Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of 1 Peter 2:18

Servants, [be] subject to [your] masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

18. Servants, be subject to your masters ] The counsels thus opening are carried on to the close of the chapter. The fulness with which slaves are thus addressed, here and in Eph 6:5-8, Col 3:22 , 1Ti 6:1-2, indicates the large proportion of converts that belonged to that class. Nearly all the names in Romans 16 and many of those of other members of the Church are found in the Columbaria or Catacombs of Rome as belonging to slaves or freedmen. The term for “servants,” here and in Luk 16:13, Act 10:7, Rom 14:4, differs from the more common word as pointing specially to household servants, the “domestics” of a family. It may have been chosen by St Peter as including the wide class of libertini or freedmen and freedwomen who, though no longer in the status of slavery, were still largely employed in the households of the upper classes, as scribes, musicians, teachers, physicians, needle-women and the like. It is obvious that the new thoughts of converts to the faith of Christ must have brought with them some peculiar dangers. They had learnt that all men were equal in the sight of God. Might they not be tempted to assert that equality in word or act? They felt themselves raised to a higher life than their heathen masters. Could they endure to serve loyally and humbly those whom they looked on as doomed to an inevitable perdition? Was it not their chief duty to escape by flight or purchase from the degradation and dangers of their position? The teaching of St Paul in 1Co 7:21-23, as well as in the passages above referred to, shews how strongly he felt the urgency of this danger. Cardinal Wiseman’s Fabiola may be mentioned as giving, with special vividness and insight, a picture of this aspect of the social life of the early Church.

with all fear ] So St Paul urges obedience “with fear and trembling” (Eph 6:5). There was, looking to the then existing relations of society, a comparative nobleness in a service into which the fear of offending their master, as distinct from the mere dread of the scourge or other punishment, entered as a motive into the obedience of slaves. And this was not to depend on the character of the master. He might be good and easy-going, or perverse and irritable. Their duty was in either case to submit, with thankfulness in the one case, with a cheerful patience in the other.

Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

Servants, be subject to your masters – On the duty here enjoined, see the notes at Eph 6:5-9. The Greek word used here ( oiketai) is not the same which is employed in Ephesians, ( douloi.) The word here means properly domestics – those employed about a house, or living in the same house – from oikos, house. These persons might have been slaves, or might not. The word would apply to them, whether they were hired, or whether they were owned as slaves. The word should not and cannot be employed to prove that slavery existed in the churches to which Peter wrote, and still less to prove that he approved of slavery, or regarded it as a good institution. The exhortation here would be, and still is, strictly applicable to any persons employed as domestics, though they had voluntarily hired themselves out to be such. It would be incumbent on them, while they remained in that condition, to perform with fidelity their duties as Christians, and to bear with Christian meekness all the wrongs which they might suffer from those in whose service they were.

Those who are hired, and who are under a necessity of going out to service for a living, are not always free from hard usage, for there are trials incident to that condition of life which cannot be always avoided. It might be better, in many cases, to bear much than to attempt a change of situation, even though they were entirely at liberty to do so. It must be admitted, however, that the exhortation here will have more force if it is supposed that the reference is to slaves, and there can be no doubt that many of this class were early converted to the Christian faith. The word here rendered masters ( despotais) is not the same which is used in Eph 6:5, ( kuriois.) Neither of these words necessarily implies that those who were under them were slaves. The word used here is applicable to the head of a family, whatever may be the condition of those under him. It is frequently applied to God, and to Christ; and it cannot be maintained that those to whom God sustains the relation of despotes, or master, are slaves. See Luk 2:29; Act 4:24; 2Ti 2:21; 2Pe 2:1; Jud 1:4; Rev 6:10. The word, indeed, is one that might be applied to those who were owners of slaves. If that be the meaning here, it is not said, however, that those to whom it is applied were Christians. It is rather implied that they were pursuing such a course as was inconsistent with real piety. Those who were under them are represented as suffering grievous wrongs.

With all fear – That is, with all proper reverence and respect. See the notes at Eph 6:5.

Not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward – The word rendered froward ( skoliois) means properly crooked, bent; then perverse, wicked, unjust, peevish. Anyone who is a servant or domestic is liable to be employed in the service of such a master; but while the relation continues, the servant should perform his duty with fidelity, whatever may be the character of the master. Slaves are certainly liable to this; and even those who voluntarily engage as servants to others, cannot always be sure that they will have kind employers. Though the terms used here do not necessarily imply that those to whom the apostle gave this direction were slaves, yet it may be presumed that they probably were, since slavery abounded throughout the Roman empire; but the directions will apply to all who are engaged in the service of others, and are therefore of permanent value. Slavery will, sooner or later, under the influence of the gospel, wholly cease in the world, and instructions addressed to masters and slaves will have no permanent value; but it will always be true that there will be those employed as domestics, and it is the duty of all who are thus engaged to evince true fidelity and a Christian spirit themselves, whatever may be the character of their employers.

Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible

1Pe 2:18-25

Servants, be subject to your masters.

Submission enjoined

The word here rendered servants means not slaves in the strict sense of the term, but domestic servants-hence the exhortation is the more applicable to our own age and country.

I. Their duty.

1. Servants, be subject to your masters in all fear. Let not the service you render be constrained and forced, but ready and joyous, remembering that, however humble, it is ennobled by religion.

2. But to what extent are they to submit? Has God placed you under a master who is exacting and ungenerous? act worthily of your profession, and show that master that there is something real in religion.

3. A cogent reason is assigned. For this is thank-worthy-literally grace-if a man for consciousness of God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.

II. The example of the Lord Jesus is set before us as the ground on which the submission should be practised. (Thornley Smith.)

The duty of servants

I. Their duty. Be subject. Keep your order and station under your masters, and that with fear and inward reverence of mind and respect to them, for that is the very life of all obedience. Do faithfully to your utmost that which is entrusted to you and obey all their just commands, and suffer patiently even their unjust severities. But, on the other side, this does not justify nor excuse the unmerciful austerities of masters. It is still a perverseness in them, as the original word is here, and must have its own name, and shall have its proper reward from the sovereign Master and Lord of all the world.

II. The due extent of this duty. To the froward. It is a more deformed thing to have a distorted, crooked mind, or a froward spirit, than any crookedness of the body. How can he that hath servants under him expect their obedience when he cannot command his own passion, but is a slave to it? And unless much conscience of duty possess servants, more than is commonly to be found with them, it cannot but work a master into much disesteem with them when he is of a turbulent spirit, a troubler of his own house. The Christian servant, however, who falls into the hands of a froward master will not be beaten out of his station and duty of obedience by all the hard and wrongful usage he meets with, but will take that as an opportunity of exercising the more obedience and patience, and will be the more cheerfully patient because of his innocence, as the apostle here exhorts. All men desire glory, but they know neither what it is nor how it is to be sought. He is upon the only right bargain of this kind whose praise is not of men, but of God. If men commend him not he accounts it no loss, nor any gain if they do, for he is bound for a country where that coin goes not, and whither he cannot carry it, and therefore he gathers it not. That which he seeks in all is that he may be approved and accepted of God, whose thanks are no less to the least of those he accepts than a crown of unfading glory. Not a poor servant that fears His name and is obedient and patient for His sake but shall be so rewarded.

III. The principle of this obedience and patience. For conscience towards God. This imports, first, the knowledge of God and of His will in some due measure, and then a conscientious respect unto Him and His will so known, taking it for the only rule in doing and suffering.

1. This declares to us the freeness of the grace of God in regard to mens outward quality, that He doth often bestow the riches of His grace upon persons of mean condition. He hath all to choose from, and yet chooses where men would least imagine (Mat 11:25; 1Co 1:27).

2. Grace finds a way to exert itself in every estate where it exists, and regulates the soul according to the particular duties of that estate. A skilful engraver makes you a statue indifferently of wood or stone or marble, as they are put into his hand; so grace forms a man to a Christian way of walking in any estate. There is way for him in the meanest condition to glorify God and to adorn the profession of religion; no estate so low as to be shut out from this; and a rightly informed and rightly affected conscience towards God shows a man that way and causes him to walk in it.

3. As a corrupt mind debaseth the best and most excellent callings and actions, so the lowest are raised above themselves and ennobled by a spiritual mind.

An eagle may fly high and yet have its eye down upon some carrion on the earth; even so a man may be standing on the earth, and on some low part of it, and yet have his eye upon heaven and be contemplating it. For conscience.

1. In this there is, first, a reverential compliance with Gods disposal, both in allotting to them that condition of life, and in particularly choosing their master for them, though possibly not the mildest and pleasantest, yet the fittest for their good.

2. In this there is, secondly, a religious and observant respect to the rule which God hath set men to walk by in that condition, so that their obedience depends not upon any external inducement, failing when that fails, but flows from an inward impression of the law of God upon the heart.

3. In this there is a tender care of the glory of God and the adornment of religion.

4. There is, lastly, the comfortable persuasion of Gods approbation, as is expressed in the following verse, and the hope of that reward He hath promised. Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ (Col 3:24). (Abp. Leighton.)

The conduct of servants

I. Religion brought into the little things of life. It does not merely include duties unto kings, but duty towards lesser lords. We may learn from this-

1. That religion applies to all classes and conditions of men. Each state of life has its own little kingdom, its own little world.

