cannot perish?
2. God requires the whole duty of man (Ecc_12:13); that is Gods due. What, nothing left for this world? Yes, moderate providence; the saving of souls hinders not provision for bodies, but furthers and blesses it (Mat_6:33). Follow thou Christ; the rest shall follow thee.
IV. beside this … add. Thus much for the addiction: now to the addition, wherein we find a concession, an accession that He requires--add. You have done something, yet there is a besides. I yield a beginning, I ask a proceeding (Heb_6:1). Gods arithmetic principally consists in addition. To give every man his own is but equity; but the addition of charity makes blessed. And as addition teaches us to add grace to grace, so there is a multiplication required to increase the effects of those graces in a multiplicity of good works. Knowledge not improved will be impaired. If there be no usury, we shall lose the principal. As in generation, so in regeneration, we must be growing up to a full stature in Christ (Eph_4:13). As a traveller passes from town to town till he come to his inn, so the Christian from virtue to virtue till he come to heaven. (Thos. Adams.)
The power of diligence
I. Now as to the homely virtue itself, giving all diligence. We all know what diligence means, but it is worth while to point out that the original meaning of the word is not so much diligence as haste. It is employed, for instance, to describe the eager swiftness with which the Virgin went to Elizabeth after the angels salutation and annunciation. It is the word employed to describe the murderous hurry with which Herodias came rushing in to the king to demand John the Baptists head. It is the word with which the apostle, left solitary in his prison, besought his sole trusty companion Timothy to make haste so as to come to him before winter. Thus, the first notion in the word is haste which crowds every moment with continuous effort, and lets no hindrances entangle the feet of the runner. When haste degenerates into hurry, and becomes agitation, it is weakness, not strength; it turns out superficial work, which has usually to be pulled to pieces and done over again, and it is sure to be followed by reaction of languid idleness. But the less we hurry the more should we hasten in running the race set before us. But, with this caution against spurious haste, we cannot too seriously lay to heart the solemn motives to wise and well-directed haste. The moments granted to any of us are too few and precious to be let slip unused. The field to be cultivated is too wide and the possible harvest for the toiler too abundant, and the certain crop of weeds in the sluggards garden too poisonous, to allow dawdling to be considered a venial fault. Little progress will be made if we do not work as feeling that the night is far spent, the day is at hand. The first element, then, in Christian diligence is economy of time as of most precious treasure, and the avoidance, as of a pestilence, of all procrastination. Now is the accepted time. Wherefore, giving all haste, add to your faith. Another of the phases of the virtue, which Peter here regards as sovereign, is represented in our translation of the word by earnestness, which is the parent of diligence. Earnestness is the sentiment, of which diligence is the expression. So the word is frequently translated. Hence we gather that no Christian growth is possible unless a man gives his mind to it. Dawdlers will do nothing. There must be fervour if there is to be growth. The engine that is giving off its steam in white puffs is not working at its full power. When we are most intent we are most silent. Earnestness is dumb, and therefore it is terrible. Again we come to the more familiar translation of the word as in tile text. Diligence is the panacea for all diseases of the Christian life. It is the homely virtue that leads to all success. If you want to be a strong Christian--that is to say, a happy man--you must bend your back to the work and give all diligence. Nobody goes to heaven in his sleep. No man becomes a vigorous Christian by any other course than giving all diligence. It is a homely virtue, but if in its homeliness we practised it, this church and our own souls would wear a different face from what it and they do to-day.
II. Note the wide field of action for this homely grace. First, note that in our text, giving all diligence, add to your faith. That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. He has just been saying that God has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and exceeding great and precious promises. The Divine gift, then, is everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for such a life already given you, see that you bring besides into the heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring, namely, all diligence. The phrase implies that diligence is our contribution. Diligence makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes Gods gifts ours. Then, again, the apostle gives an even more remark able view of the possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers exercise it in order to make their calling and election sure. If we desire that upon our Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded continence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only acceptance in the beloved, the short road to it is the well known and trite path of toil in the Christian life. Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain the full assurance of hope. The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed by our letter, when Peter says, seeing that we look for such things, let us be diligent, that we may be found of Him in peace with out spot, and blameless. If we are to be found in peace, we must be found spotless, and if we are to be found spotless we must be diligent. What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together all these items! A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a peaceful welcome, at last! (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Diligence
1. That it is not enough to flee and abstain from our fleshly lusts, and so perform the duty of mortification, unless also we add unto the same, faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, and the like Christian graces.
2. That naturally we are sluggish, slothful, and dull in the performance of holy duties, and therefore have need to be often roused up, admonished, and warned to perform our duty with all diligence.
3. That we cannot attain unto any of the graces of Gods Spirit without diligence, painful labour, and travail.
4. That the gifts and graces of Gods Spirit are worth the pains taking, worthy I say, both in regard of their nature and in regard of the recompense which we receive by them.
5. That neither the unlawful pleasures of this world are to be sought at all with any diligence, or the lawful pleasures and profits thereof with all diligence.
6. That this diligence which is required must be total, both inward and outward--=outward in every member of the body, inward in every faculty of the soul.
To the first I answer, that God doth require this great diligence in the apprehension and application of His benefits.
1. Because of the worth and excellency of His benefits.
2. Because of their inefficacy unto us if not apprehended and applied by us.
3. Because of the great profit which we shall reap thereby, being by us rightly apprehended and with all diligence applied.
4. Because of the great diligence which Satan and his adherents, the world and the flesh, do use to deprive us of the same.
5. Because the work is great, we unwieldy, our time both short and uncertain, yea, and not being diligently apprehended as they are diligently offered, they are not afterward so easily attained. (A. Symson.)
Christian diligence
I. The graces which we are here exhorted to cultivate.
II. The considerations by which these exhortations are enforced, By cultivating these various graces we shall show--
1. That our piety is not merely speculative and nominal.
2. They will contribute materially to our spiritual illumination.
3. A consciousness of our personal acceptance.
4. Perseverance in the face of temptations and difficulties.
5. A joyful and triumphant death. (Expository Outlines.)
A downright Christian
It was the saying of a shrewd thinker: If it is worth while being a Christian at all, it is better to be a downright Christian.
Activity necessary to piety
To purity activity seems essential. Fill your room with the purest air, and shut it up for one month, and when you open it the air is foul. Its stagnation has made it impure. The same is true of water; no matter how pure it may be, let it become stagnant, and it grows fetid and deleterious. The spiritual world presents an analogy. Idleness is the stagnation of the mind, and, like that of the air and water, it breeds impurity. (Christian Armour.)
Connection with preccding verses
As He hath given us all things needful for life and godliness (so), do you give all diligence, etc. The oil and flame are given wholly by Gods grace, and taken by believers; their part is to trim their lamps. (A. R. Fausset, M. A.)
Practice necessary to perfection
A neighbour near my study persists in practising upon the flute. He bores my ears as with an auger, and renders it almost an impossibility to think. Up and down his scale he runs remorselessly, until even the calamity of temporary deafness would almost be welcome to me. Yet he teaches me that I must practise if I would be perfect; must exercise myself unto godliness if I would be skilful; must, in fact, make myself familiar with the Word of God, with holy living, and saintly dying. Such practice, moreover, will be as charming as my neighbours flute is intolerable. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Exercise develops strength
As in the body so is it in the soul, exercise develops strength. The Laplanders and the Patagonians are in climates almost equally cold. The Laplanders are a small race, the Patagonians a large one. What makes the difference? The Laplanders, supported by their reindeer, spend most of their time in indolence; the Patagonians are an active race, and spend much of their time in fishing and hunting. Hence the stunted development of the one, and the large dimensions of the other. It is thus grace expands by the activity of love. (C. Graham.)
Add.
Religion a principle of growth
Our age is writing progress on its banners. It bids us to forget the things that are behind, as incomplete and unsatisfactory, and to press toward those which are yet before us. We believe that the gospel, and it alone, adequately meets this deeply-seated craving of our times. Religion is a principle of perpetual progress. Setting before us, as the great end of our existence, and as the only perfect model of moral excellence, the Infinite Jehovah, it requires, and it also ministers an ever-growing conformity to Him. Grow in grace, is the apostles injunction to all recipients of that grace. It is the secret and rule of personal reform, constantly advancing, and of social amelioration, enfranchisement and elevation.
1. The Church needs in this age to be kept in mind of the great truth, that there remains yet much land to be possessed.
2. And if, from the peculiar state and needs of the churches, we turn to review the present aspect of the world, we seem to discover similar reasons why the churches should not, now at least, overlook the fact that the gospel is, to its obedient disciples, a principle of continuous advancement, a law of expansion and moral elevation. The world, falsely or with justice, is shouting its own progress, and promising in the advance ment of the masses, the moral development of the individual. It is an age of rapid discovery in the physical sciences. The laws and uses of matter receive profound investigation, and each day are practically applied with some new success. Yet physical science can certainly neither create nor replace moral truth. The crucible of the chemist cannot disintegrate the human soul, or evaporate the moral law. But besides these advances in physical science, our age is one of wondrous political revolutions. It is again, even in lands and governments where political revolution is not needed or is not desired, an age of social reform.
3. And now, having seen how in the aspects, both secular and ecclesiastical, of our age, Christians were especially summoned to evolve what of progression there was in their own faith, let us see how in the inspired presentations of that faith, the fullest provision is made for mans moral growth. Were there no other precept: Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect, would be sufficient to show how a limitless expansion of our intellectual and moral stature was set before us in the gospel. To man, the heir of immortality, it prescribes the law and warrants the hope of an immortal progression. There are stages in Christian attainment; and one but prepares for another, and, without all, the Christian cannot be fully useful or perfectly blessed.
4. From the word add, a heedless reader might infer that all the graces thus clustered were independent each of the other, and might be selected or omitted as each disciple saw fit; and that a man might at least be safe in having but the first, though in his negligence lacking all the rest. But such is not the apostles meaning. The believer is called upon to furnish not a single and isolated grace, but to supply adding one to another, the whole consenting train, and harmonious interwoven troop, the complete sisterly choir of Christian graces. He is to look upon the one in this cluster of Christian excellences as fragmentary and untuned without the others. The one grace is the supplement and complement indispensable to the symmetry and melody of all its sister graces. Now in this choir or train Faith is the elder born, and upon it all these other graces depend. It alone justifies, but as the old theologians were fond of saying, not being alone. It comes singly to the task of mans justification, but in the heart and life of the justified man it does not come as a solitary, building there its lonely hermitage. (W. R. Williams.)
Christian growth
The word which has been translated add is a very pictorial term, and refers to a choir of well-trained musicians. The musical illustration of Christian growth is a very pro found and far-reaching one. Keats says that heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, implying that there is a music which appeals to the soul finer than anything that can be expressed by human voice or musical instrument. Beethoven was deaf, heard no outward sounds, but the soul of music was in him, and therefore with the deeper inner ear he heard continuously the Divine music to which all things are attuned. Music is the great principle of order. It enters into the essence of all things. The music of the spheres is not a mere poetic, but a scientific phrase. Everything speaks to the ear of the thoughtful of the wonderful rhythm of the universe. What nature does unconsciously and willlessly, we are to do consciously and willingly. We are to keep step and time to the music of the universe--and to add to our faith virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity--and thus practically make the statutes of the Lord our song in the house of our pilgrimage. There are two ways in which we may add to our faith all the graces which the apostle enumerates. We may add them as a builder adds stone to stone in his wall; or we may add them as a plant adds cell to cell in its structure. Whether, therefore, we take our illustration from architecture or from plant life, the essential point, as implied by the significance of the word add in the original, is that growth should be harmonious. Architecture is said to be frozen music. This is true of the commonest wayside wall. What is it that makes the sight of a well-built wall so pleasing to the eye? What is it that makes building a wall such an interesting employment that children take instinctively to it? Is it not the love of symmetry--the delight in shaping large and small, rough and smooth, pieces of stone, adapting them one to the other, and placing them in such a way that together they make a symmetrical structure? And if we see this curious harmony in the humblest rustic building, how grandly does it come out in the magnificent Gothic cathedral, where every part blends faultlessly and carries out the design of the architect; and clustered pillar, and aerial arch, and groined roof soar up in matchless symmetry, and the soul is held spellbound by the poetry which speaks through the entire structure! There is a remarkable peculiarity in the text in the original which must be specially pointed out. The preposition which we have translated to should be rendered in, and so rendered, we are significantly taught, that Christian growth is not by mechanical addition, but by vital increase. We are to add not to our faith, but in our faith, virtue, and in our virtue, knowledge, and so on. The first thing that we are commanded by the apostle to add to our faith is virtue, meaning by this term vigour, manliness. Our faith is to be itself a source of power to us. We are to be strong in faith. It is to be to us the power of God unto salvation, enabling us to overcome the temptations and evils of the world, and to rise above all the infirmities of our own nature. Our faith should be manifested as it was in olden times by a victorious strength which is able to overcome the world, which fears the Lord and knows no other fear. To this strength or manliness we are further commanded to add knowledge. In our manliness we are to seek after knowledge. The quality of courage is to be shown by the fearlessness of our researches into all the works and ways of God. We are not to be deterred by any dread of consequences from investigating and finding out the whole truth. The wisdom from above includes not only the knowledge that we are pardoned sinners, but also all that can furnish the understanding and fill the soul with food for its high capacities and boundless appetites. With wonderful sagacity the apostle commands us to add to our knowledge temperance; for there is a tendency in knowledge to puff us up and fill our hearts with pride. Temperance gives us just estimates of ourselves and of the world. It gives us the true knowledge of all things. It enables us to use our knowledge aright, to convert thought into action, and vision into life. We are to know ourselves and our relations to Gods Word in order to regulate our life accordingly. To this self-government we must add patience. As the plant slowly ripens its fruit, so we are to ripen our Christian character by patient waiting and patient enduring. It is a quiet virtue this patience, and is apt to be overlooked and underestimated. But in reality it is one of the most precious of the Christian graces. The noisy virtues--the ostentatious graces have their day; patience has eternity. And while it is the most precious, it is also the most difficult. It is far easier to work than to wait; to be active than to be wisely passive. But it is when we are still that we know God; when we wait upon God that we renew our strength. Patience places the soul in the condition in which it is most susceptible to the quickening influences of heaven, and most ready to take advantage of new opportunities. But to this patience must be united godliness. Godliness is Godlikeness, having the same mind in us that was in Christ Jesus, viewing everything from the Divine point, and living in our inner life as fully in the light of His presence as we live in our outer life in the light of the sun. And exercising ourselves unto this godliness, our patience will have a Divine quality of strength, endurance, beauty imparted to it such as no mere natural patience possesses. We wrong God when we are unkind, ungenerous, and uncourteous to each other. But brotherly kindness is apt to be restricted towards friends only--towards those who belong to the same place or the same church, or who are Christians. It must, therefore, be conjoined to charity. In our brotherly kindness we are to exercise a large-hearted charity. Such, then, are the graces which we are enjoined by the apostle to add to each other, to develop from each other, not as separate fruits dispersed widely over the branches of a tree, but as the berries of a cluster of grapes growing on the same stem, mutually connected and mutually dependent. This is the ideal of a perfect Christian character. It must have these parts; it must be characterised by these qualities, These are the fruits of the Spirit. These are the products of genuine faith. They are not like the links of an iron chain, manufactured separately, and mechanically added to each other; but they are like the living cells of a growing plant, in which one cell gives birth to another, and communicates its own qualities to it. (H. Macmillan, D. D.)
An apostles method of silencing objectors
Add to your faith virtue. You have faith. This is assumed, you perceive. Now, says the apostle, let your faith be associated with virtue. The word is used in only three passages in the New Testament. It is a word derived from the name of the Greek god of war, and hence would give some countenance to those who would simply make it to mean fortitude, or courage. Others take it in another sense, by associating it with rectitude of conduct--everything that is lovely and of good report, in conduct. For my part, I do not see how we can do without either meaning. The apostle speaks, in one of his passages, of our being a chosen people, a royal priesthood, to show forth the virtues of Him who hath called us that is, to show forth the praises; so to exhibit God in connection with our faith in His Son, that men may praise Him, seeing how His name and His law are magnified in the work of redeeming love. In another passage, in the Philippians, the Apostle Paul uses, in a more general sense, the same word: If there be any virtue--if there be anything at all commendable. Now, I think, we must look at the word as having both these senses. See, the apostle says, that your profession of faith is in connection with such conduct that the name of God may be magnified in you and by you. But, then, why should we exclude the idea of courage? Right conduct in the midst of evil men; consistency of conduct in the midst of a world lying in the wicked one; forgetting all distinctions of time, or country, or circumstances, to take Gods mercy, and apply it to our own souls; to accept Christ as Gods well-beloved Son; to look right into the grave, and think of the judgment-seat will require fortitude; and take the word, in whatever sense you please, fortitude and courage and rectitude of conduct must, says the apostle, be associated with your profession of faith in Christ Jesus. But then the apostle says we are to associate also knowledge; that is, he enjoins upon us to be intelligent professors of faith in Christ Jesus. God puts none of our faculties under ban; God does not ask any man whom He has endowed with faculties, by which He may be glorified by His creature, to keep them in abeyance, to leave them uncultivated. We are to have the soul filled with wisdom from above, and to seek all kinds of wisdom, that we may consecrate them to the service of God. And mark how necessary it is for the believer in Christ Jesus ever to be growing in intelligence. New errors creep into the Church; new forms of error are presented to the believer. He is not to be satisfied with the instruction which God blessed to the bringing him into living relationship with Christ Jesus. We ought, as a matter of conscience, and as a matter of duty, to seek to increase our intelligence, that we may be ready always to give an answer to every man, and a reason of a hope that is in us. And then the apostle enjoins temperance upon us. The simple meaning of the idea is self-government, or self-restraint, rather. This was one of the virtues which the Grecian philosophers laid great stress upon, in this general sense, not simply in eating and drinking, but in everything that referred to the passions of men. As the apostle says, Be angry, and sin not. If there is just cause of anger, we are to be moderate in our anger. And the Apostle Paul speaks of persons who are lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; that is, they are not temperate in their pleasures. There is nothing contradictory between this temperance and earnestness. Now, a man may be earnest without intelligence; he may be zealously affected even in a bad cause; but temperance--prudence, that is, moderation in our views, and in the mode of carrying out our views--may be found in connection with great earnestness. But, then, to temperance we are to add patience. Even when you regulate yourselves most, and have your spirits under the directing influences of the Spirit of God, you cannot possibly live and act for Christ without finding some difficulties. But, says the apostle, just quietly endure all things; just patiently persevere in all that concerns your Christian course. And, then, says the apostle, associate also with these things godliness. The word means certain acts of worship presented to God; but it means more than this, it means a reverential spirit, by which our acts of worship are regulated. Is it not remarkable how much our religious worship is dependent upon certain influences, certain associations, certain circumstances? You perceive a man who has associated early in life with persons who frequent the house of God, and he contracts a kind of habit, and it is a long while before he can shake off this habit. Now, just change a mans position in society; see what the increase of this worlds goods will do for a man; you see him slackening his attendance at the house of God, and leaving certain acts of worship that he once regularly engaged in. I have seen men who rigidly observed certain outward acts of worship when they were at home. I have seen them give the lamentable proof that it was all a matter of external influence. And therefore the apostle says, Associate with everything that is right, everything that is virtuous in conduct, godliness: that is, a devout and a reverential spirit, manifested in connection with your devotedness to Christ and Him crucified. But the apostle says, Not simply towards God, but towards your fellow-men. Christ Himself enjoined upon His disciples love towards each other, by which they should manifest that they loved Him. (J. Sherlock.)
Additions to faith
I. The additions which you are to make to your faith. The apostle does not exhort Christians to seek after faith. This he supposes them to possess already. You say you have faith--but faith without works is dead, being alone. Faith resembles a foundation, of high importance in case of a building, but useless ii no superstructure be reared. It is only a beginning, which is nothing without progress. What are clear notions unless they influence; or proper motives unless they impel? Moses had faith, and he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt.
1. The first addition which he requires of you as believers is virtue--courage. This principle in the whole of your Christian course will be found indispensably necessary. You live in a world unfriendly to religion. It will be found no easy thing to deny yourselves and take up your cross, to pluck out a right eye. Some of these difficulties, indeed, might be avoided if you were only to be religious and not to appear so. If we trace things to their origin we shall find a thousand evils springing, not from ignorance but cowardice. Pilate condemned a Saviour of whose innocency he was conscious because of the Jews. Many of the Pharisees believed on Him, but feared to confess Him lest they should be put out of the synagogue. The disciples were afraid and forsook Him.
2. A second addition is knowledge. And this very properly follows the former. It teaches us that courage is a force which wisdom is to employ; courage may urge us to undertake the war, but judgment is to manage it. And hence it will be easy to determine the nature of this qualification. It is practical knowledge; it is what we commonly mean by prudence, which is knowledge applied to action. It is what Paul recommends when he says, Be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is. Walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise. Walk in wisdom towards them that axe without, redeeming the time. This kind of knowledge results principally from experience and observation; and he is blameable indeed who does not grow wiser as he grows older, and who does not make every day a correction of the former. Our own history affords us some of the best materials to improve and embellish our character. We should derive strength from our weaknesses, and firmness from our falls. But, alas I what numbers are there upon whom the continuance of life and all means of improvement seem to be thrown away. They have eyes, but they see not; ears have they, but they hear not. Whereas the wisdom of the prudent is to understand his way. The prudent man looketh well to his going. He draws down his knowledge from speculation, and uses it in common life. He judges of the value of his notions by their utility. He studies his character and condition. He examines his dangers, his talents, his opportunities.
3. You are to avoid intemperance. There is a sense in which this word may be applied to the mind as well as the body.
4. You are to add to your temperance patience. There is an obvious and striking relation between these. The one requires us to bear, the other to forbear. The one regards the good things, the other the evil things of the world. By temperance we are preserved under the smiles of prosperity, and by patience we encounter the frowns of adversity.
5. Godliness is indispensable. Courage and prudence, temperance and patience, would be no Christian qualities, if in the exercise of them we were not influenced by suitable regards to God. Without this reference our religion is nothing more than morality.
6. We are to add to godliness brotherly kindness.
7. To brotherly kindness, charity.
II. Inquire how this is to be accomplished. The apostle tells us. It is by giving all diligence.
1. These things deserve your diligence. It is pitiable to see men employing their zeal and consuming their strength upon trifles. But this cannot be said of spiritual blessings and graces. These are in the sight of God of great price. They are necessary to man. They purify his passions, and tranquillise his conscience, They enrich, they dignify him, they are his perfection. They make him happy.
2. Diligence will infallibly secure these things.
3. There is no attaining these things without diligence. Diligence is indispensable.
(1) Indispensable if we appeal to analogy. You must labour even for the meat that perisheth.
(2) Indispensable if we appeal to the character of a Christian. He is a merchant, a scholar, a husbandman, a traveller, a soldier--the anxiety of the merchant, the application of the scholar, the hardy toil of the husbandman, the wearying progress of the traveller, the painful exercise of the soldier, are images which ill accord with indolence and ease.
(3) Indispensable if we appeal to the promises of the gospel. These all require it, encourage it, produce it. (W. Jay.)
The Christian chorus
The word translated add takes us back to an old Grecian custom; it means to be a chorus-leader, to furnish a chorus at ones own expense. The Greeks worshipped their gods through a hired chorus. When the poet had completed his work, he called upon the archon (or city mayor) to grant a chorus. He in turn appealed to a wealthy citizen called a choragus, who collected a chorus, hired a trainer, and in time rendered the poets composition to the delight of the citizens and the glory of the gods. As a reward he received a tripod, which he consecrated, and in some cases placed on a monument. The Athenian street lined with these memorials was called the avenue of tripods. Into this custom as a mould Peter pours the truth of Gods gift and mans duty. Verses 2-4 set forth Gods gift to man, the composition of Jehovah, the sacred score, the expression of His life and love. Grace and peace are allotted to us; they are not obtained by effort, but are gifts of God. All that pertains to life and godliness comes through precious promises. He who takes the promises of faith takes the life of God into his soul. Here stands the poet with his finished work, pleading for a chance to help the people and honour the gods. He has put himself into the composition, it is as yet only a promise of harmony; the chorus is organised, trained, the people gather, the soul of the composer finds expression, the people are inspired to nobler lives, the gods are glorified. Until the archon accepts the poets promise, and the chorus renders it, the poet is dumb. God has given Himself in great and precious promises, completed His work, and now calls upon men to accept and fill the universe with Divine harmony. Verses 5-7 give us mans duty growing out of Gods gift. His work is the inspiration to, not the substitute for our work. God operates, man must co-operate. The air is free, therefore breathe it; the earth is rich, therefore till it; the seed is vital, sow it; the sea is wide, launch out upon it. Opportunity means duty; gifts bring obligations. Peter is writing to Christians--to them that have obtained like precious faith. Faith is a present possession, something assumed, to which other things are to be added. Yet faith is but one grace, one instrument in chorus; without it the others are useless; with it alone you can never render Gods composition. A solo is not a chorus. Beethoven and Wagner cannot be rendered by one instrument; much less can God be set forth by one virtue. Add to your faith virtue. Not virtue in the narrow sense of moral excellence, but of the energy which Christians are to exhibit, as God exerts His energy upon them. Faith in the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ must be an energetic faith. The verb of life is passive toward God, but active toward men. The poet threw himself into his composition; the chorus was simply to take in what he gave, and pour it out upon others. God has put Himself into this gift of His; receiving it we are to yield our powers to it, and let His energy control us. A lazy Christian is a contradiction in terms. And to energy knowledge--intelligence, understanding, spiritual discernment. This looks two ways: understanding of truth, and discernment of what is right and wrong in life. As the years go by we should know more and more of Gods will as made known in His Word. Astronomy is ever finding new stars. Christians should find new depths, new heights, and new breadths in Gods Word as the years go by. And to knowledge temperance--self-control, the virtue of one who masters his desires and passions. Keep the beast beneath the saddle. Eyegate and eargate must be guarded lest the enemy capture mans soul, and the door of speech be kept; for If any man offend not in word, etc. And to self-control patience--the characteristic of a man who is unswerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings. Not only endurance of the inevitable, but the heroic, brave patience, with which a Christian not only bears but contends. Faith, energy, self-control count for little unless you endure; there are many Galatian Christians, who run well for a time; but the crowns are given to men who complete the race. Quick response on the part of the soil is no guarantee of a harvest; depth is as needful as willingness. And to patience godliness--reverence, respect, piety toward God; the confession of human dependence upon God manifested in conduct and conversation. Having faith, energy, self-control, and patience, there is danger lest we lose the fine sense of reverence; danger that we become irreverent. At the beginning of the Christian fife there is an awful sense of God; in too many cases this wears off, we become familiar with and degrade holy things and places, forget to bow in prayer, to close the eyes in worship. And to godliness brotherly kindness--love of the brethren. Nearness to Christ as the head means nearness to one another as members in particular; the muscles that bind the members to the head bind them to one another; the nerves that give the head control of the members are nerves of mutual icy and suffering. Godliness cannot be solitary and selfish, but must be social and unselfish; he who loves God must love his brother also. And to brotherly kindness charity--love, the broad affection which should characterise Christians, the love of men as men, God is love. The object of Gods love is the world; likeness to God means love to all mankind. Paul calls it the bond of perfectness, the sash which binds all other graces into place, the girdle over all; here it is the last instrument; without it you cannot render Gods composition to the world. The first is faith in God, the last is love to man, for faith in God begets His likeness in us. Yonder is God, the great composer, bidding us render His composition. What powers He must see in us; what confidence in our powers He must have; what a calling is ours! When St. Cecilia played the angels responded; well may they respond when human powers are counted worthy to render Gods opera. Oh, men and women, rise to the dignity of your powers and possibilities! God waits for expression, angels wait to hear God expressed. There are eight instruments called for, the octave, the perfection of harmony; though the chorus be what no man can number, yet at the heart of it is the octave, and God calls on each man to use the powers in himself; each man has the octave in himself, and is called upon to chorus his powers, to train his gifts. Then we have (verse 8) the consequences of faithful service. Grace and peace are multiplied through knowledge, and knowledge comes through faithful use of these powers. The musician who gives himself to the works of the master gains knowledge of the score, and is transformed into a sort of human photograph, possessed by and giving out the genius of the composer. So the Christian who tries to render Gods composition comes into a fuller knowledge of it, sympathy with it; Gods thoughts become his thoughts, and Gods ways his ways; he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him. The composition controls the performer. On the other hand, He that lacketh these things is blind, etc. The word blind here carries with it a curious figure, darkened by smoke. Smoke-blinded, squinting his eyes up, forgetting the door of entrance and exit, bewildered, he gropes about searching in vain for the way out of sin. Refusing to give himself to Gods gift, to cultivate the Christian graces, his horizon narrows, his life shrinks; what he has mastered sinks from him: forgiveness forgotten, sin returns, and he is lost. Hear Gods call to constant practice, Give diligence to make your calling and election sure. Gods work is done, Christ has offered the finished opera; in grace as in nature the end of His work is the beginning of your work; where the composer stops the performer begins, and at this point the composer becomes dependent upon the performer. Enter diligently upon your part of the task; by patient continuance in well-doing thou shalt reach the final reward. And that is an entrance shall be ministered unto you, etc. Ministered is the passive of the same verb that is translated add in ver.
5. As the city honoured the man who assumed the burden of the chorus, giving him a public triumph, rearing for him a tripod on the broad avenue, so God shall minister to those who chorus His works of grace mighty triumph in the kingdom of His Son. (O. P. Gifford.)
