1 Peter 2:11-25.
You must open your Bible at the passage indicated and follow this article with the Scripture before you, if you would get any real help. Space forbids quotations of any length from the passage so, as you read, refer to the Scripture and THINK.
If consequently fresh light begins to break in upon you, do not lightly turn from it, but lifting up your heart in thanksgiving to God, pursue your searching of the Word on the point. It may open up to you a fruitful field of truth and you can resume your reading of the article on another occasion.
AT verse 11 of chapter 2 The apostle Peter turns the “marvelous light” of God upon the daily lives of the holy and royal priests to whom he writes, addressing them as “strangers and pilgrims.”
They were, of course, strangers in the lands of their dispersion, as the first verse of the Epistle told us, but this is not what is alluded to here. Every Christian is a stranger and pilgrim, and we need not be surprised at this, since by the very fact that we are brought into such near and honored relationship with God there must be a corresponding severance from the world. The world is entirely antagonistic to God and we cannot hold with both at the same time. It must be one or the other. For us it is relationship and communion with God, and hence stranger ship and pilgrimage in the world. The world itself began with Cain, who was “a fugitive and a vagabond” (Gen. 4:12). We may summarize the matter thus: —
A fugitive is a man who has fled from home.
A vagabond is a man who has no home.
A stranger is a man who is absent from home.
A pilgrim is a man who is on his way to home.
The actual presence of God is the true home of our souls and we are disconnected from the world-system so as to be strangers in it, though left in it for a time to show forth the excellencies of God. Still, we do not wander aimlessly for we are pilgrims also; and this means that we have an objective before us—a fixed point of destiny to which we wend our way.
The world is consumed with fleshly “lusts” or “desires,” and consequently, given over to did gratification of those desires. The Christian has other desires of a spiritual sort which proceed not from the flesh at all, and the only way to foster these is to abstain from the desires of the flesh. This is a very personal matter.
Verse 12 deals with our lives in relation to others. The Gentiles were naturally very critical of these Jewish sojourners in their midst and disposed to speak against them. When any of them became Christians the Gentiles were more likely than ever to denounce them, as witness the way in which a Christian today gets denounced if he gives the world the smallest occasion for it. Therefore, their whole manner of life was to be right and honest. The Jew, with his notoriously strong instincts in the matter of profit-making may have particularly need this exhortation, but who of us does not need it at all? If we maintain righteousness, ultimately our very antagonists will glorify God. They may do so in a way that will ensure their own blessing. They will certainly do so when God visits them in judgment.
Verse 13 to 17, inclusive, work this exhortation out for us, in its details. These dispersed Christian Jews might very possibly be inclined to resent many of the Gentile authorities who were over them, whether kings or governors, and also the many ordinances and laws an0 regulations that had been instituted, so many of them very different to what had been given of God through Moses, to which they and their forefathers had been accustomed. Still, they were to submit. Government, they had to recognize, was a divine institution. Hence they and we are to be subject for the Lord’s sake. The Christian is of course, free for he stands in the liberty of Christ. Still, he must not use his freedom as “a cloak of malice”— in any way to vent his spleen upon others—but he must regard it as liberty to serve God, and the service of God demands the subjection to rulers which is here laid down.
The matter is tersely summed up in verse 17, and we find what becomes “the servants of God.” As to all men—honor. As to the brotherhood, i.e., all believers—love. As to God—fear. As to the king, the representative of all human authority―honor. Carrying out this we do the will of God and silence foolish adversaries.
Having thus exhorted all Christians to submission, the apostle specially addresses servants in verse 18. The word used means not exactly “slaves” but “household servants.” These, too, are to be subject to authority and specially to the masters whom they serve. These masters may be often men of the world and ill-tempered. The servant may consequently often have to suffer wrongfully. There is no credit to the Christian if, suffering for wrong doing, he takes it patiently. Such is the divine way of thinking, though nowadays people—even Christians―are very intolerant of a small rebuke for their faults. What does please God is to take patiently suffering which is endured for doing well and acting with “conscience toward God.” Nothing is harder to us naturally than this. How indignant we feel when our well-doing only serves to bring trouble upon us!
What will help us in this? Two things. Firstly, the example of Christ. Secondly, His atoning sacrifice and its results.
Verse 21 to 23 give us the first. No one ever did well like the Lord Jesus. No one ever was so misjudged, reviled and persecuted as He. Moreover, He did no sin, no guile was ever in His mouth. There was nothing in Him or His life to justify the smallest slur being cast upon Him. Yet no one suffered as He, and no one ever took the suffering with such meekness and perfection. He fulfilled the word of Isaiah 53, “He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth; He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He openeth not His mouth.” In all this He was an example for us, for we are called to His path, and to follow His steps. The consideration of Christ in all the glory of His perfection cannot fail to have its effect on us, conforming our thoughts and ways to His. If called upon to suffer we too, shall commit ourselves to Him that judges righteously instead of attempting to avenge ourselves.
Yet even so, we are not as He was, for we have sins and He had none. We needed, therefore, the atoning sacrifice of which verse 24 speaks. He who did no sin “bare our sins in His own body on the tree.” This is something altogether beyond us. We cannot follow in His steps here.
Every part of this wonderful verse deserves our most careful attention. His own self became the Sin-bearer, and no other. He bare our sins. Isaiah 53 had said He should bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, but it also predicted that He should be “wounded for our transgressions” and “bruised for our iniquities,” and be stricken for “the transgression of My people,” and His soul be made “an offering for sin.” These sins were ours, for the verse definitely speaks of the work of Christ, not in its Godward aspect as propitiating Him, but in its believer-ward aspect as bearing his sins―his sins, and not the sins of everybody.
Moreover, He bore our sins in His own body. He was definitely our Substitute. We had sinned in our bodies, and having become a true Man, apart from sin, He bore our sins in His holy body as a sacrifice for sin. This He accomplished on the tree, for it was exclusively in His death that atonement was effected. He did not bear our sins during His life, but in His death, and we are healed by His stripes as Isaiah 53 had also declared.
But then He bore our sins and delivered us from the stripes that our sins deserved, not in order that we should go on in our sins, but rather that we should henceforward be dead to the old life of worldly corruption and the sins which it entailed, and now live unto practical righteousness. Our sins have been atoned for and dismissed as to their judicial sentence, in order that we should be delivered from the practice of them and from their power.
This verse may be helpfully compared with the truth set forth in Romans 6. There sin is in question—sin as a tyrant and a master here sins. There we are to reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Here we are to be dead to sins and live unto righteousness. In both cases the cross of Christ is that from which all flows, but Romans 6 is the believer taking up the reckoning of faith in his experience. Here it is the practical result which follows. The consistent believer becomes as a dead man to all the sins that formerly pleased him, and he lives now for the will of God which is practical righteousness. And this because of the fact that the One who died for him as the Lamb of sacrifice now lives as the Shepherd and Bishop of his soul. We were indeed “as sheep going astray”— a last reference to Isaiah 53―but now we have a living Shepherd to lead us in the paths of righteousness for His Name’s sake.
F. B. HOLE.