CHRISTIAN LIFE CALLS FOR THE PUTTING AWAY OF EVILS
CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
THE Jewish Christians addressed in this epistle are thought of as “born again” into the Christian faith and life. The key-note of the epistle is “hath begotten us again.” (1 Peter 1:3) and “being born again” (1 Peter 1:23). The idea that on professing faith in Christ a man enters on and begins a new life, as a spiritual babe, in a spiritual atmosphere, in which, and in receipt of spiritual nourishment, he is to grow up into the fulness of the spiritual man in Christ, is decidedly Pauline. But St. Peter makes a special application of it to the Jews who became Christians, and might plead that they were already born of God, and that Christianity involved no vital change in their standing and relations; it was really no more than an unfolding, or reformation, of the life unto God which they already had. Both St. Paul and St. Peter distinctly claim for the Christian profession that it is a new life, beginning with a new spiritual birth, in the power of the Holy Spirit. If this is fully apprehended, the substance of the epistle will be understood as a varied help toward the training and shaping and nourishing of the spiritual babe up through its stages of growth, and the ordering of the various relations into which the babe must come as it grows. But there is a Jewish blending of figures and ideas taken from the old dispensation which is sometimes a little difficult for us to follow, but which would be very suggestive to those familiar with Judaism, who were directly addressed in the epistle. This chapter has been described as an exhortation to realise the idea of the new Israel. “The apostle bids them put away all elements of disunion, and combine into a new Temple, founded on Jesus as the Christ, and into a new hierarchy and theocracy.” Personally each professor of faith in Christ had begun a new life. Unitedly those who professed faith in Christ constituted a newly founded race, a spiritual Israel, a kingdom of priests.
1 Peter 2:1. Wherefore.—Because the new life has begun for you. There is something befitting that new life. There are things associated with the old life which are manifestly unfitting, and must be put away. The things mentioned are precisely the besetting sins of the Jewish character. Laying aside.—The counsel implies recognition of their power to deal both with wrong feelings toward others and with wrong expressions of such feelings. Literally it is “having laid aside,” and it is implied that this is involved in the old life being ended, and the new life begun. This is what ouǧht to be. St. Peter urges them to make things be as they ought to be (compare St. Paul’s teaching concerning the lingering corruptions of the “old man,” as in Romans 7). Malice.—Generally wickedness, or disposition to injure others; perhaps resentment of supposed wrong, which was a characteristic evil of the Jewish mind. The relations of the Jewish Christians and Jews would provide easy occasion for such resentments. Guile.—The great weakness of Jewish character in every age. The Laban taint in the Abrahamic race. Hypocrisies.—Like, yet distinct from, “guile.” The idea here would be met by “insincerities,” over-anxiety to make a Christian appearance. The apostle would say “be genuine,” do not strain for effect. Let the new life grow naturally, and show itself and express itself how it will. We might put his counsel in this shape: “Beware of cant and sentimentality.” Envies.—These would spoil the fellowship of the Christians among themselves. Evil speakings.—With special reference to the characters of others. St. Peter would support the motto nil, nisi bonum. Augustine thus marks the significance of these terms: “Malice delights in another’s hurt; envy pines at another’s good; guile imparts duplicity to the heart; hypocrisy (flattery) imparts duplicity to the tongue; evil speakings wound the character of another.”
1 Peter 2:2. Newborn babes.—The Greek word ἀρτιγέννητα implies the earliest stage of infancy. It was usual for Rabbinical writers thus to designate proselytes. Compare the term “neophytes.” Sincere milk.—Simple, unadultered. De Wette, “The pure, rational milk.” In view of the additions which had been made to the genuine Word of God by the Rabbinical schools, and its over-laying by perplexing and mischievous commentaries, St. Peter properly calls upon those beginning the new life to take nothing but the Word God as provided, and to cultivate an appetite for it. R.V. gives “The spiritual milk which is without guile,” and it adds to the verse the words “unto salvation,” for which there is good authority. For St. Peter’s use of the word “salvation” see 1 Peter 1:5; 1 Peter 1:9-10.
