In this epistle, the apostle, under the Holy Ghost, anticipates the moral corruption which was to overspread Christendom. Language and figures are largely employed to set forth this awful anticipation or prophecy; and surely our observations may well and fully vindicate the Spirit's forebodings. For what we know of such corruptions may lead us to say, that language or figures borrowed from Balaam, or from Sodom, or from the fallen angels, from the dog, or from the sow, are not too awful for the reality.
But pollution suggests judgment. In a divine sense, in the reckoning of God, in righteousness or holiness, there is a necessary connection between them. Accordingly, this same epistle contemplates judgment as well as moral corruption. This we see in chap. 3, following, as of course it does, chap. 2.
These are the apostle's materials, or principal objects, in these chapters- moral corruption in chap. 2, judgment in chap. 3. Glory, or the dwelling-place of righteousness, is seen only in the distance; and I may, there-fore, speak thus: moral pollution occupies the foreground, divine judgments the mean or middle place, and glory shines faintly afar off.
But this being so, the apostle has a practical purpose. It is this, I doubt not—to set the saints to that cultivation of holiness, that living exercise of their souls in the power of godliness, which will keep them apart from this evil condition which he is foreboding. This is seen in chap. 1.
PE 1{He tells them, at the very beginning, that full provision was made to this end—full provision for this husbandry, to which he is about to set them.
He tells them, that divine power had given and secured to them all that pertained to, or was needful for, not only life, but godliness, and that the promises, exceeding great and precious as they were, had a purifying virtue in them; that by them the saints would be made partakers of divine nature, as a people who had escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. All this he tells them at the outset, and this at once bespeaks his practical purpose in writing to them, setting forth their provisions in God, and His power and His promises, not for salvation or joy (though that be true, as we know), but for godliness.
The promises are looked at in their cleansing virtue. It is, as I may say, the washing of water by the word that Peter here contemplates and speaks of, as Paul does in another place (Eph. 5:2626That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, (Ephesians 5:26)).
And having thus declared our provisions in God and His word for the ends of godliness, he puts us upon the husbandry of godliness. He tells us of fruitfulness -fruitfulness which will be known in the cultivation and production of those graces and virtues which give real, intrinsic character to the saints, those habits, and tempers, and properties of the soul, the inner man, which we know with God are of great price.
And there is a difference, we may observe, between service and fruitfulness. Service is something more manifested, fruitfulness may be very hidden. The hand, or the foot, or the tongue may serve; and so they should. Tipped with the blood and the oil, they are to be instruments in the hand of the divine Master of the house, and to be as servants there; but it is in the deeper places of the affections, the secrets of the soul, that the husbandry of the saints, in the power of the Spirit and the truth, is to be yielding fruit to God. Herbs, meet for Him by whom the soul is dressed, are to spring and grow there, fragrant, and beautiful, such as bespeak the virtue of that rain that has visited it from heaven (Heb. 6:77For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God: (Hebrews 6:7)).
But still further-in proof how Peter is keeping practical godliness in view—he not only gives the promises, as we have seen, in connection with that, but other things and objects also. Thus, looking at the distant glory, he sees it under this character, the dwelling-place of righteousness (3:13). It is not its brightness or its joy he anticipates, but its purity. He calls the Mount of Transfiguration the holy hill (1:18). And this being so, the place to which the saints are tending being holy -being the dwelling of righteousness, he tells them, that if they be, as he exhorts them, cultivating godliness—if their husbandry be spent on virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, charity, and the like, then they will have an abundant entrance into that kingdom. And this is a very simple and sure thought. If the place we are to enter, when the journey is over, be a clean place, a holy hill, a dwelling of righteousness; and if, while we are on the road, we be cherishing the holy, the clean, the righteous mind, surely our entrance will be the more easy and natural, and thus abundant. This will be so, because we have been already (in the spirit of our minds, or in character) in the place we are approaching. We know it already, in the great moral sense. We may not have had one ray of its brightness or glory along the road that has led us to it, but we have been exercised in its virtue-we have been in moral consistency with it. We have not had its scenery yet, but we have already breathed its atmosphere; and that ensures an easy, a natural, or an abundant entrance.
And I may add this, that as we see, in chaps. 2 and 3, corruption ending in judgment, so in chap. 1 we see the path of the saints of those who walk in the practical power of their holy calling ending in a happy, abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom.
Yes; and this moral we may draw from this. How should the path savor of the place it leads to! Are we on our way to One who was rejected here? How fit that we should not refuse to be rejected with Him. Are we on our way to join the Conqueror of the world? How fit that we should cherish that faith that overcometh the world. Are we soon to see Him who loved us so as to die for us? How right that we should cultivate love one to another. And, according to the suggestions of this epistle, are we tending to the dwelling of righteousness? How does it become us to grow in grace, and to be adding to faith virtue, and to virtue know-ledge, and to knowledge temperance, and to temperance patience, and the like. Thus and thus we may speak to ourselves; but if one may speak for others, we have to say, " My leanness! my leanness!"
"For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. -When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with Him in glory. Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." (Col. 3:3-53For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory. 5Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry: (Colossians 3:3‑5).)
"One spirit with the Lord;"
O blessed, wondrous word!
What heavenly light, what power divine,
Doth that sweet word afford!
"One spirit with the Lord;"
The Father's smile of love
Rests ever on the members here
As on the Head above.
"One spirit with the Lord;"
Jesus, the glorified,
Esteems the Church for which He bled,
His body and His bride.
And though by storms assail'd,
And though by trials perst,
Himself our Life, He bears us up
Right onward to the rest.