Hope.
I. Christian hope, as St. Peter tells us, is seated in God. It is, as it has been called, one of the triad of virtues specifically theological. It takes its stand on Divine revelation; it looks on to the attainment of Divine promises; it draws its life-blood from no mere surmise as to what is possible for humanity in the race at large or in the individual, but from the manifestation of Divine truth and goodness in the Incarnate, whom St. Paul in one passage calls our hope, because our hope is grounded on Him and centred in Him. St. Paul, indeed, cannot think of hope without thinking of Christ.
II. A hope which is thus essentially religious, thus Christian, from the root upwards, and impossible except on the terms of Christian belief, is strong enough to face all facts, even such as are unwelcome or austere. Life must, after all, be taken seriously; the hope which is a Christian's privilege involves a wakeful collectedness of mind. When trial comes we are not to say, "It is more than we bargained for," but rather, "We were duly forewarned." Certainly there will be temptations to unhopeful-ness; there must be the discipline of hopes deferred, of successes marred, of apparent defeats and disappointments, of much that might tempt impatience to despair. A hope thus trained, while resting on august realities, is strong, because it is not fanciful.
III. Hope is a great instrument of moral and spiritual discipline. The hope which maketh not ashamed is always humble and always active. It remembers the terms of its existence: "We are made partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end."
W. Bright, Morality in Doctrine,p. 141.
The Christian's Hope.
I. First of all, let us deal with this very remarkable statement: "the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Now, there are two or three very large principles which will come, I think, out of a careful observation of the theology of these words; and the first of them is this: "the grace that is to be brought to us." I don't want to deal with theological technicalities; but we all know in the common language of religious life and education, as well as in the language of scientific phraseology, that the grace is distinct from the glory, in the same way as we distinguish the present from the future. It is here obvious that the thing which the Apostle is speaking about is on the other side of the grave, because he tells us that it is the constant object of our hope. And thus he tells us that it is all involved in the revelation of Jesus Christ, and that it is definitely fixed when He shall come to be manifest in His saints and glorified in them that believe. This grace, undeserved by us, rises from the deep fountain and artesian well of His own nature. It is grace when He comes to you and me and forgives us our sins; it is grace when into our broken feebleness step by step, according to our capacity, He infuses and communicates His own strength in temptation, and gives us hope in sorrow and triumph in conflict; and it is grace when our palm-bearing hands shall be folded in rest, and the fight shall be behind us, and the victory in our hearts. Then we shall sit down, with the Saviour who has overcome, in the kingdom, and dwell there.
II. And then there is the other side. He would have us hope it is a somewhat unusual and yet perfectly significant word he would have us distinctly comprehend that that which is the object of our hope, whatsoever superlative degree of brightness and of wonderfulness we may attain to, is in essence and in kind the very same as the feeble beginnings and dull communications of love and goodness which we get from God here. The golden thread of unity ties together all the experiences and all the possessions of a redeemed man, from the first moment of the change that delivers him from the kingdom of darkness right away on through the endless pulses of an unbroken eternity. Grace is glory in the bud; glory is grace in the flower; and all which we hope for in the future is but the evolving of that which is planted in our hearts today if we love God, though it may have to fight with much antagonism to itself both without us and within. The grace comes all from the one source; and glory is but the superlative degree of that of which we already have possession.
III. And then there is another point which I wish to make about the simple language used concerning this great object of Christian hope, which also you will find, I have no doubt, in the Revised Version about the grace that our Bible says is "to be brought." The original has it literally and strictly rendered, "the grace which is beingbrought." If I remember rightly, it was the saintly Archbishop whose commentary on this Epistle of Peter will always be held in great esteem and respected as honest and sound I mean Archbishop Leighton who rendered it, "the grace that grows, that has a being." It is being brought, it is on its road, as if some strong choir of angels had already left the throne and were coming towards us, and, like those who bear the Holy Grail, were flitting nearer and nearer and nearer to us; with all the power of the strong winds and the wave lifting them on, it is bearing down upon us as a ship at sea; travelling to us, it has already set out, as light has done years ago, from the far-off stars, and is on its road to us through the great abysses, and presently it will strike with sunshine against the darkling surface of this dull earth. It is the grace that is being brought to us floating down through the ages, the one great, far-off, Divine fact to which the whole creation is moving. And so let us cherish the solemn thought that it is ready to be revealed, and that it is coming to us with every pulse of diminishing time, with every grain of the past running out of the sand-glass; the day of the Lord is hastening on its course.
