This second epistle, beloved, I now write unto you.
St. Peter’s love token
I. The nature of it--a letter written. What shall we render to the Lord for His mercy in writing these blessed covenants?
II. The number of it--a second after the former. “This second”; not so much fearing the miscarriage of the first, as hoping to work better confirmation by the next.
III. The tenor of it--to stir up their minds. Why are the words of the wise compared to goads (Ecclesiastes 3:11) but to show that the best in God’s team need pricking forward?
IV. The order--by way of remembrance. This is a just order and method; first, to teach the way of the Lord, then to remind men of walking in it. We are not only called teachers, but remembrancers (Isaiah 62:6). (Thos. Adams.)
I stir up your pure minds.
A Christian memory
The power of memory is, perhaps, the most amazing part of our mental equipment. It is a golden thread that links infancy and age, on which are hung, like pearls, varied facts and experiences of every hue. Memory has her servant, recollection, an invisible librarian running about the chambers of the mind, to find what she calls for. Now God uses this faculty in the work of building up Christian character.
1. The gospel has a history to be remembered.
2. History repeats itself ordinarily; but this history of the gospel can never be repeated. Christ has suffered once for all. A Christian memory is swift to remember this.
3. In the revelation of His “memorial name “Jehovah has emphasised the significance of memory. He is not an abstraction, a far-distant personality, even, but “the Father of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob”--a historic God.
4. Again, keep in mind that the life of our Lord in glory is linked with that of His redemptive work on earth, as truly as your existence there, some day, will be connected with your residence here on earth.
5. Finally, a Christian memory holds in trust these historic dates of Christ and His redemption, because of the fact that they are to be the theme of adoring praise throughout eternity. (J. M. English, D. D.)
Mindful of the words which were spoken before.--
Mindfulness
I. The object of their mindfulness.
1. “Words,” for their plain certainty; not shadows and abstruse paradoxes.
2. “Spoken before,” for their antiquity; not things of yesterday; no new devices.
3. “By the prophets,” for the authority; men that had their commission immediately from God Himself.
4. “Holy prophets,” for the sanctity; they passed not through the lips of a Balaam, or Caiaphas.
5. “The commandment of us,” etc. The prophets were legal apostles, the apostles are evangelical prophets. Both these came to the world with commandments.
(1) Neither prophets nor apostles did ever command in their own names; but the former came with “Thus saith the Lord,” and the other in the name of Christ.
(2) St. Peter refers us to the words of the prophets and commandments of the apostles, and precisely chargeth our mindfulness with these lessons.
(3) Neither the prophets without the apostles, nor the apostles without the prophets, but both together. The gospel without the law may lift men up to presumption; the law without the gospel may sink them down to desperation.
(4) The rule of truth is delivered to us by the prophets and apostles.
II. Their mindfulness of that object. This consists in two things:
1. Observation. God never meant His Word for a vanishing sound; that which is kept upon eternal record in heaven, and is a constant dweller in the elected heart (Colossians 3:16), must not be a sojourner, much less a passenger, with us.
2. Conversation. It is a barren mindfulness that does not declare itself in a holy fruitfulness. Conclusion:
1. Let us desire the faculty and facility of doing; earnestly to desire it is one half, yea, the best half.
2. Let us be thrifty husbands of time and means to be spiritually rich.
3. Let us reduce all to practice. (Thos. Adams.)
Compendious commandments
Cultivate the habit of reflective meditation upon the truths of the gospel as giving you the pattern of duty in a concentrated and available form. It is of no use to carry about a copy of the “Statutes at Large” in twenty folio volumes, in order to refer to it when difficulties arise and crises come. We must have something a great deal more compendious and easy of reference than that. A man’s cabin-trunk must not be as big as a house, and his goods must be in a small compass for his sea voyage. We have in Jesus Christ the “Statutes at Large,” codified and put into a form which the poorest and humblest and busiest amongst us can apply directly to the sudden emergencies and surprising contingencies of daily life, which are always sprung upon us when we do not expect them, and demand instantaneous decision. (A. Maclaren.)