CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
1 Peter 1:3. Blessed be.—A characteristic Jewish recognition of God’s mercy. Compare with 2 Corinthians 1:3; Ephesians 1:3. Abundant.—πολὺ, much. Begotten us.—The choice of the nation is thought of as its first Divine birth; the call into gospel privileges is thought of as a new and second Divine birth (see John 3:5; Titus 3:5; James 1:18). Lively hope.—Living hope. “A life in which hope is the energising principle” (Alford). Macknight’s note is suggestive: “Believers of all nations are begotten to the hope of a new life after death, through the covenant of grace made with our first parents after the Fall. In the same hope they are begotten a second time, through the resurrection of Christ from the dead.” By the resurrection.—Here St. Peter speaks from his own personal experiences. The great revealing time, which brought to him the consciousness of a new life, was the resurrection of Jesus. Then he believed in Him with a belief that brought to him a new life. Archbishop Leighton makes the resurrection the efficient cause of our new birth.
1 Peter 1:4. To an inheritance.—Still the Jewish national figure is in the mind of St. Peter. That nation was begotten to the inheritance of Canaan; we are begotten to a spiritual inheritance, figured for us as a heavenly Canaan. Incorruptible, etc.—“Exuberant description of the excellencies of the new Canaan.” In heaven.—The heavenly spiritual spheres. Reserved until you were quickened with the new life that could appreciate it. Not future heaven, but present heavenliness.
1 Peter 1:5. Kept.—“Who, by virtue of God’s power, are under guard.” “As the inheritance hath been preserved, so are the heirs guarded; neither shall it fail them, nor they it” (Bengel). Through faith.—Not intellectual belief, but daily trust, which keeps us in spiritual union with God, and secures the Divine defence. Unto salvation.—Full salvation from all the frailties and consequent sorrows of this life; full development of the new life begun in us. Ready to be revealed.—A heaven actually prepared. A future that even now may be a spiritual presence. The idea of an inheritance gives the character to St. Peter’s figures. But heaven must be in man before he can be in heaven.
1 Peter 1:6. Greatly rejoice.—The prospect brings all the joy of a present possession. “Salvation is realised by faith as a thing so actually present as to cause exulting joy, in spite of existing afflictions.” The rejoicing is in “the whole complex sense of the preceding verses, concerning the hope of glory.” In heaviness.—Or “ye were grieved, burdened, distressed.” Temptations.—Troubles, persecutions, regarded as trials or testings of faith (see James 1:2).
1 Peter 1:7. Trial of your faith.—“Faith is not known to be what it is until it is tested by suffering.” More precious.—The faith is meant, not the trial of it. Illustration from the severe processes found necessary for the refining of gold. “More valuable than the trial of gold, which is perishable, and that is a fiery trial.” Appearing.—Better, “revelation.” The Early Church’s expectation of Christ’s coming is very difficult to understand, but it explains many apostolic expressions.
1 Peter 1:8. Not seen.—Some MSS. read, “Whom not knowing, ye love.” Love.—The word of calm and Divinely-given attachment, not the word of warm human friendship. Compare our Lord’s commendation of those “who have not seen, yet have believed.”
1 Peter 1:9. Receiving the end.—Getting now, up to measures of capacity, all the blessings of the salvation. “Their joy and peace in believing constituted a present salvation, the pledge and earnest of final and complete deliverance.”
1 Peter 1:10. Read “prophets” without the article. Plumptre thinks St. Peter is speaking mainly, though perhaps not exclusively, of the prophets of the Apostolic Church. It is, however, usual to see reference to the prophets of the Old Testament. “All the prophets looked forward with envy to the prize now in their hands.” Have enquired.—Calvin says: “When he states that the prophets inquired and examined, this refers not to their writings or teaching, but to the private longing with which each was fired.” (Compare, however, Acts 1:6-7.)
1 Peter 1:11. Spirit of Christ.—If this does not mean the “Messianic Spirit,” it would seem to support Plumptre’s limitation to New Testament prophets. Sufferings of Christ.—τὰ εἰς Χριστόν παθήματα: the sufferings for Christ, or “which pass on unto Christ.” “The sufferings spoken of are those which the disciples were enduring for Christ, and which he thinks of as shared by Him, flowing over to Him” (Plumptre).
1 Peter 1:12. Unto us.—The better MSS. give “unto you.” Now reported.—By the Christian teachers and preachers. Application is direct to the Christian Jews of Asia Minor, who were late in receiving the good tidings, but entered into the full heritage of all the good things. Angels.—Read without the article.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Peter 1:3-12
Present and Future Salvation.—The similarity between the “blessings” of 1 Peter 1:3 and the “blessings” of 2 Corinthians 1:3; Ephesians 1:3, attracts attention, and requires explanation. It is quite possible that the expression, “God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” had become fixed in the Early Church as a formula familiarly used; and, if so, we can readily recognise its value as a succinct statement of the primary Christian truths. It affirms that the Christian God is the one and only God, the same God whose unity and spirituality were the sacred trust of the Jewish nation; that this God, having been manifested to men in a Son, and in Sonship, may now be apprehended as the Divine Father; and that what He is to us we may learn from what He is to Christ: that Jesus is the Saviour from sin which His name expresses; and that, as Christ, or Messiah, He is sent of God to do that saving work; that He who saves from sin gains the right to rule the saved ones as Lord; and that the relation in which they stand to Him is a distinctly personal one, so that they can call Him “our Lord.” It is the Christian truth epitomised in the Christian name for God. And it fittingly introduces the references to the salvation which the Father God works by the ministry of “our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I. The life which the Father quickens.—“Who according to His great mercy begat us again unto a living hope.” “A life in which hope is the energising principle” (Alford). St. Peter is not here referring, generally, to the new birth, and the new life of the soul, but specifically to that new life which comes to men in the resurrection of Christ from the dead. St. Paul’s expression helps to explain St. Peter’s. He says, “If ye then be risen with Christ”; as if for the believer in Christ there was as truly a fresh life, as there was for Christ after His resurrection. St. Peter is writing to new-born souls, to those who have the life in Christ, and purposes to set before them their Christian privileges and responsibilities. The new life which the Father quickens is a double life; it is a present life of privilege, and it is the hope of a future life of blessedness. It is a living life, in the holy cheer of a living hope. It has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come. It is the life of hope which the Father quickens, through the resurrection of Christ, that is St. Peter’s great point. That was the truth to cheer persecuted Christians who were driven from their homes, perhaps with the loss of all things. What had they for their comfort, save their Christian hope? If we would understand how this new life of hope comes to us through the resurrection of Jesus, we may consider St. Peter’s own experience. That resurrection made him a new man. If St. James was our Lord’s real brother, as is assumed, his belief in Jesus as the Messiah came as the persuasion of His resurrection, and St. James was “begotten again” through the resurrection. “Mystically speaking, the moment of our emergence into this new glow of expectation was that when the Messiah Jesus, who had been cut off, emerged from among the dead.” The believer is born again to this lively hope when the fact of the resurrection is acknowledged, and its significance realised.
II. The future for which the Father quickens.—“Unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven.” Children are begotten, not only to life, but to the father’s property, that is their inheritance; it is theirs in reversion. Those who had been called to suffer the loss of all things might well remember that it was but a present and temporary loss—a loss of their banking account, not of their title deeds—it in no way affected their inheritance. If a man’s future is well secured, he can with comparative ease bear present disaster. The future as an inheritance is suggestively presented to us as our Heavenly Father’s home and estate; but instead of indications of the wealth and extent of it, our minds are occupied with the differences between it and the inheritances of earth. It is unchangeable, holy, permanent. Earthly properties are ever changing their values; sometimes consist of things of a low and degrading character, and are always uncertain; riches have a way of spreading wings. The Pontine dispersion had lost their inheritance in Palestine, but they have in no sense lost their title to their Father’s heavenly inheritance.
III. The keeping until the future is ready.—“Who by the power of God are guarded through faith.” It were but to lift a part of the load to assure the persecuted believers that an inheritance for them was held in reserve. What would ensure their preservation through their present struggles; and what could be done for them in the long waiting-time? They were to think of themselves as now being kept, being guarded. That includes the supply of every present need, if only they can realise that it is their God and Father who is keeping His sons until the time of their entering on their inheritance. His keeping is fulness of blessing. But the keeping of God implies the watching and effort of the believer. The keeping is done through, or in connection with, the believer’s faith. He must keep up his faith if God is to keep him. The term that is used and translated in R.V., “guarding,” is a military term. As the heir of a royal house is never allowed to be without a watchful attendant, so for every “heir of salvation” there are God’s attendant ministering spirits. We are safe, we may be satisfied, till our day of possession comes round.
