The mere deeply we ponder the history of professing Christians, whether as furnished by the pen of inspiration, or as coming within the range of personal observation, the more fully we must see the vast importance of a complete break with the world, at the outset. If there be not this, it is vain to look for inward peace, or outward progress. There may be a measure of clearness as to the doctrines of grace, the plan of salvation, as it is called, justification by faith and the like. But unless there is the thorough judgment of self, and the complete surrender of this present evil world, peace and progress must be out of the question. How can there be peace where self, in some one or other of its thousand shapes, is fostered? And how can there be progress where the heart is hankering after the world, halting between two opinions, and vacillating between Christ and present things? Impossible. As well might a racer expect to get on in the race while still lingering about the starting post, and encumbering himself with heavy weights.
Does the reader deem all this legal? Let him rest assured that nothing is further from every trace of legality than making a proper start on the christian course. Indeed we may set it down as a fixed principle that legality, and self, and the world invariably go together; and what we are contending for is the complete surrender of all these things in order to our running, with success, the race set before us.
Is it then, that peace is to be found by denying self and giving up the world? Most certainly not But neither can peace ever be found while self is indulged and the world retained. True peace is found only in Christ—peace of conscience in His finished work—peace of heart in His blessed person. All this is clear enough. But how comes it to pass that hundreds of people who know, or profess to know, these things have no settled peace, and never seem to take a single step in advance? You meet them, week after week, month after month, year after year, and there they are in the same position, in the same state, and with the same old story, chronic cases of self-occupation, stereotyped world-borderers, “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” They seem to delight in hearing the gospel clearly preached, and truth fully unfolded. In fact, they cannot endure anything else. But, for all that, they are never clear, bright or happy. How can they be? They are halting between two opinions; they have never broken with the world; they have never surrendered a whole heart to Christ.
Here, we are persuaded, lies the real secret of the whole matter as regards that class of persons now before us. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” A man who tries to keep one eye on the world, and the other on Christ, will be found to have no eye for Christ, but both eyes for the world. It must be so: Christ must be all or nothing; and hence it is the very height of absurdity to talk of peace or progress, where Christ is not the absorbing object of the soul. Where He is, there will never be any lack of settled peace; and there will be progress. The Holy Ghost is jealous of the glory of Christ, and He can never minister comfort, consolation, or strength to a heart divided between Him and the world. It could not be. He is grieved by such unfaithfulness; and instead of being the minister of comfort, He must be the stern reprover of indulged selfishness, worldliness? and vacillation.
Let us look at the case of our apostle. How refreshing it is to contemplate his thorough-going style! His starting was of the right sort. “He forsook all and followed Christ.” There was no halting here, at all events; no vacillating between Christ and present things. Boats, nets, fish, natural ties, all are unhesitatingly and unreservedly surrendered, not as a matter of cold duty or legal service, but as the grand and necessary result of having seen the glory and heard the voice of the Son of God.
Thus it was with Simon Peter, at the opening of his remarkable career. All was clear and unequivocal, whole-hearted and decided, so far as the starting was concerned; and we must bear this in mind, as we pursue his after history. No doubt, we shall find mistakes and stumblings, failure, ignorance, and sin; but, underneath, and in spite of all this, we shall find a heart true to Jesus—a heart divinely taught to appreciate the Christ of God.
This is a grand point. Blunders may well be borne with, when the heart beats true to Christ. Someone has remarked that, “The blunderers do all the work.” If this be so, the reason is that those blunderers have real affection for their Lord; and that is precisely what we all want. A man may make a great many mistakes, but if he can say when challenged by his Lord, “Thou knowest that I love thee,” he is sure to come right in the end; and not only so, but, even in the very midst of his mistakes, our hearts are much more drawn to him than to the cold, correct, sleek professor, who thinks of himself, and seeks to make the best of both worlds.
Simon Peter was a true lover of Christ. He had a divinely given sense of His preciousness, of the glory of His Person, and the heavenly character of His mission. All this comes out, with uncommon force and freshness, in his varied confessions of Christ, even before the day of Pentecost. We shall glance at one or two of these, not with any view to chronological order, but simply to illustrate and prove the lovely devotedness of this true-hearted servant of Christ.
Let us turn to Matt. 16 “When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” Weighty question! Upon the answer to this question hangs the whole moral condition and future destiny of every human being under the sun. All really depends upon the heart’s estimate of Christ. This it is, which like a great moral indicator, reveals a man’s true state, character, bent and object, in all things. It is not merely a question of his outward life, or of his profession of faith. The former may be blameless, and the latter orthodox; but, if underneath all this blameless morality and orthodox profession, there be not one true pulsation of the heart for Christ, no divinely wrought sense of what, and who, and whence He is, then verily all the morality and the orthodoxy are but the trappings with which a guilty, hell-deserving sinner adorns himself in the eyes of his fellows, or with which he deceives himself as to the awful eternity which lies before him. “What think ye of Christ?” is the all-deciding question; for God the Holy Ghost has emphatically declared that, “If any man”—no matter who or what he be—“love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” 1 Cor. 16:22.