1 Peter 2:3. Tasted.—Or had a beginning of experience of personal relations with the Lord Jesus. The words are taken from Psalms 34:8, LXX. version. Gracious.—More precisely “usable,” “serviceable.” The figure in the Greek word is the mellowness of old wine. The idea of the apostle is that if the Christians were like newborn babes the food they had tasted once they would want again.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Peter 2:1-3
Christian Growth is in Christian Control.—In these verses the growth is seen in what it enables a man to throw off. When men became Christians out of Pagan or heathen associations, there would necessarily be a great deal of the old life and habit that must be thrown off—a great incrustation of old evils that must be resolutely dealt with. The apostle Paul recognises how much had been done in this way by his Gentile converts when he says (1 Corinthians 6:10-11), “Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with men, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.” But St. Peter wrote his epistle mainly, if not exclusively, for Jewish converts, not for Gentile Christians. The point is, however, equally applicable to them. For there were characteristic moral faults of Judaism, and especially of the later, formal, and corrupt Judaism, which were quite as antagonistic to the Christian spirit, and the Christian life, as any of the open vices of Paganism could be. “Hypocrisies and evil-speakings “were characteristic Jewish sins. And they must be thrown off if the Christian life is to find free expression; they would be surely thrown off with advancing Christian growth. The point has its continuous application in every age, and to-day. More or less defined, every Christian life is a new start and a change. There has always been much in the old life which is unsuitable in the new. A man carries habits, tendencies, cherished ideas, infirmities, into the profession of faith in Christ, which he must gradually throw off if he is to “walk worthy of his vocation”; and the throwing off is not best done as a series of efforts, it is the natural result of growth in the Divine life. Grow, and the more vigorous life of the soul will surely shake off the old evils and frailties. In relation to the evils of our habits, disposition, hereditary tendencies, etc.—
I. We can deal with the things that give them their opportunity and power.—In that sense we can “lay them aside,” “put them away.” A man may not have gained power over himself so as to allow himself to be placed in circumstances of temptation; but he may have gained such a power of control over his circumstances that he can alter conditions and relations which he knows are temptations to him. The familiar illustration is the man who has the craving for drink. He cannot directly master that craving, but he can watch everything, and carefully avoid everything that excites it. By so doing he can wear the craving out, and presently gain the full victory, and consciousness of full strength to resist. Shaping life so that there shall be no appeals to our natural frailties in it, is the duty which is seldom recognised. And yet, in that sense, the Christian’s life is in his own hands.
II. We can suitably nourish the spiritual growth.—“The sincere milk of the Word” is not the “milk for babes” of which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews treats. St. Peter’s “sincere milk” is rational (intellectual), or more precisely spiritual milk; and he only calls it milk because his thoughts are occupied with the terms “begotten again,” “new-born babes.” He means this: Nourish yourselves into spiritual strength with just that spiritual food which is precisely adapted to your spiritual condition. It may be milk, if that is best for you; it may be strong meat, if that is best for you. The one important thing is that the Christian should grow; and the conditions of growth are very largely within his own control. He must meet his possibilities and responsibilities.
III. We shall want to nourish that spiritual growth if we rightly apprehend the responsibilities of the Christian life.—Growth is the one demand of all life—vegetable, animal, intellectual, moral, spiritual. Wherever there seems to be life, we ask what we feel to be the testing question, “Does it grow?” Every life has an aim—it is moving toward something. It will never reach it if it does not grow.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
1 Peter 2:2. Things to be Laid Aside.—The apostle mentions five, but he includes others of like nature, and he means they are to be laid aside once for all, never to be touched, thought after, or desired again. Having been laid aside, the temptation to them must be resisted, and not one of these noxious weeds must be permitted to show its head.
I. All malice—or all manner of malice. Malignity, or resentment of real or fancied injuries. You think that some one has done you a wrong, and you are angry with him; you owe him a grudge, you are determined to have your revenge. This is malice (Ecclesiastes 7:9).
II. All guile.—Guile is deceit, and (opposed to truth and openness of mind. A man who cherishes guile is never to be trusted, and he is so suspicious that he can seldom trust any one himself. A true Christian is sincere.
III. Hypocrisies.—These are allied to guile, and are indeed a species of it. Hypocrisy is acting a part as on a stage, where a person appears to be what he really is not. A. hypocrite is one who deceives, and intends to do so—does it knowingly.