Apostolic Christianity
Men are very fond of looking at the Divine government from that side where it can be the least seen, and where they are most subject to the errors of their own fluctuating imaginations, and to the obscurities of philosophy, falsely so called. It is far better, wherever we can, to look at the great truths of the Divine moral government, at the mystery of Gods dealing with men in this world, from the human side. And this is what is done in this passage. It is, in brief, the inspired disclosure of the purposes of God in respect to men. What it is that the grace of God is attempting to do with those who are called in the Lord Jesus Christ, is set forth. We are called of God. In our version it is to glory and virtue, but in the original it is by glory and virtue, as if the call was not by the nature of man, but by the nature of God. By His own being, by the glorious and virtuous power of His own Spirit, He calls us up out of our lower life--out of that nature of ours which is physical. The apostle goes on to say, On account of this, giving all diligence. You are called. The call is one which is to be answered. There is to be working together of the inspiration of the Divine Spirit and human endeavour, Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you. On account of this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue. What is faith? Supersensuousness. Well, what is supersensuousness? It is all that truth which exists beyond the discermnent of the senses. Now the apostle says, Add to that faith virtue. Add to this vision-seeing tendency of yours, which may etherealise itself and go off in a cloudy dream--add to this the practice of a wise and righteous kind. Add to your faith virtue, in the old Roman sense--true manhood. By the way, I have jumped a thought. It does not say add to in the original; it says, Provide, or develop in. It is as if he had had in his mind the thought of a plant. Add to your faith, or in your faith, virtue; in other words, develop out of your faith virtue that is, practical godliness; and in your virtue or front out of your virtue, develop knowledge. By this is not meant, evidently, that knowledge which we gather by our senses--scientific knowledge, ideas, facts; but a higher knowledge that subtle intuition of truth which men have who live high and noble lives. That which is meant by temperance is self-government. And in temperance, or front it, develop patience--endurance--the spirit of bold, quiet waiting. And to patience, godliness. That is, let your patience be not stoical. Let it not be stubborn, sulky. Let it be the waiting and endurance of a man who believes that God reigns, and that all the affairs of the universe are in His hands, and shall work toward good. And to godliness, brotherly kindness. That is, let there be in your godliness a warm sympathy and affection, not only for yourself, but for your family, for all your near neighbours, for all your neighbours that are more remote, for all your townspeople, for all the world. And to brotherly kindness, charity. Local affection and universal affection--add these. Here, then, is the apostles conception of a Christian mans character, development, and destiny; and I remark--
I. This ideal destiny of man is one that shall lead hint into the likeness, into the sympathy, and into the participation of the Divine nature. The reason why we know so little of the Divine nature is, that we have so little ill ourselves that interprets it to us. I have groped to see if there are not at least some traces along the line of this march, and I think I see some. I observe, for instance, in the progress of the lower animal in man up toward the higher, that when it reaches the human race, the difference between undeveloped men and men who are developed, is the power to discern the invisible. That is, men whose forces are muscular are inferior to men whose forces are mental. And when the apostle says that we are to be partakers of the Divine nature, I say that the declaration is in harmony with everything that I see going on in human nature. We rise away from the animal toward the spiritual. We advance from lower manhood to higher manhood. The line is from the flesh toward the spirit. Therefore, it might naturally be expected that Christian character would consummate itself in the development of the Divine nature. That is the highest form of spiritual existence, and when the apostle says this is so, I am prepared to receive it, and to rejoice over it.
II. No man was ever converted to Christianity at one flash. No man ever built a house at a single blow, except in a summer dream. The conversion by which the Spirit of God starts a man, just starts him--that is all. It turns him away from the wrong direction. It turns him toward the right model. It gives his heart an inspiration for things higher, and then says to him, Work out your salvation. A man who has a musical ear goes into a workshop and sees lying there large quantities of material of various kinds--iron, and steel, and copper, and brass--and he says, .Let me make these available. And he takes the various kinds of metal, and puts them into a furnace and melts them, and pours the liquid which they form into a mould; and when it is cool and brought out it is a bell. Such is the result of the combination of all these incoherent substances. And when it is struck it is musical. And he says, I have hit it! It is perfect! But it is a monotone; and after some thought he says. No, I have not reached perfection yet. There is more material here. What if I should make another bell? So he goes to work and makes a second bell. And then he makes a third; and then a fourth. And some musician says, Hang them up in yonder tower, and they are lifted up into the tower; and, swinging there, they ring out through the air glorious chants which call men to Gods house. God has lifted up the spire or tower of the human soul, and has set in it some thirty bells; and they are all to be brought into accord. There are two or three that strike bass notes musically; but it is our business to bring harmony into the whole mighty collection of musical instruments that are swinging in the belfry of mans soul. No man is perfect until all his faculties are brought into harmonious play. God never put a faculty into a man which was not necessary; and if we are to be perfect, every one of our faculties must be developed and used. As God looks upon men, they are not perfect until they are built up into the lines and lineaments of the Lord Jesus Christ, and have partaken in part of the Divine nature. Then they are sons of God; and to be a son of God is something transcendently glorious.
III. The glorious ideal of Christianity, compared with all the current ideas, stands up in bright and rebuking contrast. How many are calling men to church-membership! How many are calling men to morality! How many men are called to philosophy! How many men are called to philanthropy! But such is not the call of God. God calls men to be partakers of the Divine nature. And the providence of Divine grace is working on that pattern incessantly. What the gardener means, and what Nature means, are very different things. What the grape-vine means is to drive out its branches, rank and strong, far and wide. What the gardener means is grapes; and therefore he cuts back the vine on every side. Let me grow, says the vine. Bear, says the vintner. Give me more room for my leaves, says the vine. Then give me more grapes for my wine, says the gardener. Men in this world are seeking to develop forces that shall be for their pleasure. God is meeting those who are His own with blows at every step, and beating them back. He is tempering this mans zeal by various shames. He is subjecting another man to such tests as shall compel him to come to endurance. In various ways Gods providence is meddling with us. We are all praying that Gods will may be done; but we do not like the answer to our prayer when it comes. The soul is a temple, anal God is silently building it by night and by day. Precious thoughts are building it. Disinterested love is building it. Joy in the Holy Ghost is building it. All-penetrating faith is building it. Gentleness, and meekness, and sweet solicitude, and sympathy are building it. All virtue and all goodness are workmen upon that invisible temple which every man is. Ye are the temple of God. The foundations are laid, the lines are drawn, and silently, night and day, the walls are carried up, tier after tier being laid; and when the temple is built it shall seem as if it were composed of precious stones--of beryl, and amethyst, and topaz, and diamond--so that at last when it is completed, and there comes the shout of Grace, grace, unto it, it shall be a temple built in darkness to reveal light; built in sorrow to produce a joy which shall never die.
IV. If these views are generally correct, we may see in them the correction of many of the popular sayings and tendencies of the day. I am met at every step by those who say, I ought to conform to the laws of my being. Which way is the eagles nature, where he lies in his nest, or where he is, in the might of his power, poised under the sun, on a summer day? Is a mans nature that which he is born to, or that which he comes to by unfolding? Is a mans nature that which is furthest from, or nearest to, that which God meant should be the final estate to which he is to come? A mans real nature lies far beyond his present sphere. Nature in a man is not what he came from, but what he is going to. I am not, therefore, to take my models and patterns from behind; but this one thing I am to do--I am to forget the things which are behind, and to look on beyond, and to take my conceptions of true manhood and noble nature from the ideals which I form of God- and they are interpreted in my experience by Gods Spirit. (H. W. Beecher.)
Combination of Christian graces
You would think that flower-garden very defective which grew only one kind of flower, however beautiful that one may appear. It is the large variety of flowers that gives interest and pleasure in a garden. Thus, if you see a Christian with only one predominant grace, whatever it may be and however fine, he is lacking. It is the variety of graces, and their combination in the one life of experience and practice, that give charm and glory to Christian character, as it is the combination of colours that makes the light of the day. (James Hamilton, D. D.)
An incongruous addition
As it is always incongruous to see a mighty foundation with a trivial superstructure, a block of granite the basis, and a mud wall the building, a foundation of jasper, and the remaining corners all brick; so where there really is precious faith to begin with, you grieve that there should not be added courage, knowledge, temperance; but wood, hay, stubble, trivial tastes, narrow notions, sectarian prejudices, a sour or censorious spirit, and manifold infirmities of the flesh and spirit. (James Hamilton, D. D.)
Faith.--
Faith the root of Christian life
When the Vatican issued the celebrated Bull Unigenitus, the occasion of so many scandals, and of such protracted controversy, and in which it condemned, as abounding with most portentous errors, the excellent commentary upon the New Testament of the pious Father Quesnel, it selected as one of those errors, a remark of the good Jansenist upon the chapter before us, that Faith is the first of graces, and the source of every other. And yet what else than this very sentiment does the language of the apostle here suggest? Faith is put by him first in order; and is it not so put by Peters Lord? (Joh_3:36.)
I. Faith, in its widest sense, is trust or belief; confidence in the word, character, or work of another. Though requisite in religion, it is as much requisite elsewhere. Human society in its whole framework is so held together; and the kindreds and amusements and business of the world are presenting to the most earthly-minded, continual images and intimations of that faith which, when demanded of him by the Church and by the Word of God, he may sometimes affect to regard as strange and unexampled. The generous confidence of soldiers in a tried and heroic leader; the implicit confidence of his correspondents in a merchant of known means, and of proved integrity; the trust of the voyager in the intelligence and vigilance of the navigator; the unshaken assurance of a friend in the worth and affection of one whom he has long known and intimately loved--these are all but examples, in daily recurrence, of the use and the need, of the sweetness and of the power, of a reasonable faith and a well-placed trust. The faith of the gospel is something more than these, only as being trust in God. It is trust as to matters of higher concernment, and upon better warrant, and in a greater and better Being. It is a reliance on His true testimony. It is not irrational, for it has overwhelming evidence. Instead of its being, as the bigots of scepticism (for infidelity has its blind and bitter bigotry) represent it, a bandage for the eyes; and a manacle for the free hand, faith is really, to the eyes of the soul, a telescope bringing near the far glories of heaven: the evidence of things not seen, and the substance of things hoped for. And it is, to the hand, a clue leading our steps out of the mazy dungeon of sin, and through the labyrinth of earth. It is a magnet pointing the voyager to his desired haven; the charter, to the criminal, of an undeserved and full pardon. And as this faith is trust in the truth of the ever-truthful God, it is highest wisdom, as it is reliance on the Omnipresent, the Almighty, and the everlasting Jehovah, it is the surest, the only safety.
II. And should it be asked, why has it this priority in the Christian system, we answer, it may well occupy this place of precedency in the scheme of mans salvation, for various reasons.
1. Mans history required it. Unbelief, the opposite of faith, had the primary place in mans fall and perdition.
2. It occupies the first place, again, from the nature, respectively, of God and man. He, as the Infinite and Omniscient, knows much which man, as the finite being of limited faculties and existence, can know only through His Divine testimony.
3. Again, Gods unutterable tenderness and goodness have assigned to faith this post of precedency. The babe, yet but a prattler, may have full trust in the parent who cherishes it. Before it can reason, or even speak, it may believe in its father and mother.
4. And mans besetting sin--the pride which, after all the deep descent of the Fall, clings so persistently to him, however degraded, made it fitting, that the mode of his acceptance before God should be one that allowed no occasion for boasting.
III. But will not a scheme of salvation, thus free and indiscriminate, break down all virtue, and the dignity of human nature, and abolish law, and holiness, and truth? So, in all ages, objectors have argued. But the providence of God, and the history of the churches, have sufficiently answered these cavillings. The faith that justifies is implanted by a transforming Spirit, and reconciles to a holy and sin-hating Father, and unites to a Redeemer detesting and destroying iniquity. Whilst faith then accepts pardon as Gods free gift, it accepts as the inseparable concomitants of that pardon, penitence for sin, gratitude to the Giver, ingenuous love, adoption into the household of God, and assimilation to the Elder Brother--the Head of that household.
IV. From the necessity of its nature the implanted faith becomes a root of spiritual growth, and a principle of practical development. In its earlier stages faith is generally but feeble. That it should remain so, is not the will of Him who implants and who sustains it.
1. From the nature of faith, and of the human mind itself, faith, where well placed, on a trustworthy object, must grow and strengthen by exercise and continual repetition.
2. The growth set before our faith appears, again, from the character and structure of Scripture, the volume on whose testimonies faith fastens, and in whose rich pastures she must ever feed. God might have made it a book to be exhausted at one reading; or a record of the past, unavailing to the men of the present; or a mysterious outline of the future, of little clearness or usefulness till the times of its fulfilment had come. Instead of this, it is a book of all times, full of the ancient past, and the busy present, and the dread or gorgeous future. It has the simplest teachings interwoven inextricably with its most fathomless mysteries. Now, when faith is presented with such a manual, not to be mastered in weeks or years, but still evolving new lights to the latest studies of the longest lifetime, does not the structure of the book proclaim the intent of God, that faith should not sit down content with present attainments, and its as yet immature strength?
3. And so, too, the character of God Himself proclaims the same great law of the constant growth of faith. Acquaint thyself with Him and be at peace, is the demand of reason, no less than Scripture. Man has capacities and aspirations that the earthly, the perishable, the finite, and the sinful can never satisfy.
4. The office and character of the Holy Ghost, the Author of faith, point to the same results. The Saviour Himself described the influence of this Spirits indwelling as a well of water in the disciple springing up into everlasting life. (W. R. Williams.)
Faith
I. Its necessity.
1. Our apostle, to build the house of Christianity, lays this as the foundation. Philosophy lays her ground in reason, divinity in faith; the first voice of a Christian is, I believe.
2. The necessity of faith appears--
(1) In respect of God (Heb_11:6; Rom_10:14; Mat_8:13).
(2) In respect of the devil (1Pe_5:9). He is too strong for thee if thou meetest him with thy virtue, or with thy good works; for he will object sins enough to outweigh them. Solon cannot meet him with his justice, nor Solomon with his wisdom; every poor sinner can overcome him with his faith (Eph_6:16).
(3) In respect of thyself.
(a) Thou art ignorant. There is no understanding of God but by faith.
(b) Thou art originally corrupt, naturally hateful to God; nothing canst thou do to please Him, till thyself be first made acceptable to Him. The doer is not acceptable for the deed, but the deed for the doer. Hadst thou all the succeeding graces, and not this foundation of faith, whereby thy person is made accepted in the Beloved, when thou art judged, thou couldst not be saved.
II. Its singularity. Not faiths, but faith (Eph_4:5). There is but one faith in the church, as but one church in the faith; one faith in nature, not one in number. Every man hath his own faith, yet all have but one faith.
III. Its propriety.
1. Your faith, because you have a right and interest to this faith. Divers gifts are appropriated to divers men; but faith is general to all the elect.
2. Your faith, because every one must have a proper and peculiar use of faith. Thou canst not see Christ with anothers eyes, nor walk to heaven on anothers feet.
IV. Its society. To your faith; to implies some accession. Faith is a great queen; it is base to let her go without a court and a train. (Thos. Adams.)
Virtue.--
Faith and virtue
Isaac Taylor has told us we may find an illustration of this apostolic injunction by taking a view at large of church history. If we do so we shall discern beneath the scientific phraseology of the passage, a condensed but comprehensive caution against each of those prominent corruptions that have developed themselves in the course of eighteen centuries. They are readily enumerated, and may be put somehow in this fashion.
1. Pusillanimous or inert faith.
2. The licentious abuse of the gospel.
3. A fanatical or haughty subjugation of animal desires.
4. Anehoretic pietism.
5. Sectarian or factious sociality.
Thus our apostolic canon is seen to hold up as in a mirror the history of the degenerate Christianity of all ages. Now let us think of faith and manly energy combined. It would be better to inquire at this point, what is the New Testament conception of virtue? We have to thank the gospel of Christ for the force of the meaning which we at present attach to the word. You are familiar with the history and some of the literature of the great heathen nations the Greeks and the Romans. You know what virtue meant with them. Patriotism, first and chiefly; willingness to endure all, to give up all for the safety or benefit of their country; fearlessness of danger; implacability of hatred of the enemy; scorn of physical suffering; insensibility to the common sympathies of men; the cultivation of a brave war-spirit; this was courage, manliness, virtue, in those days. We have, as I said, to thank the gospel that the meaning of the word has changed, that we understand true manliness to consist in the full and free development of all that is good in human nature; the cultivation of some of those tenderer emotions which were so haughtily scorned; the recognition of the fact that, in quiet, unanswering submission, there may be majesty of soul as true or truer than is evident in the man who does battle with fortune and writhes under her hand; that love, mercy, forgiveness of injury, are not tokens of an effeminate heart, but of manliness; that a man is most victorious when he conquers himself, and most free when he yields ready, grateful obedience to the will of God. The manliest man must be the Christian; and what strikes us chiefly in thinking of the great names of pagan history, men of the type of Aristides, of Pericles, of Socrates, of Decius, of Brutus, is that it was the inspiration of this truth that they lacked for their perfection. This manly energy, then, is to be cultivated, conjoined, mixed up with that faith in the promises of God which is the only true basis upon which spiritual character can be built. Now, such a command would not have been given if the apostle had not foreseen that the tendency of human nature would be to divorce these two things, as either incompatible with each other, or, at all events, as not necessarily connected. Some of you have not lived beyond the remembrance of your first Christian experience. What effect was produced upon you by the vivid consciousness that you stood cleared from sin in the presence of a merciful Father; that eternal life was yours, that all the promises of the rich heavenly inheritance were yours? Was not the effect that your inclination was just to sit still, and ponder thankfully the marvellous grace of God, in revealing such blessing, in assuring to you such a glorious future? Such a desire for quiet contemplative enjoyment of this new experience tilled yon, that you regarded with distaste anything which threatened to break in upon it. Now you see the wisdom of it all. Now you see the necessity of the apparent harshness of some of that life. As some one has said of the early Christians, they were daily brought upon a path of danger which made them such men of action, of promptitude, and of courage, as they were men of meditation; while, more than any others, they lived in correspondence with things unseen and eternal, more than any others also they wrestled with things earthly, being embarrassed amid common cares, exhausted by hunger, thirst, and toil, distracted by fears, and often actually engaged in encountering the anguish of cruel deaths. Thus they were compelled, by the very position they occupied, to mingle with their faith, virtue. Such has been, in varying fashion, the course of Gods providence with all of us. Our nature is such that the active and the passive emotions must both have play, or the man is not proportionate in his development--the man is not manly. It is no small evidence of the Divinity of Christianity that such a precept as this is found as part of its ordinance, showing that the religion is adapted for tile man by a wisdom above his own. Faith cannot thrive without some expression in action. Faith without activity ends in superstition. Now, just glance at the other side of the truth. There must be this Christian manliness evident and active, but it must have faith as its basis, as its very life. While language helps thought, language without thought would be nothing. Activity without faith leads to infidelity, utter and complete atheism. (D. J. Hamer.)
Virtue
I. Consider, first, what this virtue is. No better suggestion has been made than that which takes it as meaning a certain manly energy, vigour, and firmness of disposition, which is the first outcome of Christian faith, and may well be the first aim of Christian effort. Now that strength of nature, firm tenacity of character, will at bottom be neither more nor less than a good strong will; for a mans strength is the strength of his will. And that being understood, what are the shapes in which this manly energy will manifest itself? There should flow from faith a tenacious vigour which masters circumstances and does not let them work with us as they please. True, the ship can only be carried by the wind and the currents, but, equally true, if there be a good strong hand on the tiller, and the canvas be wisely set, she can sail almost in the winds eye. Circumstances do make us, but it depends on us what they make us. Though they supply the force, the guidance ties in the hand that holds the reins and pulls the bit. The strength of tile Christian man will manifest itself in ruling outward things, and making them subservient, whether they be sorrowful or joyful, to the highest end of all, even his larger possession of a fuller Divine nature. And, in like manner, the virtue of my text will manifest itself in the rigid subjugation, by the energy of a strong will, of all my own inclinations, desires, tastes, passions, and the like; which all seek to assert themselves, and which the more mightily and ungoverned they work, the weaker a man is. In like manner, this manly energy, which all Christians are bade in the very first place to cultivate, will teach us independence of other people. Learn not to live upon their smiles, dare to be voices and not echoes, and to take your commandments, not from the habits of your class or of your calling, but from the lips which alone have power to command, and whose approval is praise indeed. Let me remind you that the gentle Christ is the pattern of this manly force as of everything else. All that the world adores as power looks weak, hysterical, strained by the side of the calm gentleness of that life which bears no trace of effort, and yet is mightier than all besides. He is Power, because He is Love.
II. And now observe the root of this virtue, or energy, in faith. A faith which does not grow into virtue and knowledge, and all the other links in this chain is, if not dead, at least ready to perish if it has not vitality enough to fruit. And then need I say that the exercise of confidence in God, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ, has a direct tendency to produce this strong form of character of which my text speaks? Faith as the realisation of the Unseen will bring strength.
III. And now a word as to the culture of this virtue by our own effort. The original word is very graphic and picturesque. It means, Bringing in by the side of, when fully and clumsily and yet accurately translated. Bringing in your diligence by the side of--what? By the side of that, partakers of the Divine nature. Gods gift does not make my effort unneccssary, but rather demands it as its completion and consequence. The best way by which we can give diligence to make ourselves strong, is by nurturing the faith which strengthens. Get into the habit of thinking about Jesus Christ all through your days, get into the habit of bringing mind and heart and will under the dominion of the principles of the gospel, and you will find the strength flowing into you and you will be mighty by Him. And we can get this strength in larger measure, too, by the simple process of habitually acting as if we possessed it. That is to say, you may cultivate the habit of suppressing yourselves, of stopping your ears to mens voices, of mastering and coercing circumstances. The Will gets dominion by asserting its dominion. There are no better ways of evolving this strenuous vigour from faith than these two--First, live near the source of it--They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. And then, exercise the little that you have got, and it will grow by exercise. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Virtue
I. The meaning of the word. Ii. The description of this characteristic as belonging to a Christian.
1. What a Christian ought to be. Not feeble, vacillating, pusillanimous; but brave, strong, trustworthy.
2. How a Christian ought to endure.
3. How a Christian ought to resist.
III. The need for this characteristic. There is no high goodness without strength.
IV. The way to the attainment of virtue.
1. A deep conviction of its necessity.
2. Fellowship with heroes who have embodied it.
3. Communion with its great source.
4. Exercise of as much of it as we possess. (U. R. Thomas.)
Virtue
In common speech every moral excellence is called a virtue. We also give the name virtue to that outward conformity to the law of God which constitutes a good moral character. Thus honesty is a virtue; veracity is a virtue; chastity is a virtue, etc. It is evident, however, that the text does not use the word in either of these significations. It cannot intend by virtue moral excellence in general, since it goes on to enumerate several particular moral excellences, such as temperance, patience, godliness, and charity, which must be added to virtue in order to complete the Christian character. It cannot intend any one in particular of those moral traits which we sometimes call virtues, since in addition to virtue it specifies most of these by name. For the meaning of the apostle we must go back to the primary idea of virtue--which is, manhood, manly vigour, a courageous tone of mind. The old martial Romans, from whom our word virtue is directly inherited, used this term to denote primarily the sum of all corporeal or mental excellences in their ideal of a man. The use of virtue in the sense of power or energy is common in old English; and there are some traces of this elsewhere in our version of the Scriptures, which help to determine the meaning of virtue in the text. The Greek word here translated virtue occurs but four times in the New Testament. As used by Paul in Php_4:8, it has the sense of moral excellence. But as used by Peter with respect both to God and to man, the word clearly denotes force, energy, power. There is another word (δύναμις) whose primary meaning is power, which our translators, following Wiclif, sometimes render by virtue, thus showing that they attached to virtue the old Latin sense of energy or force (Luk_8:46; Luk_6:19). Here virtue denotes not moral goodness, but miraculous healing power. Wiclif uses virtues as the equivalent of miracles. Where our version speaks of the mighty works done in Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, Wiclif styles these virtues. Again, He could there do no mighty work; Wiclif reads, He must not do there any virtue (Mar_6:5). Milton applies the phrase celestial virtues to the fallen powers and dominions of heaven, rising
More glorious and more dread than from no fall.
Here the word virtues conveys no idea of moral excellences, but is the equivalent of potentates. It is obvious, then, that in old English and in the first English version of the Bible the word virtue had its primitive Latin sense of manliness, a vigorous or energetic spirit, and that it sometimes retains this meaning in our version and also in good poetry. This is the meaning which most fitly renders the original term in the text. It is almost impossible to express this idea of virtue by any one English synonym. Isaac Taylor paraphrases it as manly energy, or the constancy and courage of manly vigour. The one word which comes nearest to it, while it has the abundant sanction of good English writers, is hardly domesticated in the pulpit; yet both the word and the thing were strikingly expressed by an honoured foreign missionary, when urging upon the American Board the immediate and thorough occupation of Turkey, with men and means for the service of Christ. Said Dr. Schauffler, After all the discouragements and disasters of the Crimean campaign, official mismanagement, army jealousies, camp sickness, and the discomforts of winter, the soldiers held on and took Sevastopol, not by science but by pluck--and what we need is Christian pluck to take possession of Turkey in the name of Christ. This is the virtue which all Christians are expected at all times to cultivate. Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue. The apostle speaks to those whom he fully recognises as one with himself in Christ. The faith that bringeth salvation is already theirs. But they are not to rest in that faith as the whole of the Christian character and life. Add to your faith, virtue; as followers of Christ cultivate a true Christian manhood.
I. Is what this manhood consists.
II. its place in a complete character.
III. How it may be attained and cultivated.
1. The virtue of which the apostle speaks--boldness, vigour, courage, manhood--is not to be confounded with rashness. In his earlier experience as a disciple, Peter was sadly deficient in the very virtue which he here recommends, though he was by no means wanting in a rough physical vigour, and the courage which that inspires.
2. This manly virtue should not be confounded with wilfulness. Stubbornness of will is not strength of character. It is doggedness or mulishness, not manliness. If wilfulness were a virtue, then Pharaoh was the most virtuous of men. A resolute, unfaltering purpose to do right, a will to honour God and to stand by truth and duty, a will which cannot be broken upon the wheel, nor relaxed by the fires of martyrdom, but like steel grows more firm and inflexible under pressure and heat--such a will is, indeed, a manly virtue. But will-worship, the magnifying of self-will, adherence to a position or course, not because it is known and felt to be right, but because it has been taken, and pride forbids to change--this wiifulness is as far from Christian manliness as a spoiled child is from an angel.
3. But the virtue of which we speak, while it is neither rash nor wilful, is always bold, firm, and determined in maintaining truth and performing duty: it is a manly and energetic tone of mind.
(1) An obvious constituent of this state of mind is an intelligent conviction of truth and duty. A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways. Steadfastness in purpose is impossible where the mind is doubtful as to the object in view. A purpose springing from mere feeling is apt to prove unstable, since feeling is a variable quantity. Manly resolve rests upon intelligent conviction. Strength of conviction gives courage to resolution.
(2) But in order to this manly virtue, the principle of obedience to God must be established in the soul as final, above all personal interests, above all earthly goods, above all merely human custom or law, above whatever would obtrude itself between the personal soul and a personal God, its Creator, Ruler, and Judge. You cannot cower down a soul that rests implicitly on God. When Luther stood before that court of the German empire which held his life in its hands, it is said that he was the only person in the assembly who was perfectly undisturbed. Luther was ready to die fox the doctrine of justification by faith, since he himself had added to faith--virtue, a manly courage, a holy energy of soul--proceeding from an intelligent and principled obedience to God.
(3) One other constituent enters into this manly virtue--that is, frankness or sincerity in avowing ones convictions of truth and duty. He who would be manly must be open. Frankness is not forwardness; it does not require that one should be always thinking aloud; neither is it bluntness; but it does forbid one from a selfish motive, to conceal his convictions when truth and duty are in question. When the Jewish Sanhedrin threatened Peter and John, and forbade them to speak or teach in the name of Jesus, the apostles fell back upon conscience and the law of Christian obedience, and said, Whether it be right in the sight of God, to hearken to you more them to God, judge ye; for we cannot but speak the things which we hi, ye seen and heard. That was Christian manliness. Peter had now learned to add to his faith, virtue.
I. The importance of this virtue to completeness of character is evident without argument. There call be no sterling character without this. The annals of Christian martyrdom often exhibit this manly virtue grafted upon child-like faith.
II. How shall this virtue be attained?
1. Study the examples of those who have manifested virtue. Look at Noah, standing up against the cavils of an apostate world to do the command of God a preacher of righteousness. Look at Abraham, with firm tread walking trackless wastes to Unknown lands, his courage rooted in faith. Look at Moses confronting the stubborn will of Pharaoh. Look at Paul, ready to face a Jewish mob, or the prejudiced Sanhedrin, or pagan governors and Roman captains, or the wild beasts at Ephesus, or the dungeon at Rome, and to stand in Caesars palace as a witness for Christ.
2. To attain the full vigour of Christian manliness, you must exercise this virtue whenever you have opportunity. Virtues will not come to serve us upon great occasions unless they are trained and developed day by day. The young Christian should begin early to cultivate this holy courage--learn to say no to every solicitation of evil; learn to say yes to every call of duty.