2. That nothing is too insignificant to be brought under the power of Divine direction.

II. Principle superseding compulsion. In this verse the apostle establishes one of the most important principles of morality-that our obligations to relative duties are not to be gauged by the character of the person to whom they are performed.

1. It is not utility that should regulate our conduct. The will of the world is to discard that which is not useful or profitable.

2. It is not comfort that is to direct our lives.

3. It is not force that is to drive.

4. It is neither the fear nor the love of man that moves.

III. Obedience independent of circumstances. Masters, like kings, differ. Some are reasonable and kind, others are unreasonable and bitter. Is a servant only to serve them who are fair and kind? By no means. The reason is explained when we come to realise that the present is of very little moment to show who serve Christ. (J. J. S. Bird.)

Suffering wrongfully.–

Endurance of wrong

It may be asked whether the advice of St. Peter to submit quietly to wrong does not destroy manliness and force of character if it is acted on? Does it not tend to create a race of effeminate, spiritless men? This question involves another. In what does moral strength consist? It is sometimes taken for granted that moral strength must catch the eye, must inflict itself on the imagination; that it must be something bustling, demonstrative, aggressive; that it must at least have colour, body, muscle, to recommend it. This is not the ease. Moral strength, in its very finest forms, may be the reverse of all this; when it makes no show, and is passive, it is often at its best. Many a man who can act with great courage in moments of great personal danger, in a struggle with a brigand, or in a burning house, cannot go through an illness as bravely and patiently as a little girl. The hardest thing often is to do nothing, to await the approach of danger or of death, and yet not to lose nerve and self-possession. No moral strength in the whole history of mankind ever equalled that which was displayed on Calvary, where all that awaited Him was present from the first to the mind of the Divine victim, who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously (1Pe 2:23). Nothing that has been said will be so greatly misconstrued as to be taken to imply that cruelty, tyranny, oppression, can be agreeable to the mind of God. He permits these things among men from time to time, just as He permits much else that is evil for His own wise ends. He brings good out of them, yet He condemns them. By and by He will punish them. Nowhere is it implied in the Bible that the systems involving the oppression of man by man have vested rights in the moral universe, or that the circumstances which permit it are even tolerable, unless they are perpetuated for very different purposes indeed. The days will come when Englishmen will look back to the abolition of the slave trade by the English Parliament as a greater title to glory than was Trafalgar or Waterloo; as among the very greatest in the course of our history. Wilberforce and Clarkson will rank even before those celebrated commanders, to whose courage and genius, under God, we owe the independence of our country. Among yourselves there are probably some who, for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully. There are no slaves, thank God, on English soil, but there are multitudes of persons in positions of dependence whose lives can easily be made miserable by the cruel ingenuity of their betters, and too often for no worse crime than that of obeying a higher sense of right. Every rank in society has its petty tyrants and its secret confessorships; to suffer wrongfully for conscience toward God is the monopoly of no one class. Here is a cadet of a noble family who will not consent to a transaction which he knows to be unjust, and he is cut off with a shilling. There is an apprentice or clerk in a large city house who will not abandon the duties or restraints of a Christian life in deference to pressure or abuse or ridicule from his companions, and he has a hard time of it. Yonder is a governess who has learnt a higher estimate of life and duty than her wealthy and ostentatious employer; or a clergyman who feels too keenly the real character of Divine revelation and the tremendous issues of life and death to acquiesce in some popular but shallow misrepresentation of the gospel which makes his people comfortable without bringing them nearer to God. These, and such as these, must, for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully. Law can do but little for them; the province of law lies outside the spheres of the heart and the conscience; the whole world of motive is beyond it. But religion can do much, or rather everything, by pointing to the crucified and risen Prince of that vast company in all ages who have cared less to avoid discomfort than to be true to known truth and duty; by pointing to the unapproached bitterness of His sorrow, and to the completeness and splendour of His triumph. (Canon Liddon.)