IV. Envies.—Some men see others better off’, more respected, and in possession of greater honours than themselves, and they envy them, want to be like them, and are mortified if they cannot be.
V. All evil speakings or slanderings.—Envies lead to these, and these are the bane of all society. What heartburnings, and jealousies, and misunderstandings have arisen from the practice of evil-speaking! There are many ways of speaking evil of others. You may insinuate doubts as to their piety; you may ask questions about them which will lead others to ask questions still more significant. And it is an easy thing to blast the character of another, whilst it is a very difficult thing to repair the injury. These things the Christian is thought of as having already laid aside, and in all circles of true believers they are—and they should be—guarded against with the utmost care.—Thornley Smith.
1 Peter 2:3. Testing Conditions.—St. Paul commends the duty of self-examination and heart-searching in connection with the Holy Sacrament in 1 Corinthians 11. This verse of our text may suggest suitable preparatory self-examinations.
I. The beginnings of a religious life.—“Tasting that the Lord is gracious.” We are very anxious to gain assurance that our beginning has been right. Perhaps we make too much of the initial stages. The New Testament describes the beginnings of religious life under a variety of forms and figures. Sometimes it is the passing in at a gate, or it is the first breath of a new life; or it is the first cry of new-born babe; or the first prayer of a penitent soul; or the healing in response to a look; or the answer to a call; or the laying of a life foundation. Here it seems to be the infant’s first taste of food—the wakening, as it were, of a new sense, which discovers that “the Lord is gracious.” St. Peter’s words may be read in the light of his own experience. There is one incident of unsurpassed tenderness in St. Peter’s life. It is his interview with Christ after the resurrection, when, again and again, but using somewhat different terms, Christ asked the searching question, “Lovest thou Me?” That was the time, above all other times, in which St. Peter felt the graciousness of the Lord. That was not his conversion, but it was his first “soul-taste,” the scene that henceforth toned his life. By this expression St. Peter evidently means—
1. A personal realisation of the graciousness of the Lord. He had been brought up in a knowledge of God that must have included His goodness. But such things as we may learn about God may lie on the mind as mere knowledge. St. Peter says that it must get in to a man, and become the man’s own. The soul, with its sensitiveness and receptivities, must touch and taste. It is easy enough for us all to sing, “God is Love.” It is a solemn moment when the soul wakes up to say, with a passion of personal feeling, “Yes, God is love.” “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.”
2. A heart realisation of the graciousness of the Lord. Many a man’s mind has hold of it, but it is much more for the affections to be swayed and constrained by it, and for the graciousness to flow in on the soul like the tide of new life to one who has been sick.
3. And it is nothing less than the graciousness of God that is tested. That word “graciousness” must be meant to express more than goodness, more than kindness. God is good to all; kind to the unthankful and the unholy, but gracious to the penitent sinner. So “graciousness” is the sinner’s “taste” of the Lord. Now, cannot a man know for himself whether, made sensitive by sin-burden, he has “tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
II. The privileges that belong to such a beginning.—Not to any particular degree of Christian attainment, but to the very beginning. First privilege—a right to the name, and to the hope, of a Christian. Second, a right of admission to Christ’s Church, which is the communion of such. Third, a right to kneel at the altar of the Lord, to sit down at the table of the Lord, which is the feast together of those who, in love, respond to love.
God’s Graciousness.—This is the sweetness of the word, that it hath in it the Lord’s graciousness, and gives us the knowledge of His love. This they find in it, who have spiritual life and senses, and those senses exercised to discern good and evil, and this engages a Christian’s further desire of the Divine Word. They are fantastical, deluding tastes that draw men from the written Word, and make them expect other revelations. This graciousness is first conveyed to us by the Word; there first we taste it, and there still we are to seek for it; there the love of God in Christ streams forth in the several promises. The heart that cleaves to the Word of God, and delights in it, cannot but find in it, daily, new tastes of His goodness. Here it reads His love, and by that stirs up its own to Him, and so grows and loves every day more than the former, and thus is tending from tastes to fulness. It is but little we can receive here—some drops of joy, that enter into us; but there we shall enter into joy, as vessels put into a sea of happiness.—Leighton.