life, two words, one by which he denotes the service of God, by the
other devotion to the world and its attractions. The former (θέλημα)
implies a pleasure and joy; it is the will of God, that
which He delights in, and which He makes to be a joy to those who
serve Him. The other (βούλημα) has a sense of longing,
unsatisfied want, a state which craves for something which it cannot
attain. St. Paul describes it as "led away by divers lusts, ever
learning" (but in an evil school), "never able to come to the
knowledge of the truth, corrupted in mind, reprobate" (2 Tim. iii. 7).
Such is the desire of the Gentiles. The Apostle describes it in his
next words: _To have walked in lasciviousness, lusts, winebibbings,
revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatries_. How gross
heathendom can be our missionaries from time to time reveal to us. All
the corruptions which they describe were reigning in full power round
about these converts. When men change the glory of the incorruptible
God for the likeness of corruptible man or even worse, and worship and
serve the creature, their own animal passions, rather than the
Creator, there is no depth of degradation to which they may not sink.
St. Paul has painted for us some dark pictures of what such lives
could be (Rom. i. 24-32; Col. iii. 5-8). But though Christianity in
our own land have forced sin to veil some of its fouler aspects, vice
has not changed its nature. The same passions rule in the hearts of
those who live to the lusts of men, and not to the will of God. The
flesh warreth against the Spirit, even if the Spirit be not utterly
quenched, and brings men into its slavery. For the sake of Christ,
then, and for love of the brethren, the faithful have need still to be
proclaiming, _Let the time past suffice_, and by their actions to
testify that they are willing to suffer in the flesh, if so be they
may thereby be sustained in the battle against sin and may strengthen
their brethren to walk in a new way.
_Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them into the same
excess of riot, speaking evil of you._ The godless love to be a large
company, that they may keep one another in heart. Hence they who have
been of them, and would fain withdraw, have no easy task; and to win
new comrades sinners are ever most solicitous. Their invitations at
first will take a friendly tone. Solomon understood them well, and
described them in warning to his son: "Come with us," they say: "let
us lay wait for blood; let us lurk privily for the innocent without
cause; let us swallow them up alive as Sheol, and whole as those that
go down into the pit. We shall find all precious substance; we shall
fill our houses with spoil. Thou shalt cast thy lot among us; we will
all have one purse" (Prov. i. 11-14). This is one fashion of their
excess of riot, but there are many more. The Apostle's words picture
their life as an overflow, a deluge. And the figure is not strange in
Holy Writ. "The floods of ungodly men made me afraid," says the
Psalmist (Psalm xviii. 14); and St. Jude, writing about the same time
as St. Peter and of the same evil days, calls such sinners "wild waves
of the sea, foaming out their own shames" (Jude 14). "Shames," he
says, because the floods of excess pour on in overwhelming abundance,
and those who escape from them do so only with much suffering in the
flesh, sent of God, to set them free from sin.
And if there be no hope of winning recruits or alluring back those who
have escaped, the godless follow another course. They hate, and
persecute, and malign. Ever since the days of Cain this has been the
policy of the wicked, though not all push it so far as did the first
murderer (1 John iii. 12). For the life of the righteous is a constant
reproach to them. They have made their own choice, but it yields them
no comfort; and if one means of making others as wretched as
themselves fails, they take another. They point the finger of hatred
and scorn at the faithful. To the Greeks Christ's faith was
foolishness. The Athenians, full of this world's wisdom, asked about
Paul, "What will this babbler say?" and mocked as they heard of the
resurrection of the dead. With them and such as they this life is all.
But the Christian has his consolation: he has committed his cause to
another Judge, before whom they also who speak evil of him must
appear.
_Who shall give account to Him that is ready to judge the quick and
the dead._ The Christian looks on to the coming judgement. He can
therefore disregard the censures of men. Neither the penalties nor the
revilings of the world trouble him. They are a part of the judgement
in the present life; by them God is chastening him, preparing him by
the suffering in the flesh to be more ready for the coming of the
Lord. In that day it will be seen how the servant has been made like
unto his Master, how he has welcomed the purging which Christ gives to
His servants that they may bring forth more fruit. He believes, yea
knows, that in the Judge who has been teaching and judging him here
day by day he will find a Mediator and a Saviour. With the unbeliever
all is otherwise. He has refused correction, has chosen his own path,
and drawn away his neck from the yoke of Christ; his judgment is all
yet to come. The Judge is ready, but He is full of mercy. St. Peter's
phrase implies this. It tells of readiness, but also of holding back,
of a desire to spare. He is on His throne, the record is prepared, but
yet He waits; He is Himself the long-suffering Vinedresser who pleads,
"Let it alone this year also."