The blessings of injustice

Where shall we look for an explanation of Gods permission of prevalent injustice and wrongful suffering in the world? Some have sought an explanation in the circumstance that all have sinned, and therefore all deserve to suffer. This affirmation is undoubtedly true, yet it offers no kind of solution to the problem. Nor does the promise of the ultimate termination of all evil in the world, or the promise of the future reversal of all present injustices, or the final recompense of the righteous, offer a perfect solution of the mystery of present wrongful suffering. All these promises shed some light of comfort on the mystery; they also help the sufferers to endure their wrongful sufferings gloriously; but they do not explain why the patient endurance of such wrongful sufferings is permitted by, and especially acceptable unto, God. And perhaps no sufficient explanation is possible in our present darkened and limited condition of existence. And, for anything we know to the contrary, the present exercise of simple faith may be, through all eternity, of such unspeakable value to man that injustice and wrongful suffering may be permitted by God chiefly for the sake of the training and development of simple, victorious faith. There is, however, another blessing of injustice which lies within our ken and is perfectly manifest. It is the splendour of spiritual character, which is engendered by injustice and wrongful suffering; and which, as far as we can see, is never engendered in any other way. As the finest gold is the gold most heated in the furnace, so the finest souls are the souls whose furnace in life has been the hottest. Without burning and welding, human souls inevitably continue gross and feeble. If when we commit a fault and are buffeted for it we take it patiently, there is no glory in patience like that. The finest spiritual glory requires a furnace heated with injustice and wrong to make its splendour and its strength appear. The very injustice which is a curse to the soul of him who commits it is transfigured by patient endurance into a blessing and a glory to the soul of him who suffers it. Not those who merely suffer, but those who suffer wrongfully, have perfect fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. And the patient endurance of such sufferings, because of the strength and glory which it imparts to the souls of His greatest children, is acceptable and well-pleasing unto God. (Canon Diggle.)

Gratitude for wrongful suffering

The words imply-

1. That man has a conscience.

2. That conscience sometimes leads to suffering.

3. That sufferings that spring from the following out of a good conscience are reasons for gratitude. This is thank worthy.

I. Because they involve the highest moral triumph. It is a triumph-

1. Of the spiritual over the material.

2. Of the right over the expedient.

3. Of the Christly over the selfish.

II. Because they open up within the man the highest sources of happiness.

III. Because it identifies the sufferer with the illustrious men of all times. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Suffering wrongfully

A minister was asked by a Quaker lady, Dost not thee think that we can walk so carefully, live so correctly, and avoid every fanaticism so perfectly, that every sensible person will say, Thats the kind of religion I believe in? He replied, Sister, if thee had a coat of feathers as white as snow, and a pair of wings as shining as Gabriels, somebody would be found somewhere on the footstool with so bad a case of colour blindness as to shoot thee for a blackbird. (Kings Highway.)

Ye take it patiently.–

Patience

Patience is the endurance of any evil, out of the love of God, as the will of God. The offices of patience are as varied as the ills of this life. We have need of it with ourselves and with others; with those below and those above us, and with our own equals; with those who love us and those who love us not; for the greatest things and for the least; against sudden inroads of trouble, and under our daily burdens; disappointments as to the weather or the breaking of the heart; in the weariness of the body or the wearing of the soul; in our own failure of duty or others failure towards us; in everyday wants or in the aching of sickness or the decay of age; in disappointment, bereavement, losses, injuries, reproaches; in heaviness of the heart or its sickness amid delayed hopes, or the weight of this body of death, from which we would be free, that we might have no more struggle with sin within or temptation without, but attain to our blessed and everlasting peace in our rest in God. All other virtues and graces have need of patience to perfect or to secure them. Patience interposes herself and receives and stops every dart which the evil one aims at them. Patience is the root and guardian of all virtue; impatience is the enemy of all. Impatience disquiets the soul, makes her weary of conflict, ready to lay aside her armour and to leave difficult duty. Impatience, by troubling the smooth mirror of the soul, hinders her from reflecting the face of God; by its din it hinders her from hearing the voice of God. How does it shake faith to be impatient of evils, either in the world or in the Church, or those which befall a persons own self! How does impatience with others defects chill love, or impatience with even our own failings and shortcomings extinguish hope! To be impatient at blame is a blight to humility; at contradiction, destroys meekness; at injuries, quenches long suffering; at sharp words, mars gentleness; at having ones own will crossed, obedience. Impatience at doing the same things again and again hinders perseverance; impatience of bodily wants surprises people into intemperance or leads them to deceive, lie, steal. In patience, our blessed Lord tells us, possess ye your souls. By patience we have the keeping of our own souls; we command ourselves, anal our passions are subdued to us; and commanding ourselves, we begin to possess that which we are. Patience, then, is the guardian of faith, the fence of love, the strength of hope, the parent of peace. Patience protects humility, keeps meekness, is the soul of longsuffering, guides gentleness, strengthens perseverance. Patience makes the soul to be of one mind with God, and sweetens all the ills of life. It casts the light of heaven upon them and transforms them into goods. It makes the bitter waters sweet; the barren and dry land fruitful. Desolation it makes a loneliness with God; the parching of sickness to be the fire of His love; weakness to be His strength; wounds to be health; emptiness of all things to have things from Him; poverty to be true riches; His deserved punishments to be His rainbow of mercy; death to be His life. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)