3. Since virtue rests upon faith, you can strengthen and develop it by increasing faith as a living power in the soul. Much as we may discipline ourselves to virtue, our strength must lie not in ourselves and our purposes, but in God our Saviour. He giveth power to the faint, and to them that have no might He increaseth strength. A living faith secures a manly piety. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Virtue
The term ἀρετὴ, translated virtue in the text, denotes strictly manhood, prowess, manly qualities. Stephanus defines it by virtus, sed proprie virtus bellica; martial courage or valour. He cites a gloss on Thucydides 1:33; where arete is expressed by industria, navities, virtus, fortitudo; activity, zeal, manliness, fortitude. Suidas denotes arete to be Constantia et animi vigor; firmness and strength of mind. Homer applies it to his heroes to denote valour in battle, and other manly qualities. The Mycenaean Feriphetes is said to have been superior in all kinds of virtues (ἀρετὰς), whether in the race or in the combat (I1. 15.642). Here virtue denotes physical qualities, such as speed, strength, prowess. So the god-like Polydorus in the agility and valour which he displayed in fight, is said to have exhibited virtue of feet or limbs (ποδῶν ἀρετὴν. I1. 20.411). The same term is applied to the valour of Meriones (Il. 13.277), and to the bodily vigour of Menelaus (Il. 23. 578). This primary sense of ἀρετὴ is strictly expressed by the Latin virtus, from which virtue is derived. This, in its literal sense, is manhood, valour; and is applied to physical courage and to energy of character--vigour of mind in dangers and labours. Cicero speaks of something akin to virtue in animals, as in lions, dogs, and horses; but insists that virtue of the mind (animi virtus), being the offspring of reason, is to be preferred to physical virtue (corporis virtuti anteponatur. De Finibus 5.13, 38). He also speaks of the Divine force and virtue of the orator. Here virtus is a pleonasm, reiterating the idea of vis. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Virtue
I. What is virtue?
II. As early as the days of apostles there were in the Christian Church those who would make faith suffice without virtue. Some really loving and practising piety, have yet, in their crude theories, discredited morality and virtue, for the purpose of extolling, as they supposed, religion.
III. But there is another class who proclaim the superiority of virtue to faith, and the sufficiency before God and man, for this life and the next, of virtue without faith. But if virtue be but the small portion of mans duties that he owes in this life to his fellow-mortals, and man be formed for another life as well as this, and have a God as well as human society to regard and propitiate, it seems impossible on any rational principle to establish it that the discharge of this small portion of his obligations shall be accepted in full for his neglect of yet higher duties to a yet higher Being. And if, in matters of human courtesy and friendship even, you are wont to look at the motive as determining the worth or worthlessness of the service rendered, does it not seem necessary even to the claim of true virtue for these social and human duties, that the man discharging them do it from right motives, from the true love of man and the paramount love and fear of Almighty God? From mere vain craving after honour and praise, men may discharge the duties. But are such duties, so prompted by lower motives, genuine virtue? Again, take a few of the more eminent of those whose virtues are thus held up as surpassing the fruits of Christian faith. Take Hobbes, the philosophical oracle of the court of the last Stuarts. Take Hume, whom his friend, Adam Smith, pronounced among the most faultless of human characters; or in later times Bentham. And after a close analysis of the lives and influence of these men, do you not find the inquiry of the apostle remaining still in full force, Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Christ? Was the morality of any of these men superior to the average morality of their times? Did virtue do in them what faith achieves in the Christian--overcome the world? Again, did it tend to improve that world, recovering its degraded, and uplifting its oppressed classes? Go out as missionaries of the new lights of philosophy without Christianity; and who of you would hope to see the new creed, like the faith of the New Testament, teaching the barbarian, taming the cannibal, making freedom possible, and law and duty sovereign over the nations?
IV. But turn to dwell rather upon the union that scripture makes between the two principles, which we have seen isolated and divorced, requiring as those Scriptures do, the man of faith to become the pattern of virtue, abounding in every good word and work. The problem is not to guide the sinless, but to recover the sinful. How can you efface the brand of sin on their souls? Morality has not the atoning calvary. It cannot call down on its pentecostal aspirations the rushing fires of the Holy Ghost. The virtue that would be thus recuperative on the masses must be preceded by a faith, with which shall go the regenerating power of God, and for which shall have been first provided the great remedial and reconciliatory process of the redemption. Let the Pharisee or the Sadducee go with another doctrine than that of faith to Zaccheus, would they have won his fourfold restitution of aught wrongly gained? The God that shall answer by fire, He is God. Faith can produce virtue. Look again at the way in which she instructs virtue. Read the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, or take the same apostles discourse of charity and its fruits, in the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthian Church. Saw you ever such full, and brilliant, and unmatched portraitures of virtue as this? But beside these preceptive instructions, remember that all the doctrines and mysteries that faith receives have their practical lessons. The fall, and original sin, how they teach humility and dependence on God--the first lessons of moral progress. The incarnation and redemption--is that a mere logomachy? On the contrary, see in it a great scheme for the subdual of sin, and the implantation of hope, and love, and gratitude. But must faith produce always virtue? It must, or it is not genuine. The inseparable accompaniment of true faith in Scripture is repentance; and what is repentance but the practical and the outward and inward renunciation of sin? (W. R. Williams.)
Of Christian fortitude
I. First, let us consider that which must accompany our whole duty, the manner of performing it, or applying ourselves to it, giving all diligence. It is not to be confined to one point, but runs through the whole detail of the Christian graces which is here given. We should summon all the powers of our souls continually to attend this very thing, and watch every occasion of doing and of receiving good. The necessity of this will appear if we reflect on the constitution of human nature, and the Divine wisdom and condescension in accommodating to it the way of conferring the greatest blessings upon us. The blessed Author of our beings has a regard to their frame while He carries on His merciful designs towards us. He does not deal by us as unintelligent machines, but rational creatures. He does not make us happy without our own knowledge, choice and concurrence. I will add but one observation more on this subject, that religious industry will produce constancy, as its natural effect. Whatever obligations we are under to diligence in our duty at any time do equally bind us at every time; and there can be no sure evidence of our sincerity without a persevering steadfastness in the work of the Lord.
II. I now come to the first particular which the apostle exhorts us to add to our faith, and it is virtue. This virtue carries in it the idea of hazards and difficulties, and the excellence of it consists in a magnanimous superiority to all dangers and all opposition. As it is peculiar to a probationary state, or a state of discipline, like ours, it is that without which there can be no real goodness, at least no steadfastness in such a state. The flesh lusteth against the spirit; our senses and inferior appetites always minister the occasion of evil. Now, these must be resisted by a Christian. Here, then, is another occasion for the exercise of Christian fortitude, which may in some cases require all our strength. How difficult must it be to stand unmoved against a train of sufferings in our outward estate. And how much invisible wicked agents may contribute to the difficulties and trials of the Christian life, who can certainly say? Having thus shown you the proper object of Christian fortitude, or the occasion of its exercise, I will next consider the exercises and dispositions of mind which are necessary to it, or do concur in it. And let us, first of all, observe that it is very different from a blind passion. Nothing is more necessary in the whole of our religion than that we be sedate and deliberate; and particularly that our zealous resolutions for God be formed upon a just and solid ground of calm and mature consideration. Secondly, having proceeded so far, the next thing necessary is steadfast resolution. It is of consequence to us that we hold on in a religious way, that we endure to the end. Then certainly we should fortify our minds against temptation by firm purposes; we shall find the firmest we can enter into weak enough. Thirdly, the virtue which the apostle here exhorts us to add to our faith imports bearing trials, uneasiness and fatigues with equanimity. A Christian has the same sense of pleasure, profit, and honour with other men: and yet he bravely denies them. He has the same feeling of pain, and yet is not moved by it to forsake his duty; and herein he acts reasonably, for the tendency of such disagreeable sensations is overruled by superior motives; he sees such an excellence in religion, finds such an inward peace and comfort in his integrity, has such a solid joy in the prospect of a future glorious reward, as is sufficient to bear him up under all his present uneasiness. Here, then, is the exercise of religious fortitude. (J. Abernethy, M. A.)
Christian fortitude
I. I am to explain the nature of this grace of Christian courage or fortitude. Courage, in general, is a temper which disposes a man to do brave and commendable actions, without being daunted at the appearance of dangers and difficulties in the way.
1. For what it is to be exercised. It is courage in Christs cause; that is, in maintaining the profession of the Christian faith, and adhering to the practice of our duty.
2. Against what Christian courage is to be exercised. It supposes oppositions, trials and dangers in our way, else there would be no occasion for it. It is a temper for which there will be no room in heaven.
(1) The power, the subtilty, and activity of the powers of darkness call for courage in a Christian.
(2) The oppositions from within ourselves require courage.
(3) The several discouragements or dangers we may meet with from other men, in the way of our duty, and even for our duty, make courage necessary.
3. Wherein or in what acts and instances it should express itself.
(1) In deliberate and vigorous resolutions for God and our duty, upon counting the cost.
(2) In the suppression of distracting fear of evils at a distance.
(3) In a vigorous application to our Christian work, notwithstanding the stated and constant difficulties and oppositions attending it.
(4) In a readiness to undertake hard and difficult services when God calls to them.
(5) In a uniform steadiness of conduct under all the trials we actually meet with.
II. What may be intended in the exhortation to add virtue, or courage, to our faith. When we are called to make this addition we are only required to build the most proper and natural structure upon our most holy faith. The fortitude required by the gospel is distinguished from all other fortitude, not only as it is upon account of the truths and duties of Christianity, but as it is founded upon Christian principles. Christian faith is most fit to inspire with Christian fortitude.
1. Faith discovers Divine providence as engaged for us and with us in all our difficulties.
2. Faith proposes the Divine Spirit as directly provided to help our infirmities. Particularly for this very purpose, to inspire us with needful courage.
3. Faith represents our main enemies as already vanquished, and as having their chief power broken.
4. Faith gives us particular assurance that our trials shall not exceed our strength; either the strength we have, or that which shall be imparted (1Co_10:13).
5. Faith sets in view greater evils to be feared from our cowardice than can be feared from our adherence to God.
6. Faith assures us of the certain and glorious success of our courage. That our endeavours against our powerful enemies shall issue in a full conquest (Rom_16:20.)
7. Faith represents to us the noblest examples of such holy fortitude upon the same principle.
Lessons:
1. Consider this grace of fortitude as a matter of the utmost importance in the Christian life. The variety of oppositions and difficulties in our way make it necessary.
2. Cultivate therefore your faith, in order to the forming of your minds to holy fortitude.
3. Use all farther additional means to fortify your minds. Be prepared for the worst, by counting frequently the cost. Make clear the goodness of your cause, for which you may be called to exert your courage. Carefully exercise good conscience: without this the best cause in profession will be very faintly maintained in an evil day. (J. Evans.)
Courage
Whatever the Christian was in the early days, he could not well be a coward, He could not live in any fear as to what people would say about him: there was no doubt about that. And he could not live with a miserable counting of the loss or gain that religion should bring him. He knew full well that it would mean abuse, loss, danger, perhaps death. So in the old time Christianity first demanded faith that took hold of the promises- and then demanded courage that held on to them at any risk though earth and hell raged furiously. To-day religion is not so much a battlefield as it is a hospital for sick and disabled folks; it is very often only a round of poultices and plasters and nourishing diet, where the talk is of troubles and trials and what we have to go through. Look at fire company in which this valour is found. Add to your faith valour. St. Peter is writing to those who have obtained like precious faith in the Saviour. But it is not good for Faith to be alone; to live in luxurious ease; hers is a high and sacred calling. So is it that at her right hand must stand the tall and stalwart captain of her guard, Courage, my Lord Courage, strong in action, resolute in danger, fearless always. And at her left is her Prime Minister, and councillor, old Knowledge, with lofty brow, and ready understanding of the times and its requirements, and skilful in devices for meeting them. Then comes the Comptroller of the Household, a goodly gentlemen of clear eye and of fair complexion, my Lord Temperance. Then cometh the Lady-in-Waiting, Patience, fair Patience, whose cheery song keepeth the palace bright in troublous times. Bear bravely, Patience sings, it is all well that cometh down from Him; and it is ever well for them that journey up to Him. Then cometh the Queens chaplain, Godliness, who moveth amidst the rest having a deep and holy sense of Gods claim, a steadfast eye to His commandments, a lofty sense of His greatness, and a glad obedience to His will. Then come the two almoners who dispense the Queens bounty--Brotherly Kindness and Charity. Thus only is Faith secure, and thus only can she rightly discharge all her duties and claim all her honours, when she is attended by each of these.
I. That Christs religion asks for courage should give it a stronger claim upon us. I ask you to-day to come and pledge yourself to the Lord Jesus Christ, because it does need courage.
II. With many is it not just this one thing--the lack of courage--which is the undoing of the life? Some want courage to decide for Christ.
III. In these busy times many a man wants courage to deal with circumstances that hinder him. Well: says somebody, indignantly, must I sacrifice my business? Yes; or anything else, if you can dare to call it a sacrifice, seeing what infinite gain is at stake.
IV. Others need courage to deal with damaging influences about them. There is some companion, or some pursuit, or some pleasure that takes away all the heart and appetite for the service of the Lord Jesus. It leaves you like a garden in winter--nipped, withered, dead, without bud or bloom or beauty. There are things that make prayer such hard work that it seems impossible, and the Bible is a weariness, and the service of God is a dreary restraint. Resolve by Gods help to have done with them bravely for the sake of the King, and for the sake of your own true life.
V. There are others still who need courage to deal resolutely with besetting sins. Your only hope is to add to your faith courage--to have no terms with the enemy. You must perish or your foe; the two cannot live together. (M. G. Pearse.)
Christian courage
It is not physical courage, the courage of the brute, the courage of the man without nerves; it is the courage of the man who has moral sense developed and spiritual ideas strong. I suppose you have heard the story of the Duke of Wellington, who, seeing in the thin red line which shines in Britains glorious story a man trembling in battle but who would not retreat, said: There is a brave man; he knows his danger, and he faces it. Another story is that two men were once standing together in battle, one strong with accumulated flesh and blood, phlegmatic, not knowing what fear was, and the other thin and pale and nervous; and as he trembled so much that his spirited horse trembled also, his phlegmatic companion turned to him and said: Humph! afraid, are you? Yes, said he, if you were as much afraid as I am you would rum And so sometimes in the Christian life apparently the weakest one is called to bear the heaviest strokes of Providence. He staggers under his affliction even as Jesus, pale and weak and trembling, staggered beneath the Cross. So we are not called to physical courage--that is good enough in its way--but to moral courage. (W. E. Griffis, D. D.)
Goodness is true manliness
There is nothing really brave, really manly, really womanly, on earth, unless it is also good. To be good and to do good--that alone is manly. There are two Latin words for man. The one--homo--means merely a man as an animal distinguished from a dog or a horse. But the other word--vir--means a man in the best and truest sense; and that gives us our word virtue, Never forget, virtue and manliness are one. (Canon Teignmouth Shore.)
Knowledge.--
Knowledge
I. What exactly is meant by this second link of our chain. What is meant here is a practical insight into what Christian people ought to do, not only in general, but at each moment in accordance with the circumstances and demands of the instant. The more we can rule our lives by the intelligent application of principles, and not by mere use and wont, instinct, imitation, mechanism, necessity, the more we shall be the men and women that God meant us to be. But Peter does not stop with such a mere toothless generality as that; for everything depends on what the law is which we apply to conduct. So this knowledge is not only of what it is right and wise to do at the moment; but it is knowledge of what it is right and wise, on Christian ground, to do at the moment and in the circumstances. Let the perception of duty be a perception illuminated and determined by the principles of the gospel, and bring that law to bear upon all life. Such a continual reference of daily exigencies and circumstances to the great principles that lie in Christ and His revelation will take the place of that selfish and secular tact and instinct which the world prizes so highly. It wilt give delicacy to roughness, sympathy to the hard, tact to the clumsy, and will bring a simplicity of motive and a suppression of self which are the best possible precautions for seeing clearly what the will of the Lord is. Supply in your strength knowledge.
II. The connection of this link in the chain with those that go before. The believing man is the truly sagacious man. The real prudence is got in communion with Jesus Christ. The eye that looks at the sun is blinded, but the eye that looks constantly at God sees all things as they are, and is delivered from the illusions which deceive the rest of mankind. To see all in God and God in all, that is the way to understand the depths of things, and to know what, at each moment, they call upon us to do. What we want to know is not only what circumstances and self-advantage require, but what Christ requires, and that we shall learn when we keep near to Him in faith. In like manner the strength, of which my text has been speaking, naturally produces--when it gets fair play, and when men give themselves honestly to work out all that is in it--it naturally produces this happy certitude and illumination upon the path by which we should walk.
III. The practical duties which come out of this exhortation.
1. First, study, and keep very near the pattern of Jesus Christ. There is nothing more wonderful in that wonderful life than the unconscious facility and certainty with which He did the very act, and said the very word that the moment required.
2. Then, again, I would say try and get a more firm and intelligent grip of the principles of the New Testament as a whole. I believe there is the weakness of much of our modern popular Christianity. You do not read your Bibles half enough.
3. Let me say again what is only a deduction from what I have already said--regard all Christian truth as being meant to influence conduct. We write up in churches the Creed on the one side, and the Ten Commandments on the other. Christ is creed and Christ is commandment.
4. Again, let us see to it conversely, that we bring all the actions of our lives under the grip of our Christian principle. The lawyers say, De minimis non curat lex. The law does not take care of the very small things. Perhaps it does not; Christs law does. It stretches out its hand over all life, and the smallest duties are its special sphere. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
To virtue knowledge
:--Virtue without knowledge were like a beautiful damsel blind, or a fair house that hath not a window in it. Virtue is like a pearl in the shell; there must be knowledge to break the shell, or we cannot come at the pearl. Ignorance is dangerous. Thus the devil carries many to hell, as falconers carry their hooded hawks, without baiting. There is no wretchedness so pitiable as that which is not known to the sufferer. If men will not know God, God will not know them. The work of regeneration begins at illumination. The first thing that sunk in our first parents was knowledge: now where the wound began, there must begin the medicine. Knowledge is the light of virtue.
1. By knowledge is here meant an insight into heavenly things.
2. This earnest exhortation to knowledge intimates that naturally we want it. The first way to knowledge is to know our own ignorance.
3. Knowledge is not the cause of sin, but ignorance; for virtue is begotten and nourished by knowledge.
4. Seeing we must join with our faith knowledge, it is manifest that an ignorant faith is no faith.
5. This knowledge must be added to virtue also. (Thos. Adams.)
Knowledge
I. There is in the Church of God, as well as in society generally, a disposition to exalt practice at the expense of theory; and yet all practice is but the embodiment of some theory. There is in some minds a disposition to mock at all science and all patient thought as being but idle and unprofitable speculation. Common sense is lauded at the expense of study and research. The labourer is exalted above the thinker, and the man of experimental activity is pronounced the truly useful, whilst the studious and reflecting is denounced as a thriftless and unprofitable cumberer of the earth. But society and the Christian Church need the thinker as much as they require the labourer. Every seaman is not expected to construct his own nautical tables, or every miner to build his own steam-engine that may uplift the ore or drain off the superfluous waters. Yet without the aid of the astronomer and the machinist, of what avail would be the practical energy of the hardy mariner, or the begrimed miner toiling in his ever dark and narrow gallery? So, in religion, a just, religious practice must grow out of just, religious principles. And although a simple and childlike faith may readily grasp the great outlines of these principles, it requires that faith should be patient and studious, in order that these principles may be fully understood and justly stated, may be seen in their due position, and may be held in their just proportion, and in their mutual dependence and symmetry.
II. Now our text and, in full harmony with it, the entire body of the Divine Scripture, require that the Christian profit in his religious course, by going on from faith to virtue, and from virtue to knowledge. The first great necessity of our nature is that we know ourselves, that we learn from the book of God our origin, destiny, and redemption. But to have a just and safe knowledge of ourselves it is needful that we know our God. Framed by Him and for Him we cannot ascertain the moral bearings or calculate, so to speak, the latitude and longitude of our own drifting course over the ocean of life; but, as we refer to Him whose will is the meridian line by which we estimate the position of all beings, and whose favour is the Light and central Sun of our moral life. And knowing ourselves, and knowing our God in Scripture, we are called upon to know this world, that portion of it called Nature which we can reach and survey; and that march of the Divine purposes in the government of the race which we call history; and to know life, or those arts, and occupations, and relations, and human laws, and local customs that are to affect us in the discharge of our duties to our fellows. We are required to know man, not only as he should be, and as in his original innocence he was, but man as he is, in his selfishness, craftiness, and wretchedness, and yet, withal, in the long and tangled train of all his susceptibilities, and his capabilities, and his hopes and his fears, his grovelling desires and his soaring aspirations.
III. The order of Christian knowledge as following and tending to guard and crown faith and virtue. Why should it be set here, and not at an earlier place, in the rank of Christian excellences?
1. We suppose the reason to have been this: it was to remind us of a great truth, that practical obedience or virtue is necessary if we would gain any great advancement in Christian knowledge. Not only is such obedience an evidence of a sound understanding, but it is also a safeguard for it. No man can keep a healthy and sound intellect who is perpetually sporting with known error, and wallowing in known iniquity. The very conscience may become defiled, and the eyes of the soul contract blindness, by disuse and misuse.
2. Virtue was again made to precede knowledge, in order to protect against a great error that began to be promulgated ere the first apostles had quitted the arena of the Church militant for the thrones of the Church triumphant. Gnosticism, or the system of knowledge, claimed in the early Christian Church the highest prerogatives. It sought to plant knowledge, or the teaching of its own wild and foul philosophy, as the very basis of faith. Much of the Rationalism and Pantheism of our own times proceeds on the same most false and most fatal principle. Instead of going out of ourselves to lind, by faith in Gods testimonies, what He is and what we ourselves are, and to obtain the recuperative grace that sanctifies the heart and so enlightens the intellect, this system drags the God and the oracle and the revelation into mans self, makes its own purblind reason, and its own hasty and crude utterances, in the natural state of alienation from God and moral blindness, the law of judgment, to God and to His teachings.
3. The gospel does not proscribe knowledge: it requires it. It makes knowledge possible to the savage by awakening aspirations where before were only appetites; and by letting out on every side the horizon of his cribbed and narrow intellect, into the wide eternity and the high infinity around and above him. It not only patronises and diffuses knowledge; it classifies it as humanity unaided cannot do it. See in modern missions the usefulness and glory of consecrated learning in a William Carey and a Henry Martyn, a Morrison and a Judson; and is it not evident that, whatever else the gospel be, it is not the patron or the parasite of ignorance?
4. Physical science in our day has made rapid progress. Religion frowns not on it. But far as physical science claims to be paramount and sufficient and exclusive, it has usurped honours that are not its due. It would, in so doing, treat man as a being of mere bodily organs, without conscience, without a God, and without an eternity; and in so regarding our race it robs and degrades us. Religious knowledge comes in to prevent the degradation and to denounce the usurpation. Religious knowledge comes in to remedy the deficiency, and to right the wrong. Political enfranchisement, or the recovery of the rights of the masses, is another most popular subject of thought and debate. But when was humanity so elevated as when the Creator assumed its likeness in Bethlehem? How is fraternity to be expounded and established, but by bringing men to look on themselves, as being in common amenable to the Last Judgment, and as being also in common interested in the great propitiation? The gospel it is, then, that gives the best knowledge; ascertains the relative rank and worth of all knowledge; popularises, diffuses, and defends it; and above all gives to man, the sufferer, the knowledge of the Consoler; and to man, the sinner, the revelation of the atonement; and to the groping captive of sin and heir of the pit, announces liberty and holiness, citizenship in heaven and sonship with God. (W. R. Williams.)
Of knowledge
I. What kind of knowledge is the subject of this exhortation? Knowledge is an attainment very suitable to a reasonable nature, and is the glory of man because it is the improvement of that faculty which is one of his distinguishing privileges. But there is a great diversity in the kinds of knowledge, which chiefly depends on the quality of the object and the importance of the ends it serves. That knowledge which the text recommends is, according to this rule, the most valuable (Pro_9:10.) If we observe the connection of the apostles discourse, that he has placed knowledge in the middle of the Christian virtues, it will appear plainly enough that he means a right understanding of them, such a knowledge as is necessary to our practising them. We should constantly study to be more and more acquainted with the Christian virtues, to understand the mind and will of God, and be making daily proficiency in the exact knowledge of our duty. We should use our own active endeavours that we may grow in knowledge, for the purposes of usefulness and goodness. Secondly, another thing intended in this exhortation is a disposition to improve knowledge to the proper practical ends of it.
II. The reasonableness of our endeavouring to attain knowledge, and make daily progress in it. II knowledge be absolutely necessary to our doing our duty acceptably, then all the arguments which press us to the one do also oblige us to the other. First, this is the way to be preserved from snares, of which we are always in danger through temptation and the deceitfulness of sin. Secondly, in proportion to the measure of our knowledge, so is our steadfastness; if it is of a rational kind. Thirdly, this unsteadiness, together with weakness of understanding, which is one cause of it, renders men in a great measure unprofitable to the world and to the Church. There is not anything a Christian should have more at heart than to promote the common edification of the body of Christ. And that this may be effected, adding knowledge to our faith and virtue is the best expedient.
III. Some directions for attaining useful and salutary knowledge.
1. The first is a high esteem of it. If it be pleasant to our souls, if we have a just sense of its excellency, and thus our affections are captivated to it; it is the best preparation of mind we can have for this most important acquisition.
2. Let us use the means of attaining knowledge with great diligence and care. There is no other way to prove our sincerity and our love of wisdom.
3. But it is above all things necessary that we use the means of knowledge, and particularly that we search the Holy Scriptures without prejudice and prepossession.
4. The best means of attaining to religious knowledge, is doing what we know to be the will of God. (J. Abernethy, M. A.)
Knowledge
The meaning of the term knowledge must be ascertained by a comparison of the text with other passages in which this word occurs. It is of course knowledge with respect to spiritual things and religious duties of which the apostle here speaks. This word is used in the New Testament some thirty times, and with various shades of signification. Sometimes it denotes a supernatural gift, knowledge by immediate inspiration. Perhaps it is in this sense that the word of knowledge is classed with the gifts of healing and of tongues, and with other miraculous powers. But since all Christians are exhorted to add knowledge to their faith, the apostle cannot intend a miraculous gift which God only could bestow. And for the same reason he cannot here intend the power or faculty of knowing in which sense the word is used when it is said that the love of Christ passeth knowledge, i.e., is beyond the natural comprehension of men. We cannot add a new sense or faculty to our natural endowments. Again, the word knowledge is used for the object of knowledge, and especially the system of truth made known in the gospel. But this must be known, in a measure, before we can have faith; and the knowledge spoken of in the text comes after faith. Knowledge is used also to denote a general apprehension of religious truth; but, as this is essential to the act of faith in Christ, it could hardly be referred to as a something to be added to faith. Isaac Taylor says this knowledge is neither human erudition nor general intelligence, but that specific knowledge of which the gospel is the subject. There is another use of the word which applies it to the deep, clear, and cordial perception of truth, followed by the discriminating adaptation of truth to practical ends. Thus the apostle Paul speaks of the Christians at Rome as full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to admonish one another (Rom_15:14); i.e., they possessed that discriminating insight into truth which would shed light upon questions of practical duty. Knowledge is a spiritual apperception of Divine things, forming and controlling the practical judgment. A soul informed by such knowledge discerns the way of truth and duty. This knowledge is not the mere perception of the truths of the gospel in their objective form, but an apperception of gospel truths in their inward spiritual relations.
I. What this knowledge is.
II. How it may be cultivated.
III. The excellence of this knowledge in its effects.
I. This inward experimental knowledge of Christ and His truth differs from the intellectual perception of truth, just as the feeling that we know the mind and heart of another differs from the knowledge of his person which we gain through the eye; it is the difference between heart knowledge and knowledge merely by perception or intellect[on. Now we may know Christ, and yet may not know Him; may know Him as to His person revealed as Divine; we may know Him as to His character recorded in the four Gospels; we may know Him as to His doctrine and His work; and still we may come far short of really knowing Christ. Such knowledge is objective; i.e., it exists in our thought as an object, and does not bring us into personal sympathy with Christ as our Saviour and Friend. It is in the brain but not in the heart.
2. And here, again, this knowledge differs from faith. Faith is that belief in Christ upon the evidence of the Gospels which leads the soul to rely upon Him as its Saviour, and to commit itself to His service. This faith rests upon a degree of knowledge as its warrant. But having gained this faith, and rested ourselves in it, we are exhorted to add to it knowledge; not the mere knowledge of the doctrine of Christ as a Saviour--for that we have already--but knowledge of Christ Himself, which comes through the heart, proving His doctrine, His promises, His love, in its own blessed experience.
3. But this inward knowledge of Christ has its outward expression in a judgment wisely exercised upon truth and duty. We need to cultivate the judgment as well as to fortify the spirit, to attain to a sound discernment of duty as well as to firmness in duty. It is a proverb that discretion is the better part of valour; a critical judgment as to the time and manner of acting is important to the success of the boldest and bravest action. In his description of the good man the Psalmist happily combines a sound judgment with boldness and firmness as essential qualities of his character. He will guide his affairs with discretion; surely he shall not be moved for ever. His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord. His heart is established, he shall not be afraid. Such knowledge is not what men of the world call prudence, which is exercised more in the cautious avoidance of evil to ones self than in devising and executing that which is good. There are two or three words which somewhat approach to this meaning--discernment, discretion, and discrimination; these all in their radical idea mean to separate, to distinguish, to make a difference, especially between the true and the false, the right and the wrong, in theory and in practice. This discrimination as to truths and motives duly exercised by the mind itself, and faithfully applied to our outward conduct, constitutes knowledge as a practical thing.
IV. How shall this knowledge be attained?
1. By the prayerful study of Christ as He is set before us in the gospel. The mere tourist sauntering through a gallery of art recognises in one painting a work superior to the rest; but the artist lingers before that picture and scans its every point till, without the help of catalogue or cicerone, he discovers it to be a Titian, a Tintoretto, a Murillo, and feasts his soul upon those diviner touches that reveal the masters hand. You must not look only, or read by catalogue or note-book, but must study. Prayer is the life element of such a study.