Such has been the mercy of God even from the days of Eden. In the
first temptation Eve adds one sin upon another. First she listens to
the insidious questioning which proclaims the speaker a foe to God:
then without remonstrance she hears God's truth declared a lie;
hearkens to an aspersion of the Divine goodness; then yields to the
tempter, sins, and leads her husband into sin. Not till then does
God's judgement fall, which might have fallen at the first offence;
and when it is pronounced, it is full of pity, and gives more space
for repentance. So, though the Judge be ready, His mercy waits. For He
will judge the dead as well as the living, and while men live His
compassion goes forth in its fulness to the ignorant and them that are
out of the way.
_For unto this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, that they
might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to
God in the spirit._ "_Unto this end_"--what does it signify? What but
that God has ever been true to the name under which He first revealed
Himself: "The Lord God, merciful and gracious" (Exod. xxxiv. 6); that
He has been preaching the Gospel to sinners by His dispensations from
the first day until now? Thus was the Gospel preached unto Abraham
(Gal. iii. 8) when he was called from the home of his fathers, and
pointed forward through a life of trial to a world-wide blessing.
Heeding the lesson, he was gladdened by the knowledge of the day of
Christ. In like manner and unto this end was the Gospel sent to God's
people in the wilderness (Heb. iv. 2), even as unto us; but the word
of hearing did not profit them. With many of them God was not well
pleased. Yet He showed them in signs His Gospel sacraments. They were
all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea, did all eat the
same spiritual meat, and all drank the same spiritual drink (1 Cor. x.
2-4), for Christ was with them, as their Rock of refreshing, all their
journey through the desert, preaching the Gospel by visitations now of
mercy, now of affliction. Unto this end He brought them many a time
under the yoke of their enemies; unto this end He sent them into
captivity. Thus were they being judged, as men count judgements, if
haply they might listen in this life to the gospel of trial and pain,
and so live at last, as God counts life, in the spirit, when the final
judgement-day is over. They are dead, but to every generation of them
was the Gospel preached, that God might gather Him a great multitude
to stand on His right hand in the day of account.
Some have applied the words of this verse to the sinners of the days
of Noah, connecting them closely with iii. 19; and truly, though they
be but one example out of a world of mercies, they are very notable.
They were doomed; they were dead while they lived: "Everything that is
in the earth shall die" (Gen. vi. 17). Yet to them the preacher was
sent, and unto this end: that though they were to be drowned in the
Deluge, and so in men's sight be judged, their souls might be saved,
as God would have them saved, in the great day of the Lord. But every
visitation is a gospel, a gospel unto this end: that through judgement
here a people may be made ready in God's sight to be called unto His
rest.
Few passages have more powerful lessons than this for every age. The
world is full of suffering in the flesh. Who has not known it in many
kinds? But it is in consequence, to those who will hear, very full of
Gospel sermons. They cry aloud, Sin no more; the time past may suffice
to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. Suffering does not mean that
God is not full of love; rather it is a token that, in His great love,
He is training us, opening our eyes to our wrong-doings that we may
cast them off, and giving us a true standard to judge between the
desire of the Gentiles and the will of God. And though men may look on
us as sore afflicted, our Father, when the rest of our time in the
flesh shall be ended, will give us the true life with Him in the
spirit.
XIII
_CHRISTIAN SERVICE FOR GOD'S GLORY_
"But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore of sound
mind, and be sober unto prayer: above all things being fervent in
your love among yourselves; for love covereth a multitude of
sins: using hospitality one to another without murmuring:
according as each hath received a gift, ministering it among
yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God; if any
man speaketh, _speaking_ as it were oracles of God; if any man
ministereth, _ministering_ as of the strength which God
supplieth: that in all things God may be glorified through Jesus
Christ, whose is the glory and the dominion for ever and ever.