IV. This grace perfected, which is on its way to us, is given to us all, involved and implicated, or, to put it into plainer words, wrapped up as the literal rendering would be in the revelation, the apocalypse of Jesus Christ. When He comes, it comes. The two things are twisted together, like the fair jewel set in a golden setting is surrounded by stones and pearls; so for us our grace is all included in that encyclopædiacal glory the manifestation of Jesus Christ Himself. When He who is our Life shall be manifested, says the other Apostle, then shall we also appear, shall be manifested, with Him in glory.
V. And notice the brief reference to the quality of the hope which you and I have to cherish. You cannot build a fortress-home of hope in the future when you have nothing but the uncertain external foundation to build upon; but here is a rock for us. What rock? My Master's word. Here is another rock. What rock? My Father's character; and on this, and most of all, I believe, upon that historical fact that our Brother Christ hath died and risen again and is ascended up on high, we may build with absolute certainty the fair fabric of a perfect hope, erected upon a rock, and may have done with "peradventures" and "maybes" and change them into "verily, verily." He says that of us, and we believe that is true. Wherefore set your hopes on Christ, that you may prove all things. "Gird up the loins of your mind" i.e.,brace up yourselves to make an effort that is not an easy one; for there are plenty of difficulties in the way of any man keeping the light of hope burning in the watch-tower through the darkness of the night and the fury of the storm. "Gird up the loins of your mind"; fix your attention and concentrate your thoughts on the points on which the hopes are built. No man can cherish any hope about any poor miserable thing in this world unless he keeps thinking about it; and no Christian man or woman can cherish hopes for another world unless they keep thinking about it, and you cannot keep thinking about it without a dead lift of faith.
A. Maclaren, British Weekly Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 553.
Christian Hope.
I. Hope in its auxiliary conditions: girding up the loins and being sober.
II. Hope in its operation: "Hope perfectly unto the end." (1) Hope is natural to the human mind, nothing more natural; (2) we must persevere in the face of difficulties, however great, for he that endureth to the end shall be saved.
III. Hope in its immutable foundation. (1) Our hope is based on Divine grace as brought to us in the past at the first revelation of Jesus Christ; (2) fresh supplies of grace are being brought for us in the present; (3) our hope looks forward to the future. J. C. Jones, Studies in First Peter,p. 94.
The Place of Mind in Religion.
The phrase may have lost something of its picturesqueness in its transfer from the East to the West and from the first century of the Gospel to the nineteenth. But if St. Peter stood amongst us at this moment here in England, in London, at the exact point of thought and talk and writing which is our position today, I doubt if he could find a word of counsel more suitable or more suggestive than that which speaks in this brief text: "Gird up the loins of your mind." What can be more striking than St. Peter's application of this figure to minds, and to minds in their religious aspect? He sets before us the figure of an ungirt, untidy, slovenly mind, and bids us beware of it in ourselves as religious men and Christians. One thing is presupposed; St. Peter counts it self-evident: that mind has place in the things of God. St. Peter does not fear the too much mind, but the too little. What St. Peter dreads is the half-mind; what he rebukes is the slovenly, the untidy, the dissolute mind. He does not fear the practised, the disciplined, the intense intellect. He bids the mind gird itself up as for a task requiring all its exertion, a task desperate without it. Mind has place in the things of God, and must gird itself up to handle them. Just in proportion as it is earnest and active, it will know and keep its place. Let us try to sketch one or two of the particulars of that girding of the text.
I. "Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty. Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child on the breast of its mother." Humility, queen of graces towards God and man, but chief element of that mind-girding which is our subject. Gird up the loins of your mind, first of all, by a deep humility. "Thou art near, they tell me, O Lord; but I am so far off so ignorant, so stupid, so sin-bound oh quicken me."
II. But next to it I would place its sister grace, which is patience, that Divine ὑπομονή of which we speak so often, made up of two ingredients: submissive waiting, that upward look which acknowledges dependence and that onward look which believes in eternity, which knows that with the Lord a thousand years are as one day, which therefore is "willing to wait." Be willing to wait, not indolently, not in indifference, not as those who wrap themselves in their virtue or wrap themselves in their faith, careless of the multitude, careless of the race, but in the twofold definition of the grace which we are magnifying: a submissive waiting.
III. Humility; patience; last, hope. Hope is the expectation more or less confident, for it admits of degrees of a pleasant future. It cannot be that this scene of confusion should be for ever. Hope, which is faith's foresight, sees things which are not as though they were, and hears a voice say from the excellent glory, "Behold, I make all things new." "We, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness."
C. J. Vaughan, Restful Thoughts for Restless Times,p. 264.
References: 1 Peter 1:13. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxii., No. 1909; Preacher's Monthly,vol. ii., p. 422. 1 Peter 1:13; 1 Peter 1:14. Homilist,2nd series, vol. iv., p. 483. 1 Peter 1:14. H. P. Liddon, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxxiii., p. 257; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. iii., p. 83.