2. We gain this knowledge by a diligent and teachable seeking after the will of Christ. The spirit of obedience helps to the knowledge of duty. This determination to do the will of Christ is like a signal rocket piercing the gloom of night from a ship on an unknown shore.
3. We gain this knowledge by studying questions of right and duty in the closet. The place for calm, mature judgment is the place of secret prayer.
4. We may gain this knowledge by being willing to learn, and to correct mistakes. The key of knowledge is humility.
5. We may cultivate this knowledge by often testing ourselves by our principles. If we were careful to keep a daily balance-sheet of our actions and principles, we should be more quick to detect errors of judgment, and to increase our stock of practical wisdom. True principle is a fixed quantity. It rests upon the eternal base of truth and justice, and is firm as the pillars of heaven. As the old Egyptians took their astronomical bearings from the sun-line upon the pyramid, so should we take our moral bearings by the light of Christs teaching and life, giving the meridian line of principle and duty.
V. The excellency of this knowledge in its effects.
1. This knowledge, combined with firmness in faith, gives beauty and dignity to character. We have seen that virtue gives energy, strength, resolve; but a character in which force and earnestness predominate is one-sided; may easily run into extremes.
2. This knowledge gives us power over ourselves. Man was created a power, and not a thing. In proportion as the soul gains a true spiritual power over its inferior desires does it become a power over the world.
3. This knowledge gives us power for good and even great achievements. It is no modern discovery that knowledge is power.
4. This knowledge of Christ gives us power over evil and over death. It is half the battle to know the enemy, his ground, his resources, and his tactics. Classical usage helps us little as to the meaning of γνῶσις (gnosis) in the New Testament. Plato uses it commonly of understanding, though sometimes of a deeper philosophical insight. But with the Neo-Platonists, gnosis came to be almost a technical term for higher insight, deeper wisdom, a certain mysterious knowledge reserved to the initiated. In this sense of deep spiritual insight, but without the associations of mysticism or mystery, the word gnosis is often used in the New Testament. It is a term peculiarly liable to abuse by enthusiastic minds, and before the close of the apostolic age there began to appear a sect of Gnostics, who claimed to have an extraordinary insight into Divine things beyond the system of faith, which the people commonly received on authority. This insight they professed to have gained through certain secret traditions handed down from Christ, the higher light. Their gnosis corresponded to the esoteric doctrines of the old Greek philosophers, mysteries to be communicated only to the initiated. The Epistles of John seemed to have been aimed in part at this Gnostic tendency. The true Christian knowledge is as far as possible both from the obscureness of mysticism and from the pretensions of clairvoyance. The gnosis of the New Testament is the privilege of all Christians alike. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Temperance.--
Temperance
I. Temperance is the curb, bringing into subjection all those passions of human nature that tend to voluptuousness, just as patience and meekness check and keep under the fiercer passions or those tending to violence. Christian temperance sets itself in opposition to the drunkards bowl, and the gluttons banquet, and the revels of the profligate, and the anxious longings of the covetous, and against the immoderate desire of what is net ours, as well as against the undue and immoderate abuse of what is ours. It includes, thus considered, sobriety, and chastity, and moderation--all the varieties of a wise self-discipline, imposed on mans fierce quest of pleasure.
II. Let your knowledge, then, said the apostle to the readers of his Epistle, defend itself by the companionship of temperance. Why, it may be asked, should this be selected, and not any other of those clustering graces which go to attest the energy and fruitfulness of the Divine Spirit in the work of his moral renovation? Let it be remembered, then, that in the sin of our first parents, the knowledge which they sought, beyond God and His instructions, was knowledge which brought with it a sin against the holy temperance that had before been the law of Paradise, and the defence of primeval innocence. Was it not then fitting that the victim of the Fall should be perpetually reminded of his need to be on his guard evermore against that dominion of the bodily senses into which the Fall betrayed us? In Satans school knowledge brought forth intemperance; but it must not be so in Christs school. Is it not, again, a fact, sustained by the history of the Christian Churches, that even when men enjoy this gospel their knowledge, both in things secular and spiritual, is but too often perverted into a license for casting off the self-control and the serene moderation of Christian principle? Is not a palmy civilisation often found shading a feverish and lawless sensuality? Was it not thus that Solomon--after his wide research, that wrote of plants from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall, and in consequence of his growing acquaintance and his large converse with heathen society--became in his old age a doting conformist to the lewd idolatry of Ashtaroth?
III. To glance at the bearing of this Christian grace on the temperance reformation of our times. But we suppose that the best friends of temperance will yet find that, to give it permanence, it needs the broader basis and the deeper root of a religious movement; and that there, as in so many other earthly reforms, the controlling motives--the effectual lever, must rest on some stronger and firmer basis than earthly considerations. Drunkenness is enough to damn a man; but the mere absence of drunkenness is by no means enough to save him.
IV. The claims of this Christian grace, taken in the wide and comprehensive sense which scripture attaches to it, upon the disciples of our times.
1. It is necessary to true piety. The knowledge and love of God cannot lodge in a heart crowded and dragged downward by debasing and sinful pleasure. If men are Christs, they are crucified with Him to the flesh and the world.
2. It is necessary to Christian usefulness. The man who would be really and truly useful must have an unselfish sympathy. Now, of this the lovers of pleasure are notoriously destitute. Few things more rapidly bring a seared callousness over the heart than the habitual pursuit of gross and selfish pleasure.
3. It is necessary to national well-being and prosperity. (W. R. Williams.)
Of temperance
I. The virtue itself, and wherein it consists, will be easily understood by any one who attends to the present constitution of human nature, and what our experience will obviously suggest to us. The Author of our being has implanted in us passions which excite us to such action as is useful for our safety; and herein His wisdom and goodness appears, making provision for the continuance, the comfort, and all the purposes of our existence in this world. But, as the highest ends of our being are not confined to the present state, the same wise Creator has endued us with nobler powers and affections, by which we are deter mined to the pursuit of more excellent objects, wherein our true perfection and happiness consists; it is plain these inferior appetites were ordained to be in subjection to reason, and to be gratified within such limits as to be consistent with superior enjoyments, and with the proper exertion of superior powers. To consider this subject a little more particularly--
1. In the first place, it is plain that sobriety or temperance does not require the rooting out or an obstinate refusal to satisfy or comply with the original appetites of nature.
2. But, on the other hand, temperance requires such a regulation and restraint of our desires towards sensible objects, or the pleasure of the external senses, that they shall not possess that room in our esteem which is due to things of vastly greater excellence and value. Temperance not only forbids all excesses, but requires such an habitual moderation that the freedom of the mind may be preserved, its powers in a constant readiness for better exercises, and that it may have a taste for intellectual and moral pleasures. The natural effect of a customary indulgence to carnal desires is a confirmed habit which increases the desire so as it prevails against better inclinations; and then experience shows the truth of what the apostle teaches, that fleshly lusts war against the soul; they tend to enervate its powers, impair its liberty, and bring it into bondage.
3. I observe that sobriety, like all other virtues, is seated in the mind. The appetites take their rise from the body, but the regulating them belongs to the higher faculties of the soul. It is in the superiority of the soul in its freedom, and in the dominion of reason and conscience over the lower desires and passions that the virtue chiefly consists.
II. To propose some motives to sobriety or temperance. This particular virtue of temperance stands upon the same foot with the rest, and is, like them, recommended by its own native beauty and intrinsic worth, which at first strikes any mind which attends to it. It is impossible for any one, upon a deliberate comparison, not to acknowledge in his heart that the sober man is more excellent than his neighbour who is intemperate; that it is a more lovely character and more worthy of the human nature to have the rule over ones own spirit. Besides, intemperance naturally tends to make life not only mean and contemptible, but miserable. But I intended principally to insist on these considerations which are contained in the gospel. It deserves the serious attention of Christians that the blessed Author of our religion Himself, and His apostles after Him, very earnestly inculcate this virtue. Let it never enter into our thoughts that great professions of respect or pretended faith will please Jesus Christ if we continue in carnal impurity and live after the flesh. But there are two arguments Which you will find often urged in the new Testament: one is taken from the circumstances of our present state compared with the future. The second is, that temperance is an excellent preservative from snares and temptations. (J. Abernethy, M. A.)
Self-government
One of the old Italian masters has left us his conception of temperance on the walls of a little chapel, where he has painted a heroic female figure with a bridle upon her lips, and her right hand binding the hilt of a sheathed sword to its scabbard. And that conveys in symbol and emblem an idea of a self-command that restrains the utterance of emotion and sheathes the sword of passion.
I. This self-command is a universally admitted necessity. A man has only to look at himself to see that he is so made as that bits of him are meant to be governed, and bits of him are meant to govern; that there are some parts of his nature which are intended to be kept down under hatches, and some that are meant to be on the quarter-deck, with the helm in their hands. We have only to look, for instance, at the way in which the necessities and the appetites which belong to our bodily organisation work, to see that they were never meant to have the mastery, or to be left to operate as they please. A man is hungry, thirsty, feels the sting of some perfectly innocent, legitimate, fleshly need, and that appetite is as blind as a bat to all other considerations except its own gratification. No matter what lies between it and its object, its tendency towards the object is the same. And is a man to let such a mere unintelligent and almost involuntary impulse drive him? And ii is just as true, too, about other bits of our nature, for instance--emotions and passions. Anger is a very good thing; God puts it in us. It is meant to be exercised. Yes! But it is meant to be governed. And so joy, mirth, fear, and all the rest of them; all these are inseparable from the perfecting of a mans nature. But their unbridled working is the ruin of a man. And then excellences want to be controlled, in order that they may not run to faults. Some edible plants, if they once run to seed, are ruined for food; so a mans good qualities need to be kept under, in order that they may not become exaggerated into weaknesses. And a mans bad qualities, natural weaknesses and defects of character, which are too deeply engrained in him ever to be got rid of--these want control in order that they may be turned into excellences, as it is quite possible for them to be.. What did God put a will into you for, but that you might be able to say not I like; or I was tempted, and I could not help it; but that you might, before each action, be able to say I will; and that passions, and the stings of lust and sense, of appetite and flesh, and emotions and affections, and vagrant fancies and wandering thoughts, and virtues that were running to seed, and weaknesses that might be cultivated into strength, might all know the master touch of a governing will, and might obey as becomes them? And what did God give you a conscience for, but that the will, which commands all the rest, might take its orders from it?
II. This absolute necessity is a proved impossibility. From the beginning moral teachers of all sorts have been saying to men, Rule yourselves; and from the beginning the attempt made to govern myself by my unaided self is doomed to failure. Not absolute failure, thank God! I would not be understood as if I were denying that, to a large extent, every man and woman has this power of self-government. But I do want you to consider that the worth of self-control depends, to a large extent, on the motive from which it is practised; and that, unfortunately, for twenty men that will exercise it for the sake of temporal purposes and immediate advantage, there is one who will exercise it for the sake of higher motives. A great deal of the moral reformation and restraint which the best of men, who are not Christians, put in practice upon themselves, is exactly like taking a child with scarlet fever and putting it into a cold bath. You drive in the eruption, and that is about as much as you do, except that you make the disease worse, because you have driven it in. But, beyond that, when once a mans passions, or affections, or desires, or any other part of him, have got the bit between their teeth, and have cast off control, it is impossible to bring them again into obedience. When the very instrument by which we are to coerce the worst part of our nature is itself tainted, what, in the name of common sense, is to be done then? When you send out the military to suppress the mob, and the military, bayonets and all, go over to the mob, there is nothing left for the sovereign but to abdicate. As somebody has said about such a matter, it is a bad job when the extinguisher catches fire. And that is exactly the condition which men stand in who are seeking to exercise a thorough-going self-restraint, when the self which should govern is itself tainted and evil, the will bribed and enslaved, the conscience sophisticated and darkened. What is the use of saying to such a man, Govern thyself?
III. Here we have a Christian certainty, if we choose to make it so. Let these three things, faith, strength, insight, work upon you, and they will make the impossible possible. That is to say, if you want to govern yourselves begin with faith. We rule ourselves when we let Jesus Christ rule us. The Christian man, thinking of his conflict, and knowing that with his ten thousand it is hard for him to meet the twenty thousand who are arrayed against him, invokes, as some petty chief of a weak tribe might, the aid of the great emperor whose dominions are at hand, and when he stretches his protecting power over the little territory there is liberty and there is victory for the trembling prince. So hand over the authority and the sovereignty of thy soul to Jesus Christ, and He will give thee the strength to govern thyself. And, in like manner, we have here implied another prescription, Add to thy strength, temperance. II I am in Christ it is not a question of one bit of my nature against the other, but it is a question of the higher nature, which is His, flowing into mine, and so enabling me, the true me, which is Christ in me, to keep down the animal and the evil that attaches to me. And, in like manner, there is the third condition of self-command here; that knowledge of which the preceding clause speaks, which is mainly a clear insight into Christian duty. If we have once clear in sight the dictates of an enlightened conscience, felt to be Christs will, then it will not be so hard to put the screw on all that rebels against Him, and to stimulate (for that is a part of self-command) the lagging and slothful graces of our hearts. So it comes to this, the necessity, which is an impossibility for everybody else, is a possibility for the weakest among us, if we let Christ rule in our hearts. Put the reins into Christs hands, and He will make you kings over yourselves, and priests unto Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Temperance
The grace of temperance may be here diversely understood.
I. For such a discretion as may season all these graces; So taken it is the salt of every virtue. Devotion without discretion is like a hasty servant that runs away without his errand. Profession of faith without temperance is turned into hypocrisy or preposterous zeal; virtue without it is folly. Patience without discretion wrongs a good cause. Godliness without temperance is devotion out of its wits. Brotherly kindness without temperance is brotherly dotage. Charity without temperance is prodigality; it gives with an open hand and shut eye.
II. For such a discretion as may moderate knowledge, and qualify that heat to which it is addicted (1Co_8:1). Temperance is not so much a virtue itself as a marshal or moderator of virtues. It is not enough to do a good work unless the due place, fit manner, and convenient time be observed.
III. For such a moderation of the mind whereby we so demean ourselves as neither to surfeit on fulness, nor to despair on want.
IV. For a moderate use of outward things. There is intemperance--
1. In lust; so it is called incontinence. This may be avoided--
(1) By subduing the body to the soul (1Co_9:27).
(2) By debarring the flesh all lust-provoking meats and drinks, High diet is adulterys nurse.
(3) By avoiding temptations (1Co_6:18).
(4) By meditating on the punishment. What men think most pleasing is most plaguing; to have their lusts granted (Psa_81:12).
2. In apparel. Christ says the body is more worth than raiment; but some strive to make their raiment more worth than their bodies; like birds of paradise, their feathers are better than their carcases.
3. In meats.
(1) For the manner; this is merely circumstantial, and may thus he expressed: too Soon, too late, too daintily, too fast, too much, is gluttony.
(2) For the measure: it is an insatiate desire of delicacies (Luk_12:19; Php_3:19). As too much rain drowns the fields which moderate showers would make fruitful; so this plethory of diet, instead of conserving nature, confounds it.
(3) For the matter: it is great feasting.
(4) The effects are manifold and manifest.
(a) Grossness.
(b) Macilency of grace.
(c) Consumption of estate.
(d) Sickness of body.
(e) Rottenness and death. The finest food shall make no better dust.
(i) Abstinence is mans rising, as intemperance was his fall.
(ii) It is Gods blessing that makes fat, and not meat.
4. In drinks.
(1) It makes room for the devil.
(2) It overturns the estate.
(3) It poisons the tongue.
(4) It woe to itself (Pro_23:29).
Learn we how to avoid it--
(a) Because we are men. While the wine is in thy hand, thou art a man; when it is in thy head, thou art become a beast.
(b) Because we are citizens, and therefore should lead civil lives; drunkenness is an uncivil exorbitance.
(c) Because we are Christians (1Ti_6:11; Tit_2:11-12; Luk_21:34). (Thomas Adams.)
Temperance
This is the third figure in that sum in compound addition the footing up of which makes the complete Christian character. Our modern use of this word temperance restricts it mainly to abstinence from strong drink. Abstinence alone does not fully express the idea, since this presents rather its negative side. The word means strictly ruling with a strong hand, having the mastery; and when applied to a person, the temperate man is he who governs himself firmly, who has the mastery especially over the passions and appetites of his lower nature.
I. What this self-control involves or implies. ̓Εγκράτεια is used by Plato and Aristotle to express self-discipline, self-mastery. Xenophon uses it to express the government of all the passions and appetites; such a mastery of the natural desires for food, drink, and sensual gratification, and such a power to endure cold, heat, fatigue, and want of sleep, as become a good general in time of war. (Mem. 1.2, 1; 1.5, 1; 2. 1, 1.) So Paul used the word when addressing Felix, who lived in open adultery with Drusilla, and who indulged every selfish and sensual passion; he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment, till the wretch trembled. The Latin temperantia, from which our word temperance is derived, has the same meaning; moderation, regulation, government, self-restraint. And it is applied not only to sensual appetites, but to the government of the tongue, the eyes, the temper; to the restraint of the emotions of grief under calamity or of exultation in victory. Cicero defines temperantia to be that which teaches us to follow reason, both in what we seek and in what we avoid; a firm and judicious control of reason over impulse and desire (De Finibus 1, 14, and 2, 19).
II. By what means it may be attained.
1. This Christian temperance or self-control implies and demands the absolute subjection of all evil appetites, passions, and desires. Those grosser social vices with which the pagan society of the old world was thoroughly infected, and which the old pagan religion encouraged--vices which destroyed home, corrupted literature, debased art, and defiled the altars of the gods--were so little thought of as evils, were so fully sanctioned by custom, were so gilded over by the example of public men, the toleration of law, and the flattering arts of genius, were so protected by the priests, who made them a means of revenue, that it was an easy thing for a Christian at Corinth, at Ephesus, at Antioch, or any like luxurious capital, to slide into sins the bare suggestion of which we should resent with abhorrence. Anger, in the common use of the word, is an evil passion. A passionate man cannot exercise self-control. Some ancient philosophers used the word temperance as the specific opposite of irritability. Self-indulgence in appetite, whether under the form of drunkenness or of gluttony, is a sin. It is a sin against the body, whose beautiful mechanism we strain and impair by any excess. It is an offence against the mind, whose faculties we clog and stupefy by excess. It is a sin against God, the gifts of whose bounty are perverted. Covetousness is specified again and again in the Word of God as one of the worst forms of carnal passion; and the subjection of this is indispensable to self-government. The greed of gain must be subdued, or it will choke the life of godliness in the soul. The Christian must learn to moderate his views and desires of worldly possessions. The tendency to a self-satisfied and even luxurious enjoyment of the world is, perhaps, the strongest antagonist in our times to a simple scriptural piety. Sensual appetite, pleasure-seeking for its own sake, and frivolity in the methods of enjoyment, a vain love of pomp and show--these proceed from a propensity which cannot be reconciled with the love of God.
2. Besides this absolute subjection of all evil passions and propensities, the law of temperance requires that those natural desires which are in themselves innocent and lawful, should, both as to the manner and the measure of their indulgence, be regulated by a regard for the highest good of the soul. Appetites and tastes we have which were never designed to be our tempters and tormentors--making the body a mere battlefield of the soul--but were meant to minister to a pure and healthy enjoyment. But the peculiarity of these native appetites and tastes in man is that they do not, like the instincts of animals, regulate themselves, but require the mild restraint of reason. That is a nice point--a hair-line--where desire instead of ministering to rational enjoyment, oversteps the bounds of reason, and becomes an ungovernable passion. Keep well within that line.
3. It has been assumed in this discussion that since all sin concentrates in a selfish will, this of course must be subdued in order to a sound and perfect self-control. But I wish to insist upon the idea that selfishness is not merely to be restrained, held in check by compromises, but to be conquered, if ever the soul would gain the mastery of itself for God. Our love of God, to be complete, must be unconditional. The existence of a calculating, selfish spirit is incompatible with the very idea of love.
III. How shall it be attained?
1. Not by mere force of will, determining to override, and if possible to annihilate the sensibilities and propensities of our nature, whether for good or evil. The cold impassiveness of marble is not self-control, nor can the Christian perfect his moral nature by cutting away all natural emotions and sympathies. One may conquer many an appetite and passion by mere force of will, and in so doing may strengthen the will itself in resistance to God, and may stiffen that will with the pride of self-righteousness.
2. Neither is self-control to be attained by the arbitrary mortification of the body, by means of denials and penances. Christianity was not made for the desert and the convent, but for the living and hostile world; and we are not to become saints by secluding ourselves from the outer world, but are to be saints in it by the power of a new life.
3. But in order to gain self-control we must study ourselves, especially as to our weak points of character, and aim to conquer specific modes or habits of evil to which we are prone.
4. Again, the power of self-control will be strengthened if we cherish habitually the sense of Gods presence and of His watchful eye. And not only the thought of God as ever nigh to us, but the presence of God by His spirit within us must be cherished if we would govern ourselves by His law. The apostle enumerates temperance, self-government among the fruits of the Spirit. And now, in conclusion, let me urge you to give all diligence to add this grace to your character; to perfect yourself in the government of your own heart.
(1) I urge you to this diligence by the greatness of the object to be obtained. Consider what it is to gain the mastery over a single passion. Think of the poets, the statesmen, the warriors who have sunk under the inebriating cup and have left a dishonoured name.
(2) I exhort you to be diligent in this self-conquest because it is made practicable by timely diligence. Passions indulged have a rapid and fearful growth.
(3) I exhort you to this self-control for your own peace of mind.
(4) Your duty to Christ and your professed hope in Him require that you shall govern yourself in His spirit. He died for all, that they should not henceforth live to themselves, but to Him who died for them and rose again. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Self-mastery
I. The nature of self-mastery.
II. The difficulties of self-mastery.
1. Hereditary.
2. Surrounding.
3. Inherent.
III. The advantages of self-mastery. The evils from which it saves--physical, social, spiritual.
IV. The means of self-mastery.
1. Fellowship with other self-conquerors.
2. Communion with Jesus Christ.
3. Help from heaven.
4. Earnest, brave endeavours. (U. R. Thomas.)
Temperance
Temperance, self-mastery, the power of self-restraint, is a necessary part of Christian life, natural to it, indispensable to its perfection. Let me illustrate what I mean. You have a servant: he comes to you unacquainted with the perfect working of your system of business, strange to you, strange to the service he has to render; you do not take him into your full confidence at first; you give him such detailed directions that he cannot well make a mistake. By and by you give him your confidence, you throw him upon his honour; he knows as well as if you were always telling him what you want him to do. If there comes to pass a transaction different from what he has been engaged in, he knows your principles so well that he can complete it without referring to you at all. Detailed instruction is no longer necessary. It strikes you, too, very forcibly sometimes, does it not, that the higher position which the servant now occupies may be much more abused than the lower--the more mechanical office? He is freer in one sense from control, and, if he be a good man, the very fact that you put him on his honour in your service makes him doubly dutiful. But you know that confidence may be abused, and the fuller the trust, the greater the possibility of abuse. You know that freedom--leaving a man to act for himself, with nothing but well-instilled principles to guide him--means possibility of delinquency as well as possibility of uprightness. You say, in a word, that the man has knowledge; and that knowledge will be a dangerous thing for him and for you unless it be conjoined with self-mastery, self-restraint. You say, in other words, that in this high, confidential, honourable position in which the servant stands, to be faithful and perfect in his service he must add to his knowledge, temperance. You have raised your servant from being little better than a machine, and you have made a man of him; the risk increases with the dignity. Intemperance is of two kinds--asceticism and licentiousness; temperance is the mean between the two. If a man is of such a nature that he cannot use his freedom without abusing it, if he must go to one extreme or the other, it is better that he should be an ascetic than a theological libertine, just as it is better for a man who must be either an entire abstainer or a drunkard, that he should be the former. Both extremes are equally intemperate; but, of course, while there is not much more than self-denial in the one, there is sin in the other. (D. J. Hamer.)
Self-control
A river is usually an unmixed blessing to a country. It fertilises adjacent lands. It presents a matchless highway for commerce. But there are exceptions to the rule. One of the largest rivers in the world is known by the name of Chinas sorrow. The banks through which the Yellow River flows for nearly a thousand miles of its course are so low and so friable that, with the first flash of the spring floods, away they sink, and thousands of square miles of country are laid under water. It is not hemmed in by granite or limestone gorges like its great and incomparably useful neighbour the Yang Tsze. Its torrents are unrestrained. Within historical times it has shifted its course altogether, and discharges itself into the sea some hundreds of miles away from the old mouth. Although a river of first-class dimensions, counted by the volume of water it discharges, for nearly a thousand miles of its course it is scarcely navigable. It is a colossal power for good wasted through the lack of strong, binding power in its banks. And there are not a few people who are like this capricious river in the career they follow. We might, perhaps, describe them as the Churchs sorrow. There is uncommon virtue or potency in their characters, and they are not altogether wanting in knowledge. But through the lack of this temperance or self-restraint they break out at given periods like Chinas sorrow, and make schism and faction in the Church, and fritter away their own capacity for usefulness, and possibly in the end shift their course into altogether unexpected channels. (T. G. Selby.)
Patience.--
Patience
I. The Christian attitude in reference to all that is unwelcome and sorrowful. In your self-control supply patience. Is there one of us who is not aware of some crook in the lot? Well, then, this is true wisdom, quietly take it and let it work as it is meant to work. It is Christian patience that is here enjoined, not the mere stoical, submitting to the inevitable; not the mere pride of not showing my feeling; not the mere foolish attempt to argue myself into insensibility. This Christian patience has for its very first element the recognition of the bitterness of the cup that He gives us to drink. The second element in Christian patience is quietly bearing, with submitted and acquiescent will, the pain or sorrow that comes upon us. Now, remember where, in our series of Christian graces, this wise endurance of the inevitable and God-sent suffering comes. It comes after self command. That teaches us that it will take a great effort of self-control to keep the quivering limb quite still, if undrugged by any false anesthetic, under the gleaming knife. But we can do it. And remember, too, that this injunction of Christian patience comes in a series which is all dependent on faith. Patience is possible when beneath all the sorrows, be they great or small, we recognise Gods will. And in another way faith ministers patience by teaching us to understand and recognise the meaning of sorrows.
II. The Christian attitude towards all difficulty, the armour for them that struggle. What we have to deal with here is Christian perseverance. And about that I have only two things to say. First, how impossible it is to get any wholesome, vigorous Christian life without it; and in the second, how faith likewise ministers to all persistent effort and energy. As to the first, no course of life which has in view a far off end, towards which all its efforts are to be directed, but runs the risk of wearying ere the end is attained. The quiet persistence with which the leaf grows green and broad, and takes no care; the quiet persistence, with which from tiny knob, hard and green, the grape advances to blushing purple, and juicy sun-warmed mellowness, is the type of the fashion in which alone the harsh crudities of nature can be turned into the sweetnesses of grace. Add to your faith persistence. And be thankful to remember that our gospel alone gives men motives and power thus to persevere to the end.
III. The attitude of the Christian soul towards long-deferred good. There is an element of hope in the New Testament conception of patience. In fact, in some passages the word seems almost to be a synonym for hope, and we read in other places of the patience of hope. This view of the patience of hope suggests to us a thought or two. The weakness and the misery of all earthly anticipation is that it is full of tumult and agitation. Hope is not calm, but the very opposite. As usually entertained it leads to impatience and not to patience. And the reason why hope is impatient is because we foolishly set our hopes on things that are too near us, and on things that are uncertain. The man that is only going a railway journey of an hours duration will be more tired at the end of the first half-hour than a man who is going a journey of a days duration will be at the end of the first half of the day. If we were only wise enough to fling our hopes far enough forward, and to set them upon that future upon which they may fasten, which is as certain as the past, there would be no need and no possibility of the agitations that perturb all earthly anticipations. And you can get the patience that endures and persists where you get everything else--from Him who is its example as well as its giver. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Patience
Patience is, in the estimation of some, a mere rudge among the virtues. In Scripture she is a queen, magnanimous and dignified. How it is and why it is that the disciples of temperance or self-restraint are immediately commended to the cultivation of a gentle and forbearing spirit, will, as we think, appear if we but advert to the petulance which all rigorous and abstinent self-control is apt to foster. Thus, during the great fast of the Mohammedans, the Ramadan, observed by severe abstinence from food through all the hours of daylight, travellers have noted the querulous spirit that seems for the time to reign through a Turkish city. A recent British missionary speaks of the devotees of Hindooism, whose austerities are most rigid, and who proclaim superiority to all passion, as being notorious for a general irritability. The ascetic, of all times and of all forms of faith, has been subject, and not without some plausibility, to the imputation of sourness.
I. What Christian patience is not.
1. The patience of the disciple of Jesus is not stoical apathy, nor acquired or affected obduracy to all physical suffering.
2. Nor, much less, is Christian patience a meek indifference to all error and wickedness in the world around us. The standard of Christian piety adopted by some, which is all softness and repose, would have no room for men like the lion-hearted Knox who did, under God, so thorough and good a work before a licentious court, and a frowning nobility, and a raging priesthood, for the Scottish nation. Patience shines forth in such a spirit at such a time triumphant. It is the patience that dares brave all anger, and loss, and suffering; but that dares not sacrifice truth or duty, or make the fear of God to bend to the fear of man.
