Christ's Absence and Return.
All the practical exhortations of this passage are founded upon the truth that "the end of all things is at hand." Yet, strange to say, there is hardly any passage of Scripture which has given rise to more frequent cavils than this simple assurance.
I. Some persons are fond of asserting that the Apostles were mistaken in this belief; that when they wrote the end of all things was not at hand. But the answer is, that the Apostles warned the men of their own age, and through them the men of every age, that by remembering the uncertainty of the world's duration they should assign to temporal things their true value and see that the true safety of a Christian consists in a life of prayer, and love, and active duty.
II. But there are some who object altogether to the hope of heavenly reward as a motive of action. Christ Himself, however, encouraged His disciples by such promises. St. Paul was stirred up by them to ever-increasing diligence and greater eagerness in pressing towards the mark. If we are not to lower our conception of goodness by practising it for the sake of future happiness, neither are we required to
"Wind ourselves too high
For sinful man beneath the sky,"
and to exclude from the heart every feeling except a cold and naked sense of duty.
G. E. L. Cotton, Expository Sermons on the Epistles,vol. ii., p. 40.
References: 1 Peter 4:7. W. W. How, Church of England Pulpit,vol. x., p. 517; H. J. Wilmot-Buxton, The Life of Duty,vol. i., p. 260.