IV. The discipline of the keeping time.—“Though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold temptations;” trials. A most sympathetic and wise reference to the calamities and afflictions which these Christians had to endure. St. Peter would have them thought of as only the school-boy discipline of the heir to an estate, who must be duly prepared for his coming responsibilities and privileges. Moral character can only be moulded through a discipline of severe experiences; and when we have entered on our inheritance, our surprise will be that God has been enabled to accomplish in us such fitness for it through so few earthly trials. Observe the suggestive relation of the many and various trials and the “little while” for which we have to be disciplined by them. There is always this great consolation connected with our earthly trials: they never do stay long. There is no element of permanency in human troubles. They would not be disciplinary if there were. They cannot stay one moment after God’s purpose in them is fully wrought. And so we can always truthfully speak of “our light affliction, which is but for a moment.” And there is always this consolation: God’s discipline now is the guarantee that He is preparing us for something by-and-bye.
V. The present possession of that future.—“Receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.” “Faith is the substance”—the actual, present realisation—“of things hoped for.” It is in one sense true that the heir to an estate, while he is only the heir, has nothing; but it is also true that in the feeling that all is coming to him, he has a present possession of everything; and, moreover, he has the use, up to present needs, of all that belongs to the estate. So the believer has all the comfort of knowing heaven is coming, and for the supply of all his present needs he has the full use of all the heavenly things. The attention of these persecuted men is turned away from the loss of their worldly goods, to the untouched, ever abundant supplies of spiritual good, which really are some of their future inheritance come to them now. “Poor in this world, rich in faith, heirs of the kingdom.”
VI. The advantage which Christians have over Jews in this present spiritual possession.—The Jews’ advantages were all in the material, earthly sphere. A land of Canaan; a formal and ceremonial religion; an obedience of works. According to their ideas, a Messiah as an earthly conqueror and King. So outward was the entire Jewish range, that the more devout souls, the prophets, anxiously looked forward to the spiritual time, which the Christians had now entered upon (1 Peter 1:10-12). So far from Christian Jews wanting to go back to formal Judaism, the best Jews of the ages had always wanted to get on to Christianity; and even the angels were profoundly interested in this spiritual dispensation. There is nothing to envy in the past. It has had its day; it fitted to the needs of its day. But it only fitted to the average needs of men. In the old times the better, the more spiritual, men could not rest in it, could not be satisfied with it. Abraham “rejoiced to see Christ’s day.” And so did every man of faith, every man of spiritual insight and spiritual feeling, all down through the ages. If they anticipated the spiritual dispensation, how foolish those actually in the spiritual dispensation must be if they hankered after, and thought of returning upon, the old and formal and preparatory one.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 Peter 1:3. Hope as a Power in Moulding Character.—Three great graces—faith, hope, and love—are the abiding graces, vital in their influence on character, and central in their relations to Christianity; combining, they produce all the “fruits of the Spirit.” Faith, taking hold on the unseen, prevents us from giving too much heed to that which is visible; Hope, taking hold on the future, prevents us from giving undue attention to that which is temporal and present; Love, taking hold on the unselfish and the Divine, prevents us from being absorbed in carnal and idolatrous self-interest. In the original the emphasis grammatically falls on the word hope, for while the other words are participles, this is in the imperative. Literally translated, it would read thus: “Wherefore, girding up the loins of your mind, being sober, hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” The text suggests the power of hope as an inspiration in character and conduct, and indicates the objects of Christian hope, and the time when those objects shall be most gloriously and fully revealed.
I. Look at the power of hope in human character.—What makes the difference between human beings and beasts? Very largely, the presence of hope as a factor in character. Hope is one of the foremost elements in human character; distinguishing man as man, giving him a higher rank than all the rest of the animal creation. And as it is a necessary factor in character, so it is in human progress. Any conditions in human society which tend to repress or suppress hope are abnormal and unnatural, and hostile to man’s well-being. We glory in our American civilisation because, more than in any other country on the face of the earth, men may here rise, give scope to hope, foster aspirations, and encourage all rational expectations. Hope presents a perpetual incentive to progress; not an ignis fatuus, a will-o’-the-wisp, beguiling us into marsh and mire, but impelling us continually onward to things higher and better. If we could reach our own ideal, further progress would be impossible. And hope helps us to bear trials. It surrounds us with a kind of “elastic medium,” so that when the terrible afflictions of this life beat against us, they rebound from us. There is a power in hope that prevents the severity of their blows from crushing us.
II. What are the objects set before the Christian hope?—“The grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Few of us ever think of this. When we speak of the grace that is revealed, we think of what is already manifested, of Golgotha with its cross, of Gethsemane with its agony, of the Garden with its rent tomb, of the ascending Christ and the descending Spirit. But in the third verse of this chapter the apostle says God “hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.” Peter is speaking of something future, not grace already manifested, but an inheritance “reserved in heaven,” “ready to be revealed in the last time.” And so here, “The grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Jesus Christ’s incarnation was not a revelation. His Divinity was rather hidden within the veil of His humanity: only now and then the glory of that Divinity shone forth, and then His disciples saw that He was the Son of God, and realised for a moment the greatness and the grandeur of His personality. When Jesus was here He was in disguise. God was only feebly and faintly manifested in the flesh, which obscured the glory. But when Christ comes a second time, no longer to make a sin-offering, but to bring full salvation unto His people, then will be the revelation of Jesus Christ. He will come like the King in His glory, and with Him all the holy angels and saints; not to pursue a weary way from the manger to the cross, but as a King to reveal and unfold Himself; and that will be the revelation of Christ. All the grace that comes to you, from the hour of your regeneration to the hour of your complete sanctification, is nothing in comparison with the grace that is to be revealed to you by Christ in the day when you are presented, faultless, before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. When Christ shall come to receive His saints to Himself there will be a revelation of grace in comparison with which all the grace that you now have, or have previously known, will be but as a drop in comparison to the ocean.
III. The contrast between the objects of Christian hope and worldly hope.—What God promises stands firm—a verity, a reality; there is an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading. You do not see that inheritance yet. You are like a minor who has not yet entered on his estate, but who receives the revenue of it as the payments of interest come in: and so we have a foretaste of our future inheritance; the Spirit of God gives us an earnest of our possession until the day of redemption. There is nothing illusive in the Divine promise. And consider, once more, the permanence and reliability of the Christian objects of desire and expectation. We come to a limit in this world. You may have all the treasure of the world, and yet when death comes, from your relaxing grasp all these things disappear. You may have been applauded and admired by the world, but the applause of men will fade and faint on your ear as you reach the gates of the tomb. The glory of your possessions and your achievements will all pale and grow dim when you face the last great destroyer. But, blessed be God, the point at which human hopes are utterly blasted is the point at which Christian expectations only arrive at their consummation.—A. T. Pierson, D.D.
The Resurrection the Chief Doctrine of Christian Faith.—If Christ had not risen from the dead there would be no Christianity; our faith would be in vain, and our hope void, the whole gospel a farce, and there would be no forgiveness of sin. The resurrection of Christ is the basis of all that we have and hope and love in Christ, but especially have we in it the surety of the hope of eternal life, because thereby all fear of death has been banished, and future blessedness and life have become a reality in Christ Jesus. He is our Head, and we through faith are members of His body. And since our Head has overcome sin and death and Satan, we partake of the triumph and the victory. For He has conquered our enemies for us and not for Himself. The victory is ours, as is also the triumph. When a ruler or a general conquers the enemies of a kingdom, he indeed triumphs, but the fruits and glories of the victory belong to the whole country and to all the citizens. Therefore all Christians triumph with Christ in His glorious resurrection.—Gossner’s Schatz-Kästlein.
The Resurrection Mystically Treated.—St. Peter is speaking, so far as himself is concerned, not mystically but literally, as his history before and after the resurrection shows. To him and to the other apostles the resurrection was a regeneration, and they became new beings. To subsequent Christians precisely the same effect takes place when (suddenly or gradually) the fact of the resurrection is acknowledged and its significance realised (Philippians 3:10). Yet we must not confine the meaning of the words to the effects of this conscious realisation. St. Peter is reviewing the transaction theologically—i.e., from God’s point of view, not phenomenally, from man’s. He speaks of the begetting, not of the being born—of the resurrection itself, not of the preaching of the resurrection. To God, with whom, according to St. Peter, time does not exist (2 Peter 3:8), there is no interval between His begetting of Christ again from the dead (Acts 13:33; Revelation 1:5) and His begetting of us again thereby. In the mystery of our union with the Incarnate Word, historical resurrection did, through baptism, in some ineffable manner, infuse into us the grace which makes new creatures of us. Archbishop Leighton well says, “Not only is it” [the resurrection] “the exemplar, but the efficient cause of our new birth.”—A. J. Mason, M.A.
The Resurrection.
I. In these words our attention is directed to Jesus Christ.—“Jesus Christ” is a name above all other names on earth. Many great names of heroes, military conquerors, philosophers, poets, scholars, artists, musical composers, scientific investigators, and discoverers, and great religious reformers, are dear to the heart of this country, and of the whole civilised world. But the name of Jesus is above all other names. Every Sabbath is the weekly memorial of His triumphant resurrection.
II. Jesus Christ is considered in His human nature.—“Seed of David.” See Matthew’s Genealogy. He was also Son of God. “Thou art My Son.” “In the beginning was the Word.” As God, He could make an atonement for human sins. Yet He was human; a real man, with all our liabilities and limitations, experiencing our infirmities, and having a fellow-feeling with us.