II. What then is Christian patience? We understand by it a calm endurance of evil for Gods sake. Now, evil is both physical and moral. Physical evil includes pain, want, disease, and death; moral, errors, sorrows of soul, and wickedness in all its varying shades, and in all its hideous shapes. Taken in this largest sense, patience includes the grace of meekness, from which, however, in other portions of Scripture, it is distinguished. Meekness is the quiet endurance of wrong from man, and patience is the endurance of woe appointed of God. But in our text we suppose the word patience to include both meekness and patience strictly so called. It is the quiet endurance of evil for Gods sake. That it is endured, implies that the evil is not self-invented and self-inflicted. If the physical evil be the effect of our own utter neglect, the passive endurance of it is not sufficient to make the sufferer a patient Christian in the truest sense of those terms. Against moral evil it must bear patiently its bold protest; but the want of immediate effect to that protest, and the presence of that evil in the world, and its temporary triumph, must not shake the Christians patient reliance on the wisdom and justice of the Divine Providence. For Christian patience is essentially hopeful. It must quietly wait for the salvation of God. So is it also in the New Testament represented as bound up with Christian diligence or industry. The Bible tells us of patient continuance in well-doing, and sends the pleader of the promises and the keeper of Gods precepts to learn of the husbandman, who, having sown the seed, must have long patience for the harvest. We have seen its needfulness to fill out Christian temperance.
III. Let us observe, now, its relations to other graces of the religious character.
1. Ours is a day of religious effort for reform at home and evangelisation abroad. Look at the need of patience to preserve the spirit of the labourers in working order, and to render their endeavours successful. Mackintosh praises Wilberforce as being a model reformer, because of his immovable sweetness, as well as his inflexible persistency. But many good men assay, without this patient sweetness, to reform others by the virtual tyranny of harsh and unreasoning criminations. They resort to moral coercion where they should use moral suasion.
2. Again, as a preservative of faith and knowledge and godliness, patience is indispensable. It was said by the illustrious philosopher Newton, that if he had accomplished anything in science, it had been by dint of patient thought. The believer in Scripture who would feed, from its full pages, his faith and knowledge and piety into richer development and greater vigour, must be patient in searching, patient in pondering and comparing, and patient in praying over those sacred lines.
3. Again, virtue and godliness and charity, all practical Christian excellences, need patience for their development. Confidence, said a British statesman, is a plant of slow growth. True, consistent piety is also such, and needs long and meek study of Gods providence and Word to refine and perfect it. Carey said, modestly, in his old age, when his grammars and versions of Holy Scripture were almost a library in themselves, I can do one thing--I can plod. Men, families, nations, have pined and dwindled because they could not plod. In the souls struggle heavenward we do well to recollect that he who endureth to the end shall be saved, and that by faith and patience we inherit the promises.
IV. Let us now consider the motives that should persuade us to be patient as Christians. For as patience includes meekness under wrongs of our fellow-men, we must forgive or we may not hope ourselves before God to be forgiven. As patience includes submission to the Divine appointments, let us remark that our trials are lessened by serene meekness and resignation. God lightens and removes them more early, and they do not so deeply wound and empoison the soul. We are to remember, too, the necessity of this grace to success and influence with our fellow-men. It is the patient perseverance in well-doing that builds up consistency, and influence, and weight of character. We are, again, all to remember our own unworthiness before God, and our liability to pay ten thousand talents, ere, in our fretfulness, we chide man harshly, or murmur bitterly against our God and His providence. Nor is it unfitting that we remember how much of mercy and kindness there is in Gods allotments.
V. We see why patience is to be desired, but how is it to be attained?
1. By the study of Scripture. We see there glorious examples and inspiriting promises, and the most solemn warnings, and the most apposite models and precepts.
2. Let us pray. Does the spirit in us lust to envy? And would envy swell into wrath, or blasphemy, or murder? The apostles reply is, He, our God, giveth more grace. And He gives it in answer to prayer. The apostles when bidden by their Lord often to forgive the offending and injurious, prayed, Lord, increase our faith. Repeat the petition. For its teacher yet lives to be its answerer.
3. Above all, be in communion, much and habitually, with Christ. (W. R. Williams.)
Patience
Now let us look at this matter fairly. Jesus Christ does not want to put us, as His disciples, in an artificial world. He has thought for us in the future and also in the present. He takes up the conditions of our life here, He takes up all the powers of our nature; and the truth which He reveals so asserts itself that when fully grasped and acted out the powers of our nature are most fully ordered and developed, the conditions of our life are most perfectly met. We are placed in certain circumstances, and Christ knows them. Christ would so teach us, so mould our nature, that we fulfil all the conditions of our earthly course in such a way as to be best prepared for entering on the fuller realities of the heavenly and eternal life. Patience, then, power of endurance, power of perseverance, is a necessary part of Christian character. Take one or two simple reminders and this will appear clearly enough. Men are in a condition of suffering in this world. Account for it as you may, expound the purpose of it as you may, the fact remains. Somehow or other we seem to be always playing at cross-purposes with ourselves. Who ever formed a plan and found no hindrance to the carrying of it out? And is it not in these smaller matters that our chief causes of discomfort lie? The big, thick clouds that altogether shut out the light from a mans life only gather once or twice perchance in his history. Yet all men have to suffer, and to suffer severely, from minor trials every day; and to meet these some firm, abiding principle regulating the life is needed. Does it not also suggest itself to you that the position in which Christianity puts a man in relation to God, to himself, wen, to things present and things future, is such as to require that he, at all events, of all men should be possessed of this grace of patience, this energy of quiet perseverance. If it be a necessity in every-day life apart from Christianity, it is all the more a necessity to the Christian. He sees things to which other men are blind; he has burdens laid upon him which other men know nothing of; and he of all men must be specially strengthened to endure. A man takes a piece of rough iron and fines and hardens it into steel. It is sterner and stronger than it was in some respects, but is more susceptible in others. It will glitter with brilliant polish, but a breath can dim and tarnish it. The finely tempered sword must be kept ensheathed, or it will lose its lustre. So Christianity takes a man in his rough, natural state and refines his nature. He is stronger and yet more susceptible than he was before. It comes, then, to this alternative: he must be moved from the risk of danger, taken, in a word, out of the world, or he must have a new power of endurance given to him which will enable him to resist contaminating influence. A gardener takes a flower root; what it has of beauty is wild and fitful, it has many rough defects. He cultures it, and by care and scientific appliance he makes the same life bring forth more beautiful blossoms. But the plant has a fragile beauty; it cannot now weather the storm, it must be guarded against the nipping frost and the rude wind. So Christianity takes a man and puts such grace into his heart that his life bears flowers and fruit unto holiness; but he cannot bear unconsciously what he could before. It conies, then, to this alternative: that he must be removed from contact with the storms of this worlds experience, or else he must have what the gardener cannot give his cherished plant, special and increased power to withstand and to patiently endure. So you see this grace of which Peter speaks, and which at first sight seems rather incongruous with the rest, is really a necessary and inherent part of the Divine life in man. Christianity would deal cruelly and fatally with us if patience were not inalienably connected with the life which it cherishes. But there are other points in which such necessity as I have asserted is clearly seen besides that arising from the keener susceptibility of the Christian. We set out with a high ideal. Our whole nature thrills with the new life that has begun to stir within us. The sense of deliverance is precious. We feel that new motives, new aims, new desires have come to us. Sin and misery have fled away; hope and joy and peace will fill our heart. Such happy life is to be for our constant enjoyment. Are these not the thoughts which fill the soul when it first passes from death unto life? Has such experience, then, been an unchanging one with you? Have you never been thrust back from what you thought a sure and safe position of advance? Sin does not lose its hold upon us all at once. We are weak, and only by patient perseverance can we be made strong. We are subject to temptation, and only by patient watching can we hope to escape. We are ignorant, and only by patient learning can we attain unto knowledge. A war is carried on within us in which the good principles do not come scatheless from the conflict. These rebuffs and disappointments and failures are sure to meet us. Our Master had to contend with evil, and led the way by His example of faith and patience to the inheritance of the promises: so must we persevere and endure unto the end. (D. J. Hamer.)
Patience
I. The elements of a true Christian patience. The literal meaning of ὐπομονή is remaining behind, or remaining in the house; i.e., abiding--das zuruckbleiben, zuhausebleiben (Passow). Hence constancy, stability, steadiness. Our days on the earth are as a shadow, and there is none abiding (1Ch_29:15). The Septuagint here uses ὑπομονη to denote stability, the opposite of that which is transitory and fleeting. In the text De Wette renders ὑπομονη by Standhaftigkeit, steadfastness. It is something more than submissiveness, by which Isaac Taylor defines it. Patientia denotes the quality of bearing or enduring. Cicero applies it to the endurance of hunger and cold. In analysing patience into its elements we must view it both upon the negative and the positive side.
1. Patience does not imply a want of sensibility to suffering, sorrow, or wrong. A North American Indian would think it unmanly or cowardly to betray a consciousness of pain, to utter a cry or shed a tear for any physical suffering. We may not seek for patience in an insensibility to suffering, whether natural or forced, nor in a sullen disregard of personal consequences in carrying out some proposed end or meeting an imagined fate.
2. And here we may note more particularly that patience does not argue indifference to the issue of the trials or labours which are upon us. The mind will forecast its own future, will have hopes, will have fears, will have a choice as to events affecting its own happiness; no logic or philosophy or schooling can destroy these essential qualities of the human soul; take away these, and man ceases to be a man. He who professes not to be troubled about events because he does not care what happens is not an example of the patient man. The true patient man does care what happens. The care-nothing spirit is not true Christian patience.
3. Neither is a do-nothing spirit to be identified with patience. There are times when patience counsels to inaction, when the strength of Israel is to sit still. But this patience of waiting is not the inaction of sluggishness nor of despondency. It is a watchful inaction, like-that of men sleeping upon their arms, with their camp-fires always lighted and the sentinels at their posts. The shipwrecked mariner in an open boat without oar or sail has nothing to do but wait for the appearance of relief. But if he has a compass and a paddle and knows himself to be within a hundred miles of land, then patience will be shown not in idle waiting or in praying for some chance relief, but in working on without murmuring and without despair, though the hand is weary and the head is faint, and neither sun nor star appears over the waste of waters.
Viewed, then, positively patience requires--
1. The consciousness of a right intent. This removes from within all disturbing causes which might irritate and unsettle the mind, and enables us to commit our way to the Lord in confidence. We shall grow patient under trials in proportion as we grow unselfish. And so too of labours; if we enter upon these with a pure intent, if we rise above all selfish feeling to the grandeur of working for mankind and for God, then shall we hold on by the attraction of the work itself, never ruffled by opposition nor disheartened by difficulty. Hence the exercise of a true Christian patience demands a conscience void of offence towards man and God.
2. The exercise of Christian patience demands implicit confidence in God and in our cause as approved by Him. Patience and faith go hand in hand. The main element in patience is Christian submission to the will of God. This rests upon confidence as its basis--confidence in the wisdom, the power, and the love of God.
3. Patience must have in it the element of hope. Patience is incompatible with despair. Patience under trial expects Gods appearing. Patience in labour awaits Gods help. The virtue of patience, by reason of its quiet and retiracy, commands but little notice and admiration from men. Men do not lay the stress of greatness upon the passive virtues.
II. The place and valve of patience in the Christian character.
1. This virtue of patience we need in all our labours for the cause of Christ and the good of men. In working against evil we are prone either to irritation or to despondency. Our weak natures are annoyed by the opposition we encounter in a good cause.
2. We need this patience under the afflictions and wrongs which we personally suffer--afflictions at the hand of God, persecution, calumny, wrong from our fellow-men. How sweet is patience under the hand of God! It is like sunlight and flowers in the chamber of sickness. But it is easier to bear great and prolonged afflictions which come directly and visibly from the hand of God than the petty vexations and wrongs which arise from untoward circumstances and evil men. Great occasions rally great principles and brace the mind to a lofty bearing, a bearing that is even above itself. But trials that make no occasion at all leave it to show the goodness and beauty it has in its own disposition.
3. We need patience with respect to the fulfilling of Gods plans of mercy for the world. Gods promises are like century plants. They grow silently, almost imperceptibly, through wind and storm, by day and night, and year by year. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Godliness.--
Godliness
At first sight it appears strange to find godliness ranked among the special virtues of the Christian character, whereas it is a very much more general expression than any of these specific excellences which precede it in this list. Nor is it less singular to find it inserted in the midst of a catalogue of Christian graces, whereas we should rather expect it to stand as the all-inclusive foundation of them all. What do we mean by godliness? The fundamental idea is reverence toward God. That reverence expresses itself both inwardly and outwardly--inwardly by habitual communion with Him in spirit; outwardly by habitual service of Him in act. The word covers substantially the same ground as the Old Testament expression, the fear of the Lord. If, then, we take that for the meaning of the word, the singularity of its insertion in this catalogue may be found to be the means of teaching important truths.
I. The first lesson that I would gather is as to the root of real religion. We must never forget, in considering this series of Christian virtues, that faith is regarded as the foundation of them all. It is the raw material, so to speak, out of which all these other graces and excellences are made. And this is especially the case with regard to the sense of reverence to God manifesting itself in habitual communion with Him and habitual service of Him which is meant by this word godliness. Some of us say that we believe in Jesus Christ and are living by faith. Does your faith lead you to this continual godliness? Are you brought by it into continual communion with Jesus Christ, and, through Him, with God? Do you constantly refer all your actions to Him?
II. We have here the other lesson that real religion is a thing to be cultivated by the strenuous exercise of Christian graces. No man becomes godly by mere desiring. The bridge between faith and godliness is made of manly strength, discrimination and discernment of duty, rigid self-control, patient perseverance. If you have these things your faith will effloresce into godliness; if you have not, it will not. You will want all these virtues and graces which precede godliness in my text. You will want manly strength--for a hundred reasons, because of the condition of things round about you, which is always full of temptations to draw you away, because of your own proclivities to evil. And you will want manly strength, because you can get no hold of an unseen God except by a definite effort of thought, which will require resolute will. Further, for godliness, we need to cultivate the habit of discrimination between good and evil, right and wrong, because the world is full of illusions, and we are very blind. And we need to cultivate the habit of self-control and rigid repression of passions, and lusts, and desires, and tastes, and inclinations before His calm and sovereign will, because the world is full of fire and our hearts and natures are tinder. And we need to cultivate the habit of patience in all its three senses of endurance in sorrow, of persistence in service, and of hope of the future, because the more a man cultivates that habit, the larger will be his stock of proofs of the loving-kindness and goodness of his God, and the easier and more blessed it will be for him to live in continual communion with Him. Exercise thyself into godliness, and do not fancy that the Christian life comes as a matter of course on the back of some one initial act of a long-forgotten faith in Jesus Christ.
III. Then another lesson to be gathered from this catalogue of graces is that true religion is the best preservative and strengthener of all these preceding excellences. Do not spend your time upon merely trying to cultivate special graces of the Christian character, however needful they may be for you, and however beautiful they may be in themselves. Seek to have that which sanctifies and strengthens them all. Faith is the foundation, godliness the apex and crown.
IV. And the last thought is that this true religion or godliness unites in one harmonious whole the most dissimilar excellences of character. Notice that in this series all the excellences which precede my text are of the sterner, the more severe, and self-regarding kind, and that those which follow it are of the gentler sort and refer to others. If I might so say, it is as in some Alpine range, where the side that faces the north presents rugged cliffs and sparse vegetation, and close-knit strength to breast the tempest and to live amidst the snows, whilst the southern side has gentler slopes and a more fertile soil, a richer vegetation, and a sunnier sky. And in like manner the difficult problem of how tar I am to carry my own cultivation of Christian excellence apart from regard to others, and how far I am to let my obligations to help and succour others overcome the necessity for individual cultivation of Christian character, is best solved as Peter solves it here. Put godliness in the middle, let that be the centre, and from it will flow on the one side all needful self-discipline and tutoring, and on the other all wise and Christlike regard to the needs and sorrows of the men around us. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Godliness
A religious man is he who practically makes his accountability to God the law of his life, who is bound to God with the sense of personal obligation for all that he receives, in all that he does. What, then, is that godliness which is capable of being nurtured as an addition to saving faith in Christ and to the several virtues before enumerated? Some understand the term in the old English sense of god-like-ness, a moral resemblance to God. But this does not express the objective sense conveyed in the original word. God ward-ness, if we might make such a term, would be nearer this than God-like-ness, a state of mind which is toward God as the sole object of its adoration and religious reverence, the central, supreme object of its trust and love, the final source of moral obligation and authority. One may have a certain faith in Christ who is yet wanting in a just and commanding reverence toward God. A mind that believes in Christ as historically revealed in the New Testament, accepts Him as a Divine Teacher, and even regards His death as in some way connected with the redemption of mankind, but which does not recognise a necessity for that death as an atonement between human guilt and Divine justice, is wanting in that godliness of which the apostle speaks. It has not attained to that reverence for God in the holiness of His Being and the purity of His law which makes the atonement at once a moral necessity for the soul itself and a legal necessity for the Divine government. A mind that looks to Christ as the author of a universal and indiscriminate salvation for the race, and admits no distinction in the results of probation between those who accept and those who reject the terms of that salvation, is surely wanting in this godliness. A just reverence for God as lawgiver and judge is wanting.
I. The essential characteristics of godliness.
1. That it is most inward in its seat and power. The Apostle Paul has in view this internal spiritual quality of true godliness when, writing to Timothy, he says, Follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness. Here godliness is distinguished from righteousness. Righteousness, as it stands in this catalogue of Christian qualities, denotes rectitude of action; godliness points to the inward spring of that action, and the ground of its righteousness, in a just sentiment of veneration toward God. True godliness has the soul for its seat and God for its object. Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.
2. This sentiment is equally compounded of love and fear. That veneration or reverence toward God which is true piety is grounded in a love of His holiness. There is a veneration whose chief element is awe; a reverence for dignity, station, greatness, power, which is cold and formal and distant. Such is the veneration which barbarian tribes manifest for the mysterious powers of Nature. But the veneration of the Christian mind for God is not a dim awe of invisible power, a dread of that Almighty force which heaped up the mountains, but is a reverence for that which is greater than physical force, however sublime and terrible, even the greatness of a good and just and holy character. The poet Shelley disowned a personal God; yet what one has aptly styled the atheistic hunger of his soul caused him to fill the universe with invisible powers to which he paid that credulous homage which atheism always pays to mystery. But with this love and adoration of the character of God should mingle always a salutary awe of His majesty. By the fear of the Lord men depart from evil.
II. What are the modes of its expression?
1. We should cherish this reverence for the being of God when we approach Him in prayer. Abraham and Moses, and Samuel and David, with all their importunity in supplication, were filled with reverence and godly fear when they drew nigh to God in prayer.
2. We should cherish reverence for the name of God.
3. True godliness implies a reverence for the law of God as the supreme and final rule of moral action. Thy Word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against Thee.
4. We should cherish also a profound reverence for the will of God as manifested in His providence. I opened not my mouth, because Thou didst it. The godly mind rises above all secondary causes in nature and all intermediate human agencies to perceive and acknowledge the hand of God in its afflictions.
III. Guard against its counterfeits.
1. We are cautioned not to confound gain with godliness. The Apostle Paul warns Timothy against men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness. At first view this seems a strange and almost incredible form of heresy. But call to mind the fact that under the Old Testament dispensation temporal prosperity was promised to godly living, and you will readily see hew the idea might arise, as it did, that outward prosperity was always a mark of inward piety. This substitution of gain for godliness is one of the most subtle and depraving devices of the enemy of souls. It is making a calf of gold under the very brow of Sinai, and setting aside the Holy One of Israel for an image of Mammon.
2. The other error is thus characterised by Paul. He speaks of men who are lovers of their own selves; lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, who yet have a form of godliness but deny the power thereof. Manifold are the forms under which such godliness appears. There is a poetic form of godliness, a sentiment which takes the air of reverence and breathes the name of the Divinity when singing of the grander forms of nature. The old Greek and Latin poetry peopled the invisible with gods, whose presence and agency it represented in all the mysteries of nature and in all leading events of human experience. The machinery of Homers great epic lies within the supernatural; the gods played their part in every Greek tragedy. Indeed, we know the religion of Greece and Rome mainly through their literature. But while true godliness is true veneration for God, not all veneration is godliness. It may lead the soul to God, or it may not lie deeper than the sentient and the imaginative. There is an artistic or aesthetic form of godliness. The Greek mind, which under the fairest clime and the most liberal government was stimulated to the highest culture in taste and art, expressed its devotion through artistic forms, especially in sculpture. But taste and art, however subsidiary to the expression of devotion, can never be of the essence of godliness. There is a dogmatic form of godliness, a creed-worship, a veneration for dogmas and authorities in religion. Wherever the creed is put before the life as evidence of piety, the profession of the lips before the confession of the heart, there the form of godliness is substituted for its power. There is a mechanical work-form of godliness. This puts all the religious energy of the soul into such outward visible acts as seem to be deeds of piety, but which may be only deeds of self-righteousness. The methodical and laborious Southey was once describing to a friend his minute allotment of time for his diversified labours in reading and writing--such an hour being given to French, the next to Spanish, the next to a Review, the next to classics, the next to history, etc. But pray, Mr. Southey, interrupted the friend, at what time do you think? Might it not be asked of some who abound in the drill-work of religion, At what time do you pray?
IV. The motives for cultivating a true godliness.
1. That God is as He is. Could we but form a conception of God as revealed in the Scriptures, surely we must bow reverently and walk softly before Him.
2. The blessedness of godliness both here and in the hereafter.
3. The fact that we shall soon meet God face to face. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Godliness
The term εὐσέβεια, here translated godliness, is used in the New Testament to denote that reverence toward God which is a spontaneous feeling of the heart in view of His character (see in Robinson). Cornelius was a devout man (εὐσεβής), and feared God. The prevailing use of εὐσέβεια by classic writers gives to it this same objective sense. Plato, Thucydides, Desmosthenes, use it to express veneration toward the Deity (πρὸς Θεοὺς). See in Stephanus, Suidas, and Passow ed. Rost und Palm. In the Definitions sometimes ascribed to Plato, εὐσέβεια is defined to be Δικαιοσύνη περὶ Θεοὺς, that which is just, fitting, meet, as toward the gods. The Stoics defined it to be ἐπιστήμη Θεο͂ν θεραπείας--the appreciative or becoming service of the gods. Stephanus defines it by religiositas, thus expressing the same idea of reverence toward God. De Wette, in his note upon 2Pe_1:6, says Ehrfurcht und Liebe gegen Gott--veneration and love toward God. This use of the word precludes the idea of God-like-ness, and favours the less euphonious, but more expressive term, God-ward-ness. It denotes also something deeper than a formal outward reverence for the demands of God, and refers directly to the reverence of the soul toward God. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Of godliness
I. Wherein godliness consists. It takes in all those dispositions of mind with the proper expressions of them which are due to the high perfections of the Deity, and which result from the relations we bear to Him. As He is eternal, independent, infinitely excellent, powerful, wise, holy, and good, the light of nature itself teaches us to glorify Him by our praises, to esteem, love, and fear Him, and to obey His will in all things as far as it is known to us. As He is the almighty Creator of all things visible and invisible, the preserver and governor of the world, from hence arises the obligation to gratitude, confidence in His mercy, submission and resignation to His providence. The inward affections which naturally arise comprehended in godliness are, first, fear, a reverence for His majesty, a serious affecting sense of all His glorious attributes, not a confounding terror and amazement. Secondly, the fear of God, as the Scripture explains it, which is an essential part of godliness, and of the respect He claims from us, doth not exclude love. His goodness naturally excites love. Gratitude is a kind of love which naturally arises in the mind to any being who discovers kind intentions towards us. The exercise of love and respect seems especially to consist in an entire acquiescence in the order He has appointed, with confidence in His wisdom and goodness and submission to His will. When I speak of resignation to God, I do not only mean that we should be satisfied with the occurrences of life, but that we should approve and actively obey His precepts, submitting to His moral as well as providential government. This doctrine has been always taught in the true Church, and care taken to prevent mens falling into that fatal error of placing the all of religion in acts of devotion, while they neglected that much more substantial proof of respect to the Deity, the imitating of His righteousness and mercy. Yet the external acts of adoration and homage to the Deity are not to be left undone, and the performing of them according to His institution is a part of godliness. Not that there is any value in the outward performance, as separated from the affection, but supposing first the sincerity of good principles and disposi tions in the soul, they ought to be exerted in external acts of worship for two reasons. First, because that has a tendency to increase them. The body and the mind in our present constitution have a mutual influence on each other. Secondly, another reason for outward acts of adoration and homage to God is that thereby we may glorify Him.
II. The reasonableness and necessity of adding godliness to all other virtues. First, if we consider godliness in itself abstractedly, it will appear to be a very eminent and important branch of our duty. Not only is it so represented in the Holy Scriptures, but if we attend to the reason and nature of the thing, we must be convinced that, as God is the most excellent of all beings with whom we have to do as our ruler and constant benefactor and our judge, our first respects are due to Him. It is the distinguishing privilege of mankind to be capable of religion. Secondly, it ought therefore to be added to all other virtues, because it is the chief support and security of them, and where it prevails has a great influence on men to practise them. The efficacy of godliness, strictly so called, to the production of all other virtues appears from the nature of it already explained, for it imports a disposition to obey all Gods commandments and to do everything which He approves. (J. Abernethy, M. A.)
Godliness
It was a beautiful saying of one of the old Fathers when, addressing himself to God, he exclaims, Thou hast formed man. Thy creature, for Thee, and he cannot be at rest until he have come again unto Thee.
I. What is the godliness here commended? Looking to the sense of the term here employed in the Greek original, it is piety or the fear of God--that veneration of the Most High which leads to homage and obedience. Godliness has its three sides. It is communion with God, for the society of our Maker is enjoyed in true worship of Him. It is intellectual and spiritual assimilation to Him, in the cordial admission and love of His truth; and practical assimilation to Him, in the endeavour to reflect on the world the lustre of His graces and some broken, distant beams, at least, of His moral excellences. To make this possible--to raise the fallen and rebuild the down trodden and polluted shrine--God Himself has come amongst us.
II. There are foul semblances of godliness, mere idols, that delude many. Let us keep our selves from them.
1. It is a mistake to suppose that mere veneration for some higher existence, however imaginary and false our views of this existence--that such vague veneration is godliness; that God hears alike with delight those who call Him Jehovah and receive the Bible and those who call Him Juggernaut and who swear by the Hindoo Shaster. In this vague and unscriptural sense of the term the atheistic poet, Shelley, and the pantheistic philosopher, Spinoza, have been called men of piety, because of a spirit of tenderness and awe that was attributed to them. But atheism--the ungrateful and irrational dethronement and denial of any God--is that to be by any apothecarys art of liberalism made to coalesce with the love and worship of the true God, as forming the same incense of accepted adoration? As to pantheism, it is opposed to piety or true godliness radically and throughout. True godliness begins in humility and penitence, and is sustained by prayer and adoration. But pantheism begins in pride.
2. It is a mistake, again, to look, as some seem now disposed to do, upon the austerities and ceremonies of the Church of Rome, as the fairest exhibition of godliness.
III. IN what mode, then, may we safely and successfully attain the godliness which the apostle here enjoins? Far, then, as it is a life, God must give it. Far as it is a truth, He in His Scriptures and by the Spirit of His Son must teach it; and far as it is a communion, it must be sought in the one way, Christ. Daily and earnest and effectual supplication is necessary. This must, again, seek Gods teachings in the study of His revealed truth. Here He has manifested Himself, His purposes, and character; and this, His book, He delights to honour and to transcribe afresh into the experience and hearts of His devout people.
IV. Every inducement of interest and duty, of honour and safety, of benevolence to man and piety towards God, requires each of us to become the friend and child and follower of the living God.
1. Remember that it is the highest style of human nature. The scholar, the sage, the discoverer, and the hero, what are they, before God, to the saint?
2. Holiness is, again, the master-key of the universe. Born to die, you are fated to travel hence. But whither? Become Gods charge and child. Be a renewed man by Gods grace, and you are gifted, virtually, with the freedom of the universe.
3. Remember, again, that it is the one thing needful. Send bread to the famishing, give sympathy to the oppressed, give healing remedies to those who are sick and ready to die, give education to the ignorant. But before the school, or political emancipation, or health, or even bread, the tribes of Adam need true godliness.
4. The last consideration is that as godliness is the bond and crown of all the virtues, so it is, on the other hand, the one sufficient remedy for the subjugation and removal of all the vices. (W. R. Williams.)
Godliness
Let us trace the wisdom and necessity of the exhortation, and the wisdom and necessity of that which is thus commanded. It was a wise suggestion to men of every age that they should possess and develop this habit of pious reverence. It gives us the hint that the contrary was likely to be the tendency. It is no easy thing, under all circumstances, to look calmly and trustfully up to the throne of the living God, and cheerfully commit all our life to His fashioning and to His keeping: it is no easy thing at all times to trace the gentleness of His grace in the ways of providence. We see the necessity of the exhortation, then, because this reverence of heart in all purity and faith is hard of accomplishment. Our lot seems to be cast in what, generally speaking, may be called a thinking and reading age. Men are learning to observe, and to glory in observing. There is Gods great universe, spreading about us on all sides, and He who created it, and created us, knew that as men learned to read, they would aspire to acquaintance with the truths which unfold themselves to careful observation. The only thing I have to say about it is, that it makes a life of reverence, of piety, of godliness, harder to us than it was to men who lived in the time nearer to human intellectual infancy. By the discovery of what are called natural laws, and the secondary causes of the effects we see around us, do we not apparently lengthen the distance between ourselves and God? To the savage, the thunder is the voice of the Great Spirit, the lightning is the flash of His angry eye. He stands face to face with his deity in these things. To the Israelite, God, Jehovah worked directly in sending the plagues upon the obstinate king and his people, who would not let them go; in bringing streams of water from the rock, in sending manna for their food, in overthrowing their enemies, in establishing their greatness. They did not see, or care to see, the second causes, the long chain, it may be, of means by which these effects were accomplished. They seemed to stand ever in the immediate presence of their God. Is it not true that the advancement of science and acquaintance with natural laws has removed you to a lengthened distance from Him, who works through all things by the word of His power; and that, as there is a wider interval for you to overpass, it is harder for you, than it was, say for Abraham, or Noah, to live a life of reverence and the fear of God? Thus much concerning the necessity for the exhortation. One word on the necessity of that which is thus commanded. Because the thing is harder there is the more credit in its accomplishment. If the man has a larger interval over which to look, the stronger must be his sight, if he is able to see clearly through all the intermediate second causes, the great first Mover in all things, working out His purpose. The more thickly the clouds and darkness roll around God, the truer man does he assert himself, who is able to trace His loving intention through the mystery. If we are ever to come to the full stature of manliness in Christ, we must possess in active exercise this disposition of godliness. (D. J. Hamer.)