Patience under oppression

Writing, probably from Rome-certainly in one of the closing years of his life-St. Peter saw the great tendency of social and political circumstances around him towards that great outbreak of violence against the worshippers of Christ which is known in history as the first persecution, in which he and St. Paul laid down their lives. He is anxious to prepare the Asiatic Christians for the trials which are before them. Then, as now, there were bad Christians who fell under the just sentence of the criminal law, and St. Peter reminds them that there is no moral glory in suffering that which we have deserved, even though we take our punishment uncomplainingly. What glory is it if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But he knows also that aggravated sufferings awaited numbers of inoffensive men and women, whose only crime would be that they were worshippers of the meek and lowly Jesus, and centres of light and goodness in a corrupt and demoralised society. When the storm burst, as it would burst, they might be tempted to think that the government of the world was somehow at fault in this award of bitter punishment to virtuous and benevolent persons, conscious of the integrity of their intentions-conscious of their desire to serve a holy God-to do any good in their power to their fellow creatures. Accordingly, St. Peter puts their anticipated, trials in a light which would not, at first sight, present itself, and which does not lie upon the surface of things. If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. There is a peculiar moral glory in patience under unmerited wrong, if not according to any human, yet certainly according to a Divine, standard. This is acceptable with God. Now, many men have said, and more, perhaps, have thought, about such teaching as this, that it is a splendid paradox. That a criminal should suffer what he has deserved satisfies the sense of justice. That a good man should suffer what he has not deserved violates the sense of justice; and if he submits uncomplainingly he acquiesces in injustice. Nay, he does more: he forfeits the independence-the glory-of his manhood. The precept to take it patiently is, in a word, objected to as effeminate and anti-social. Now, here it must be remarked, first of all, that for serious Christians this question is really settled by the precepts and example of our Lord Himself. Even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, etc. In His public teaching our Lord made much of patient submission to undeserved wrong. He pronounced those men blessed who suffered for righteousness sake. Not in exemption from suffering, but in truthful endurance, would His true followers find their peace. In your patience possess ye your souls. Nay, more. Christians, He says, are to welcome such trials. They are to meet the persecutor half way. They are to do good to them that hate them, to pray for their persecutors, etc. And in perfect harmony with this teaching is His own example. Well, it is this sinless being who is also the first of sufferers. Nothing was wanting, humanly speaking, to make patience impossible. The natural sensitiveness of His tender frame, the ingenious appliances of torture, such as a crown of thorns pressed down upon the head and the temples, the coarse brutality of His executioners, the vivid consciousness of the sufferer sustained from moment to moment, might well have exhausted patience. And what His mental sufferings must have been we may infer distantly from the agony in the garden. But St. Peter directs especial attention to the insults to which our Lord was subject, and which may have tried His patience even more than the great sorrows of His soul or the tortures of His body. When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but submitted Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. No complaint, properly speaking, escaped Him. Certainly, He asked the soldier who struck Him on the face for the reason of the act. He for a moment broke His majestic silence in His compassion to this poor mans insensibility to natural justice, and perhaps also in order to show that if when suffering more He did not complain, it was not because His feeling was dulled, but only what was due to patience. For Christians, then, I say, the question whether patience under undeserved wrong is right-is a duty-is not an open question. It has been settled by the highest authority-our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. From His teaching there is no appeal In His example we Christians see the true ideal of human life. As He is, so are we in this world. And yet if, for Christians, the question is not an open one, the very authority which settles it enables us to see some reasons for the decision. Indeed, our Lord teaches us by His sufferings more than in any other way. By these He reveals to us the love of God: by these He points to the value of heaven. These sufferings are the measure of the gravity of our sins, of the miseries of hell, of the solemnity of life. But beyond this our Lord gives us lessons about pain. The existence of pain in the world is a fact which has from the earliest ages attracted and perplexed human thought. What is it in itself? It is a certainty both to feeling and to thought, and yet it is beyond analysis; and its inaccessibility to any real examination adds to its mysteriousness with all thoughtful minds, and increases the anxious interest with which it is regarded. It is ubiquitous: it is importunate: it meets us everywhere: it leaves us today only that it may return tomorrow. In this vast district of human experience deism sees, however reluctantly, an unexplained libel upon the character of God-atheism a hideous flaw, which, however bound up with the order of nature, impairs and disintegrates it. The Greeks talked much of a Divine Nemesis, a word which has played a great part in human thought; but Nemesis was not merely Divine justice overtaking human crime: it was also a malignant envy which grudged man his power or his good fortune, and