III. The emphasis given to our Lord’s resurrection.—“Remember.” The resurrection is more than a fact. Many facts are secret or private. But the resurrection of Jesus was a public, and thus a historical fact.
IV. The entire Christian Church—east and west, north and south, is founded on the fact.—Every individual church, of every name and denomination, is founded on the fact. The church in Antioch, the apostolic churches in Europe, and all other churches, are built up on the same foundation. The observance of the Lord’s day bears testimony to the fact of His resurrection.
V. The disciples of our Lord proclaimed far and wide the fact of the Lord’s resurrection.—They had seen the Lord, and they went into details. They preached everywhere, Christ the Crucified, and Christ the Risen. For their testimony they braved opposition, odium, and obloquy. Jesus also foretold His resurrection. Consider three theories.
1. Some person or persons had taken His body and hidden it. They could have had no motive for such theft.
2. His enemies took it and hid it, It was in their interest, as His enemies, to produce His body after the third day.
3. The disciples themselves stole the body and hid it. How could they dare martyrdom for a fable?
VI. The Resurrection is a joyful fact.—“According to My gospel.” It was part of the “glad tidings of great joy” which it was His pride and delight to proclaim. The apostle appropriated it with rapture. “My” gospel. “Remember.” We are apt, in the daily jostle of daily business and engagements, to push aside and to forget this fact. Hence the importance of the anniversary of Easter Day, and of every successive Sabbath Day.—James Morison, D.D.
1 Peter 1:3-9. The Living Hope of the Christian.
I. What gives us this hope? (1 Peter 1:3).—It is God who docs this, according to His great mercy. Without this love of God there is fear of Him, and a lack of trust in Him on the part of man, and an endeavour to base and build upon other foundations. Yet all of these prove to be dead hopes, and end in self-deception, or even despair. The living God, through the resurrection of His Son, has given a firm foundation for a living hope; the resurrection being the sure evidence that Christ’s atonement for our sins has been accepted, and that in Him and Him alone we can hope.
II. Who can entertain this hope? (1 Peter 1:5).—It is those who are guarded through faith unto salvation. The only assurance and certainty in this living hope springs from the faith in God’s mercy, and Christ’s life and work. And reasons to believe we have now, as many as had the early Christians. To them, indeed, the Lord appeared visibly, even to Paul; but we have His sure Word and testimony, and the Holy Spirit working through that Word, convincing and convicting the heart.
III. What does this hope bring? (1 Peter 1:4).—It is an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled which this living hope guarantees. All this, however, is only possible under the presupposition that those who are to receive this realisation of their hopes are also alive, and have been raised from the tomb. Christ’s resurrection is thus to us also a sure sign that we too shall rise and live in and with Him eternally.—Wilhelm Bauer.
1 Peter 1:4-5. The Inheritance.—Most of the salutations in the epistles refer to the privileges of believers. We often dwell on the things which we do not possess, but in these introductions we are reminded of the things which we do possess. Our names are down in the old register—the election book. See 1 Peter 1:2. We trace back our lineage. Every step of the inquiry delights us, as we move from one number of the pedigree to another—martyr, apostle, prophet, priest, king, to the father of the faithful, yea, to Enoch, Enos, and Abel. But the last step is the grandest—to see our name in the old book of election by grace. The new birth,—see 1 Peter 1:3. We have a new heart of love and tenderness. We are bidden to look forward to the inheritance of the saints in light.
I. That by the promise of the gospel we are entitled to an inheritance.—Begotten again, we are children, and as such, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ. The words which the apostle uses in the text appear synonymous, and yet they are not. (See the original.)
1. Immortal in its nature.—“Incorruptible.” The final state of godliness will be of such a spiritual nature that corruption will be impossible. In other words, it will be a state without sin, and, consequently, without its destructive effects. Present experience has its moments of foretaste of that state. Let us examine this matter. Returning on Wednesday evening from Box Hill, the heavens were generally covered with clouds, but in the west the setting sun had riven the clouds, and there was a streak of beautiful blue sky. So is Christian experience—clouds generally, but here and there beautiful light. I will look towards the heaven of your soul. Before the cross and the end of the ninth hour, the light returned. So when conviction made way for conversion; on the mount of transfiguration, overshadowed by the cloud of glory. So communion with God. “The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.” Look to 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 Peter 1:23, of this chapter. The life of Jesus is immortal—invulnerable. Strike the light, but you cannot wound it: so is the truth. Touches of these speak of the state when all shall be undying—thought, praise, purity, joy, etc.—all undying.
2. Pure in its administration.—“Undefiled.” It will be a state the enjoyment of which will preclude the possibility of abuse. The most perfect and delicate flower is the most susceptible of being tarnished or destroyed; the touch of the finger will do this. So with the Christian virtues. When we would do good, evil is present. There are interruptions. Let us name one or two. Interruption to continuous religious thought. The astronomer making observations, and the cloud coming between. Some gloomy thought. There are also circumstances outside ourselves that do this. Like the withering blast of the east wind, our prospects are often blighted. But the state of heaven will be such that no clouds will darken the mind, and no trials will harass the heart. The touch will be pure—even if we touch the throne itself there will be no dark Mark 3. Perpetual in its beauty. “That fadeth not away.” The beauty that was, has faded; the beauty that is, is fading; and the beauty that is to come must fade here—Nature’s beauty, human beauty, and fortune itself. Moral beauty. The fair and promising young man has gone wrong. Look at yonder garden. Body like unto His glorious body. The soul without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. Virtue eternal as its Author.
4. Distant in its location.—“Reserved in heaven.” You must remove to a new scene, where the wicked cease from troubling, and where the weary are at rest. No battlefields there; no hospitals; no graveyards. No, not even a trace of sin. “Reserved.” Some lovely spot. “Behold, I go and prepare a place for you,”—crowns, thrones, etc.
II. That believers are now kept under guard and discipline in order to the future enjoyment of that blessed state.—
1. Faith is the medium of power.—The power of resistance, and the power of perseverance. To reign with Christ in life is full of inspiration. We lay hold of eternal life.
2. Salvation is the end of faith. What is the voice of faith but a cry for a better state? We cannot rest till we reach the goal. We press forward.
3. Time is the revealer of salvation. You will see. The ages have rolled on—wonderful things. Time’s last effort. Bring in the inheritance. What is our title?—Anon.
1 Peter 1:5. Kept by the Power of God.—Believers, as a class, are thus described: “Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.” The words bring before us the doctrine commonly known as that of “final perseverance,” as opposed to that of possible defection and perdition on the part of true believers and regenerated sinners. Look at the objections to this doctrine, as they seem to weigh upon the minds, not of speculative theologians, but of practical experimental Christians, whose belief is, in purpose and profession, founded on the word of God and the experience of His people. The objections are twofold:
(1) The doctrine is unscriptural;
(2) it is of evil tendency. These are virtually one; for the objection to the doctrine as unscriptural has no substantive existence or foundation apart from its imputed or alleged pernicious tendencies in practice. It must be admitted that in Scripture there is no categorical denial of this doctrine, or any statement absolutely inconsistent with it. If it is rejected it must be because it is believed to be pernicious. What, then, is the evil tendency imputed to this doctrine?
1. It is said to assume the final perseverance of the saints to be secured by a power inherent in themselves, or by something in the very nature of a saving change, precluding all defection as a sheer impossibility, entirely irrespective of the subject’s own religious state or dispositions, or of any influence exterior to him, over and above the impulse given at conversion, or the vis inertiœ of his new-born nature—a belief which may be justly charged with tending to indulge a proud reliance upon self, and an habitual security, alike dishonouring to God and dangerous to man.
2. The only proof which it requires of the saving clause, from which it draws its proud security and absolute immunity from danger, is the consciousness or memory of inward exercises, not susceptible of formal proof, and wholly independent of the actual condition of the subject at the time when he asserts his claim to this prerogative or privilege of absolute exemption from the risk or possibility of a fall from grace. The rejection of the doctrine is always based on the assumption of an inherent independent power of self-preservation, or the sufficiency of mere subjective states and exercises, to demonstrate the possession of that power. But no such assumptions are imputed in the word of God. As in our text, the preservation is explicitly described as the effect of a power exterior and superior to themselves, as effected by a sovereign, a Divine, an almighty agency. If all depend upon the action of Omnipotence (the power of God), where is the pernicious tendency? If we can no more, in and of ourselves, secure our own continuance in this state than we could create it, or create ourselves, or than we could create a World, “where is boasting then? It is excluded.” It may, however, be said that if we look upon the exercise of the power of God as absolutely and irrevocably pledged for our protection, the tendency of this belief to generate security and licence is as evident and strong as if the power were inherent in ourselves; nay, more so, since the power, instead of being finite, is now infinite; instead of being human, is Divine; instead of being ours is God’s, and yet completely under our control. This specious representation quietly assumes that we ascribe the perseverance of believers to an absolute, immediate act of power, without the use of means or the prescription of conditions. But this aspersion on the doctrine is wiped off by the simple but authoritative language of the text, which, so far from representing this conservative agency of God’s grace and omnipotence as acting independently of faith in the preserved and persevering subject, holds up faith itself as in a certain sense the means by which the perseverance is secured, by which the preservation is effected. Faith is not a thing to be assumed at pleasure, but to be established as conclusive evidence; not that of consciousness, or memory, or fancy, but of actual experience and practice. Where the fruits of faith are not, there is no evidence of faith. Where faith is not, there is no pledge of God’s omnipotence to save from falling. It is only those who have this faith and bear this fruit that have a right to claim a place among the happy souls who are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.”—J. A. Alexander, D.D.