Of the practice of godliness
1. The amiableness of a truly pious temper, and the importance of it in religion.
2. It will have a most happy influence to make us holy and righteous in our whole conversation in the world.
3. It will tend exceedingly to our own interest and happiness. The exercise of it will afford us the most sincere and high pleasure and satisfaction.
I. The proper methods of raising and cultivating a temper of rational piety and devotion.
1. Let us be at pains to acquire just notions of the Deity; for the opinions which we form of Him will have the greatest influence on our temper and behaviour towards Him.
2. Let us keep up a lively sense of the excellence and the goodness of God in our minds by serious attention to them, and frequent reflections upon them.
3. Let us consider God as always present with us, and the Witness and Inspector of our behaviour. The lively consideration of this cannot but make us exceedingly careful to treat Him with all possible respect and honour, and to do everything which we apprehend will be pleasing and acceptable to Him.
4. Let us attend carefully upon the positive institutions of religion, and the outward duties of devotion. These have been appointed on purpose to maintain in us a lively sense of God and His excellences, to recall to our minds the several considerations which have a tendency to improve and strengthen our good dispositions towards Him, to instruct us in the duty which we owe to Him, and to make us serve Him with the greater zeal and cheerfulness. And if we attend to them for these ends, we shall find them means every way fitted to answer them. (J. Orr, D. D.)
Brotherly kindness.--
Brotherly kindness
I. Observe how in the very name of this grace there lie lessons as to its foundation and as to its nature. The word is all but a coinage of Christianity, and the thing is entirely so. The gospel bridged over all the divisions, and brought bond and free, Jew and Gentile, man and woman, into a great unity, so deep, so real, that all antagonism vanished. The mystery hid from ages was revealed--that a common relation to a Divine Father made all the men who partook of it one. But let us think of what instruction this word contains in reference to the foundation of this Christian unity. We go deep down into the very heart of Christianity when we talk about all Christians being brethren. It is not a mere sentimental expression to convey the idea that they ought to love one another, but it is a declaration of the deep reason why they ought thus to love one another; and it links on to that great truth, that in Jesus Christ all they that love Him and trust to Him do receive direct from God a real communication of a new and supernatural spiritual life, which makes them no more merely sons of God by creation and after the flesh, but sons of God through the Spirit. The lonely pilgrim travels to the Cross, and when he comes there he finds that he is come unto the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in heaven. This unity is a far deeper thing than mere identity of opinion. Christs Church is no voluntary association into which men may pass or not, as they please, but you are born into it, if you are Christian people, as much as you are born into your mothers house. And you can no more denude yourselves of your relationships to the other men who possess the same life, than you can break the tie of brotherhood which hinds you to all them that have received corporeal life from the same source as you.
II. Observe that the place which this virtue holds in the series teaches us the one-sidedness of a character without it, however strong and self-controlled. Unless the rock be crowned with a coronet of wild flowers it is savage and black. And unless to our strength that fronts the world, to our quick discernment of duty that looks through illusions and clearly sees duty, to our self-control, that is severe to ourselves, and to ourselves alone; to our patient persistence that bears and does and hopes on and ever, we add the supreme beauty of sympathetic gentleness and Christlike tenderness, all these other lovelinesses will lack their last touch of poignant exquisiteness that makes them complete. On the other hand, it is a very real danger in earnest Christian culture, that we shall concentrate our attention far too much on the self-regarding virtues, and too little upon those which refer to others. The place which this brotherly kindness occupies in our series, may further teach us that it is a great mistake for good men to cultivate the gentler graces at the expense of the sterner and the stronger. Christian love is no mere feeble emotion, but a strong and mailed warrior, who beareth all things, and can do all things.
III. The occurrence of this grace in our series teaches us the lesson that it is a duty to be won by effort. It is just as much your duty to cherish brotherly love to all professing Christian people as it is to govern your own passions, or to do any of these other things that are enjoined upon us here. The introductory clause of this whole series covers them all. Giving all diligence, add to your faith. The hindrances are strong and real enough to make effort to overcome them absolutely essential. There is our own selfishness. That is the master-devil of the whole gang that come between us and true Christian charity to our brethren. And then, besides that, there is in our day a wide distinction among Christian people, in station, in education, in general outlook upon life, in opinion. In addition there is that most formidable hindrance of all, our wretched denominational rivalries.
IV. The place which this grace holds in our series teaches us the best way of making it our own. In your godliness supply brotherly love. The more we realise our dependence upon God the more we shall realise our kindred with our brethren. The electric spark of love to Christ will combine the else separate elements into one. Cleaving to the one Shepherd, the else scattered sheep become one flock, held together, not by the outward bonds of a fold, but by the attraction that fastens them all to Him. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Brotherly kindness
I. The connection. The apostle joins brotherly kindness to godliness.
1. Because brotherly kindness is the daughter of godliness. The river of charity springs from the fountain of piety.
2. Because brotherly kindness is the moderator of godliness. God loves not such mad zeal, that so fixeth the eyes on heaven that it despiseth to look on their poor brother on earth.
3. Because godliness is proved by brotherly kindness (1Jn_2:9).
II. The definition. It is a love to the faithful; to such as possess the same faith with us, and by that faith are adopted heirs to the same God, through the brotherhood of the same Christ. It is distinguished from charity by nearness and dearness. By nearness, I mean not local but mystical. Charity hath a great latitude, and is like the heaven that covers all; brotherly kindness like the sun that shines upon the one half at once. The firmament sends influence to more than the sun, but the sun comes nearer to that object it blesseth than the firmament. By dearness; for the bond of nature is not so strong as the bond of grace. Our creation hath made us friends; our redemption, brethren.
III. The distinction. There are three sorts of brethren.
1. By race; and that either by birth, or by blood.
2. By place, such as are of the same nation.
3. By grace.
IV. The conclusions.
1. The necessity is great.
(1) It is worthy in itself; that virtue which is ranked with godliness must needs be honourable.
(2) We are apt to neglect it; therefore St. Peter urges it several times (1Pe_1:22; 1Pe_2:17; 1Pe_3:8, and here); St. Paul thrice (Rom_12:10; 1Th_4:9; Heb_13:1).
2. The practice.
(1) What it forbids as opposites to it, and murderers of it.
(a) Contentious litigation (1Co_6:6-7; Pro_6:19; Gen_13:8).
(b) An inveterate hatred. God loves all His children; wilt thou hate him that God loves? (1Jn_2:11; 1Jn_3:15).
(c) Even anger itself is a traitor to this virtue; for as hatred is a long anger, so anger is a short hatred; malice is nothing else but inveterate wrath (Mat_5:22).
(d) Oppression (1Th_4:6).
(e) A proud contempt of ones brethren (Psa_50:20).
(2) Positively.
(a) This brotherly kindness is shown in reprehending those we love (Lev_19:17).
(b) Helping their poor estates.
(c) Praying for them. (Thos. Adams.)
Brotherly kindness
I. This same apostle has, in his earlier epistle, enjoined ii upon the disciples of Christ to love the brotherhood. And whom has the Saviour taught us to regard as being thus our kindred and our brethren? We turn to the Gospels for the needful light in interpreting the Epistles.
1. When our Lord was celebrating with His apostles, the last religious ordinance of His life on earth, He said to them, A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one to another (Joh_13:34-35). This law was new in its authorship. The Decalogue on Sinai had been given through Moses. The Son Himself was now come to speak, face to face, that law of Love which crowned and solved all the earlier commandments. It was, again, novel in its motives. To intimate His equal Deity, the Son here makes love to Himself, the motive of holy obedience. As it was new, too, in its evidence. It would become, before the world, the badge and public pledge of Christian discipleship.
2. But whilst I am required to cherish a brothers warm regard for these, are none but these my brethren? We answer to this question: Spiritual ties, whilst overriding, do not annul all natural bonds. And who are our brethren, by these earlier and human ties? We suppose all who are near to us--those attached and grappled to us by the domestic charities; those, again, with whom we are united of our free choice by the bonds of friendship; and those, lastly, who are our countrymen, one with us by the law of patriotism.
II. How, then, is it that godliness needs the addition of brotherly kindness?
1. Far as the range of worldly brotherhood extends, in our relations to the home, to the circles of friendship, and to our countrymen generally, godliness should be guarded by this grace of human sympathy, to counteract an unjust, but common imputation against true piety. The monk, fleeing to the wilderness; the spiritualist, overlooking his engagements to society and the household, in the care of the closet and his soul, are answerable for an error here. Their godliness lacks brotherly kindness. So, too, the hostility of the worldly to true piety, venting itself of old by statutes and penalties; venting itself in our times, rather in derision and cruel mockery, may easily provoke in the minds of the truly godly an alienation that would, unchecked, issue in utter isolation. But this is rather natural than justifiable. It is not so much the strength of the Christians godliness, as the human weakness intermingled with, and diluting that piety, which thus teaches him to withdraw, because he has cause of complaint.
2. But not only may the bonds of worldly and human brotherhood, thus, with or without the Christians fault, be seemingly sundered by his godliness; a mans piety may seem to hinder his recognition at times of the ties of spiritual brotherhood also. If it be asked, how this can be, let it be remembered in reply, that a man of eminent devoutness may easily become absorbed and abstracted in manner.
3. But a more disastrous barrier to this brotherly kindness is the existence and range of controversy among Christians.
III. We now reach that division of our subject in which we consider now the Christian grace of brotherly kindness is to fill up the sphere of worldly brotherhood, embracing as that does, friendship, kindred, and country.
1. As to the power of religion to adorn and cement friendship, the history of the Church speaks emphatically.
2. As to the effects of religion on those who are our brethren because our countrymen, the topic of Christianity in its relations to the nation is too vast and complicated to be at this time discussed. It is evidently a duty of Christian patriotism, to urge thoroughly the work of Home Missions, and to send the Bible and Sabbath-school and ministry on the very crest of the westward waves of emigration.
IV. The manner in which the Christian grace, which the apostle here enjoins, should be displayed in the distinct sphere of spiritual brotherhood.
1. Within the same church, then, the disciples of our Saviour need to be more and more given to mutual intercession.
2. Christians in this day need, again to ponder the warnings of James as to social and terrestrial distinctions, unduly dwelt upon in the intercourse of fellow-disciples. Fraternity among Christians, again, requires that we do not abandon merely to the care of the State, the poor and dependent of our fellow-disciples. (W. R. Williams.)
Brotherly kindness
Now, one of the first impulses of the heart when men are thrown together is to lay hold at once of points of contact, to recognise identity of interests, community of feeling, to get rid, as far as possible, of those things which are exterior and accidental, or else to pierce through these and find how, in all essential and unalterable things, the human heart is at one with its kind. I know that society, and commercial society not least, manifests contending interests, that the motto seems to be--Every man for himself, and (sometimes not very reverentially added, by the way) God for us all; that it appears almost necessary that a man should harden his heart against consideration for his brother man; that he is afloat upon an angry sea; that the struggles of others often dash the water in his face, and threaten his own existence, and that even if he abstain from retaliation, he scarcely dare reach out a hand to help a brother for fear of being dragged down. I know these things from present observation; but still it is true that all such circumstances are an after-growth, and that under the earliest, simplest conditions of human society, brotherly kindness is an instinct, an irresistible impulse. You may see it, if you like, springing forth again, with all its early strength and freshness, on occasions such as when men, few in number, and with all differences of position destroyed, have to form among themselves society anew; in any case of shipwreck, say, when some are cast upon uninhabited land. The brotherly instinct is at work again at once, and only expires when simplicity is corrupted, and artificialism blots it out. Now, is it not the wish of the best moments of every man, that this feeling could be maintained, that all contending interests should sign a truce of brotherhood? And I suppose the best of men, as they find the hopes which their fancy had kindled die away in the light of fact, say, The thing is impossible: while I have to deal with such men as so-and-so, I can afford little room for the exercise, in this relation, of such a virtue as brotherly kindness. We must be living under a different condition of things from the present, all society must be made afresh before this can be. Exactly so, and that is the root of the whole matter. Men must be renewed, redeemed, and then brotherly kindness may have its full and perfect exercise. Is not this announced as the mission of gospel truth in this world? It reveals our own nature to us; it shows us in what points we are akin one to another. And now another question meets us; the answer to which will engage our attention. Peter is writing to Christians, to those, he says, who have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. Why does he think it needful to insist upon the exercise of this virtue, brotherly kindness? Is not this the message that we have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another? What need, then, for special exhortation as to the mingling of this with the other elements of Christian character? If we think for a moment, the answer to such question will readily occur. Christianity, the religion of faith and love, is the law of the heavenly life, but it is sent to us here, and now, for the ordering of this earthly life. I shall now point out what seem to me the grounds on which the seclusive, meditative, form of piety might be judged likely to manifest itself unduly, and then remind you of one or two facts which show that such judgment is well founded. Gospel truth teaches us this one thing of all most clearly--the individual relation between each human heart and God--personal, not representative, nor corporate religion--the impossibility of vicarious love, of deputy service. Personal susceptibility, personal action are necessary if the soul is to make any way toward heaven. This revelation gives him not only new light concerning his own nature, it gives him new ideas of God. This Infinite Being is revealed as standing in near relation to our spirit, as having made sacrifice for our souls redemption, so that our life is lifted out of all its appearance of littleness, sublimed by the ordering of His perfect will, sanctified by the might of His Holy Spirit. May not a man, when thoughts like these possess him, when his godliness takes its truest, intensest form, well be wishful to stand in some quiet place apart from interruptive society, where he may fathom, in some measure, the vastness of what has been revealed. But there is more; this Divine relation is to be an abiding one: death is no destroyer of it, but rather a caster down of what has been a hindrance to the closer union. These highest delights are, in one sense, solitary ones, we can communicate no idea of them in words, and we are tempted to leave that society in which none can fully know us and have sympathy in our joy, and wait in communion with Him who sees all and knows all, and accepts the silent homage of our hearts. Now, such tendency as this towards seclusion has manifested itself in time past, and it is seen to this day. We know it in the experience of those who are called Mystics, men of the German school like Tauler, men of the French school like Gerson. We see it in the seclusion of hermits, and monks, and nuns. But has the idea no force with us? We are social, but is it Christian or worldly sociality that we practise? Do we not seclude our religious life too much within ourselves? (D. J. Hamer.)
Brotherly kindness
I. The characteristics of brotherly love.
1. This love is based upon the evidence of a Christly character, and is prompted by love to Christ Himself. It is not the doctrine of a universal fraternity which the text inculcates, but brotherly love between the members of the body of Christ. This brotherly love rests primarily upon a character recognised and approved as the basis of fellowship; it is the love of a friend of Christ for another in whom also he discerns a friendship for, and a likeness to Christ. The profession of love to Christ is not enough to command this brotherly love. We do not then bestow this brotherly affection indiscriminately upon all who call themselves by the name of Christ. We must have evidence that they are His disciples. But, on the other hand, we may not withhold this love from any who show truly the spirit of Christ. The love of Christ will prompt to this. That love is the most potent of moral affinities. Not more surely does the magnet search out and draw to itself particles of steel in a heap of sand, than does the love of Christ in the heart draw to itself, by its sweet and potent magnetism, whatever has a real affinity for Christ. It is not an external and formal fellowship, not the spirit of sect or party, not alliance in a particular Church, which generates and feeds this love; but an inward affection for Christ Himself, which causes us to delight in whatever is like Christ or is pleasing to Christ. Our very love for Christ forbids that we should love as brethren those who do not, above all errors and faults, clearly evince their love for Him.
2. This brotherly love does not require in Christians an entire agreement in opinion or coincidence in practice.
3. This brotherly love does not forbid Christians to controvert the opinions or reprove the faults one of another.
4. True brotherly love does not require the same marks of outward consideration toward all Christians. This love is neither a vague sentimentalism nor a levelling radicalism.
II. The grounds or reasons of this mutual affection of the followers of Christ. We have seen that this brotherhood of believers is founded originally in their common relations to Christ. Descending now from this general survey, we may note more particularly--
1. That brotherly love is the only real bond of union in a Church of Christ. What is a Church? A body of professed believers in Christ, associated under a covenant for mutual watchfulness and help in the Christian life, and for maintaining the ordinances of the gospel. Its basis is a covenant. A covenant differs herein from a constitution. A constitution is a system of rules and principles for the government of persons united under it. But a covenant, as the term is used in Church affairs, is a solemn agreement between the members of a Church, that they will walk together according to the precepts of the gospel, in brotherly affection. Now it is obvious that this covenant cannot Stand one moment without love. Love is its essence; its vital element. In the normal structure of out churches, we have nothing to hold us together but the simple bond of love.
2. Brotherly love is the truest evidence of a regenerated and sanctified heart. The heart of man is by nature selfish and proud. It careth for its own things and not for the things of others. The gospel makes the soul and its interests paramount $o all temporal distinctions; it puts the spiritual infinitely above the physical; it honours character above all rank, and station, and wealth, and power; it honours all men as the offspring of God; and it looks upon the renewed man in Christ as the image of Christ, to be received and loved for His sake. One is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are brethren.
3. This law of Christian brotherhood declared by our Lord, not only secures to each and every disciple the same rights and privileges in His kingdom; it forbids any relation between Christians which is inconsistent with their absolute equality before Him, and their fraternal love for each other.
4. The fraternal love of Christians gives to the world the highest and most convincing proof of the reality and the power of Christian faith, and is the necessary condition for the advancement of Christianity in the world. For the spread of Christianity, therefore, it is not enough that we found schools and colleges, build churches, establish missions, multiply tracts and Bibles; all this apparatus is needed for the work; but they who would reform and save the world, must above all things have fervent charity among themselves.
III. How shall this love be developed and cherished?
1. Wherever this is possible, Christians must cultivate a familiar acquaintance with each other. How often a Church is rather an aggregation of independent units than the coalescing of congenial fervent hearts!
2. We must cherish brotherly love by dwelling in our thoughts and speech upon the excellences of brethren rather than upon their infirmities and defects. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Charity.--
Charity
We have now reached the last bead on this rosary of Christian graces. As the apostle uses it here, this love is the crown and consummate flower of all Christian excellence; the last result of discipline and self-culture, the very image of God.
I. charity is the sum of all duty to all men. We hear it urged--and there is a truth in the saying--we want less charity and more justice. Yes! but we want most the charity which is justice; the love which every man has a right to expect from us. You do not do your duty to anybody, however you may lavish gifts upon them, unless this Christ-like sentiment dwells in your hearts. The obligation has nothing whatever to do with the character of the object on which that ray is to fall. The sun is as much bound to shine upon a dunghill as upon a diamond. Our obligation to love our fellows has a far deeper source than the accidents of their character. Now let me remind you that all this is an intensely practical exhortation. People curl their lips at the fine words that Christian teachers talk about universal love, and say, Ah! a pretty sentiment. It does not mean anything. Well! let a man try for a week to live it, and the want of practicalness in the exhortation will be the last thing that he will complain of. Fine emotion is all very well, but even Niagara is going to be turned to practical use now-a-days, and made to work for its living. And all the rush of the deepest and purest emotion is nought unless it drives the wheels of life.
II. Notice how this same grace or virtue is represented as being attainable only as the outcome of godliness. There is only one thing that can conquer the selfishness which is the great enemy of this universal charity, and that is that the love of God poured into a mans heart shall on its bright waves float out the self-regard which is central and deep almost as life itself.
III. This grace is the last result of all Christian culture and virtue. The man that is simply righteous, strong, self-controlling, patient, has not yet touched the highest apex of possible development. All these cold and stern graces need to be lit up, like the snow of the glacier, with the gleam of this sweet, solemn light, in order that they may glitter with their serenest whiteness. Add to virtue, love; to knowledge, gentleness; to all the graces which regard our own self-development, the supreme consecration of the excellence that forgets itself, and stretches out loving hands, laden with tender sympathies and large gifts towards the weary, even if it be the hostile world. Further, this Divine charity, not only completes these sterner graces, but it needs them for its development and its perfecting. Our love to our fellows will never be noble, deep, Christlike, unless it be the child of severity to ourselves. And still further let me remind you that this wide, expansive, all-comprehending charity is the child of an intensely personal faith. It is when the love of Christ to me dawns on my heart that I am brought to the broad charity that grasps all the men whom Christ has grasped, and can-not but love in its poor measure, them whom He so much loved that He died for them. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Of brotherly kindness and charity
I. The principle itself is easily understood, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. The proper expressions of this inward good affection in the mind are as various as the necessities of mankind, and the abilities and opportunities of others to relieve them. To instruct the ignorant, to reclaim the disobedient, to convert sinners, to strengthen the weak, comfort the feeble-minded, to encourage the sincere; these are the noblest offices we can possibly perform to our brethren, because they serve the highest ends, and produce the best and most lasting effects. But, besides these offices of charity, there are others enjoined by the natural law of benevolence, and which the gospel, so far from overlooking, peculiarly enforces. The wise and sovereign providence of God has so ordered that there is a diversity in the state of men; some are indigent, others in a capacity of relieving. In all these, and other cases of a like nature, reason and a compassionate heart will readily suggest to a man how he ought to show his charity.
II. The obligations we are under to the practice of this excellent duty.
1. And the first thing I shall mention is taken from the consideration of ourselves. Let any one look into the workings of his own heart when a pitiable object is presented to him, and try whether he does not feel something within which calls him to stretch forth his hand for the relief of the distressed? if it is not with violence to himself that he can harden his heart, and hide himself from human misery? The greater ability, therefore, which Divine providence gives any man of diffusing the effects of his virtue far and wide by relieving multitudes of his fellow-creatures, the larger occasion he has of enjoying the purest pleasure, even like that of God Himself, whose happiness is in communicating good, for the absolute perfection of His nature raises Him above the possibility of receiving any.
2. Another obligation to the practice of brotherly kindness and charity arises from the object of it, our brethren and neighbours, their condition, and the relation we stand in to them. Do we acknowledge God the Author of our being? He is equally the Author of theirs, which should inspire us with tender compassion towards each other. But the Christian religion has super-added special obligations to those general ones which the common ties of humanity lay upon us, by establishing a new and intimate relation among the disciples of Christ.
3. In the third place, we are, with respect to God, under great and indispensable obligations to the exercise of brotherly kindness and charity. This is clearly insinuated in the text, for the apostle exhorts us to add charity to godliness. The principles of the fear and love of God will naturally determine us to exercise good-will and beneficence to our brethren. (J. Abernethy, M. A.)
Charity
We are now got to the roof of this spiritual house, charity. This is the highest round of the ladder: there be eight steps, this is the uppermost, as nearest to heaven.
I. The motives to charity.
1. The necessity of it--
(1) In respect of God. He charges us with it, both in the law and in the gospel (Lev_19:18; Joh_13:34).
(2) In respect of thyself. Things of greatest use should be of greatest estimation. Thou wouldst know if thou breathest, Christian; the sign of it is thy charity. This is the pulse of faith (Jam_2:18).
2. The dignity of it. It is a royal office; yea, a Divine practice. Mercy and charity is the sole work communicable to man with God. The Lord is content to acknowledge Himself the charitable mans debtor (Pro_19:17).
3. The commodity of it. It secureth all, increaseth all, blesseth all.
4. The danger of neglecting it (Mat_25:41-43; Pro_21:13; Jam_2:13).
II. The materials wherein this external and practical part of charity consists.
1. Who must give charitably (1Ti_6:17; Luk_12:21; 1Ti_6:18; 2Co_8:12; Eph_4:28; Luk_3:11).
2. What must be given: not words, but deeds; a charitable heart hath a helpful hand.
3. To whom extends our charity: this munificent part of it to the poor (Luk_14:13-14; Luk_6:33).
4. Whereof must we give: not evil-gotten things, but our own. When the oppressor hath built his almshouse, and hopes by his perfunctory devotions to be admitted to heaven, the curses of the undone wretches knock him down to hell.
5. How we must give--
(1) Cheerfully.
(2) Discreetly.
(3) With a right intention; for Gods glory, not thine.
(4) Opportunely. The more delay in giving, the less honour in the gift.
(5) Before giving thy goods to the poor, give thyself to God. (Thos. Adams.)
Charity
I. The place charity occupies. It is brought forward last in our text, not as being in itself independent of, and in order of time, subsequent to those which the apostle has before recounted; but it is exalted, because of its power to keep in unison all the other graces, as the knot completes and holds together the garland. The regenerate soul loves God in the first pulsations of his new-found spiritual life; and gratitude to the Redeemer who has bought him, prompts, early and continually, all his acts of obedience to God, and all his acts of kindly service to his fellow-man. But how is it related to, and distinguished from brotherly kindness? Whilst the latter regards mainly the principle of fraternal obligation to human nature, the former finds its chiefest scope and its highest object, in the filial ties binding man to his Father and God. The love of God subordinates and regulates all the outgoings of attachment in the renewed heart.
II. We must now discuss the true nature of Christian charity, as distinguished from the semblances that usurp wrongfully its titles and honours. It is not, then, as the popular usage of the word would often make it--bare almsgiving. Neither is this grace a mere magnanimous disregard of all doctrinal variances, and a baseless assurance that all forms of faith are, if sincere, equally acceptable to God. No: the charity of the Scriptures loves the true God; and as He is the God of Truth, it loves, ardently and without compromise, His truth, unmitigated and unadulterated. Nor is evangelical charity connivance with sin. Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him, but in any wise rebuke it, said the law. Charity rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth, is Pauls language in his matchless portraiture of this grace. And, as in the nature of God, love to truth and holiness, is an attribute, having as its opposite pole, hatred to falsehood and unholiness; so, in each other true servant of God, the love of piety is necessarily detestation of impiety, and hatred for the workers of iniquity--not indeed detesta tion of their persons and souls, but of their practices, and principles, and influences. For the charity of the Scriptures is, first, love to God, the Creator and Source of all goodness--to the good amongst men, as bearing His regenerate image--and to the evil of our race it is a charity, that seeks to reclaim and restore.
III. And now let us dwell upon some of the fruits which Christian charity might and should display in the field of human society. Its root is, then, in another world. It is, first, filial towards God; and then fraternal towards man as the creature of God. (W. R. Williams.)
Charity
Christianity inculcates charity, universal love. This religion of Jesus implies a love that is unrestricted in its exercise, but the implication lies a little farther from the surface than that which teaches social feeling among Christians themselves. You cannot conceive of a man who loves Christ not having the impulse to exercise kindness of feeling towards those who hold the Same precious faith and promises with himself. Fellowship, more or less close, is implied in the very nature of the case. But you can conceive of a man who has strong feelings of brotherly kindness, and, in one sense, because such feelings are strong within him, not expanding his love to include those who are not one with him in matters of faith. Conceive of such a thing, did I say? The possibility has become a fact over and over again. Think of the market-place at Smithfield, where Protestants and Romanists were burnt as each adverse party came into power; and why all this? Was it not because men had brotherly kindness of so strange and strong a kind, that they had no charity at all? We see it in all regions of thought. In politics men are banded into cliques and parties, and because of the very strength of the bonds that hold them together, they find it hard to exercise charity towards opponents. Even in the cold region of philosophy, where there is so much that is abstract, so much that seems unfruitful and uneventful, any acquaintance with the history of the rise and growth of rival schools will remind us that fierce persecution-spirit has not been wanting. As we see this lack of charity manifesting itself in every branch of thought, we need not be surprised that, and in this matter of religion, we find sectarianism rampant, and charity lacking. I have said that the inference from the genius of Christianity is universal love, but that it is not so obtrusive, not so readily reached, as the duty of brotherly kindness. It shows itself clearly, though, after a little thought. It springs from the fact that Christianity is a religion for the whole earth, and that it teaches us how to strike away all that is accidental in the condition and surroundings of men, and to find under these outward differences of nation and caste, of position and intellect, the heart that throbs with the same passionate impulse as our own. The gospel of Jesus Christ proclaims its mission to be to unite once more all the children of men into one Divine family. Now the fact that charity and love for all men, irrespective of class, or creed, or circumstance, love for them because they are men, created and redeemed by the one God and Father of us all, is so rarely and so imperfectly exercised, presents itself as something for which we should be able to account. Not to excuse it, but to find out the reason of it. Persecution, in its most virulent, in its fiercest form, has well-nigh disappeared now-a-days. But are there not three kinds of relation in which we may stand to men: one of active opposition, one of neglect and apathy, one of active sympathy and hearty co-operation? We may in some measure have shifted from the first to the second in our dealing with those who do not agree with our system of thought, and belief, and action, but that we have not advanced to the third is an unquestionable fact. I do not plead for sympathy with error and sin, but this I say--that we shall be striving after imitation of God Himself if we still love the sinner and the wanderer, not because of, but in spite of their being such, and try to reclaim them from that which has a tendency to interrupt our charity in its full, free, Divine flow. A man with any spark of enthusiasm about him, a man of strong conviction, having settled views of truth, is, by the very force of his own nature, made impatient of dissidence and contradiction. He thinks that all men ought to see with his eyes, and to speak with his tongue. It seems then to follow from this, that the more that intelligent holding of Christian truth obtains among men, the more difficult will the exercise of this grace of charity become! The exercise of charity, universal love, demands an effort; so does everything that is worth having; and this is perhaps the highest form of religious feeling to which we can aspire. Retaining our own moral convictions, not sacrificing our individualism of nature, to look abroad upon others, who, conscientiously as ourselves, have laboured their way towards the attainment of the truth, and, as the result, see it in a different light, and speak of it in a different language--to look abroad upon all these, and love them. Heavens light shines down upon the world, and some things cast up the red ray, others the green, others the blue, or yellow. Let them not become bitter one against the other, because individuality so asserts itself. It is the same holy light, it touches them, they live in it. Let them rejoice and love one another. (D. J. Hamer.)
