CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES
2 Peter 1:12. Present truth.—Not some particular phase of truth, but the truth which you have and hold.
2 Peter 1:14. Showed me.—The reference cannot be to John 21:18, as John’s gospel was written later than the epistle. It may, however, be to the incident narrated in that gospel.
MAIN HOMILETICS ON THE PARAGRAPH.— 2 Peter 1:12-15
Completing a Life-Work.—St. Peter could not fail to realise how important to the young Christian Churches was his own personal influence, and his authoritative teaching, as well as those of St. Paul. It is singular that he makes no reference to his friend St. John, and we can only conclude that at this time St. John had not found the opportunity for setting forth in writing his womanly, mystical conceptions of the person and gospel of Christ. It was befitting that St. Peter should make provision for the continuance of his life-influence, and that he should comfort his disciples with the assurance that he would have this in mind. In a sense the necessity was specially laid on St. Peter, as the most prominent of the apostles. But it is a duty which should be duly considered by every good man, and especially by every good teacher. No man has any right to allow his influence to be a merely temporary and passing thing. He ought to do all that in him lies to make it permanent. The relation of the apostolic developments of the Christian truth to the original revelations of those truths in the Person, teaching, and work of the Lord Jesus, needs very careful consideration. More especially in view of the fact that on the revelation rests the absolute Divine stamp, but on the developments only a Divine assistance, which worked through the particular knowledge, and peculiar characteristics, of individual minds; so that we have respectively the Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine settings of the truth. And St. Peter is in no way to blame if, in his anxiety for the preservation of Christ’s truth, there blended an anxiety to preserve also the Petrine stamp upon it. It would have been an unworthy thing if St. Peter had cherished the idea of founding a Petrine school or sect; but a man may be jealous about conserving the particular settings of truth which have been revealed to him, and have come to him with power.
I. Christian truth, and thought, and life, may become too dependent on individuals.—The controversies of the Christian ages would have been mildertoned if the various settings of truth could have been dissociated from their authors, and considered simply upon their merits. Personal feeling comes in when we think of Cerinthus, and Arius, and Augustine, and Calvin, and Wesley, and there is a kind of jealousy for the system, out of respect to the man. Sectarianism, in nine cases out of ten, has grown out of the personal influence of some man. That is a perfectly legitimate force—one which God abundantly uses for the spread of His truth. But the response to it often becomes exaggerated and excessive, and men accept on the authority of the man rather than on the evidence of the truth. Following particular men is one of the grave weaknesses of our time. When a Christian life is really no more than personal attachment to an individual, and repeating after him, it is placed in the gravest peril when that man’s influence is removed. So often the man has come to stand in front of the Christ.
II. Because of this undue dependence, Christian teachers are often removed by death or otherwise.—We can easily see that the prolonged influence of individuals must grow perilous. When pastors continue into old age in the same church, there are certain serious evils which become rife. If Calvin or Wesley, or any other leader, had lived on, how surely they must have been mischief-makers to the Church! And so often in smaller spheres, popular men carry people away, wisely and well, or otherwise, but always at the peril of quiet, sober Christian thinking and Christian living. And God’s providence is always actively at work for their removal at fitting times. It is for the world’s good that apostles die. Their work can only be for a while. It is for the Church’s good that her thought-leaders and her popular leaders never stay very long in any one sphere. Sectarianism may be useful, but exaggerated sectarianism would not fail to secure the Church’s moral ruin.
III. The truth of all true teachers abides when they have passed away.—No living seeds of truth sown in the souls of men ever really fail. It may very well be that we fail to recognise the fruitage. It often is a fruitage in life, in character, in triumph over sin, in good cheer, in comfort, in the soul’s renewed power. We err in thinking so much of the results of Christian teaching and influence in the purely intellectual spheres. And yet, what every man has truly taught surely goes to make up the whole of truth for the ages. Time does, indeed, try all settings of truth, and relegate some that seemed for a time very prominent, to the background and obscurity. And it is singular to notice how the spheres of Christian truth that interest men are constantly changing, and so what seemed to be lost settings of truth come into view and power again, and when they come are often unrecognised, and so they are freely talked of as the fresh discoveries of the new age. Every true teacher may honourably show an anxiety that the truth given to him to teach should be preserved; and this is best done by committing it to writing, as St. Peter did. Out of the writings the personal element soon fails, and the opinions and views come to stand on their own merits alone. Beginning with the holy gospels, what a splendid heritage of Christian literature has come to us! But this is not so fully recognised as it should be—the literature of each age belongs to each age, is adapted to each age, and fades with its age; but the literature of the next age is really its resurrection—its thoughts and truths re-translated, re-dressed, and re-expressed, to fit the moods of the new generation. The apostles and their immediate successors live on in every age. They have gone. Age after age their successors, too, have gone; but their teachings, a thousand times translated and adapted, are the Church’s possessions to-day. And what is true of them is true of every man to whom is given grace to put a personal stamp on any side or aspect of the revealed truth of God. Dead—he lives.
SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES
2 Peter 1:12. The Present Truth.—This is a suggestive phrase. There is a present truth for every age—that which God emphasises by His providence, which history emphasises by human need, and which doctrine emphasises by the extremes of error. In this day the present truth which is of supreme importance is the supernatural. The drift is towards naturalism in philosophy and materialism in practice. We must lay stress on the Divine and supernatural element in the Word of God, the nature of man, the history of the race, and the work of the Spirit.
I. As to the Word of God.—We must assert its inspiration and infallibility. Inspiration must be more than genius, or illumination which depends on internal consciousness, while inspiration has external attestation of prophecy and miracle. Any theory of inspiration that leaves out infallibility, destroys the value of the Bible as God’s book, for it takes away the court of final appeal. Reason and conscience are ordinarily safe guides, but when they err we need an infallible standard by which to correct their variations, as the best watch needs to be adjusted by God’s celestial clock.
II. As to the Divine image in man.—It is defaced, but not effaced, like a shattered mirror whose fragments still reflect your image. Development is at bottom a denial of the descent of man from God, and substitutes his ascent from the oyster. To make a man a mere animal leaves gaps unfulfilled—the beginnings of life, consciousness, intelligence, conscience. Moreover, it leads to the caste spirit, to the undervaluation of man as man, and the erection of barriers to human progress, and begets carelessness of his condition. It classes dogs and Hottentots together, and led the French governor of the isle of Bourbon to rank the Malagasy with asses.
III. As to the hand of God in history.—To make history atheistic is to make humanity anarchistic. If human history is but an accident or a fate, then, as there is no God in it to rectify it, man’s only hope is to right his own wrongs. To believe in a Providence behind human affairs leads to patience and long-suffering; but if there be no adjusting power, why consent to injustice? The alarming developments of Society to-day, which threaten all government with ruin, are direct results of infidel teaching.
IV. As to the Spirit of God.—Reformation is not regeneration. Transformations of character and communities which are radical and permanent are the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Nothing less than creative power can be equal to a new creation; and for the highest success in any true work for God and man, the Spirit of God is a necessity. Genius, learning, and philanthropy, come to their limits. The moral and spiritual nature of man refuse to yield until some mightier force is at work than man can bring to bear.—Homiletic Magazine.