Kept unto Salvation.—Many of God’s people are at times full of fears concerning their personal interest in Christ. Perhaps it ought not to be so. We have to face the fact that it often is so. The work of sanctification is a quiet, gradual, unseen work, of which we cannot accurately trace all the stages. It may be likened to the currents that run below the surface of the ocean, and secretly bear the vessel on its way, or out of its way. Or it may be likened to the steady march of time, which changes all earthly things, wears away the framework of the Pyramids, and crumbles down the everlasting hills, though, watch as we may, we can hardly follow the process. In our times of fear, we more often doubt our right to the Divine promises than doubt the general fulfilment of the promises. At our darkest times we are assured that the promises are “yea and amen” for those, to whom they are given. Our difficulty is that they are not given to us. Sometimes these feelings follow on the encouragement of some loved sin. Keep that sin; call it by some milder name though you may, it will stand between you and God. Like the host of Israel that went forth against the city of Ai, you will return from your toil defeated and disgraced if some accursed thing be kept within your camp. Sometimes they follow on neglected means of grace. Only as the soul maintains a constant intercourse with God can it maintain a constant assurance of His love. Sometimes they follow on watching too minutely our own thoughts, and frames, and feelings. We may soon come to put our trust in those feelings, and then every change in our feeling will fling a shadow over us, and feeble feeling will fill us with despair. In our text may be found a threefold description of the true child of God, by the help of which we may scatter the doubts and fears that loom over us. He is one
(1) on whom the preserving power of God rests;
(2) one in whom the spirit of faith is working;
(3) one for whom salvation is prepared.
I. The child of God is one on whom the preserving power of God rests.—This is a description which links the believer with the king-psalmist of Israel, whose poetically recorded experiences we so greatly enjoy. Perhaps there was no thought brought so much peace to the psalmist as the thought that he was “kept by God.” To his thought, God was “a sun and a shield; the Lord would give grace and glory.” His prayer was, “Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe.” God was to him “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land”: “the Keeper of Israel, who never slumbered nor slept.” He could say of God, “I flee unto Thee to hide me.” Christian experience ever deepens our conviction of our own weakness; our inability to protect and keep ourselves. We feel more and more every day that we need a guarding as well as a guiding hand. The promises Christ gave to His disciples show that this need was recognised. “They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand.” Those disciples are the sheep and lambs of Christ’s flock. They may be quite sure that the Shepherd is ever near to protect, defend, and keep. Our Lord, in His great intercessory prayer, said, “I kept them in Thy name, and none of them is lost.” Discipleship to Christ involves Divine keeping; and the Saviour prayed as though He were bound to give an account to God of each believer’s safety. We may realise this preserving power of God in several ways.
1. In the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit. No doubt the operations of the Spirit are mysterious. “The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth.” But He does take up His abode in the believing soul. His presence pledges the fact of the change wrought in us. His operation is designed to preserve the soul from all evil, and to guide it into all truth. Source whence all Divine blessings for the soul flow, whence all the food of the spiritual life comes, whence all developments of the spiritual life receive their furtherance, that Spirit is no less the “Great Heart” guide, by whom the pilgrim is defended and preserved, the champion by whom his foes are defeated and his difficulties overcome. His presence is our seal unto the day of redemption; His work to keep the soul unto the full salvation that is prepared. The presence of the Holy Spirit is the fulfilment of all the promises of the Divine Presence. When Moses stood before the burning bush, and received the Divine command for the deliverance of Israel, he was overwhelmed by the responsibilities of the charge, and received this comforting and strengthening assurance: “Certainly I will be with thee.” That promise was fulfilled in the presence with him of God’s Holy Spirit. When Jeremiah pleaded his incapacity for the prophetic office, so earnestly saying, “Ah, Lord God; behold, I cannot speak! for I am a child,” God’s promise came, comforting him: “Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee.” That also was fulfilled in the presence of God the Spirit. And how much to us all is that promise and assurance of our ascending Saviour, “Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the world.” However else we may think that promise to have been fulfilled, it was certainly fulfilled in the abiding presence with us of the Holy Spirit. We imagine a sort of threefold Divine presence that we enjoy. A presence of God the Father—a Divine eye watching our every step, searching our every thought and purpose; a presence of God the Son, the living Friend to whom our thoughts may be made known, whose companionship we may daily enjoy; and a presence of God the Spirit, working within us, checking, inspiring, guiding, keeping. But, if we think a little closely, shall we not find that these three are one? If we have the presence of the Spirit, have we not each person of the blessed Trinity—the loving Father, the only-begotten Son, and the all presiding Spirit. Surely the whole promise of a present God is fulfilled for you, if you know that the Spirit of God is with you. If you know His power in your heart, rejoice; it is the power of God, a power efficient to keep you unto the salvation ready to be revealed.
2. In the strength we derive from the exercise of prayer. The spirit of prayer is illustrated in the wrestling of Jacob with the angel at the Brook Jabbok. Intense earnestness is expressed in that determination, “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.” Prayer is a laying hold of the Divine arm, a reliance on the Divine strength. The very terms of Christian prayer indicate our sense of God’s interest in us, and concern for us. “Abba, Father,” gathers about us fatherly love, fatherly watchfulness, and fatherly preservations. Thankfulness in prayer is the recognition of the hand of goodness ever over us. And the substance of all prayer is, that in all the forms of our spiritual toil and struggle we may have the help of God; we may not be left to our own weakness; we may be upheld and kept. And so of all the answers we receive to our prayer. They may be summed up in one thing: the realisation of God’s presence with us, and power resting on us. The sense of Divine aid, Divine inspiration, Divine keeping, which we may bear about with us day by day, is the answer to our prayer.
3. In the actual experience of the believer. In their temple service the Jewish people might well sing, “The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge,” because their entire history was lit up with continual signs of His presence and power. Delivered from the house of bondage with a high hand, the sea saw the majesty of their leader, and fled, leaving a highway for God’s people; waste deserts became lands of plenty, and foes failed when Israel’s God marched before them. Manifested in burning bush and fiery pillar, ruling as Theocratic King, raising up one and setting down another, delivering and redeeming again and again, no truth was brought home to the Jew like this one, “The Lord of hosts is with us.” And we are the Israel of God. The power of God is witnessed in all our past history. Looking at the way in which the Lord hath led us, we say, again and again, There God guided; there God preserved; there God conquered for us; there foes gathered thickly, but God put His hedge of mercy round us; there we made mistakes, and wandered into by-paths that might have led us to destruction, but God in mercy restored our wandering feet. Over all our past may well be written, “Kept by the power of God.” We have been like that servant of the prophet. We could see that the house was surrounded with foes, and there was no way of escape. We could not see what, nevertheless, we might have seen, that the mountains all round about were full of the chariots and horsemen of the Lord. Far “greater were those with us than all that could be against us.”
II. One in whom the spirit of faith is working.—Faith is often dealt with as connected with our first approach to God; as the gate at the head of the way of life. But we need to see that this same “faith” is called for throughout the whole course of the Christian life. We live day by day, spiritually, only as we believe; our strength, our comfort, our success, are in direct proportions to our faith. The work being carried on in your hearts is a spiritual work; you cannot watch it with your bodily eyes. The Being working is a spiritual Being; you can never see Him by your side. His way of working is a spiritual way; you may not always discover it: only faith brings the comfort of the Divine strength and nearness. That is true for us which was but fabled of an ancient prince. He had lost his father, and when setting out to endeavour to gain tidings of him, one of the divinities came down, took the form of an aged counsellor, and accompanied him in all his journeyings. That is true for us, but we only feel it, only get the joy of it, only know the impulses of it, only walk strongly and safely, as faith realises the fact. There is a great difference between knowing things with the mind, and believing them with the heart. The doctrines, commands, and promises of God lie within this sacred book like dry bones in the valley. They are mere forms of truth; mere declarations of Divine wisdom; beautiful enough, but cold and dead. Faith comes, the faith which says, This is the Word of God, and the Word of God to me—and then the dry bones live; a creative breath seems to have passed over them all. Without faith the Word of God is as a harp fully strung, but silent. Even in its silence one feels there are within it the possibilities of beauteous song. But let faith come, and touch the chords; then music is drawn forth, which seems like earth-echoes of the angels’ songs above. Now it may be warlike tones, wild and clear, that nerve the Christian’s arm, and send him boldly forth to fight the good fight of faith; now gentle, soothing strains that calm the troubled breast, and whisper to the torn and tried, God’s eternal peace. Have faith in God. Lay hold thereby of the power of God. Let that be the spirit in you which grasps the Divine energy that would rest upon you. With the power on you, and the faith in you, you shall be kept unto the salvation prepared. Learn from that great chapter of Hebrews how faith can work in daily life. Faith marked the acceptable worship Abel offered. Faith gave the triumph in the hour of Enoch’s translation. Faith kept Noah when the judgments of God were in the earth. Faith guided Abraham in his journeyings. Faith saved Moses in the moments of danger. Faith discomfited the foes of God’s Israel. And what shall we more say? Time would fail to tell the triumphs of daily faith, the toil it helps us to perform; the sorrow it helps us to bear; the wisdom it helps us to gain; the evils it helps us to fight; the glory it helps us to win.