which humbled him accordingly. Heathendom saw that there was a connection between pain and conscience. It had very indistinct ideas of the nature of this connection. What it was exactly revelation must say. Accordingly in the Old Testament there is one predominating aspect of the moral use of misfortune and pain. It is the punishment of sin. The righteousness of God is the great feature of the Jewish revelation of God. God is power; God is intelligent; but above all else God is righteousness. And it is in accordance with His righteousness-not, observe you, as the caprice of an arbitrary will, but in deference to the unalterable necessities of our self-existing moral nature-that He inflicts pain and misfortune as punishment for sin. This faith that pain justly follows misdoing, because God who governs all is righteousness and could not have it otherwise, runs through the Old Testament. It dictates the law: it is illustrated again and again in the history: it is the keynote to more than half the Psalms: it supplies the prophets with their greatest inspirations. But although it is true that sin is followed by punishment, because God is righteousness, it does not follow that all human suffering in this life is a punishment for sin. Against this idea the Old Testament itself contains some very emphatic protests. Thus the Book of Job has for its main object to show theft Jobs misfortunes are no real measure of his sins. And when Psalmists could say, It is good for me that I have been in trouble, or The Lord hath chastened and corrected me, but He hath not given me over unto death, or All Thy waves and storms are gone over me, it is clear that already a new light was breaking upon the world. But it was by our Lord that the cloud was fully lifted from this great district of human experience, so that we are now able to map it out, and to discover its bearings, and turn it to practical account. Our Lord does not reverse what the old dispensation had taught as to the penal object of a great deal of human pain, but He also rules that much pain is strictly a discipline-a Fathers discipline of His children. Pain may thus be a token of favoured sonship; and, if so, then to pass through life without pain may be anything but an enviable lot. If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons, for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? Pain thus need not be an enemy: it may be a friend in disguise: at least it may become so. Why should it not be welcomed? This is the voice of Christian teaching. Why, like the natural elements, fire and water, should it not be taken in hand and conquered and made the most of? Why should we not get out of it all the disciplinary and purifying virtue that we can, and so turn the scourge into a blessing? And if the question be asked by some anxious soul, How am I to know? Is this unjust humiliation, or this insult, or this loss of means, or this illness, or this heartache, a punishment for past sin or a tender discipline? the answer is, Conscience must itself reply. Here, then, is the answer to the criticism on St, Peters precept, to which I was referring just now. There may be cases in which the interests of truth and righteousness-the interests of others-may make resistance to oppression a duty. They are rare, indeed. As a rule, trouble and pain are to be taken patiently as coming from God, inflict them who may. The early Christians were men who felt they had nothing to do either with the legal government of the Roman Empire or with the moral government of the universe. All that they knew was that they had to suffer for being what they were, and for believing what they did believe. The only question with them was how to suffer. And as for society, society has been again and again purified, regenerated, saved, by the passive endurance, as distinct from the active struggles, of its very best members. And let me make two remarks in conclusion. In this glad acceptance of undeserved pain we see one of the central forces of the Christian religion by which, as a matter of fact, it made its way among men eighteen centuries ago and ever since. Literature, social prestige, political influence, were all against the Church; but in the long run the old empire was no match for a religion which could teach its sincere votaries, generation after generation, to regard pure suffering as a privilege, as a mark of Gods favour, as a pledge of glory. Depend upon it patient, cheerful acceptance of suffering is a great force which achieves more than many active energies that command the attention of mankind. And if this way of taking the troubles which are laid upon us supplies Christianity with its force, so it secures to human life its best consolations. We live in an age of progress. The circumstances under which we pass life are being brought more and more under the control of man; but is there less suffering in the wend than there was a hundred years ago? Looking to the present state of the world, is there likely to be? I fear not. Even science, which does so much for us, shifts the scene of suffering, rather than diminishes its area. What is taken away by one hand is returned by the other. If disease is assuaged, life is prolonged under conditions which, in an unscientific age, would have been fatal to it, and which necessarily involve suffering. And human nature does not change. The same principles and passions and dispositions which, needlessly or intentionally, inflict suffering on others are at work now, although their operation is limited by improvements in human society. Some of us may be young and lighthearted, and may not yet know what real trouble and pain mean. We shall know in time. The lesson comes to most men early enough in life, whether inflicted by others or, as more frequently, direct from above. The important point is to be prepared for it when it does come, to see in it the hand of our Father in heaven, to thank Him for treating us thus as children, for punishing, for purifying us here, that He may in His mercy spare us hereafter. (Crown Liddon.)

