'If ye call on Him as Father, who without respect of persons
judgeth according to every man's work, pass the time of your
sojourning here in fear.'--1 Peter i. 17.
'If ye call on Him as Father,' when ye pray, say, 'Our Father which art
in heaven.' One can scarcely help supposing that the Apostle is here, as
in several other places in his letter, alluding to words that are
stamped ineffaceably upon his memory, because they had dropped from
Christ's lips. At all events, whether there is here a distinct allusion
to what we call the Lord's Prayer or no, it is here recognised as the
universal characteristic of Christian people that their prayers are
addressed to God in the character of Father. So that we may say that
there is no Christianity which does not recognise and rejoice in
appealing to the paternal relationship.
But, then, I suppose in Peter's days, as in our days, there were people
that so fell in love with one aspect of the Divine nature that they had
no eyes for any other; and who so magnified the thought of the Father
that they forgot the thought of the Judge. That error has been committed
over and over again in all ages, so that the Church as a whole, one may
say, has gone swaying from one extreme to the other, and has rent these
two conceptions widely apart, and sometimes has been foolish enough to
pit them against each other instead of doing as Peter does here,
braiding them together as both conspiring to one result, the production
in the Christian heart of a wholesome awe. If ye call on Him as Father
'who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man's
work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear.'
So then, look at this twofold aspect of God's character.
Both these conceptions ought to be present, flamingly and vividly,
burning there before him, to every Christian man. 'Ye call Him Father,'
but the Father is the Judge. True, the Judge is Father, but Peter
reminds us that whatever blessed truths may be hived in that great Name
of Father, to be drawn thence by devout meditation and filial love,
there is not included in it the thought of weak-minded indulgence to His
children, in any of their sins, nor any unlikelihood of inflicting penal
consequences on a rebellious child. 'Father' does not exclude 'Judge,'
'and without respect of persons He judg_eth_.'
'Without respect of persons'--the word is a somewhat unusual New
Testament one, but it has special appropriateness and emphasis on
Peter's lips. Do you remember who it was that said, and on what occasion
he said it: 'Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons'? It was
Peter when he had learned the lesson on the housetop at Joppa, looking
out over the Mediterranean, and had it enforced by Cornelius' message.
The great thought that had blazed upon him as a new discovery on that
never-be-forgotten occasion, comes before him again, and this unfamiliar
word comes with it, and he says, 'without respect of persons He judges.'
Mountains are elevated, valleys are depressed and sunken, but I fancy
that the difference between the top of Mount Everest and the gorge
through which the Jordan runs would scarcely be perceptible if you were
standing on the sun. Thus, 'without respect of persons,' great men and
little, rich men and poor, educated men and illiterate, people that
perch themselves on their little stools and think themselves high above
their fellows: they are all on one dead level in the eye of the Judge.
And this question is as to the quality of the work and not as to the
dignity of the doer. 'Without respect of persons' implies universality
as well as impartiality. If a Christian man has been ever so near God,
and then goes away from Him, he is judged notwithstanding his past
nearness. And if a poor soul, all crusted over with his sins and leprous
with the foulness of long-standing iniquity, comes to God and asks for
pardon, he is judged according to his penitence, 'without respect of
persons.' That great hand holds an even balance. And though the
strictness of the judicial process may have its solemn and its awful
aspect, it has also its blessed and its comforting one.
Now, do not run away with the notion that the Apostle is speaking here
of that great White Throne and the future judgment that for many of us
lies, inoperative on our creeds, on the other side of the great cleft of
death. That is a solemn thought, but it is not Peter's thought here. If
any of you can refer to the original, you will see that even more
strongly than in our English version, though quite sufficiently strongly
there, the conception is brought out of a continuous Divine judgment
running along, all through a man's life, side by side with his work. The
judgment here meant is not all clotted together, as it were, in that
final act of judgment, leaving the previous life without it, but it runs
all through the ages, all through each man's days. I beseech you to
ponder that thought, that at each moment of each of our lives an
estimate of the moral character of each of our deeds is present to the
Divine mind.
'Of course we believe that,' you say. 'That is commonplace; not worth
talking about.' Ah! but because we believe it, as of course, we slip out
of thinking about it and letting it affect our lives. And what I desire
to do for you, dear friends, and for myself, is just to put emphasis on
the one half of that little word 'judgeth' and ask you to take its three
last letters and lay them on your minds. Do we feel that, moment by
moment, these little spurs of bad temper, these little gusts of
worldliness, that tiny, evanescent sting of pride and devildom which has
passed across or been fixed in our minds, are all present to God, and
that He has judged them already, in the double sense that He has
appraised their value and estimated their bearing upon our characters,
and that He has set in motion some of the consequences which we shall
have to reap?
Oh! one sometimes wishes that people did not so much believe in a future
judgment, in so far as it obscures to them the solemn thought of a
present and a continuous one. 'Verily, there is a God that _judgeth_ in
the earth,' and, of course, all these provisional decisions, which are
like the documents that in Scotch law are said to 'precognosce the
case,' are all laid away in the archives of heaven, and will be
produced, docketed and in order, at the last for each of us. Christian
people sometimes abuse the doctrine of justification by faith as if it
meant that Christians at the last were not to be judged. But they are,
and there is such a thing as 'salvation yet so as by fire,' and such a
thing as salvation in fulness. Do not let filial confidence drive out
legitimate fear.
