Two leading thoughts are presented for our guidance in 1 Peter chapters 3 and 4. The one is “practical righteousness”; the other, “following Christ.” It is perhaps not quite unnecessary to say that the first must always precede, as well as accompany, the second. The man who has not learned, like Zacharias (Luke 1:66And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless. (Luke 1:6)) to be practically “righteous before God,” cannot surely be said to be following Christ.
No doubt on reading this the tendency of our minds is at once to say, “This can have no application to me.” Possibly not. But before saying so, carefully consider all your business transactions alone, apart from the voice of the world, and the custom of the market; and remember, that nothing but pure righteousness will stand before God. Those not engaged in business can have but little idea of its unhealthy state from the combined effects of competition, corruption and adulteration, and surely it is not beyond the truth to assert that many Christian men compound with their consciences in business transactions in a way they would abhor in private life. The great justifying plea is that others do it. It is the “custom of the trade” to put “100” for “80,” to call “medium” “very fine,” to have two prices, and that without the knowledge of the buyer, to give and receive “percentages,” or some other form of what are commonly called “bribes,” to wink at adulteration of all kinds so long as not actually practiced by themselves, and so on. No doubt it is, but this will be no plea before the judgment seat of Christ. There will be a terrible unmasking there, and it will then be seen what a hollow show many a Christian life was for want of daily practical righteousness, and that against one’s own interest.
Does not this account for the low dead spiritual level of many of our lives? We come to the Lord’s table, we hear the most glorious and elevating truths, but somehow we do not get more like Christ. Why? Because daily we are in one way or another infringing on God’s standard of practical righteousness. It is therefore useless to study our favorite Deuteronomy 26, before we fully carry out Deuteronomy 25:13-1613Thou shalt not have in thy bag divers weights, a great and a small. 14Thou shalt not have in thine house divers measures, a great and a small. 15But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. 16For all that do such things, and all that do unrighteously, are an abomination unto the Lord thy God. (Deuteronomy 25:13‑16). No doubt we shall suffer in pocket if we walk daily in God’s presence in righteousness, and still more if we go on and try and show something of the grace and love of Christ in our business; but our reward in heaven will be great. Forgive, dear reader, these words if too severe; they will not be in vain if they point out to our souls the hidden and perhaps unsuspected sin of years, that has barred all progress.
We do not enter here on the question of what trades are, and what are not, suited to the separate position we profess to hold. In all that God will surely guide the true soul, who first of all sees that in his daily life there is no transaction that he will be ashamed to have investigated in the presence of God.