III. One for whom salvation is prepared.—Our salvation begins when we begin to live for God. Peter speaks of “receiving now the end of your faith, even the salvation of your soul.” But that salvation has another stage. It is really as yet undeveloped. “Now are we the sons of God, but it doth not yet appear what we shall be.” The salvation now is salvation in the world, that shall be salvation from the world. This is salvation going on amid dangers, temptations, and evils: that shall be salvation perfected in scenes of holy rest, and triumph, and peace. And that fuller salvation is ready, prepared, waiting to be revealed. This further salvation is God’s purpose in the work of His Son. However much the work of Christ accomplishes for us here on earth; however God’s grace beautifies character, conquers evil, gladdens the home, gilds life with brightness, and crowds it with blessing, we cannot limit the great salvation to that which is earthly and fleeting. The purpose of God in redemption is wide and broad and deep as the everlasting life, and long as the everlasting ages. It may find you a poor sinful soul, low down in degradation; it will cleanse all stains, heal all wounds, and bless you now; but it will not rest satisfied until you are placed as a polished jewel in the crown of the Redeeming King. This is the design of the preserving power that rests upon you. For what does He keep you I Why does an eye that never slumbers nor sleeps watch Israel? Why does the Almighty Friend ever abide with us? Why? It is this: that we are being “kept” to the salvation that is ready to be revealed. This is the end of our faith. Faith grasps much for this life; but it is like the foreign bird, brought from sunnier climes—it ever seems to be stretching its wings and striking the bars of its cage, as though it would be away to the home it loves. Faith, a heavenly thing, born of God, in sympathy with the high and heavenly, will press beyond the struggling and darkness of time, and strive to gain the light and peace of eternity. And all is to be revealed in the last time. We know when that is. When the keepers of the house shall tremble, and the strong men shall bow themselves, and the grinders cease because they be few, and those that look out of the windows be darkened; when the silver cord shall be loosed, and the golden bowl be broken; when the dust shall return to the earth as it was, and the spirit return unto God who gave it;—then shall the full salvation be revealed, and we shall enter the New Jerusalem, from whence they go out no more, and where God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes. Kept now for sanctifying, one day we shall be glorified.
1 Peter 1:6. Rejoicing and Heaviness.—This verse seems to gather up the thought of the first nine verses. The tone of this epistle reveals the sanctifying influence of a Christian experience upon St. Peter. What strikes attention is the recognition of the twofoldness of religious life. If it breathes the air of heaven, it treads the soil of earth. We are often surprised to find the life is a constant struggle, and the soul is calm with a Divine peace. St. Peter intimates that this is the very thing we should expect. The best men cannot always live in the sunshine of hope. A Christian life on earth can hardly fail to be a mingling of rejoicing and heaviness.
I. The spirit of the Christian should usually be a spirit of rejoicing.—
1. The rejoicing of love (1 Peter 1:8). Love to Christ. The love that comes with faith in the unseen. Accepted love is our deepest source of earthly joy. We feel a holy pride when we can say of the Lord Jesus, “This is my beloved, and this is my friend.”
2. The rejoicing of the promised future (1 Peter 1:4). But the future finds nothing for the soul apart from Christ. Heaven is everything if the “Lamb be the light thereof.”
II. The spirit of the Christian may be for a time a spirit of heaviness.—The rejoicing is “without limit.” The sadness is “for a season,” and “if needs be.” The heaviness comes from the trying, testing, of the very faith whence the rejoicing comes. The struggle of life may be expressed in this form: Under how thick darkness can you cling to Christ? Beaten how ever severely by foes, can you still keep hold on Christ, refusing to be beaten off! Whatever your earth-trials may be, remember they are but passing things. The soul’s restful joy in God should be deep, abiding, eternal.
Note by Archbishop Leighton.—“His scope is to stir up and strengthen spiritual joy in his afflicted brethren. In this thing ye rejoice, that ye are begotten again; that there is such an inheritance, and that you are made heirs of it; that it is kept for you, and you for it; that nothing can come betwixt you and it, and disappoint you of possessing and enjoying it. Though there be many deserts and mountains and seas in the way, yet you are ascertained that you shall come safely thither.”
The Christian State.—
1. The Christian state is properly one of deep and abiding joy. See this in St. Paul.
(1) Joy in the salvation wrought by God.
(2) Joy in the salvation resting on God. A deep-sea calm. An above-clouds calm.
2. Apparently, the Christian state is one of agitation, anxiety, and heaviness. Observe, however, the qualifications of this—“for a season,” “if needs be.” Still, even with these qualifications, the Christian state is often one of heaviness. How is this? The soul’s joy is the sign of a life of faith, and this must be tested, as in the case of Abraham, David, Peter. Can anything keep up the soul’s joy under the heaviness.
(1) Assurance that it is testing, not destruction, not punishment.
(2) Assurance that God is watching the process, regarding it as a precious work of refining.
(3) Seeing that the designed issue is a simpler hold of Christ; a clearer spiritual sight of Him. And so, through the experience, the joy really becomes “unspeakable and full of glory.” And so we receive now the end of our faith, the salvation of our souls (a) from fear, (b) from sin, (c) from corruption. And thus we are made ready for Christ’s appearing. We see what we ought to regard as our great Christian treasure—our souls’ joy in the great salvation. We are sure to have the joy if only we have, and can keep, holy admirations of Christ.
The Future in the Present.—St. Peter here states a fact of common human experience, which takes its highest form in the Christian spheres. The future we anticipate does exert a present influence on us. What is to be is everywhere helping men to bear what is. The “castles in the air” of the boy or girl at school help them over present tasks and discipline. The future of business success strengthens men to bear with and to overcome present perplexities and difficulties. The “good time coming,” the “golden age,” are not altogether things in the by-and-bye. They are actually with us now, in the cheer and strength they give.
1 Peter 1:8. Things Unseen.—It takes a very strenuous effort to bring the unseen Christ before the mind habitually, and so as to produce effects in the life. You have to shut out a great deal besides, in order to do that; as a man will shade his eyes with his hand in order to see some distant thing the more clearly. Keep out the cross lights, that you may look forward. You cannot see the stars when you are walking down a town street and the gas lamps are lit. All those violet depths, and calm abysses, and blazing worlds, are concealed from you by the glare at your side. So, if you want to see into the depths and the heights, to see the great white throne and the Christ on it, who helps you to fight, you have to go out unto Him beyond the camp, and leave all its dazzling lights behind you.—A. Maclaren, D.D.
The Love of One Unseen.—In Peter we have not a highly intellectual, cultured man, so it was not given to him to set the first forms and shapes to the expression of Christian doctrine. For that work the Apostle Paul was specially called, endowed, and educated, and the fitness of the Divine choice of instruments has never been more fully demonstrated than in the selection of Paul for that particular work. Peter evidently had a larger heart than head; his great feature was impulsiveness: sometimes it led him astray into forwardness, presumption, and over-positiveness; but sometimes it enabled him to make noble testimonies, and even sometimes to force an entrance into mysteries whose doors refused to yield at the bidding of sanctified intellect. It may be said, in a comprehensive way, that we are indebted to Paul for Christian truths that may be thought out. Paul, in his most enthusiastic moments, is a man of mind and culture, and he abundantly proves that the intellectual man need not be a cold, hard, dry, or unloving man. Again and again we find his soul catching fire of the truth with which he deals, all aglow with the fervour and enthusiasm which the truth he studies enkindles; bursting out in intense utterances of adoration, as if the emotions of his heart must force the bonds of silence, and send forth at least a cry. Peter adds to the circle of Christian truth and doctrine almost wholly those forms which bring satisfaction to the heart, which are found out by the sensitiveness of Christian emotion; and so his words come to us like fresh revelations in particular moods of our feeling. In our times of meditation, of quickened emotion, of sacramental preparation, we shall find words of Peter frequently suggested, and largely helpful; by their aid our souls may often gain wing, and fly into the innermost recesses of communion with Christ, and with His truth. Peter’s words have often proved, through the Divine Spirit, live coals from off the altar, which have reillumined the smouldering love of our souls, and set the flame rising high again, and burning bright for consuming the dross of self and sin. Our text is one of his most characteristic and best-remembered words. I envy no man who is so unsusceptible to its tenderness, its thrill of emotion, and its hallowed suggestiveness, that he can coldly study it, take it to pieces, criticise it, and set out the precise meaning of its parts. I cannot. I shall not try to. I shall not satisfy anybody to-day who asks exactly what it means, what it teaches and what it involves. I have wanted it to be to me a live coal, setting fire to holy feelings of love and truth within me. And now I want it to be a live coal to you, kindling such fires of thankfulness, faith, and love in you, that we may have an unusual time of refreshing and hallowed joy in presence of the emblems of our suffering, dying Saviour to-day. I want to lead you along this line of thought, staying a little while at each point for the needful unfolding and illustration. Salvation comes by love to a Person; that love may be sight-quickened, that love may be faith-quickened; the love quickened by faith will be altogether nobler, mightier, more satisfying than the love quickened by sight.