Amen."--1 PETER iv. 7-11.
_But the end of all things is at hand._ Well-nigh two thousand years
have passed away since the Apostle wrote these words. What are we to
think of the teaching they convey? For it is not St. Peter's teaching
only. Those who laboured with him were all of the same mind; all gave
the same note of warning to their converts. St. Paul exhorts the
Philippians, "Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is
at hand" (Phil. iv. 5); and in the first letter to the Corinthians the
last words before his benediction are to the same purport: "Maran
atha" (1 Cor. xvi. 22); that is, The Lord cometh. St. James preaches,
"Stablish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh" (James
v. 8). To the Hebrews the Apostle writes, "Yet a little while, and He
that shall come will come, and will not tarry" (Heb. x. 37). While
St. John, who lived longer than any of the rest, conveys the warning
even in more solemn tones: "Little children, it is the last hour" (1
John ii. 18). Are we to look on these admonitions as so many mistaken
utterances? Are we to think that the disciples had misunderstood the
Lord's teaching, or would they say the same words if they were with us
to-day?
We may allow that those who had been present at the Ascension, and had
heard the words of the angels declaring that "this same Jesus should
so come as they had seen Him go into heaven" (Acts i. 11), might
expect His return to judge the world to be not far distant. But, in
whatever they say in reference thereto, their main concern is that men
should be ready. "In such an hour as ye think not the Son of man
cometh," is the ground-text of all their exhortations. Now had arrived
the fulness of the time (Gal. iv. 4) in which God had sent forth His
Son, born of a woman; and if we take the verb of St. Peter's sentence
ἥγγικε, "has come near", we feel that he viewed the new era
on which the world had entered in this light. And so did the other
Apostles. One says, "Now once in the end of the ages hath Christ been
manifested" (Heb. ix. 26); another teaches that things of old "were
written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages are come"
(1 Cor. x. 11). God has spoken aforetime in many portions and in many
ways, but in the end of these days He hath spoken in His Son (Heb. i.
2). All things are now summed up in Christ; He is the end of all
things. Prophecy, type, sacrifice, all have passed away. There will
come no new revelation; no word more will be added to the Divine book.
Its lessons will find in each generation new illustrations, new
applications, but will admit no change of form or substance. The
Christian dispensation, be it long or short, is the last time; it will
close with the Second Advent. And continual preparedness is to be the
Christian's attitude. And this is the purport of St. Peter's next
exhortations, which are as forceful to-day as they were eighteen
hundred years ago.
_Be ye therefore of sound mind._ Exactly the counsel which should
follow the previous lesson. It was misinterpreted at first, as it has
been since. We know how unwisely the Thessalonians behaved when they
had been told by St. Paul, "The day of the Lord so cometh as a thief
in the night" (1 Thess. v. 2). The Apostle learnt that they were
sorely disturbed, and wrote them a second letter, from which we can
gather how far they had wandered from soundness of mind. At first the
Apostle speaks gently: "Be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet
be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us,
as that the day of the Lord is now present" (2 Thess. ii. 2). But soon
he shows us how the excitement had operated. Some among them had begun
to walk disorderly, apparently thinking that they might live upon the
community, working not at all, but being busybodies. These made, no
doubt, the approach of the day of the Lord their pretext. St. Paul
bids such men in quietness to work and eat their own bread. To be
found at their duty was the best way of preparing for the end.
How soundness of mind may serve the Church of Christ is seen in the
settlement of that murmuring which arose (Acts vi. 1) as soon as the
Christian disciples began to be multiplied in Jerusalem. It was the
Grecian Jews who complained that their widows were neglected. The
Apostles wisely withdrew from the distribution about which the
complaint was made, and more wisely still gave the oversight into the
hands of Greeks (as the forms of all their names bear witness) who
would be fully trusted by the murmurers. "And the word of God
increased." The pages of Church history supply examples in abundance
of the need in religious matters for this soundness of mind. We need
not go back to very ancient times. What sore evils led to and arose
out of the peasant war in Germany in the days of the Reformation,
followed by those excesses which disgraced the name of Christianity in
Münster and other parts of Westphalia! And in our own land both at
that time and subsequently the unwise enthusiasm of those who acted as
though whatever had been must be wrong hindered sorely the temperate
efforts of the more conservative and sober minds; while undue
prominence given to single doctrines of the Gospel has many times
warped men's minds; and does so still, making the cause of Christ to
be hardly spoken of. A sense of proportion is a gift which the Church
may fitly pray for in her members, and that, while they seek to foster
the sevenfold graces of the Holy Spirit, they may ever keep in mind
the mercy of Him who bestows only a portion on each of us as we can
receive it, and makes no man the steward of them all.