He 'judges according to every man's work.' I do not think it is
extravagant attention to niceties to ask you to notice that the Apostle
does not say 'works,' but 'work'; as if all the separate actions were
gathered into a great whole, as indeed they are, because they are all
the products of one mind and character. The trend and drift, so to
speak, of our life, rather than its isolated actions and the underlying
motives, in their solemn totality and unity, these are the materials of
this Divine judgment.
Now, let me say a word about the disposition which the Apostle enjoins
upon us in the view of these facts.
The Judge is the Father, the Father is the Judge. The one statement
proclaims the merciful, compassionate, paternal judgment, the other the
judicial Fatherhood. And what comes from the combination of these two
ideas, which thus modify and illuminate one another? 'Pass the time of
your sojourning here in fear.' What a descent that sounds from the
earlier verses of the letter: 'In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet
believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving
the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.' Down from
those heights of 'joy unspeakable,' and 'already glorified,' the apostle
drops plump into _this_ dungeon: 'Pass the time of your sojourning here
in fear.' Of course, I need not remind you that the 'fear' here is not
the 'fear which hath torment'; in fact, I do not think that it is a fear
that refers to God at all. It is not a sentiment or emotion of which God
is the object. It is not the reverent awe which often appears in
Scripture as 'the fear of God,' which is a kind of shorthand expression
for all modes of devout sentiment and emotion; but it is a fear, knowing
our own weakness and the strong temptations that are round us, of
falling into sin. That is the one thing to be afraid of in this world.
If a man rightly understood what he is here for, then the only thing
that he would be terrified for would be that he should miss the purpose
of his being here and lose his hold of God thereby. There is nothing
else worth being afraid of, but that _is_ worth being afraid of. It is
not slavish dread, nor is it cowardice, but the well-grounded emotion of
men that know themselves too well to be confident and know the world too
well to be daring and presumptuous.
Don't you think that Peter had had a pretty rough experience in his life
that had taught him the wisdom of such an exhortation? And does it not
strike you as very beautiful that it should come, of all people in the
world, from his lips? The man that had said, 'Though all should forsake
Thee, yet will not I.' 'Why cannot I follow Thee now?' 'Bid me come to
Thee on the water.' 'This be far from Thee, Lord, it shall not be unto
Thee'--the man that had whipped out his sword in the garden, in a spasm
of foolish affection, now, in his quiet old age, when he has learnt the
lesson of failures and follies and sins and repentance, says in effect:
'Remember me, and do not you be presumptuous.' 'Pass the time of your
sojourning here in fear.' 'If I had known myself a little better, and
been a little more afraid of myself, I should not have made such a fool
of myself or such shipwreck of my faithfulness.'
Dear friends, no mature Christian is so advanced as that he does not
need this reminder, and no Christian novice is so feeble as that,
keeping obedient to this precept, he will not be victorious over all his
evils. The strongest needs to fear; the weakest, fearing, is safe. For
such fearfulness is indispensable to safety. It is all very well to go
along with sail extended and a careless look-out. But if, for instance,
a captain keeps such when he is making the mouth of the Red Sea where
there are a narrow channel and jagged rocks and a strong current, if he
has not every man at his quarters and everything ready to let go and
stop in a moment, he will be sure to be on the reefs before he has tried
the experiment often. And the only safety for any of us is ever to be on
the watch, and to dread our own weakness. 'Blessed is the man that
feareth always.'
Such carefulness over conduct and heart is fully compatible with all the
blessed emotions to which it seems at first antagonistic. There is no
discord between the phrase that I have quoted about 'joy unspeakable and
full of glory,' and this temper, but rather the two help one another.
And such blended confidence and fear are the parents of courage. The man
that is afraid that he will do wrong and so hurt himself and grieve his
Saviour, is the man that will never be afraid of anything else. Martyrs
have gone to the stake 'fearing not them that kill the body, and after
that have no more that they can do,' because they were so afraid to sin
against God that they were not afraid to die rather than to do it. And
that is the temper that you and I should have. Let that one fear, like
Moses' rod, swallow up all the other serpents and make our hearts
impervious to any other dread.
'Pass the time of your _sojourning_.' You do not live in your own
country, you are in an alien land. You are passing through it. Troops on
the march in an enemy's country, unless they are led by an idiot, will
send out clouds of scouts in front and on the wings to give timeous
warning of any attempted assault. If we cheerily and carelessly go
through this world as if we were marching in a land where there were no
foes, there is nothing before us but defeat at the last. Only let us
remember that sleepless watchfulness is needed only in this time of
sojourning, and that when we get to our own country there is no need
for such patrols and advance guards and rearguards and men on the flank
as were essential when we were on the march. People that grow exotic
plants here in England keep them in glass houses. But when they are
taken to their native soil the glass would be an impertinence. As long
as we are here we have to wear our armour, but when we get yonder the
armour can safely be put off and the white robes that had to be tucked
up under it lest they should be soiled by the muddy ways can be let
down, for they will gather no pollution from the golden streets. The
gates of that city do not need to be shut, day nor night. For when sin
has ceased and our liability to yield to temptation has been exchanged
for fixed adhesion to the Lord Himself, then, and not till then, is it
safe to put aside the armour of godly fear and to walk, unguarded and
unarmed, in the land of perpetual peace.