I. Salvation comes by love to a Person.—I am always trying to make you see what a large, comprehensive thing our salvation is. With its varied forms of beginning, with its many-sided applications as it continues its working, and with its many endings of relation to soul-life, body-life, and social life, the salvation of a man may well be called “so great salvation.” Looking in some directions towards God and conditions of reconciliation and acceptance with Him; in others, towards ourselves and the effectual removal of the very love of sinning; and in yet others, towards our fellowmen, and perfecting the harmony of our intercourse with them;—verily a man’s salvation does grow to our thought as a very wide, rich, comprehensive thing. I cannot get all the fulness of the idea of a man’s salvation into the word conversion; that is but a point of it, a stage in it, a portion of it. Nor will it all go into the word sanctification; that, too, expresses a part only. The Bible words are regeneration and salvation—wide words, that arch over a man’s life, from the moment of spiritual awakening right through to the moment of “presenting faultless before the glory,” even as the arched dome of heaven spans our earth from utmost east to utmost west. Can we get any worthier impression of what God intends, and what he prophetically sees realised, when he begins to save a man? Surely He anticipates the poor half-burnt brand, not only plucked from the fire, but the fire-marks taken away; the brand quickened with new life, grafted into the true vine, filled in every duct and vessel with the rich vine sap, and bringing forth abundant fruit. The brand is not fully saved until the grape clusters hang thickly upon it. Surely when God touches the heart of the poor, weary, homeless, despised, and despairing prodigal with the thought of love and home, it is in the hope of finding him one day settled in the old son’s place, and filled with the old child-spirit of obedience and trust. The prodigal is not saved by being put back into the home, he is only saved when he gets again the spirit of the home. What does God see as the final issue when He begins to save a man? Surely a sight that must fill with rejoicing that heavenly Father’s heart. He sees one clothed in white robes, all stainless, which are the emblem of one at last made all pure and “glorious within.” He sees one crowned with a crown which is the seal of final victory in the life-battle with sin. He sees one tuning a right noble song from a heaven-harp; a song so sweet, so loud, it shall for ever tell what joys fill that soul with rapture which has reached the perfect righteousness and the full salvation. Let us but get this large idea of what it is for a man to be saved, and then we shall see the truth of the statement that salvation comes by love to a Person. No merely intellectual grasp of any truth, even the sublimest ever revealed to man, can work out this great and mighty change. The force that alters man for better or for worse is the force of His love. “Tell me,” it has been said, “the companions a man keeps, or the friends he has, and I will tell you what he is.” The great renewing, changing, saving power is our love to the Lord Jesus Christ, the infinitely excellent and loving One; or, as I like to think of it, it is our heart-grasp of Him; because all heart-grasps must be blended faith-holdings and love-holdings; and when faith and love hold together, love is sure to swallow up and absorb the faith: and when our love just opens our whole soul and life to Christ, and bids Him welcome to come right in, then all the saving power He has in His Divine right, and has won by His life, experience, and sacrifice, can be exerted in us; He can save us wholly; save us with His full salvation from the past, from our sins, from sinfulness, from death, from hell; save us by changing us into the likeness of His own obedience, trust, and love; and so prepare us to “shine for ever in the light of God,” the monuments of a great salvation. We may believe a thing, we cannot love a thing: we may like it, admire it, value it, cherish it. It is of necessity to love that its object must be able to respond, returning love for love. So you see I believe in the work of Christ; believe in the Atonement; and the Redemption; and the Sacrifice; and the Resurrection. But since my higher life, my full salvation, comes by that love, which is a swallowing-up of faith in something higher, I must get beyond things: I shall never be able to love the work, and the Atonement, and the Redemption,—they must pass into lights which shine down upon, and all around, the Saviour, the Redeemer, the Atoner, the Propitiator, Him who gave Himself for us—glorifying Him, making Him so beautiful that our heart is wholly won to Him, our love fully set upon Him, and body, soul, and spirit, are yielded in a sacrifice of affection unto Him. Sometimes you feel a little difference between the mode in which I present Divine truth to you, and the modes of your previous apprehension; and possibly you may sometimes think the difference far greater than it is. Really it lies in this: you think so much of the redemption; I try to lift up your eyes, and get them fixed on the Redeemer. You dwell on the work of salvation; I try to point out the person of the Saviour, and show you what glorious power to deliver He has gained through His work. You try to formulate a doctrine of the Atonement; I long to make you see the infinite fitness and fulness of the Divine Atoner and Reconciler. You say, “It is Christ that died.” I try to repeat after Paul, and say, Yes, that is true, but there is more. Oh! to see and feel that something more: “Yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” It is impossible to do more than suggest to you how much the apostles made of the person of Christ, and how constant is their demand of loyal attachment to Him, trust and love to Him. A little roll of passages may suffice to set this upon your thoughts. Christ required personal relations to Himself. “Come unto Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden.” “He that hath the Son hath life.” “I give unto them eternal life.” “Him that cometh unto Me I will in no wise cast out.” “By faith that is in Me.” “Whosoever believeth in Him might not perish, but have everlasting life.” “This do in remembrance of Me.” The apostles preach, saying: “Him hath God exalted, a Prince and a Saviour.” “God hath made that same Jesus whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” “Unto you that believe He is precious.” Paul shows us his loving relations to a personal living Saviour, when he says, “The life I live in the flesh is a life of faith on the Son of God”; and our text is in fullest accord with the whole New Testament when it says, “whom,” not “which”—“whom having not seen, we love; in whom though now we see Him not yet believing, we rejoice,” etc. And surely He is the true minister of the Word who, as an ambassador of the living Christ, beseeches men in Christ’s stead to be reconciled unto God.” This, then, is a most true and worthy way in which to think about Divine things. Our full salvation comes by love to a Person. In presence of these sacramental emblems, how true that must seem to every one of us! Just what we gather round them for is, that, seeing Christ afresh by their help, we may set our love afresh upon Him; and often we have found that nothing so mightily helps us in our godly living as these sacramental quickenings of our love to the personal and living Christ. We do not see Him in a vision of dazzling brightness, “clothed in white garments down to the foot.… His head and hairs white, like wool, as white as snow, His eyes like flames of fire, His feet like fine brass, burning to white heat in a furnace?” His voice does not come to us like “the sound of many waters”; but we still hear Him say the words which quicken adoring, thankful, trustful love: “Fear not; I am the first and the last, I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore. Amen.” The old test of discipleship remains: “Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?” Well for us all, and for the progress of the work of redemption in us, if we can respond, “Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Thee.”
II. That love maybe sight-quickened.—As was the love of the disciples for their Master. They were with Him in the privileges of closest intimacy; they received the impressions of confidence which ought to follow witnessing His mighty works; but far beyond that, the secrecies of communion, the knowledge of His private life of purity and charity, woke in their hearts an enthusiasm of affection which made them in due time heroes and martyrs. With what a tender, trustful affection John loved Christ; getting as close as he could to Him, and even, with almost a woman’s gentleness, venturing to lean on His bosom. With what a passionate and ardent affection Peter loved Him; a kind of love which might stumble, but was too wholly sincere and intense entirely to fail and fall. Would you see love that comes by sight, read the heart of Mary Magdalene, that woman who was “last at the cross and first at the grave,” and wept her sorrow because they had taken away the body which she had meant to embalm with sweetest spices by her own loving hands; or go into the Bethany home, and see Mary pass out, soon to return and blend precious ointment and thankful tears upon the Saviour’s feet; look at her:—
“Her eyes are homes of silent prayer,
Nor other thought her mind admits,
But, he was dead, and there he sits,
And He that brought him back is there.
“Then one deep love doth supersede
All other, when her ardent gaze
Roves from the living brother’s face,
And rests upon the Life indeed.”
Tennyson.
All this was sight-quickened love; they saw and believed; and need I point out how this love was salvation to them, delivering them from sin, and self, and all ignoble ends, and lifting them up to all high and noble uses, and putting a glory on their lives? Too readily we cherish the thought of our dreadful loss, in that we have never seen Christ. Sometimes the heart goes out in a passionate longing: “Oh that I could but once see Him!” How would we journey if we might at last gaze upon Him in one of His attitudes of infinite tenderness, bending to look with such gentle acceptance on the poor sinner that rained her tears upon His feet, or holding a little babe in His arm, and touching the other little ones that clung about His robe, and saying, “Suffer the little ones to come unto Me.” Only to see a full-length picture of Him sets our heart beating with emotion; surely we could believe, we could love, if we might but see Him. So we repeat the mistake of doubting Thomas, who wanted to see the wound-marks in His hands and side. And to us, as well as to Him, comes the Saviour’s gentle reproof: “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed; blessed are they which have not seen, and yet have believed.”