_And be sober unto prayer._ The Apostle selects one example wherein
the sound mind ought to be sought after, and he has chosen it so as to
be of general application. The wisdom to which he is exhorting is
needed for all men, both those who teach and those who hear, those who
serve tables and those who are served thereby. Many members of the
Christian body, however, will not be concerned with such special
duties. But all will pray, and so to prayer he applies his precept.
_Be sober._ A sound mind will preserve us from extravagance in our
approach unto God. For even here extravagance may intrude. The
Corinthian Church had gone very far wrong in this respect.
Over-elated, losing soundness of mind, through the bestowal of certain
gifts, they had introduced such irregularities into their religious
meetings that St. Paul speaks of occasions when they might have been
regarded as madmen (1 Cor. xiv. 23). These were public prayers. St.
James applies the same standard to private prayers: "Ye ask, and
receive not, because ye ask amiss" (James iv. 3). There is no true
prayer in your petitions. You have selected in your own hearts what
you would fain have and do, and you come before God with these as your
supplications. There is no thought in them of yielding to God's will,
but only the sense that if your petitions were granted you would reap
a present satisfaction. Ye ask amiss. Many a heart can testify to the
proneness to err thus by want of sobriety.
_Above all things being fervent in your love among yourselves._
Soundness of mind and sobriety should dominate every part of the
believer's life; but there are other virtues of pre-eminent
excellence, unto which, though they be far above him, he is encouraged
to aspire. Of these St. Peter, like St. Paul (1 Cor. xiii. 13), places
love at the summit, above all things. The word he uses signifies that
perfect love which is the attribute of God Himself. To frail humanity
it must ever be an ideal. But the Apostle in his second epistle (2
Peter i. 7) has given a progressive list of graces to be sought after
in a holy life, a series of mountain summits each above the other, and
each made visible through the one below it. Here, too, love comes as
the climax; and the Revised Version marks it as far above mere human
affection: "In your love of the brethren supply also love." Here is no
anticlimax, if we once appreciate the grandeur of the concluding term.
In the present verse, however, the Apostle exhorts that this Divine
quality is to be exercised by the converts among themselves, and
exercised with much earnestness and diligence. It is to be the grace
which pervades all their lives, and extends itself to every condition
thereof. But we understand why St. Peter has used this word for love
as soon as we come to the clause which follows: _For love covereth a
multitude of sins_. To cover sin is Godlike. It has been often asked,
Whose sins are covered by this love, those of him who loves, or of him
who is loved? The question can have but one answer. There is nothing
in the New Testament to warrant such a doctrine as that love towards
one's fellow-men will hide, atone for, or cancel any man's sins. When
our Lord says of the woman who was a sinner, "Her sins, which are
many, are forgiven; for she loved much" (Luke vii. 47), it is not love
to the brethren of which He is speaking, but love to God, which she
had manifested by her actions toward Himself; and when He presently
adds, "Thy faith hath saved thee," He tells us the secret of her
availing love. But when men are animated by that love toward their
neighbours which shows likest God's, they are tender to their
offences; they look to the future more than to the past, hoping all
things, believing all things; they have tasted God's mercy in the
pardon of their own sins, and labour to do thus unto others, to cast
their sins out of sight, to put them, as God does when He forgives,
behind their back, as though in being forgiven they were also
forgotten. The phrase is quoted by St. Peter from Prov. x. 12, where
Solomon says, "Love covereth _all_ sins," and our Lord's words to St.
Peter himself (Matt. xviii. 22) about forgiving until seventy times
seven times practically set no limit to the extension of pardon to the
repentant. Thus taught, the Apostle uses the noble word ἀγάπη
of human tenderness to offenders, because he would urge men
to a boundless, all-embracing, Godlike pity for sinners.