Charity
I. Its essential elements and conditions.
1. As an essential element of this love there must be the full recognition of a common humanity in all men, whatever their country, their colour, their language, their birth, or their condition.
2. But the doctrine goes farther, and recognises in all mankind not only the brotherhood of a common physical descent and of like physical characteristics, but a higher relationship as the common offspring of God.
3. And hence again, this love for man which the gospel enjoins, must flow primarily from love to God.
4. The Scriptures always trace this love to a renovated heart.
II. Its practical sphere and effects.
1. We may trace the practical working of this spirit, in charity for the opinions of others in matters of religion.
2. Another application of this law of love is to the faults of others.
3. This spirit of love should be viewed in its application to the necessities of our fellowmen.
4. This spirit of love will prompt also to all wise and beneficent measures of philanthropy and reform.
III. Hindrances to its expression.
1. These hindrances lie in the want of consideration. A candid allowance for the circumstances of others would almost always mitigate that severity of judgment which fastens upon the outward act, or makes one an offender for a word.
2. In the want of intercourse. If travel enlarges the mind, it expands the heart also to a kindlier judgment of men, and sympathy toward them.
3. In some lurking selfishness, which invents excuses for not loving others.
IV. The methods of developing this affection.
1. By rightly estimating its power. Power does not lie in noisy demonstration or in visible force. The power that again melts down these barriers and unlocks the frozen earth, can you hear that, though it makes the trees clap their hands and wakes all the birds to song? And can you hear love; or weigh it, or measure it? But in that little word lies a power greater than philosophy, diplomacy, or arms, to rule and mould the world.
2. By the constant and studious practice of love.
3. By elevated communion with God. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him. And so we are urged to cultivate this love.
4. By its own dignity and blessedness. The Scriptures place love before all things, in the enumeration of Christian graces. Charity never faileth. (Joseph P. Thompson.)
Charity
I. The glory of love. We might conclude its surpassing glory from its position in the exhortation. By a sort of spiritual rhetoric it is the word of the climax. It is love which, like the sunlight, giving the landscape its sublimest glories, transfiguring it with something like the lustre of the golden city, gives to all the landscape of character if.s beauty. It is love which, like the Shekinah that glorified the temple, alone glorifies the structure of a character built on faith, and consisting of virtue, temperance, etc., is an empty shrine till it glows there. It is love that crowns manhood.
II. The power of love. It is--
1. The spring of a true character. Supplying the constant and sufficient motive to lead men to live the right life. It is--
2. The sign of a true character. As in their search for nightingales, controversial naturalists discover them by their song, so in their search for Christians, men discover them by their deeds and life of love. It is--
3. The sceptre of a true character. We conquer by love.
III. The duty to love.
IV. The way to love. How can this glory be attained, this power exercised, this duty discharged?
1. Cherish lovingness. Banish pride, malignity, envy, uncharitableness.
2. Exercise love.
3. Have fellowship with Christ. (U. R. Thomas.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v5 Chapter 20
Chapter 20
WHO SHALL ASCEND INTO THE HILL OF THE LORD?
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2Pe_1:5-11
THE Apostle has just set forth in all their fullness the riches of Divine grace: the precious faith, followed by the bestowal of all helps toward life and godliness, and with the large promises of God to rely on for the future, promises whereby those who seek to renounce the things which are not of the Father, but of the world, may become partakers of the Divine nature. These blessings are assured, are in store, but only for those who manifest a desire to receive them. How this desire shall be shown, how it shall constantly grow stronger and be ever fulfilling, until it attain perfect fruition in Christs eternal kingdom, is the next instruction. "Yea, and for this very cause adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue." The plenteousness of the Divine bounty is proclaimed that it may evoke an earnest response from all who receive it. What shall I render unto the Lord for all the benefits which He hath done, and is doing, unto me? is to be the hearts cry of the feeblest of Gods saints. For the boundless Ocean of grace asks that there should be mingled with it some drops of human duty. God will heal the bite of the serpents in the wilderness, but to gain the blessing the wounded ones, even in their suffering, must turn their eyes to the appointed symbol of healing. Christs power will cure ten lepers, but He first sends them away to do their little in the path of obedience: "Go, show yourselves to the priest." Thus the Apostles exhortation here, "Adding on your part all diligence." The diligence of which he speaks is that sort of endeavor which springs from a sense of duty: an earnest zeal and will to accomplish whatever it finds to do; that does not linger till some great work offers, but hastens to labor in the immediate present. This is the spirit in which Christian advance will be made. And the lines on which such progress will go he now describes as though each new step were evolved from, and were a natural development of, that which preceded it. The faith which the Christian holds fast is the gift of God, and it contains the germs of every grace that can follow. These the believer is to foster with diligence.
St. Peter begins his scale of graces thus: "In your faith supply virtue." Here virtue means the best development of such power as a man possesses. It may be little or great, but in its kind it is to be made excellent. And here it is that the Christian workers in every sphere must surpass others. They work from a higher motive. What they do is a constant attestation of their faith, is done as in Gods sight, and in the confidence that in every act it is possible to give Him glory. There can be no carelessness in such lives, for they are filled with a sense of responsibility, which is the first fruit of a living faith. And in St. Peters figurative word the believer is said to supply each grace in turn because he contributes by his careful walk to wake it into life, to make it active, and let it shine as a light before men. "And in your virtue knowledge," he continues. For, with duty rightly done, there comes illumination over the path of life: men understand more of Gods dealings, and hence bring their lives into closer harmony with His will. And we have Christs own assurance, "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall know of the teaching". {Joh_7:17} And the same is true not only of the Lords own lessons, but of all the promptings of the Spirit in mens hearts. If they hearken to the voice which whispers, "This is the way," it will become at every stage plainer, and there will be shown to them not only the how, but the wherefore.
"And in your knowledge temperance." There is a knowledge which puffeth up, giving not humility, which is the fruit of true knowledge, but self-conceit. Of the evil effects thereof the Apostle knew much. Out of it grew extravagance in thought, and word, and action; and its mischief was threatening the infant Churches. Against it the temperance which he commends is to be the safeguard, and it is a virtue which can be manifested in all things. He who possesses it has conquered himself, and has won his way thus to stability of mind and consistency of conduct. "His heart is fixed, trusting in the Lord," and so he can go forward to the Apostles next stage of the heavenward journey: "And in your temperance patience." This is the true sequence of spiritual self-control. Life is sure to supply for the godly man trials in abundance. But he is daily striving to die unto the world. The effort fixes his mind firmly on the Divine purposes, and lifts him above the circumstances of time. He is a pilgrim and sojourner amidst them, but is in no bondage to them, nor will he be moved, even by great afflictions, to waver in his trust. He can look on, as seeing Him that is invisible, and can persevere without being unduly cast down.
"And in your patience godliness." The mystery of godliness-that is, Godlikeness-was made known by the Incarnation. The Son of God became man, that men might through Him be made sons of God. And godliness in the present world is Christ made manifest in the lives of His servants. Toward this imitation of Christ the believer will aspire through his patience. He takes up the dross and bears it after his Master, and thus begins his discipleship, of which the communion with Christ waxes more intimate day by day. Such was the godliness of St. Paul. It was because he had followed the Lord in all that He would have him to do that the Apostle was bold to exhort the Corinthians, "Be ye imitators of me"; but he adds at once, "as I am of Christ". {1Co_11:1} And when he sends Timothy to recall his teaching to their minds he says, "He shall put you in remembrance of my ways which are in Christ." By such a walk with Christ His servants are helped forward towards the fulfillment of the two tables of the moral law, to which St. Peter alludes in his next words: "And in your godliness love of the brethren; and in your love of the brethren love." The last-named love (αγαπη) is that highest love, the love of God to men, which is set up as the grand ideal towards which His servants are constantly to press forward; but from this the love of the brethren cannot be severed; nay, it must be made the stepping-stone unto it. For, as another Apostle says, "he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, cannot love God, whom he hath not seen". {1Jn_4:20} But love of the brethren is not to be narrowed, in the verse before us, or elsewhere, to love of those who are already known to the Churches as brethren in the Lord. The Gospel of Christ knows no such limits. The commission of the Master was, "Go ye forth into all the world." All mankind are to be won for Him; all are embraced in the name of brethren. For if they be not so now, it is our bounden duty to endeavor that they shall be so. And in thus interpreting we have the mind of Christ with us, who came to seek and to save them that were lost, to die for the sins of the whole world, and who found His brethren among every class who would hear His words and obey them. We have with us, too, the acts of God Himself, who would have all men come to the knowledge of the truth, and who, with impartial love, maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth His rain upon the just and the unjust, that thus even the evil and unjust may be won to own His Fatherhood. Such Divine love is the end of the commandment, {1Ti_1:5} and terminates the list of those graces the steps whereto St. Paul has more briefly indicated when he says the love which is most like Gods springs from a pure heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned. In this way shall men be borne upward into the hill of the Lord.
The knowledge of Christ is a lesson in which we cannot be perfected till we behold Him as He is, but yet through it from the first we receive the earnest and pledge of all that is meant by life and godliness, and the culture of the Divine gifts, will yield a rich increase of the same knowledge. "For if these things are yours and abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ." Men in this life can draw nearer unto this full knowledge, and the bliss of each new gain prompts to more zealous exertion. There can be no relaxation of effort, no remissness, in such a quest. For hope is fostered by the constant experience of a deepening knowledge, and receives continual pledges that the glory to be revealed is far above what is already known. The enlightened vision grows wider and ampler; and the path, which began in faith, shineth more and more unto the perfect day. The world offers other lights to its votaries, but they lead only into darkness. "For he that lacketh these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the cleansing from his old sins." He who has taken no heed to foster within him the light which is kindled by faith, and which can only be kept alive by the grace of the Divine Spirit, is blind-yea, blind indeed, for he is self-blinded. He has quenched the inward light which was of Gods free gift, and made the light within him to be darkness, a darkness, like Egypts, which may be felt. Such a man has no insight into the glories of the celestial vision, no joy of the widening prospect which captivates the gaze of the spiritual man. He can see only things close at hand, and is as one bowed downward to the earth, groping a dreary way, with neither hope nor exaltation at the end. For he has forgotten-nay, St. Peters words are stronger and very striking-ληθην λαβων-he has taken hold upon forgetfulness, made a deliberate choice of that course which obliterates all remembrance of Gods initial gift of grace to cleanse him from his old sins. Unmindful of this purification, he has admitted into the dwelling where the Spirit of God would have made a home other spirits more wicked than those first cast out. They have entered in, and dwell there. There is a marked contrast between this expression and the word used for Gods gift of faith (2Pe_1:1). That a man receives (λαχων) as the bounty of his Lords love; and if treasured and used, it proves itself the light of life for this world and the next. The wrong path he chooses for himself (λαβων), and its close is the blackness of the dark.
"Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure." "Wherefore, brethren"-because such terrible blindness as this has fallen upon some, who left their first grace unimproved and allowed even the memory of it to fade away-do you give the more diligence in your religious life. The true way to banish evil is to multiply good, leaving neither room nor time for bad things to spread themselves. When the peril of such things is round about you, it is no time for relaxed effort. Your enemy never relaxes his. He is always active, seeking whom he may devour, and employs not the day only, but the night, when men sleep, to sow his tares. Let him find you ever watchful, ever diligent to hold fast and make abundant the gifts which God has already bestowed upon you. In the foreknowledge of the Father, you are elect from the foundation of the world; and your call is attested by the injunction laid upon you, "Ye shall be holy, for I am holy." Your inheritance is in store where nothing can assail it. God only asks that you should manifest a wish, a longing, for His blessings; and He will pour them richly upon you. He has made you of a loftier mould than the inanimate and irrational creation. The flower turns to the sun by a law which it cannot resist. From the Sun of righteousness men can turn away. But the Fathers will is that your eyes should be set on the hope which He offers. Then of a certainty it will be realized. Lift up your eyes to the eternal hills, for from thence your help will come. The promise is sure. Strive to keep your hope equally steadfast. For now you belong to the household of Christ; now you are through Him children of the heavenly Father; to this sonship you are elect and have been called, and to it you shall attain if you hold fast your boldness and the glorying of your hope unto the end.
"For if ye do these things, ye shall never stumble." The way will be hard, and may be long, the obstacles in your path many and rugged, heaped up by the prince of this world to bar you from advancing and make you fainthearted; but down into there a ray which shall illumine the darkness and make clear for you the steps in which you ought to tread, and the rod and staff of Gods might will support and comfort you.
"For thus shall be richly supplied unto you the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." In his first words in this passage the Apostle exhorted the believers to supply something, as it were, of their own towards their spiritual advancement; but when the demand was fully understood, behold God had made ready the means for doing everything which was asked for! Within the precious faith which He bestowed was enfolded the potentiality of every other grace. There they lay, as seeds in a seed-plot. All that men were bidden to do was to give them culture. Then Gods Spirit would operate as the generous sunshine, and cause each hidden power to unfold itself in its time and bloom into beauty and strength. In this verse the Divine assistance is more clearly promised. What men bestow shall be returned unto them manifold. Do your diligence, says the Apostle, and there shall be supplied unto you from the rich stores of God all that can help you forward in your heavenward journey. The kingdom of God shall begin for you while you are passing through this present life. For it can be set up within you. It has been prepared from all eternity in heaven, and will be enjoyed in full fruition when this life is ended. But it is a state, and not a place. The entrance thereto is opened here. The believer is beckoned into it; and with enraptured soul he enjoys through faith a foretaste of the things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor heart of man conceived, the things which God has prepared for them that love Him. Over those joys Christ is King, but He is also the door; and those who enter through Him shall go in and out, and shall surely find pasture, even life for evermore.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv5–9 5–8. Yea, and for this very cause. Because God…
5–8. Yea, and for this very cause. Because God has called you with precious promises. What God has done calls on us to do our part. All diligence. No exertion must be spared. There must be the fullest co-operation with God. In your faith supply virtue. The Common Version is wrong. Faith is the basis of the Christian life and all are expected to possess it, but out of it must grow other excellencies. Virtue. Moral courage, the natural fruit of a trusting faith in God. Knowledge. The moral heroism must be guided by knowledge or it will run into “a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge.”
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v5 2Pe_1:5. Beside this.—“Yea, and for this very cause,” “on…
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
2Pe_1:5. Beside this.—“Yea, and for this very cause,” “on this very account.” Diligence.—Or earnestness; putting heart into effort. Add.—Better as R.V., “in your faith supply.” Adding to is not the idea of the Greek. “Each element of the Christian life is to be as an instrument by which that which follows is wrought out.” Knowledge.—Here, “moral discernment.”
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2Pe_1:6. Temperance.—General self-management. Patience.—As self-control in temper. Godliness.—The right tone on all conduct; or it may mean, as it certainly includes, right disposition towards God.
2Pe_1:7. Charity.—τὴν ἀγάπην, general and universal love for men as men.
2Pe_1:8. Barren, etc.—ἀργοὺς, idle, not using effort; ἀκάρπους, not attaining results. Knowledge.—See 2Pe_1:2-3.
2Pe_1:9. Blind.—Self-blinded, closing his eyes to the light. μυωπάζων, contracting the eyelids, as one who cannot see clearly. Was purged.—And therefore stands pledged to the new life.
2Pe_1:10. Never fall.—Better, “stumble.” A step short of falling. “The man who has acquired these graces has his path freed from many stumbling-blocks, and his vision cleared to see and avoid the rest.”
2Pe_1:11. Ends the first main section of the epistle.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—2Pe_1:5-11
2Pe_1:5-9. The Proper Response to Christian Privilege.—The apostle has been reminding his readers of the Christian promises and privileges. Such reminders are always the basis on which is laid some earnest call to duty. In 2Pe_1:5, the apostle says, “beside this”; or better, “on this very account.” R.V. “Yea, and for this very cause.” Because of the promises and privileges, you should give diligent attention to making a worthy response in spiritual growth. Growth in Christian life is the prominent point of the teaching of this epistle. Perhaps St. Peter felt that his Christian life had witnessed a very remarkable growth, and that in this he was an ensample to the believers. He seems to sum up what he would most anxiously impress in the closing words of this epistle: “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.” The R.V. helps to the proper understanding of this passage. It is not “Add to your faith virtue,” but “With your faith supply virtue.” Do not be content with any one Christian grace, and do not exaggerate the importance of any one, but try to nourish harmoniously the complete, all-round Christian life and character. It is as if St. Peter had said, “You will surely find that each grace gained helps you to gain the other graces; and that every new grace, or improved grace, improves, and helps to perfection the other graces.” The proper response for us to make to promise, and privilege, and indeed to our own pledge, is precisely this all-round and harmonious growth in Christian graces. What things are necessary, then, to the proper making up of the Christian character, and the Christian life?
1. Faith is pre-supposed; both as the belief which is the beginning of right relations with Christ, and as the daily faith or trust, which is very breath of the Christian life. A Christian only lives so long as he keeps his trust.
2. Virtue. Not purity, or chastity, which is a later association with the term. In Pagan ages virtue meant valour, courage; and this, filled with the Christian spirit, is the firmness, conscious strength, and good cheer, that come of firm, established Christian principle. It is really moral stability which brings a sense of sufficiency for every good work. This virtue led St. Paul to say, “I can do all things in Him who strengtheneth me.”
3. Knowledge. Apostles never exaggerate, as we are apt to do, the importance of mere head-knowledge. But it is quite as true that they urge with much earnestness the intelligent apprehension of revealed truth. The more practical form of knowledge is, however, most prominent in their minds; it is the “wisdom” of the Book of Proverbs, which means “moral discernment,” cultured skill in the actual ordering and ruling of our lives. Knowing how to behave ourselves in the house of God, and everywhere else. Not mere head-knowledge, but what may properly be called life-knowledge, the basis of good self-ruling.
4. Temperance. Not mere abstention from anything, drink or lust; but wise management of self, so that there never shall be any excess. The power to strike the “happy mean” always. The skill that keeps from any form of excitement that tends to put us off our balance, and make us lose our self-control. Abstinence may be the best thing under given circumstances, but it is not the absolutely best thing. To use without abusing is altogether nobler than not to use at all. The saintly man is not the man who gets away from the world, but the man who, staying in the world, is not of it; never lets it master him.
5. Patience. Christian patience is waiting, but it is much more than waiting; it is endurance, which means a waiting that involves strain and trial. It is bearing a burden while you wait. It is that spirit which is only attained when life is apprehended as a sphere of moral discipline, the methods of which cannot now be fully understood, but the issues of which are absolutely assured, and the conduct of which is wholly in all-wise and all-loving hands.
6. Godliness. Better seen as God-likeness. Then it can at once be apprehended that, if it is to be something really practical, it must be likeness to “God manifest in the flesh.” It must be the persistent endeavour to fashion our lives after the Christ-pattern, not by way of any mere servile imitation of incidents or actions, but in a noble way of giving sway and influence to the same principles, and motives. And to ensure “God-likeness” involves the deepest interest in the human life of the Lord Jesus, and such near fellowship with Him that we readily change into His image.
7. Brotherliness. “Love of the brethren.” The power and the skill that may enable us to fix and arrange all our human relationships aright, and keep them right. There may be a direct reference to our relations with those who have like precious faith with us; our brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus.
8. Charity. R.V. “love.” It may be doubted whether we can wisely lose the word “charity,” which, for Bible readers, does not mean “almsgiving,” but “considerate helpfulness of one another.” And we want a word to express that, which is one of the essential features of the Christly life. Charity expresses the “beautiful” in Christian relations, as no other word can do. If the very close relations between these things be observed, it will be fully recognised that the getting of any one of them becomes a direct help to the gaining of the others. They are links of a chain, and if one link be drawn close, the others will surely be drawn nearer. The truth to present forcibly is, that Christian character is a whole. You see it is when you see it perfectly presented in Christ. We can never be satisfied with our own characters while the possible whole is unrealised. We can never be satisfied with one-sided and imperfect developments in those to whom we minister in Christ’s name. We must desire their all-round and harmonious growth. And the grace is at our command for nourishing in ourselves, and in others, that all-round growth.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
2Pe_1:10. Making Sure our Calling.—The doctrines of predestination, Divine grace, and effectual calling, have a strong basis in human conviction. Whatever his forms of belief may be, every saved man cherishes the assurance that he was called of God, and led to make choice of God. There are two factors in human redemption: the moving of Divine grace toward us, the response of our hearts to it; and both are essential. The order of the words “calling and election” is not our usual order. We say “election and calling” (Rom_8:29-30). St. Peter may have meant by “election,” here, man’s act of choice. Then he may be representing Christian hope on both its sides: God’s calling and man’s choosing.
I. Our calling and election needs to be made sure.—Not to God. It does need to be realised by ourselves, and demonstrated to others. There is a great difference in individuals as regards Christian assurance. Some have no confidence throughout their lives. Assurance partly depends on natural disposition, partly on surrounding circumstances and influences. Religious experience is too living a thing to be squared to any system. The kind of relation that health bears to the work and pleasure of life, an assured interest in Christ bears to our Christian living and labouring. The assurance of our calling bears directly—
1. On the activity of Christian life. “Not barren or idle,” as ground bringing forth nothing. Illustration: Conviction of call on the old prophets made them active. Noah kept busy at his Ark under the power of strong convictions. St. Paul says, “Woe is me if I preach not the gospel;” “Now, then, we are ambassadors for Christ.” In him was a noble restlessness of activity, based on strong conviction.
2. On the fruitfulness of the Christian life. “Nor unfruitful.” “Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.” Fruitage of Christian knowledge. Real rooting in Christ is never afraid of growing in knowledge. There is sometimes more attention given to rooting than to fruiting; then the religious life is apt to weaken into mere sentiment.
3. On the hopefulness of Christian life. They that fail are “blind”—cannot see afar off. Plain human vision can see little beyond this present life. Strong confidence gets us upon the Delectable Mountains, and helps us to hold the telescope, and see visions of the far-away. Much of the joy of Christian living depends on the hopefulness which pierces into the future.
4. On the responsibility of Christian life. “Forgotten that he was purged.” If a man is purged, it is manifestly as a preparation for a clean, new life. “Ye are washed, ye are sanctified.” Life gains its full responsibility as the sphere in which Christ can be glorified, when we can say, “I am a purged, washed, redeemed man.”
5. On the security of the Christian life. “Shall never fall.” Illustrate from experience of Christian ministers. God’s call is just what keeps them from despair in the strain-times of life. There are similar experiences in private life.
6. On the final triumph of Christian life. “So an entrance ministered abundantly.” A most unworthy feeling sometimes gets possession of Christian professors. They think they may get at last just inside the gate; satisfied with being “almost saved,” “saved so as by fire,” “scarcely saved.” Holy Scripture never encourages such feelings, because they usually represent a false humility. It urges us rather to aim at getting right close up to the throne. The Christian ought to go into heaven as a ship enters harbour after voyage, with yards manned, and flags hanging along every rope. If it be so important that we should have and keep a well-grounded hope, the question remains—
II. How can the assurance of our calling and election be maintained?—“Give diligence.” It is a matter requiring active pursuit. We must not idly wait for some Divine impressions. God’s witness comes to workers. Yet we may pursue it wrongly. We shall
(1) if we fall back on past experience; or
(2) if we merely nourish religious feelings. The true direction is given by St. Peter (2Pe_1:5-7). These terms describe growth—the growth which is the sure sign of life. Plant: its life is shown by its growing. Child: its health and vigour are evidenced by its growing.
1. True assurance comes out of growth in godly character. One grace is to be added to another. A lower grace is to rise and be developed into a higher.
2. True assurance comes out of growth in practical godly living. Ever more complete subjection of all life to the sway of holy principle. Ever holding more and more of life under godly control. Up to the light you have, follow on, and you will find that, as you grow, assurance grows; you will “keep your calling and election sure.”
2Pe_1:10-11. Christian Diligence.—How eagerly we catch the last words of dying friends! In the fourteenth verse of this chapter St. Peter says, “Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.” The warm-hearted apostle, who through good and evil report had faithfully preached the gospel for many years, and had led very many souls to peace and joy, was about to enter within that veil which hides the “great majority” from mortal sight, and to join the “spirits of just men made perfect” in their eternal rest. With such a change at hand, it is no wonder that such an earnest and loving entreaty runs through this epistle. With the last moments of his life he strove to minister to the saints by stirring them up with the holy reminiscences of the past. What a worthy termination to the life of one who had left all things to follow the Master! Let the thought that our text formed a part of the last message St. Peter delivered to the Church, influence us to give the more earnest heed to his words. The expansion of the Christian virtues forms a part of the exhortation. We have a chain of eight links to forge. “And besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.” Out of the Christian temper these holy virtues grow, but their cultivation requires diligence. Our text is a resumption of the passage under another figure—that of entering service, and perseverance in duty. This duty is stimulated by the twofold promise of present safety and future glory.
I. The duty which is enjoined.—“Give diligence to make your calling and election sure.” Negligence would have endangered the safety of their position. They were in possession, and they were exhorted to conserve every blessing and maintain a good profession. The subject has two branches, indicating two important steps in the experience of the saints.
1. Your calling. This word is frequently used by St. Paul. “I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called” (Eph_4:1). It is by invitation we enter the service of Jesus Christ. “Wherefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.” The source of the invitation is Divine,—“For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” Two things are implied: the gracious invitation of the gospel, and the willing acceptance of it by us. Let us seize on these important points, that we may fully realise our calling. The gospel is a call from God. We have turned every one to his own way, and have forsaken the way of peace. Notwithstanding our apostasy, the gracious Lord has stretched forth His hands to a stiff-necked and a gainsaying people. The first step in redemption is from the throne: the rebels are asked to return and sue for peace. Under the old Dispensation the proclamation ran: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is none else.” Under the Christian dispensation the proclamation was renewed and intensified: “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” The mission of Jesus was not only to declare the merciful nature of God, but also to use every legitimate means to induce the sinner to seek God’s favour. The Advent brought in a life more replete than any other, which embodied all the elements of influence and attraction. The Ambassador of peace sought, by a full exposition of the terms of mercy, to influence sinners to accept their salvation. The parable of precept; by example and deed, yea, and by suffering and death, our blessed Lord put forth the invitation. His first great work was to seek the lost, to bring the offer of redemption home to the heart and conscience of man. The gospel is that representation, and its ministers are the ambassadors who cry, “Hear His voice, and harden not your hearts as in the day of provocation.” The sum and substance of their mission is contained in the memorable words of St. Paul: “Be ye reconciled to God.” But this is not all; we are called into the service of God, which is a course of life in harmony with the call. To accept the invitation is to make the life of Christ our example. We are called to repentance, to faith, to prayer, to holiness, and to service. The first response of the penitent is: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” Those who accept the invitation engage to enter the service of Christ, and give Him their time, talent, and substance. This is our calling.
2. Your election. The term “election” in the writings of St. Paul generally means the pre-determination of God to save mankind through Jesus Christ. But St. Peter, in the text, uses the word in the sense of “acceptance.” It is simply an extension of the meaning which the word “calling” contains. The servant is chosen, or approved of, after a trial of his services. This is a step forward. The first step is taken in answer to the sovereign will of God, through His mercy by Jesus Christ; but the second step is a movement in our own soul. The new birth is exhibited by the life which follows it. The new heart circulates the vital element through the whole man.
3. Such a station demands diligence. We do not at once ascend to the higher grade of faith, but must work out our salvation through fear and trembling. The climax of Christian experience is reached by a persistent effort of holy living. Diligence in the study of God’s Word will bring the assurance of truth. Diligence in following the example of Christ will give a conscience void of offence. Diligence in the spiritual exercise of communion with God will give the evidence of the Spirit, testifying with our spirits that we are the children of God. Diligence in loving efforts to establish the kingdom of Christ in this world will bring the assurance of service. Every step forward brings us nearer the promised land. The higher objects of the Divine life are attainable, not by spasmodic effort, but by faithfulness to trust. The cross comes before the crown, and labour before rest. The example of Jesus will lead us onward and upward, until we reach the highest point in holiness and consecration. Let us lay aside every hindrance to run with patience the race set before us. The certainty that “if ye do these things ye shall never fall,” stimulates action, for all the steps of faith are firm, and all the aspirations of hope are sure. There never will be any unfaithfulness in the Master; He will not discharge His faithful servants. If we are true to our Father’s faith till death, we shall maintain the course, and get the crown. Those who have put their hand to the plough must not look back. It is by looking forward we make the straight furrow. Those who are in the fold will share its blessings world without end. They will never fall into unbelief or temptation, but will stand, firmly fixed on the Rock of Ages.
II. The prospect which cheers.—In looking upward there is to be seen the object for which all labour, and its possession.
