2—HIS LIFE AND TESTIMONY.
“Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”
(Luke 5:8).
THAT in the sight of God everyone is as his spirit is (not to the exclusion of overt acts) is a truth which the word of God will not suffer to be passed over or set in the background. “God is the God of the spirits of all flesh.” “He formeth the spirit of man within him.", “All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes: but the Lord weigheth the spirits.” “The righteous God trieth the hearts and reins” (i.e. the thoughts, the will, and the affections and emotions), and, when earthly life is closed, the spirit returneth to God Who gave it. This, and much more, we have in the O.T. In the New, our Lord's description of the state of the rich man after death in Luke 16 can leave no question to one not hardened against the truth, that it is vain to try to draw off the eye of the spirit from its true condition before God by surrounding it with the things and circumstances of this world. At death they are left, and can be no longer a shield, and man then is as his spirit is; for the Lord said, “In hell he lifted up his eyes, being in torments.” The past was remembered; all in which he had lived and found his pleasure was left forever; and the judgment of that past was yet to come.
In life, the spirit of the man which is in him knoweth the things of the man, and he alone of men knoweth them (1 Cor. 2:11). As Elihu said, “There is a spirit in man: and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” And there is not only this knowledge in the individual spirit of the man, but there is conscience— “his thoughts meanwhile accusing, or else excusing, one another.” Thoughtful men therefore shrink from the spirit, charged with all this knowledge, being brought defenseless into the presence of God. As Dr. Johnson said, “I have made no approaches to a state which can look on death as not terrible." What a bright contrast to this is Peter's testimony. The calmness with which he speaks of his approaching martyrdom, a cruel one, is much to be noted. It was but the putting off his tabernacle (2 Peter 1). This was not making light of death. If any man ever experienced the power of death as wielded by the devil, the terror that he can bring by it, and his own abject weakness in the presence of it, it was Peter. But when he wrote his Epistles, Christ had, by death, brought to naught him who had the power of death, and taken away its sting. But we are anticipating. It would be well to follow the narrative of his life, remarking this only, that it has pleased God to single him out to make known His ways of grace in souls. The other apostles had each a history; but we have more of his innermost exercises and experiences than of any of them.
It is not too much to assume that he was on a level, religiously, with the mass of the Jews of his time. This we may infer from the need of the vision of the great sheet let down from heaven, and from his words to Cornelius (Acts 10). How morally low that level was he exposes in a remarkable passage in his first Epistle. Writing to those who by birth were Jews ("of the dispersion” chap. 1:1) he says: “Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ.” He says nothing of open wickedness, for all might have been respectable, as became a religious people proud of their descent and privileges; yet how great, how costly the ransom! The prophet had long before said to their fathers, in the words of Jehovah: “This people draw near me with their mouth, and with their lips do honor me, but have removed their heart far from me, and their fear toward me is taught by the precept of men.” The Lord Jesus applied these words to those in Israel in Simon's time whose worship was “vain;” and was he an exception? The divine order of the congregation and assembly in Israel presented in types God's provision for drawing near to them, and thus, while a means of blessing for them, was a witness against the rites and ceremonies of idolatry, which Paul energetically denounced as “vain” (Acts 14:15, R. V.). Peter uses the same word in describing the manner of life of the Jews. It was as “vain” as that of the worshippers of Jupiter and Mercury: their hearts, even in their outward approaches to God, were at as great a distance from him.
But what a measure of the evil of man's heart is this! There are degrees of moral turpitude, but heart distance from God cannot be in degree. It is alike in the most amiable and refined, as in the most shamefully wicked; and if persisted in, notwithstanding all God's dealings, must end in eternal separation from Him. The congregation of formalists, however pious their utterances, is a “congregation of the dead;” and the solemn confession “at last” of such will be— “I was almost in all evil in the midst of the congregation and assembly” (Prov. 5:14).
Such then was Simon before his brother brought him to Jesus. In his conduct at the Lake of Gennesaret we may trace a change of no small significance. He was weary after a whole night of toil; yet he willingly put himself and his ship at the Lord's service, desirous, doubtless, not only that the people should hear the word of God, but that he and his partners should hear it also. All this was beautiful in its season. A personal sense of the grace of Christ has attracted his soul; still the question of conscience was as yet not raised, much less settled; and, until the soul is brought into the presence of God, it never is. There may be true-hearted service and happy association with others in it, a real wish for the people to have the gospel, and some self-sacrifice for this end. But for the conscience, the soul must be alone with God; for conscience is individual, it has no partner. It is well to notice also, that it was not in service that Simon got this question of conscience raised and settled. The preaching was over. Will he—contrary to all experience and reason—be obedient to the word of the Lord, simply and only because it is His word— “Launch out now into the deep, and let down your nets for a draft?” A merely rational consideration of the circumstances would lead to hesitation; but, by grace, there was none. “Master,” he said, “we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at Thy word I will let down the net.” At once the miracle which followed was used to make manifest in Whose presence he was, and “he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” To a natural man there must be something inexplicable in this. There is no cry for mercy; but the claims of the holiness of God are vindicated at all cost. How could it be associated with such evil as he now saw in himself? Yet he drew nearer to Jesus than ever he had done before! Truly “He was called Jesus for He shall save His people from their sins;” but was Simon one of His people? Israel had long since forfeited this relationship. “Ye are not my people, and I will not be your God,” was the sentence pronounced by Jehovah (Hos. 1:9); and Simon took no such ground. Vile, impure, polluted in the springs of his being—a sinful man—he owned in his own case the righteousness of the sentence “lo-ammi.” That sentence the Lord in “His abundant mercy” at once reversed in the assuring words: “Fear not, from henceforth thou shalt catch men,” i.e. be fully associated with Him in His service of love.
How pointless much of Peter's testimony becomes (as 1 Peter 2:9-11) when these truths are disregarded! The great beauty of this application of Hos. 2:14-23 to those of Israel who had like faith with him (yet the marked contrast in their earthly position—not “sown in the earth,” but “strangers and pilgrims” in it) is not perceived. Undoubtedly believing Gentiles share in this grace (Hos. 1:10 and Rom. 9:26); but it is a question whether a Gentile can so fully enter it as a Jew.
Repudiated Israel shall yet find in Jehovah a HUSBAND, for “He will betroth her to Himself forever” (Hos. 2:19); and to Peter, with those to whom he wrote, it was given to anticipate this in their own experience. “And he forsook all and followed Jesus:” as Paul says, “espoused to one husband.” There were failures, we know; but from this time he was a separated man to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, to grow in the knowledge of Him—knowledge which dawned on his soul in the ship at His knees, and found sweet expression in his last written words— “To Him be glory both now, and to the day of eternity” (2 Peter 3:18). This was his object in life and death. Is it ours?