_Using hospitality one to another without murmuring._ We need only
reflect on the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles to realise how
large a part hospitality must have played in the early Church as soon
as the preachers extended their labours beyond Jerusalem. The house of
Simon the tanner, where Peter was entertained many days (ix. 43); the
friends who at Antioch received Paul and Barnabas and kept them for a
whole year (xi. 26); the petition of Lydia, "Come into my house, and
abide there" (xvi. 15); and Jason's reception of Paul and Silas at
Thessalonica (xvii. 7), are but illustrations of what must have been
the general custom. Nor would such welcome be needed for the Apostles
alone. The Churches must have been very familiar with cases of
brethren driven from their own country by persecution, or severed from
their own kinsfolk by the adoption of the new faith. To such the kind
offices of the Christian congregations must have been constantly
extended, so that hospitality was consecrated into a blessed and
righteous duty. To be "given to hospitality" (Rom. xii. 13) is
reckoned among the marks whereby it shall be known that believers,
being many, are one body in Christ; and from the salutations in the
last chapter of the Epistle to the Romans we can frame a picture of
the large work of lodging and caring for strangers as it entered into
the duties of a Christian life. The brethren at Rome are exhorted to
receive and help Phœbe, the bringer of the Epistle, because she had
been a succourer of many, and of Paul himself. Of Priscilla and
Aquila, who are next named, we know that they were friends and
fellow-workers with St. Paul in Corinth, and that in Ephesus they
showed their Christian love toward the stranger Apollos; and not only
so, but they provided a place where the brethren might assemble for
their worship. Later on is mentioned Mary, who bestowed much labour on
the brethren, Urbanus, a helper in Christ, and the households of
Aristobulus and Narcissus, whole families made friends through the
extension of hospitality. Of the mother of Rufus St. Paul speaks
tenderly as his own mother also. The coupling together of Philologus
and Julia suggests that they were husband and wife and had opened
their doors to the brethren, and the notice of Nereus and his sister
points to similar good offices. And from whatever place the Epistle
was sent to Rome, there Tertius, St. Paul's amanuensis, was under the
hospitable roof of Gaius, whom he speaks of as the host of the whole
Church. Doubtless at times the burden might fall heavily on some of
the poorer brethren. Hence the need for the Apostle's addition
_without murmuring_. The word is the same which is used (Acts vi. 1)
of the complaints of the Grecians. And in this matter, as in all, a
sound mind would be called for, that loads might be placed by the
Churches only on such as were able to bear them.
The intimate fellowship that would grow out of such exercise of kind
offices must have been a power to encourage greatly the labourers for
Christ. As they dwelt together, hours not given to public
ministrations would be spent in private converse, and would knit the
members together, and forward the common work. As St. Paul writes to
Philemon, who appears to have been eminent in good offices, the hearts
of the saints were refreshed by this godly intercourse. In friendly
communion the love of all would wax warmer, zeal become more earnest,
the weak would be strengthened, and the strong grow stronger.
_According as each hath received a gift, ministering it among
yourselves, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God._ The close
connexion between _gifts_ and _grace_ is better marked in the Greek
than it can be in the English. The χαρίσματα are bestowed
upon us by the χάρις of God. But every word in the sentence
is full of force. Each hath received a gift. None can plead his lack
of faculty; none can claim exemption from the duty of ministering;
none is so poor but he has something that he can lay out for the
brethren. All have time; all have kind words: the least can give, what
is the best of gifts, a good example. But what we have is not our own;
it is received: and humility would teach us to believe that God has
bestowed on us the powers which we are best fitted, by place and
opportunities, to use in His service. None can say of any gift, "It is
all my own; I may do with it as I please." God has set the world about
us full of His exchangers. The poor, the feeble, the doubting, the
fearful--these are God's bankers, with whom we may put out our gifts
to usury. And Himself is the security for all that we deposit thus:
"Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these My brethren, ye
did it unto Me." Hence we live under the responsibility of
stewardship. And every man's gift is given to profit withal
(πρὸς τὸ συμφέρον, 1 Cor. xii. 7). The Greek implies that it must
be shared with others. Nor can any of us make it a profit to himself
till he have found the way to make it profitable to his brethren.