How awful is this! And how remarkable to find it at the close of such an epistle as the first to the Corinthians! How forcibly it declares to all who will only bend their ears to listen, that love to Christ is the basis of all sound doctrine, the motive spring of all true morality! If that blessed One be not enthroned at the very center of the heart’s affections, an orthodox creed is an empty delusion; and an unblemished reputation is but dust cast in a man’s eyes to prevent him seeing his true condition in the sight of God. The Christians at Corinth had fallen into many doctrinal errors and moral evils, all needing rebuke and correction; but when the inspiring Spirit pronounces His awful anathema, it is leveled, not at the introducers of any one special error, or moral pravity, but at “any man who loves not the Lord Jesus Christ.”
This is peculiarly solemn at all times; but specially so for the day in which our lot is cast, when the Person and glory of Christ are so little thought of or cared for. A man may actually blaspheme Christ, deny His deity or His eternal Sonship, and yet be received into professing christian circles, and allowed to preside at so-called religious meetings. Surely all this must be dreadful in the sight of God, whose purpose it is “that all men should honor the Son even as they honor the Father;” and that every knee should bow, and every tongue confess to Jesus as Lord of all. God is jealous for the honor of His Son; and the man that neglects, rejects, and blasphemes that blessed One will yet have to learn and own the eternal justice of that most solemn decree, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.”
How momentous, therefore, the question put by our Lord Christ to His disciples, “Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am?” Alas, alas! “men” knew nothing, cared nothing about Him. They knew neither who He was, what He was, nor whence He was. “Some say that thou art John the Baptist; some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets.” In a word, there was endless speculation, because there was utter indifference and thorough heartlessness. The human heart has not so much as a single true thought about Christ, not one atom of affection for Him. Such is the awful condition of the very best of men until renewed by divine grace. They know not, they love not, they care not for the Son of God—the Beloved of the Father’s heart—the Man on the throne of heaven’s majesty. Such is their moral condition, and hence their every thought, word, and act is contrary to God. They have not a single feeling in common with God, for the most distinct of all reasons, that the One who is everything to Him is nothing to them. Christ is God’s standard, and everyone and everything must be measured by Him. The heart that does not love Christ has not a single pulsation in unison with the heart of God; and the life that does not spring from love to Christy however blameless, respectable, or splendid in the eyes of men, is a worthless, objectless, misspent life in the judgment of God.
But how truly—delightful to turn from all the heartlessness and indifference of “men,” and hearken to the testimony of one who was taught of God to know and own who the Son of man was! “Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Here was the true answer. There was no vain speculation here, no uncertainty, no may be this, or may be that. It was divine testimony flowing from divinely given knowledge. It was not yea and nay, but yea and amen to the glory of God. We may rest fully assured that these glowing words of Simon Peter went up, like fragrant incense, to the throne of God, and refreshed the heart of the One who sat there. There is nothing in all the world so precious to God as a heart that, in any measure, appreciates Christ. Let us never forget this!
“And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
Here we have the very first direct allusion to the church, or assembly of Christ; and the reader will note that our Lord speaks of it as yet future. He says, “I will build my church.” He was the rock, the living stone, the divine foundation; but ere a single stone could be built on Him, He must die.
This is a grand cardinal truth of Christianity—a truth which our apostle had yet to learn, notwithstanding his brilliant and beautiful confession. Simon Peter was not yet prepared for the profound mystery of the cross. He loved Christ, and he had been taught of God to own Him in a very full and blessed manner; but he had yet much to learn ere he could take in the soul-subduing truth that this blessed Son of the living God must die, ere even he, as a living stone, could be built upon Him. “From that time forth began Jesus to show unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.”
Here the solemn truth begins to break through the clouds. But Simon Peter is not prepared for it. It withered up all his Jewish hopes and earthly expectations. What! The Son of the living God must die! How could it be? The glorious Messiah be nailed to a cross! “Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, “Be it far from thee (or pity thyself), Lord, this shall not be unto thee.”
Such is man! Such was even Simon Peter! He would fain turn the blessed Lord away from the cross! He would, in his ignorance, frustrate the eternal counsels of God, and play into the hands of the devil! Poor Peter! What a rock he would be for the church to be built upon! “The Lord turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offense unto me; for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.”
Withering words! Who would have thought that “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona,” should so speedily be followed by, “Get thee behind me, Satan?”