III. That love may be faith-quickened.—As was the love of these stranger Jews, scattered abroad, to whom Peter wrote, and as is ours. They, nor we, have ever seen the Son of God; yet, “though now we see Him not, believing in Him, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” Archbishop Leighton says: “The eye is the ordinary door by which love enters the soul, but this (saving love to the Lord Christ) enters by the faith-faculty, which is the soul’s eye.” For the things that are unseen and eternal stand related to the soul’s eye just as the things that are seen and temporal do to the bodily eye. And amongst the various definitions given of faith, I would single out this one as peculiarly full, and true, and suggestive: “Faith is that state of the soul in which the things of God become glorious certainties.” Must not all the faculties of our soul be vastly superior to the faculties of our bodies? In truth they are sublime powers, only feebly represented even by the wonderful senses of eye, and ear, and touch. It is a far, far grander thing that we can love, and believe, and adore, and obey, than that we can see, and hear, and feel. And all that sphere of unseen things with which faith and love and hope have to do is far more real than that outward world of sensible objects with which eye and touch can deal. Put together these two things: “The sun shines;” “God lives;” and surely that one which only the soul’s eye sees, which only faith can grasp, is the one which is most certainly true, really the most free from doubt to every one whose soul-eye is clear. Only try to think what a little piece of our life, after all, is concerned with “things seen and temporal,” and how broad, and wide, and high, and rich, is the world of the unseen with which we deal. The things of thought, emotion, and affection, are mostly unseen. The heroes, whose stories we cherish for continual inspiration, are all unseen. Our departed friends are now unseen; we have only the images of them which faith and love create. Beyond the blue sky we see the dome of God; within the movements of nature we trace the handiwork of God. Measure life by what our eye sees, our ear hears, and our hand can touch, and it is a poor, limited life indeed; so many miles through to the other side—so many leagues measured all round. Look at life with the soul’s eye, see it with the faith-faculty, and then our human life grows profound and awful; worlds are within worlds; worlds are beyond worlds; everything has eternal issues and relations. By the measurements of faith the world’s diameter is infinite, and its circumference is God. But the question which our text suggests, and which our Christian hearts want answered, is this: Can this faith-sight of Christ help me to love, to the love that saves? Well we know, for again and again we have felt how, looking into the face, and watching the life, of our brother or sister has touched our hearts and won out a love that longed to prove its deep, true power in sacrifices for them. Well we know how sight-quickened love has delivered us from evil, elevated us, made us nobler men and women. But can it be so with faith-sight? Yes, brethren, and more, much more. Try if your loves are all limited to those you see. Try whether it is so, that all the persons present to your heart are persons you can look upon and touch. Well the widow knows that her unseen husband is far closer and more real to her than any who sit beside her. The mother folds her heavenly child to her heart oftener than her living children to her bosom. And by faith we can see Christ; we can realise Him, and find kindlings of love rise towards Him, purer, stronger far than any that we might have felt, had we looked into His human face and touched His gracious hand. How true poetry is to the deepest feelings of our nature! Tennyson, mourning over his friend, lost to touch, tells us how near that friend ever was to thought, and heart, and faith:—
“Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near, in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
“Far off thou art, but ever nigh,
I have thee still and I rejoice.”
“Known and unknown; human, Divine;
Sweet human hand, and lips, and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine.”
And hear how the poet-soul thinks of Him who found it “expedient that He should go away,” out of sight and touch, to become for human souls the ideal of all that is pure, and loving, and winsome, and beautiful:—
“Strong Son of God, immortal Love,
Whom we, that have not seen Thy face,
By faith, and faith alone, embrace.
“Thou seemest human and Divine,
The highest, holiest manhood Thou.”
Better, far better for us, that Christ is now unseen. We are no longer limited to the impressions produced by His human figure, we can raise the noblest and most perfect ideal of Him; we can put about our thought of Christ everything that we find touches our heart most deeply, everything we count most loving and lovely. Even when we love through sight we do not love exactly what we see, but an ideal which our heart fashions; we love our beloved because we see them transformed with a beauty which our heart gathers round them; and upon the records left of the Son of God we all can build the figure of our own Christ, transcendently, infinitely pure and lovely, and our soul will be lifted up by the very nobility and glory of the unseen One whom we love. And this is our confidence and joy; our ideal shall never disappoint us. Let the faith-faculty do its utmost, and the love-faculty crown its creation to the utmost, it cannot reach the very glory of Jesus; it is never worthy of Him. He is better than mind can think. He is better than heart can conceive. Our Christ is unseen, and yet we set our love upon Him. Our Christ we shall not see to-day, and yet, believing in Him, we may be found rejoicing with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of our faith, even the salvation of our souls. How can this be? What is there in our soul-vision of Christ to kindle fresh love and awaken a joy that shall be ever growing toward the unspeakable? What? Oh, brethren, as you see Him there, about Him is the fashion of a “lamb as it had been slain.” Gazing on Him, our soul is flooded with memories of a wonderful, blessed past. We see the manger-place that tells how He thought not even equality with God a thing to be held with unrelaxing grasp, but emptied Himself and entered the world a helpless Babe. We see the daily scene of self-denial and grace—mighty deeds of kindness, and winsome words of love,—melting even hard hearts to His obedience. We see the scene shaded by the olives of Gethsemane. We see the scene illumined by the torches of a murderous band. We see the scenes that disgraced for ever the tribunals of earthly judgment. We see a Saviour coming forth, wearing a mock crown of thorns and a scornful old purple cloak, yet calm in the grace of His self-sacrifice. We see three crosses; our soul is entranced to watch the dying agonies and listen to the dying cries of One whose woe a darkening sky in mercy hid; and as we see our hearts remind us that all this was borne for us.
“For love of us He bled;
For love of us He died;
’Twas love that bowed His fainting head,
And pierced His sacred side.”
Is it any wonder that those memories should quicken within us a new and enthusiastic love? And when the memories of the past grow faint, we look again, and lo! how beautiful our Saviour is! In His face shines the glory of an infinite love, that has won its triumph out of sacrifice. Does heaven seem bright? It is the light of His beauty shining through it. Is heaven radiant with song? The one burden of those who sing is the infinite worth and grace of Him who “loved us and gave Himself for us.” And as, admiringly, with the eyes of our soul, we look upon Him; as we cherish loving memories, and listen to His words of tenderness and grace, still spoken to all loving hearts;—how can we keep our souls from rising in their responsive love, and saying, with new enthusiasm of affection, “Lord, Thou knowest all things; Thou knowest that I love Theo.”
Did St. Peter say, “Not having seen”? That is but partly true, poorly true. Our souls have seen the unseen Christ. The life is ever freshly manifested to the faith-quickened vision of human souls. We have seen. We have “beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth”; and it may be that we shall have another soul-vision to-day, and our hearts may respond, as did Thomas, saying, “My Lord and My God.”
1 Peter 1:7. The Proper Reading of Human Afflictions.—They are the “trial of our faith.” Faith is here put for the Christian profession, which is based on faith in Jesus as Messiah and Saviour. And the trial of the faith is spoken of because those addressed were actually then suffering on account of their Christian profession. The writer of the epistle more fully describes the trial through which these Jewish Christians had passed (Hebrews 10:32-34). “After ye were enlightened, ye endured a great fight of afflictions; partly while ye were made a gazingstock, both by reproaches and afflictions, and partly while ye became companions of them that were so used. For ye had compassion of me in my bonds, and took joyfully the spoiling of your goods.” The trial of faith is sometimes spoken of in a way that leaves a very unworthy impression of God upon the mind. It is assumed that He sends trial in an arbitrary way, upon His good pleasure, and as an exercise of what is called Divine Sovereignty. Scripture gives no warrant for our representing Divinely sent trials as other than “for our profit.” Man submits metals to severe testings, but only with one or both of two distinct objects in view. Either for the improving of the metal itself, or for the preparing of the metal unto some use and service. And human afflictions, as God-sent trials of faith, are never read aright, unless they are seen to have a distinct purpose in the improvement of the person subject to them, or in the fitting of him for some particular ministry. “He doth not afflict willingly, nor grieve the children of men.”