The duty of patience under injuries

I. What is implied is this duty.

1. The not entertaining the impression of injuries with acrimony of thought and internal resentment.

2. The not venting any such resentment in virulent vindictive language.

II. Whence it is that this duty comes to be so exceedingly difficult.

1. From the peculiar provoking quality of ill language.

2. Because nature has deeply planted in every man a strange tenderness of his good name, which, in the rank of worldly enjoyments, the wisest of men has placed before life itself. For, indeed, it is a more enlarged and diffused life, kept up by many more breaths than our own.

III. By what means a man may work himself to such a composure and temper of spirit, as to be able to observe this great and excellent duty. And here, when we consider what obstructions are to be conquered and removed, we must acknowledge that nothing under an omnipotent grace can subdue the heart to such a frame. To discommend this, of returning railing for railing, slander for slander, both to our practice and affection, I shall fasten only upon this one consideration; namely, that it is utterly useless to all rational intents and purposes.

1. The first reason that would induce a man, upon provocation, to do a violent action by way of return, should be to remove the cause of that provocation. But the cause that usually provokes men to revile, are words and speeches; that is, such things as are irrevocable. Such a one vilified me; but can I, by railing, make that which was spoken, not to have been spoken? Are words and talk to be reversed? Or can I make a slander to be forgot, by rubbing up the memory of those that heard it with a reply?

2. Another end, inducing a man to return reviling for reviling, may be by this means to confute the calumny, and to discredit the truth of it. But this course is so far from having such an effect, that it is the only thing that gives it colour and credibility; all people being prone to judge, that a high resentment of a calumny proceeds from concernment, and that from guilt; which makes the sore place tender and untractable.

3. A third end for which a man may pretend to give himself this liberty is because in so doing he thinks he takes a full and proper revenge of him that first reviled him. But certainly there is no kind of revenge so poor and pitiful; for every dog can bark, and he that rails makes another noise indeed, but not a better. (R. South, D. D.)

Of patience

The word patience hath in common usage a double meaning, taken from the respect it hath unto two sorts of objects somewhat different. As it respecteth provocations to anger and revenge by injuries or discourtesies, it signifieth a disposition of mind to bear them with charitable meekness; as it relateth to adversities and crosses disposed to us by Providence, it importeth a pious undergoing and sustaining them. That both these kinds of patience may here be understood, we may, consulting and considering the context, easily discern.

I. Patience, then, is that virtue which qualifieth us to bear all conditions and all events by Gods disposal incident to us, with such apprehensions and persuasions of mind, such dispositions and affections of heart, such external deportments and practices of life as God requireth and good reason directeth. Its nature will, I conceive, be understood best by considering the chief acts which it produceth, and wherein especially the practice thereof consisteth; the which briefly are these:

1. A thorough persuasion, that nothing befalleth us by fate, or by chance, or by the mere agency of inferior causes, but that all proceedeth from the dispensation or with the allowance of God.

2. A firm belief that all occurrences, however adverse and cross to our desires, are well consistent with the justice, wisdom, and goodness of God.

3. A full satisfaction of mind that all (even the most bitter and sad accidents) do (according to Gods purpose) tend and conduce to our good.

4. An entire submission and resignation of our wills to the will of God, suppressing all rebellious insurrections and grievous resentments of heart against His providence.

5. Bearing adversities calmly, cheerfully, and courageously, so as not to be discomposed with anger or grief; not to be put out of humour, not to be dejected or disheartened; but in our disposition of mind to resemble the primitive saints who took joyfully the spoiling of their goods, who accounted it all joy when they fell into divers tribulations.

6. A hopeful confidence in God for the removal or easement of our afflictions, and for His gracious aid to support them well; agreeable to those good rules and precepts: It is good that a man should both hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord; Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him; Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart.

7. A willingness to continue, during Gods pleasure, in our afflicted state, without weariness or irksome longings for alteration.

8. A lowly frame of mind (that is, being sober in our conceits of ourselves, sensible of our manifold defects and miscarriages; being meek and gentle, tender and pliable in our temper and frame of spirit; being deeply affected with reverence and dread toward the awful majesty, mighty power, perfect justice and sanctity of God; all this wrought by our adversity, effectually, according to its design, softening our hard hearts, mitigating our peevish humours.

9. Restraining our tongues from all discontentful complaints and murmurings, all profane, harsh expressions, importing displeasure or dissatisfaction in Gods dealings toward us, arguing desperation or distrust in Him.

10. Blessing and praising God (that is, declaring our hearty satisfaction in Gods proceedings with us, acknowledging His wisdom, justice, and goodness therein, expressing a grateful sense thereof, as wholesome and beneficial to us) in conformity to Job, who, on the loss of all his comforts, did thus vent his mind: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

11. Abstaining from all irregular and unworthy courses toward the removal or redress of our crosses; choosing rather to abide quietly under their pressure, than by any unwarrantable means to relieve or relax ourselves.

12. A fair behaviour toward the instruments and abettors of our affliction; those who brought us into it, or who detain us under it, by keeping off relief, or sparing to yield the succour which we might expect; the forbearing to express any wrath or displeasure, to exercise any revenge, to retain any grudge or enmity toward them; but rather even on that score bearing goodwill, and showing kindness unto them.

13. Particularly in regard to those who, by injurious and offensive usage, do provoke us, patience importeth-

(1) That we be not hastily, over easily, not immoderately, not pertinaciously incensed with anger toward them.