1. Everlasting kingdom. “Wherefore we receive a kingdom that cannot be moved.” The ultimate triumph of truth, and the universal reign of righteousness, are looming in the distance. The vision is full of encouragement. From one mind the law will go forth to rule all men; and from one heart love will flow to bless mankind. The kingdoms of this world change, but Messiah’s rule will run parallel with the ages. “Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and Thy dominion endureth for ever.” Founded upon His immutable nature, and directed by His own inexorable counsel, His reign cannot be shaken by time or destroyed by sin. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. We are looking forward towards universal order, when the foundation of the government shall be laid in the affections of its subjects. Its organisation will be complete, and its boundaries commensurate with the habitable parts of the earth. To our labour of love and work of faith, this is the goal. Once established, the gospel will continue its hold on all believers, and supply them with unabatable joy. There will be no more sin, and no more curse. The kingdom will be lighted up by the presence of Jehovah, and no unclean thing will enter it. This, then, is that consummation for which the ages are in travail, and to which Christian effort will give birth.
2. Abundant entrance. The vision is that of the gate of the golden city, thrown widely open. It seems as if he saw the victorious army returning from the battle-field, receiving an ovation from the citizens. The result of Christian service is contemplated, and the joy that shall follow. The consummation of hope, and the realisation of the objects of faith, will flow into the soul abundantly. Abundant will be the gratification at seeing the victories of the cross. Jesus will be crowned “Lord of all.” Abundant will be the welcome to the pilgrims of the night: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant”; and unstinted will be the congratulation when they enter the joy of their Lord. They will evermore reign with Christ in life. Such will be the end of prayer, such the reward of patience. Each worker will receive his penny, and each martyr his crown. The termination of the struggle will be the beginning of real and eternal life. Work, then, until the Master come with His reward to each faithful servant. Work, before the night cometh; work diligently to obtain the Master’s approval now, and His joy hereafter.—Weekly Pulpit.
2Pe_1:11; 2Pe_1:14-15. What Faith Makes of Death.
I. The representation of death as a putting off the tabernacle.—There is, of course, a reference to the warning which the apostle received from his Lord “signifying what death He should die.” He had learned that in his old age he should be seized and bound and led “whither he would not.” In all probability the language of our verse would be more accurately represented if we read for “shortly” suddenly—the apostle’s anticipation not being so much that his dissolution was impending as that his death, when it came, would be sudden—that is to say, violent—and therefore he seeks to warn and prepare his brethren beforehand. The expression seems to blend the two figures, that of a tabernacle—or tent—and that of a vesture. As the apostle Paul, in like manner, blends the same two ideas when he talks of being “clothed upon with our house which is from heaven,” and unclothed from “our earthly house of this tabernacle.” To such small dimensions has Christian faith dwindled down the ugly thing, death. It has come to be nothing more than a change of vesture, a change of dwelling. Now, what lies in that metaphor? Three things I touch upon for a moment. First of all the rigid limitation of the region within which death has any power at all. It affects a man’s vesture, his dwelling-place, something that belongs to him, something that wraps him, but nothing that is himself. This enemy may seem to come in and capture the whole fortress, but it is only the outworks that are thrown down; the citadel stands. The organ is one thing, the player on it is another; and whatever befalls that has nothing to do with what touches him. Instead of an all-mastering conqueror, then, as sense tells us that death is, and as a great deal of modern science is telling us that death is, it is only a power that touches the fringe and circumference, the wrap-page and investiture of my being, and has nothing to do with that being itself. The “foolish senses” may declare that death is lord, because they “see no motion in the dead.” But in spite of sense and anatomist’s scalpels, organisation is not life. Mind and conscience, will and love, are something more than functions of the brain; and no scalpel can ever cut into self. I live, and may live, and—blessed be God!—I can say shall live, apart altogether from this, bodily organisation. Whatever befalls, it is only like changing a dress, or removing into another house. The man is untouched. Another thing implied in this figure—and, indeed, in all three metaphors of our text—is that life runs on unbroken and the same through and after death. If the apostle be right in his conviction that the change only affects the circumference, then of course that follows naturally. Unbroken and the same! The gulf looks deep and black to us on this side, but, depend upon it, it looks a mere chink which a step can cross, when seen from the other. Like some of the rivers that disappear in a subteranean tunnel, and then emerge into the light again, the life that sinks out of sight in the dark valley of the shadow of death will come up into a brighter sunshine beyond the mountains, and it will be running in the same direction that it followed when it was lost to mortal eye. For just as the dying Stephen knew his Master again, when he saw Him standing in the glory, we should know our dear ones after they had passed through this change; for all the sweetness and all the love would be there still, and nothing would be gone but the weakness that encompassed them, and the imperfection that sometimes masked their true beauty. The same in direction, the same in essence, uninterrupted through the midst of the darkness, the life goes on. A man is the same, whatever dress he wears. Though we know that much will be changed, and that new powers may come, and old wants and weaknesses fall away with new environment, still the essential self will be unchanged, and the life will run on without a break, and with scarcely a deflection. There is no magic in the art of death which changes the set of a character, or the tendencies and desires of a nature. As you die so you live, and you live in your death and after your death the same man and woman that you were when the blow fell.
II. Death is further spoken of as a departure. “I will endeavour,” says the apostle, “that ye may be able after my decease.” The word for “decease” here is a very unusual one, as, no doubt, many of you know. It is employed with reference to death only twice in the New Testament, once in the text, and once in the account of our Lord’s Transfiguration, where Moses and Elias are represented as speaking with Him “of the decease that He should accomplish at Jerusalem.” You may observe that immediately after the last of my texts, the apostle begins to speak about that Transfiguration, and makes definite reference to what he had heard there; so that it is at all events possible that he selects the unusual word with some reference to, or some remembrance of, its use upon that occasion in the narrative of one of the evangelists. Again, it is the word which has been transferred into English as Exodus, and may possibly be here employed with some allusion to the departure of the children of Israel from the land of bondage. Now, looking at these three points, the literal meaning of this word, its employment in reference to the deliverance from Egypt, and its employment in reference to the death of Christ, we gather from them valuable considerations. This aspect of death shows it to us as seen from this side. Like the former, it minimises its importance by making it merely a change of place—another stage in a journey. We have had many changes already; only this is the last stage, the last day’s march, and it takes us home. But yet the sad thoughts of separation and withdrawal are here. These show us the saddest aspect of death, which no reflection and no consolation of religion will ever make less sad. Death, the separator, is, and must always be, an unwelcome messenger. He comes and lays his bony hand upon us, and unties the closest embraces, and draws us away from all the habitudes and associations of our lives, and bans us into a lonely land. But even in this aspect there is alleviation, if we will think about this departure in connection with the two uses of the word which I have mentioned. A change of place; yes! an Exodus from bondage; as true a deliverance from captivity as that old Exodus was. Life has its chains and limitations, which are largely due to the bodily life hemming in and shackling the spirit. It is a prison-house, though it be full of God’s goodness. We cannot but feel that, even in health, and much more in sickness, the bondage of flesh and sense, of habits rooted in the body, and of wants which it feels, weighs heavily upon us. By one swift stroke of Death’s hammer, the fetters are struck off. Death is a Liberator, in the profoundest sense; the Moses that leads the bondsmen into a desert it may be, but to liberty and towards their own land, to their rest. It is the angel who comes in the night to God’s prisoned servant, striking the fetters from his limbs, and leading him through the iron gate into the city. And so we do not need to shiver and fear for ourselves or to mourn for our dear ones, if they have passed out of the bondage of “corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.” Death is a departure which is an emancipation. Again, it is a departure which is conformed to Christ’s “decease,” and is guided and companioned by Him. Ah! There you touch the deepest source of all comfort and all strength:
“Christ leads us through no darker rooms
Than He went through before.”
And the memory of His presence is comfort and light. What would it be, for instance, to a man stumbling in the polar regions, amidst eternal ice and trackless wastes, to come across the footprints of a man? What would it be if He found out that they were the footprints of His own brother? And you and I have a Brother’s steps to tread in when we take that last weary journey from which flesh and sense shrink and fail.
III. The last aspect of these metaphors is that one contained in the words of our first text: “an entrance ministered abundantly.” The going out is a going in; the journey has two ends, only the two ends are so very near each other that the same act is described by the two terms. Looked at from this side, it is a going out; looked at from the other side, it is a coming in. The smallest faith that unites a man’s heart with Jesus Christ makes him capable of receiving so much of salvation as is contained in the bare entrance into the kingdom; but every degree of faith’s increase, and every degree of faith’s enrichment, makes him more capable of receiving more of God in Christ, and he will get all he can hold. So every deed here on earth of Christian conduct, and every grace here on earth of Christian character, has its issue and its representative in a new influx of the glory, and a more intimate possession of the bliss, and a more abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom.—Selected.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
2Pe_1:7. Brotherly Kindness.—Two fishermen, a few years ago, were mending their nets on board their vessel on one of the lakes in the interior of Argyleshire, at a considerable distance from the shore, when a sudden squall upset their boat. One of them could not swim, and the only oar which floated was caught by him that could swim. His sinking companion cried, “Ah, my poor wife and children, they must starve now!” “Save yourself; I will risk my life for their sakes!” said the other, thrusting the oar beneath the arms of the drowning man. He committed himself instantly to the deep, in danger of perishing for the safety of his companion. That moment the boat struck the bottom, and started the other oar by their side and thus both were enabled to keep afloat till they were picked up.
2Pe_1:10. Who are the Elect?—You have heard of the senator relating to his son the account of the book containing the names of illustrious members of the Commonwealth. The son desired to see the outside. It was glorious to look upon. “Oh, let me open it,” said the son. “Nay,” said the father, “it’s known only to the council.” Then said the son, “Tell me if my name is there.” “And that,” said the father, “is a secret known only to the council, and it cannot be divulged.” Then he desired to know for what achievements the names were inscribed in that book. So the father told him; and related to him the achievements and noble deeds by which they had eternised their names. “Such,” said he, “are written, and none but such are written, in the book.” “And will my name be there?” said the son. “I cannot tell thee,” said the father; “if thy deeds are like theirs, thou shalt be written in the book; if not, thou shalt not be written.” And then the son consulted with himself, and he found that his whole deeds were playing, and singing, and drinking, and amusing himself; and he found that this was not noble, nor temperate, nor valiant. And as he could not read, as yet, his name, he determined to “make his calling and election sure.” And thus, “by patient continuance in well-doing, the end is crowned with glory, honour, immortality, and eternal life.”—Rev. E. P. Hood.
2Pe_1:10. Preparing for Eternity.—I have read somewhere—I think it was of Bonaventura—that in one of his sermons he described himself as in a dream, beholding a vast valley of rocks covered with workers, or those who were supposed to be working. Some wrought, and as they wrought, they shaped pieces of stone. Every piece of stone was shaped to exactly the same proportions, squared to exactly the same shape. “And I saw,” said the dreamer, “and behold while they wrought, invisible, white-winged angels stood by, and they took each piece of stone and bare it, and built of them a palace in the fair kingdoms among the mansions of light. And I noticed others who were idle, lying, sleeping in the valley of rocks; but I noticed that invisible, dark living spirits were by them while they slept—not to receive the hewn stones, but themselves excavating, and shaping, and bearing them away to build homes in the dark vaults of lost being. Then I knew that these stones were hours. And I knew that our hours are building our future eternal homes; that as they are passed here, so shall we be for ever.—Hood.
2Pe_1:11. The Abundant Entrance.—We may take an illustration from a vessel returning after a long voyage, and being received and welcomed by expectant friends. She has been, let us suppose, absent for years has been toiling and trafficking in every sea—touching at the ports and trading in the markets of many lands; she is approaching at last her “desired haven” the harbour from which she set out, whence loving thoughts went with her as she started on her perilous way, and where anxious hearts are now wishing and waiting for her return. She is descried in the distance: the news spreads; all is excitement; multitudes assemble; pier and quay, beach and bank, are crowded with spectators, as the little craft pushes on, and every moment nears her destination. There she is!—worn and weather-beaten, it is true, covered with the indications of sore travel and long service, and with many signs of her having encountered the battle and the breeze. But all is safe! Her goodly freight is secure and uninjured; her profits have been large; the merchandise she brings is both rare and rich. She is coming along over a sunny sea, leaping and dancing as if she were alive. Her crew are on the deck, and, with straining eyes and palpitating hearts, are looking towards the shore. A soft wind swells the sails; the blue heavens are bending over the bark, as if smiling on her course, while the very waves seem to run before her, turning themselves about with conscious joy, clapping their hands, and murmuring a welcome! How she bounds forwards! She is over the bar! She is gliding now in smooth water, is passing into port, and is preparing to moor and to drop her anchor for the last time! While she does so there comes a shout from the assembled spectators—the crowds that witness and welcome her approach—loud as thunder, musical as the sea! Gladness and greeting are on every hand. Eloquent voices fill the air. The vessel has received “an abundant entrance;” her crew have been met with sympathetic congratulations, are surrounded by eager and glad friends, hailed with enthusiasm, embraced with rapture, and accompanied to their home with shouting and songs!—Rev. T. Binney.
Entrance Ministered.—The phrase “an entrance shall be ministered” is an expressive and a striking one; what can be the meaning of it? The English word supplying no satisfactory answer to this question, we naturally turn to the word employed in the original, and by this we are unequivocally directed to a usage which was anciently prevalent on the Greek stage. Without pretending to any extensive knowledge of theatrical amusements as they are conducted among ourselves, it may, I suppose, be safely observed that the scenery and the performers tell the whole story of the plot, and that an acted drama has not now any auxiliary explanation. It was not so in ancient Greece. There, besides the scenery and the actors, was placed at the side of the stage a small body of persons who took no part in the play, but at various points of its progress recited, or sang, a few sentences auxiliary to it; either announcing persons of distinction, explaining some intended action, or bewailing some tragical occurrence. This group of persons was called the chorus, and upon this word chorus is distinctly formed the verb which is here employed by the apostle when he says “an entrance shall be ministered” into the heavenly kingdom. One critical observation only requires to be made. At different periods of Grecian history the word to which I am referring appears to have had different significations. More anciently, and primarily, the word ἐπιχορηγέω signified to lead, or conduct, the chorus, while less ancient writers employ it to denote one who provided the expenses of the chorus. I hold myself quite at liberty to take the more ancient, and the undoubtedly primary meaning of the word, as the only one which is at all suitable to the apostle’s purpose. And his meaning cannot, I think, be less than this: that as in a dramatic performance persons of distinction were honourably introduced by the chorus, so the entrance of a saint into heaven shall be “ministered,” or chorused. It shall not be the mere addition of one to the number of its inhabitants, not an obscure or unnoticed admission, as merely granted, but an entrance announced with gladness and accompanied with honour. To proceed yet a step farther, the apostle tells us that to some “an entrance shall be ministered abundantly.” Keeping in view the general idea before us, the conception suggested by this very expressive word, “abundantly,” it is not difficult to realise. State pageants vary in their degrees of splendour. Always befitting the royal dignity, on some occasions as when the personage introduced is of extraordinary rank, they are more especially gorgeous, every contrivance of courtly ingenuity being put into requisition to make the ceremony correspond with the dignity of the one party, and to express the regard of the other. In such a case an introduction may be said—to take up the phraseology of the text—to be “ministered abundantly.” And the idea conveyed to us cannot be less than this, that among believers in Jesus there are some whose entrance into heaven shall be more especially honourable—whatever those honours may be, of which all that can be said is that the eye hath not seen them, the ear hath not heard them, neither hath the heart of man conceived them.—Rev. John Howard Hinton, M.A.
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 On v5 2 Peter
2 Peter
THE POWER OF DILIGENCE
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2Pe 1:5.
It seems to me very like Peter that there should be so much in this letter about the very commonplace and familiar excellence of diligence. He over and over again exhorts to it as the one means to the attainment of all Christian graces, and of all the blessedness of the Christian life. We do not expect fine-spun counsels from a teacher whose natural bent is, like his, but plain, sturdy, common sense, directed to the highest matter, and set aglow by fervent love to his Lord. The Apostle paints himself, and his own way of Christian living, when he thus frequently exhorts his brethren to ‘give all diligence.’ He says in this same chapter that he himself will ‘give diligence [endeavour, in Authorised Version] that they may be able after his decease to have these things always in remembrance.’ We seem to see Peter, not much accustomed to wield a pen, sitting down to what he felt a somewhat difficult task, and pointing the readers to his own example as an instance of the temper which they must cherish if they are to make anything of their Christian life. ‘Just as I labour for your sakes at this unfamiliar work of writing, so do you toil at perfecting your Christian graces.’
Now it strikes me that we may gain some instruction if we throw together the various objects to which in Scripture, and especially in this letter, we are exhorted to direct this virtue of diligence, and mark how comprehensive its range, and how, for all beauty of character and progress in the Divine life, it is regarded as an indispensable condition. Let us then look, first, at the homely excellence that is the master-key to all Christian maturity and grace, and then at the various fields in which we are to apply it.
I. Now as to the homely virtue itself, ‘giving all diligence.’
We all know what ‘diligence’ means, but it is worth while to point out that the original meaning of the word is not so much diligence as haste. It is employed, for instance, to describe the eager swiftness with which the Virgin went to Elizabeth after the angel’s salutation and annunciation. It is the word employed to describe the murderous hurry with which Herodias came rushing in to the king to demand John the Baptist’s head. It is the word with which the Apostle, left solitary in his prison, besought his sole trusty companion Timothy to ‘make haste so as to come to him before winter.’ Thus, the first notion in the word is haste, which crowds every moment with continuous effort, and lets no hindrances entangle the feet of the runner. Wise haste has sometimes to be content to go slowly. ‘Raw haste’ is ‘half sister to delay.’ When haste degenerates into hurry, and becomes agitation, it is weakness, not strength; it turns out superficial work, which has usually to be pulled to pieces and done over again, and it is sure to be followed by reaction of languid idleness. But the less we hurry the more should we hasten in running the race set before us.
But with this caution against spurious haste, we cannot too seriously lay to heart the solemn motives to wise and well-directed haste. The moments granted to any of us are too few and precious to let slip unused. The field to be cultivated is too wide and the possible harvest for the toiler too abundant, and the certain crop of weeds in the sluggard’s garden too poisonous, to allow dawdling to be considered a venial fault. Little progress will be made if we do not work as feeling that ‘the night is far spent, the day is at hand,’ or as feeling the apparently opposite but really identical conviction, ‘I must work the works of Him that sent me while it is day. The night cometh when no man can work.’ The day of full salvation, repose, and blessedness is near dawning. The night of weeping, the night of toil, is nearly past. By both aspects of this brief life we should be spurred to haste.
The first element, then, in Christian diligence is economy of time as of most precious treasure, and the avoidance, as of a pestilence, of all procrastination. ‘To-morrow and to-morrow’ is the opiate with which sluggards and cowards set conscience asleep, and as each to-morrow becomes to-day it proves as empty of effort as its predecessors, and, when it has become yesterday, it adds one more to the solemn company of wasted opportunities which wait for a man at the bar of God. ‘All their yesterdays have lighted’ such idlers ‘to dusty death,’ because in each they were saying, ‘to-morrow we will begin the better course,’ instead of beginning it to-day. ‘Now is the accepted time.’ ‘Wherefore, giving all haste, add to your faith.’
Another of the phases of the virtue, which Peter here regards as sovereign, is represented in our translation of the word by ‘earnestness,’ which is the parent of diligence. Earnestness is the sentiment, of which diligence is the expression. So the word is frequently translated. Hence we gather that no Christian growth is possible unless a man gives his mind to it. Dawdlers will do nothing. There must be fervour if there is to be growth. The heated bar of iron will go through the obstacle which the cold one will never penetrate. We must gather ourselves together under the impulse of an all-pervading and noble earnestness, too deep to be demonstrative, and which does not waste itself in noise, but settles down steadily to work. The engine that is giving off its steam in white puffs is not working at its full power. When we are most intent we are most silent. Earnestness is dumb, and therefore it is terrible.
Again we come to the more familiar translation of the word as in the text. ‘Diligence’ is the panacea for all diseases of the Christian life. It is the homely virtue that leads to all success. It is a great thing to be convinced of this, that there are no mysteries about the conditions of healthy Christian living, but that precisely the same qualities which lead to victory in any career to which a man sets himself do so in this; that, on the one hand, we shall never fail if in earnest and saving the crumbs of moments, we give ourselves to the work of Christian growth; and that on the other hand, no fine emotions, no select moments of rapture and communion will ever avail to take the place of the dogged perseverance and prosaic hard work which wins in all other fields; and wins, and is the only thing that does win, in this one too. If you want to be a strong Christian--that is to say, a happy man--you must bend your back to the work and ‘give all diligence.’ Nobody goes to heaven in his sleep. No man becomes a vigorous Christian by any other course than ‘giving all diligence.’ It is a very lowly virtue. It is like some of the old wives’ recipes for curing diseases with some familiar herb that grows at every cottage door. People will not have that, but if you bring them some medicine from far away, very rare and costly, and suggest to them some course out of the beaten rut of ordinary, honest living, they will jump at that. Quackery always deals in mysteries and rare things. The great physician cures diseases with simples that grow everywhere. A pennyworth of some familiar root will cure an illness that nothing else will touch. It is a homely virtue, but if in its homeliness we practised it, this Church and our own souls would wear a different face from what it and they do to-day.
II. Note the wide field of action for this homely grace.
I can do nothing more--nor is it necessary that I should--than put before your mind, in a sentence or two, the various applications of it which our letter gives.
First, note that in our text, ‘giving all diligence, add to your faith.’ That is to say, unless you work with haste, with earnestness, and therefore with much putting forth of strength, your faith will not evolve the graces of character which is in it to bring forth. If, on the other hand, we set ourselves to our tasks, then out of faith will come, as the blossoms mysteriously and miraculously do out of an apparently dead stump, virtue, manliness, and knowledge, and temperance, and patience, and godliness, and brotherly mindedness, and charity. All that galaxy of light and beauty will shine forth on the one condition of diligence, and it will not appear without that. Without it, the faith, though it may be genuine, which lies in a man who is idle in cultivating Christian character, will bear but few and shrivelled fruits. The Apostle uses a very remarkable expression here, which is rendered in our Bible imperfectly ‘giving all diligence.’ He has just been saying that God has ‘given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, and exceeding great and precious promises.’ The Divine gift, then, is everything that will help a man to live a high and godly life. And, says Peter, on this very account, because you have all these requisites for such a life already given you, see that you ‘bring besides into’ the heap of gifts, as it were, that which you and only you can bring, namely, ‘all diligence.’ The phrase implies that diligence is our contribution. And the very reason for exercising it is the completeness of God’s gift. ‘On this very account’--because He has given so much--we are to lay ‘all diligence’ by the side of His gifts, which are useless to the sluggard.
On the one hand there are all great gifts and boundless possibilities as to life and godliness, and on the other diligence as the condition on which all these shall actually become ours, and, passing into our lives, will there produce all these graces which the Apostle goes on to enumerate. The condition is nothing recondite, nothing hard either to understand or to practise, but it is simply that commonplace, humdrum virtue of diligence. If we will put it forth, then the gifts that God has given, and which are not really ours unless we put it forth, will pass into the very substance of our being, and unfold themselves according to the life that is in them; even the life that is in Jesus Christ Himself, in all forms of beauty and sweetness and power and blessedness. ‘Diligence’ makes faith fruitful. Diligence makes God’s gifts ours.
Then, again, the Apostle gives an even more remarkable view of the possible field for this all-powerful diligence when he bids his readers exercise it in order to ‘make their calling and election sure.’ Peter’s first letter shows that he believed that Christians were ‘chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father.’ But for all that he is not a bit afraid of putting the other side of the truth, and saying to us in effect. ‘We cannot read the eternal decrees of God nor know the names written in the Book of Life. These are mysteries above us. But if you want to be sure that you are one of the called and chosen, work and you will get the assurance.’ The confirmation of the ‘call,’ of the ‘election,’ both in fact and in my consciousness depends upon my action. The ‘diligence,’ of which the Apostle thinks such great things, reaches, as it were, a hand up into heaven and binds a man to that great unrevealed, electing purpose of God. If we desire that upon our Christian lives there shall shine the perpetual sunshine of an unclouded confidence that we have the love and the favour of God, and that for us there is no condemnation, but only ‘acceptance in the beloved,’ the short road to it is the well-known and trite path of toil in the Christian life.
Still further, one of the other writers of the New Testament gives us another field in which this virtue may expatiate, when the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews exhorts to diligence, in order to attain ‘the full assurance of hope.’ If we desire that our path should be brightened by the clear vision of our blessed future beyond the grave, and above the stars, and within the bosom of God, the road to that happy assurance and sunny, cloudless confidence in a future of rest and fellowship with God lies simply here--work! as Christian men should, whilst it is called to-day.
The last of the fields in which this virtue finds exercise is expressed by our letter, when Peter says, ‘Seeing that we look for such things, let us be diligent, that we may be found of Him in peace without spot, and blameless.’ If we are to be ‘found in peace,’ we must be ‘found spotless,’ and if we are to be ‘found spotless’ we must be ‘diligent.’ ‘If that servant begin to say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and to be slothful, and to eat and drink with the drunken, the lord of that servant will come in an hour when he is not aware.’ On the other hand, ‘who is that faithful servant whom his lord hath set ruler over his household? Blessed is that servant whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing?’ Doing so, and diligently doing it, ‘he shall be found in peace.’
What a beautiful ideal of Christian life results from putting together all these items. A fruitful faith, a sure calling, a cloudless hope, a peaceful welcome at last! The Old Testament says, ‘The hand of the diligent maketh rich’; the New Testament promises unchangeable riches to the same hand. The Old Testament says, ‘Seest thou a man diligent in his business, he shall stand before kings.’ The New Testament assures us that the noblest form of that promise shall be fulfilled in the Christian man’s communion with his Lord here, and perfected when the diligent disciple shall ‘be found of Him in peace,’ and stand before the King in that day, accepted and himself a king.
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On v9 Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
sins
Sin. (See Scofield "Rom 3:23").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v8 The fruitful diligence of the Christians:
The fruitful diligence of the Christians:
v. 8. For if these things be in you and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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v. 9. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.
v. 10. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure; for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall;
v. 11. for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Having depicted the way of sanctification, the development of a Christian in holiness, the apostle shows how self-evident is the life of good works: For as these virtues exist and increase to you, they will not set you forth idle or unfruitful toward the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. With the very first beginning of faith the Christian will show, will give evidence of, its presence in good works and deeds. But there is no such thing as standing still in sanctification; a Christian must constantly increase and grow in good works, as the fruits and the outflow of the faith and the disposition and inclination toward all good virtues which live in his heart. Their power is so great as simply to render it impossible for a believer to be barren, like a withered tree, or unfruitful, like one that has foliage, but no fruit. Faith is a living, active power in the heart of the believer, and the more this power gives evidence of its existence in the entire life of the Christian, the more he will grow in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is the blessing which the Lord has laid upon the faithfulness for which He is ready to supply the Christian with new strength day after day. Col 1:10-11.
On the other hand, it is also true: For he with whom these virtues are not present is blind, being short-sighted, having assumed forgetfulness of the former cleansing of his sins. If a person does not possess faith and love toward God in his heart, even if he is a member of a Christian congregation, he is at least partially blind, since he is so short-sighted that he cannot look beyond the temporal things nearest at hand. His mind is engaged only with earthly matters, because he has forgotten what wonderful gifts the Lord imparted to him through the forgiveness of sins applied to him at the time when he came to faith. In other words, his behavior shows that he has lost the faith which was given him at the time of his conversion, he no longer has any eyes for the glories of heavenly things.
The admonition of the apostle, therefore, is altogether timely: So be all the more eager, brethren, to make sure your calling and election; for, doing this, you will never stumble. God has issued to us the call of grace in the Gospel, thus assuring our hearts of His justifying and saving grace, Rom 8:30. And this is in accordance with His election: for to this end God has predestinated and foreordained us, that we should be called, be justified and sanctified through faith, and be given eternal salvation, 1Th 1:4-5. This call and election of God is sure on His part, 1Pe 1:5; Joh 10:27-30. But it would be the height of foolish arrogance for a Christian to argue that he can act and live as he chooses in the world; for, according to the will of God, His elect children are to walk forward to the realization and enjoyment of their hope on the paths of sanctification, 2Th 2:13-14; Eph 1:4. The argument of the true believer, therefore, is this, that he will be happy only on the ways of righteousness, in order that he may be certain and comfort himself with the assurance that he belongs to the elect of God, Eph 4:1: Php 2:12. Those that foolishly risk their soul’s salvation by a life of sin and self-indulgence will soon find that they will stumble and fall, never to arise again. God will not be mocked.
The believers that are in every way conducting themselves as true children of God have the comforting assurance: For thus shall be richly furnished to you the entrance to the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. If Christians thus follow the will of their heavenly Father in making their calling and election sure, then God will mercifully reward their faithfulness. He will offer to them, He will open up before them, the way, the entrance to the riches of His mercy, that they may enter into, and enjoy to the fullest extent, the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Note the heaping up in this verse of words suggesting splendor and richness.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv5, 8 For this reason
For this reason
This refers to what Peter has just said in the previous verses. AT: "Because of what God has done" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
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brotherly affection
This refers to love for a friend or family member and likely means love for ones spiritual family.
translationWords
faith
know
self-control
endure
godly
love
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On v5 1:5-7 The stair-step structure of these verses, with each…
1:5-7 The stair-step structure of these verses, with each virtue leading to another, is a common literary device called a sorites. The sequence in such passages is not stressed—e.g., Peter does not imply that moral excellence must come before knowledge. Yet love is the pinnacle of the virtues (1:7).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.