1 Peter 1:8. Loving Whom we have Not Seen.—That God should be invisible is a necessity of His perfection. Heaven is no more capable of containing God than the earth, although more of His glory is displayed there. And angels and sainted souls in heaven, in their highest raptures, in their clearest visions, “see no similitude.” But here is another kind of invisibility altogether. God having appeared and made Himself “manifest,” disappears again from mortal sight. Jesus Christ, in personal, visible form, has wholly left this world. All the myriads of living men who name His name have to speak of Him as “Him whom they have not seen.” This is apt to shape itself to our first thoughts as, in some sense, a loss. “The eye affects the heart,” and we think that if we saw Him with our eyes it would surely be a little easier to believe in Him, and our love would spring up at the sight. When we think more deeply, and bring into our view, as far as we can, all the elements of the case, we drop these earthly hankerings and vain regrets, and, coming upon the higher ground of our text, we say, “Whom having not seen, we love.” It is very desirable that we should live habitually on this higher ground, making as few backward, downward movements, to the lower ground, as may be. It is a fact that great multitudes saw Jesus Christ in the flesh, and did not believe. It is a fact that great multitudes who had thus seen Him in the flesh without believing, did believe immediately after He disappeared. It is a fact that those who had believed when He was here, believed still more when He went away. Their faith then became more intelligent and more heroic; it became another and a higher thing. It is a fact that many who had not seen Him, but, being His contemporaries, had often heard of Him, without believing by the hearing, no sooner heard that He had gone from the world than they believed at once. It is a fact that great numbers, in many cities and countries, hearing from the lips of preachers and evangelists the whole story of His coming to this world and going hence, believed. It is a fact that on the same testimony, and by force of the same evidence, men have believed ever since, all over the world, and are believing new. Take for guidance of thoughts three words out of the passage:—
I. Faith.—“Yet believing, were joice.” Faith is naturally the first thing, without which no other thing can be. If we do not believe in the existence of Christ in heaven, of course we shall not direct any affections to Him there. If we do believe, we have it as our life-work to nourish faith, to raise it to its higher degrees, keep to it in perpetual exercise. Faith is fundamental, but it is structural as well—it grows in and with the building. If his life is a growing one, as every life should be, his faith grows with and in his life, and his life by his faith. Nearly all believing may be said to be believing in Christ. This makes the object of faith so simple, and yet so manifold! It is Christ in heaven, but that one thing contains many. He is therewith as a sacrifice, to offer its perpetual virtue; as an advocate, to plead for those who are in trouble and danger; as a Ruler, to watch and guide all affairs; as a Friend, to do His friends all kindly service; as an Elder Brother, to prepare for the home-coming of the younger members of the Divine family, and to welcome them home when they come.
II. Love.—“Whom having not seen, ye love.” The love is really born with the faith, begins to act with it, grows by its means, and is not cooled or repressed by the invisibility of its object. Love is the tenderest and the most delicate, and yet it is the strongest and most overmastering, of all human emotions. To love Christ—there, in a moment, you have the sublime of this affection! But how does the great and glorious Christ feel to me? For love rises to meet love. The feet of love are fleetest when other feet are seen advancing. The arms of love, are outstretched to meet outstretched arms.
III. Joy.—One Christian feeling thus glides into another, becomes part of another. Faith begins to have a glow in it, and—lo! it is “Love.” “Love” begins to have a gladness and to wear a glory, and—lo! it is heavenly “Joy.” There is some joy in every Christian’s heart. Much will depend on temperament, much on habit, much on outward circumstances, as to the development and cultivation of this sacred principle. But in every case you have the element and actual beginning—the root, and fountain, and flowing spring, of a heavenly and eternal joy. Blessed necessity! that compels every soul in Christ to be happy in Him! A flame of renewal has passed through the inmost being, refreshing waters of grace have cleansed every corrupted faculty, and cooled every fevered thought. If he cannot break out into a loud song, he can chant some softer syllables of praise. It is even said to be the joy “unspeakable”; and it is “full of glory.”—A. Raleigh, D.D.
The Love of the Unseen.—Show how it is that we find it possible to love the unseen; and that it is possible for our love of the unseen to become a mightier moral power than our love of the seen. Our salvation comes by love (which necessarily includes faith), but in setting our love upon Christ we are under this apparent disability: we have not the important help of the sight-faculty. We are, however, under this real advantage, that we are set upon securing the help of the faith-faculty. That will do much more and better for us than the sight-faculty ever, under any circumstances, could. Observe that, in a proper sense, we cannot be said to love things. We love persons. But the interest we have in things may help us toward loving persons. Our Lord’s sacrifice, atonement, etc., are not objects of love, but helps toward our loving Christ. The faith-faculty is exercised about truth declared. It fashions from its own ideal of the person so revealed. And no worthy ideal of Christ, fashioned upon the basis of truth declared concerning Him, can ever disappoint. The sight-faculty does materially help us to love, but it keeps us under limitations, from which the faith-faculty wholly delivers. “Thomas, because thou hast seen Me thou hast believed; blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”
1 Peter 1:11-12. The Unselfish Ministry of the Prophets.—“Not unto themselves, but unto you, did they minister the things.” And this they knew. This “was revealed to them.” This they accepted as, for them, the duty of the hour. But there could not be a much harder lot. They pictured a glorious time; they lived in their imaginations; but for them it was all a dream, an anticipation, a vision of the far-away, which they knew could never become reality for them. But they were willing to serve others. It must have been hard for them. It must have been a great strain on character and faith. They saw the sufferings of Christ, they saw the spiritual glory that followed them. They saw the spiritual kingdom of Christ possess the earth, and they knew they would never breathe the air of that kingdom, or be employed in its service. Yet those old prophets do but illustrate the universally working law of service for God. You cannot do it if you want anything for yourself.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1
1 Peter 1:5. Kept by God.—The Rev. J. H. Brooks, D.D., says: “If your final salvation depends on your holding out or holding on, you will most certainly be lost. Two ministers were conducting a meeting together, and at its close one of them said, ‘I picked up a Dublin tract on a railroad train the other day, and with great interest and profit, although it teaches a doctrine I don’t believe.’ ‘What is the doctrine?’ asked his friend. ‘The doctrine of the perseverance of the saints,’ he answered. ‘Neither do I believe it,’ was the reply. ‘Is it possible?’ exclaimed the first. ‘I thought, you were decided in your belief of it.’ ‘No, I am not. I once believed it, but since I have come to know more about the saints, and especially about myself, I believe all of us would go to the devil if left to ourselves; but I believe very firmly in the perseverance of the Lord;’ and they shook hands to show their fellowship in this truth.”
1 Peter 1:6-7. The Purpose for which Trials are Sent.—When Joseph Alleine and seven other ministers, and forty private Christians, were committed to the prison of Ilchester about two hundred years ago, Alleine said much to cheer them. Among other sweet things, he said: “Shall I tell you a story I read? There was a certain king that had a pleasant grove, and that he might make it every way delightful to him, he caused some birds to be caught, and to be kept in cages till they had learned sundry sweet and artificial tunes. And when they were perfect in their lessons, he let them abroad out of their cages into the grove, that he might hear them singing those pleasant tunes, and teaching them to other birds of milder note. Brethren,” he added, “the Lord is that king, this grove is His Church, these birds are yourselves, this cage is the prison; and God hath sent you hither that you should learn the sweet and pleasant notes of His praise.”
1 Peter 1:7. Trial of Faith.—When a founder has cast his bell, he does not at once put it into the steeple, but tries it with the hammer, and beats it on every side, to see if there be a flaw. So when Christ converts a man, He does not at once convey him to heaven, but suffers him first to be beaten upon by many temptations, and then exalts him to his crown.
1 Peter 1:8. Loving the Unseen.—A mother in England taught her little child that his father was away in India. As soon as he could lisp his father’s name, his picture was shown him, and he was taught to say, “That’s my papa.” Though he had never seen his father to know him, yet through that mother’s faithful teaching he had learned to love him. One day, unexpectedly to all, the father returned from India, and as he entered the hall door, his little son was the first to greet him, exclaiming as he did so,” My dear papa, I am so glad to see you.” So the Bible pictures before us Christ, our Elder Brother, “whom, having not seen, we love,” and of whom we sing, “He’s my Saviour.” By-and-bye, when we behold Him face to face, we shall know Him and meet Him, not as a stranger, but as a friend.
Faith and Reason.—An old writer says Faith and Reason may be compared to two travellers. Faith is like a man in full health, who can walk his twenty or thirty miles at a time without suffering; Reason is like a little child, who can only with difficulty accomplish three or four miles. Well, says this old writer, on a given day Reason says to Faith, “O good Faith, let me walk with thee.” Faith replies, “O Reason, thou canst never walk with me.” Well, they set out together; when they come to a deep river, Reason says, “I can never ford this.” When they reach a lofty mountain, there is the same exclamation of despair; and in such cases Faith, in order not to leave Reason behind, is obliged to carry him on his back; and, adds the writer, “Oh, what a luggage is Reason to Faith!”
Faith as the Eye of the Soul.—Faith is a grace that has both its birth and life in light, and in that light it sees light. Faith is not only a hand, but an eye, to the soul, and hath its sights both in way of aspect and prospect, not only to look on things immediately before it, but to look on things far hence and to come; it can see things that are invisible. Some things are invisible in respect of their nature; so God is, and so spirits are. Some things are invisible in respect of their distance, they are not yet present with us, but are things to come; faith can see both these. It is true we have not the sight of sense, but we have a sight as noble, yea, and in some respects, more excellent than that of sense. The sight of faith is more full and certain than that of sense. We have, indeed, not a perfect sight, but we have such a sight which God hath vouchsafed to His poor ones in the world, that by the power of it they may be enabled to walk through all the conditions, how dark and sad soever.—Symonds (1651).