(2) That we do not in our hearts harbour any ill will, or ill wishes, or ill designs toward them, but that we truly desire their good, and purpose to farther it as we shall have ability and occasion.

(3) That in effect we do not execute any revenge, or for requital do any mischief to them, either in word or deed; but for their reproaches exchange blessings (or good words and wishes), for their outrages repay benefits and good turns.

14. In fine, patience doth include and produce a general meekness and kindness of affection, together with an enlarged sweetness and pleasantness in conversation and carriage toward all men; implying that how hard soever our case, how sorry or sad our condition is, we are not therefore angry with the world, because we do not thrive or flourish in it; that we are not dissatisfied or disgusted with the prosperous estate of other men; that we are not become sullen or froward toward any man because his fortune excelleth ours, but that rather we do rejoice with them that rejoice; we do find complacence and delight in their good success; we borrow satisfaction and pleasure from their enjoyments.

II. The example of our Lord was indeed in this kind the most remarkable that ever was presented, the most perfect that can be imagined; He was, above all expression, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; He did undertake, as to perform the best works, so to endure the worst accidents to which human nature is subject; His whole life being no other than one continual exercise of patience and meekness, in all the parts and to the utmost degrees of them. (Isaac Barrow, D. D.)

Patience in tribulation

I. The special beauty of Christian behaviour. This is the grace or beauty.

1. The disciple of Christ does not act from motives of expediency, but from principle.

2. The disciple of Christ does not pursue pleasure or ease, but duty.

II. The exciting motive which prompts the attainment of this character. He will know that he is pleasing God. He will realise that God is the avenger.

III. The natural argument to be specially considered. For what glory is it, etc. This is an urgent and important warning and caution. It urges discrimination and self-examination with regard to our sufferings. (J. J. S. Bird.)

Acceptable with God.–

Thanks from God

This is acceptable with God. And the Greek might bear such a rendering as this: God says, Thank you. Yes, so it is. If in some great house some poor servant, or if in a school some persecuted child, will dare, for Gods sake, to choke back the passionate outburst of indignation, and to endure grief, suffering wrongfully, there is a thrill of delight started through the very heart of God, and from the throne God stoops to say, Thank you. The hero explorer may be thanked by his country and his Queen, but the weakest and obscurest saint may receive the thanks of the Almighty. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

Even hereunto were ye called.–

God has ordained his people to undergo troubles in this world

God has ordained that all His shall suffer troubles, therefore we are to look for them, and bear them patiently. Through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of heaven. God knows how ill we can bear prosperity, but are ready to surfeit thereof, as children do of sweetmeats. Standing waters gather mud. As the Israelites in their journey to Canaan suffered much, so must we in this tabernacle, before we come to heaven; thus is God pleased to exercise us for His own glory and our good.

Uses:

1. We must not think the worse of any because of their afflictions, or conclude them to be bad men and hypocrites, which was the fault of Jobs friends.

2. We must not think the better of ourselves for prosperity. God can afford the dogs the bones, the things of this world.

3. We must not dislike ourselves for our afflictions. It is an argument of Gods love, not of His hatred (Heb 12:6). To have afflictions and to profit thereby is the sign of a happy man.

4. We must prepare for afflictions, not dreaming for ease; they are the better borne when looked for.

5. We must bear them patiently, as being of God.

6. We must bear them thankfully, as whereby we are furthered in holiness.

7. We must bear them joyfully, in respect of the eternal happiness and immortal glory we shall be shortly brought to.

8. If the children of God get not to heaven but through many sorrows, what shall then become of the wicked and ungodly (1Pe 4:18; Jer 25:29; Jer 49:12)? (John Rogers.)

Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example.–

Christs sufferings in Gethsemane

He suffered for us; it was during His agony in the garden that our Lord appears to have been most deeply penetrated with the sense of His afflictions.

I. The intensity of those sufferings which our Saviour experienced in the garden of Gethsemane; and,

II. What His conduct under those sufferings ought to teach us. There is, perhaps, no circumstance of the gospel at which our reason is so inclined to cavil, as the affliction which our Saviour then experienced. We cannot understand how it is possible that the Messiah, who is one with the Father, should be thus liable to grief, and thus deeply moved at the prospect of His approaching persecutions. Our difficulty here results from our utter inability of forming any notion of the infinite magnitude of the Divine power, We can understand that in the Majesty of the Deity, He should hold pain and sorrow as His subjects; but we cannot understand His rendering Himself subject to them. We are unable to conceive that exercise of His power by which He manifested Himself as entire a master of His own infinite attributes, and withdrew Himself, as it were, from the sustaining succours of His eternal Godhead, that, as a man, He might suffer for our redemption. Yet this is what our Saviour did. If we were merely to confine ourselves to temporal views, and exclude all consideration of the spiritual cause of our Lords sufferings, it may even then be with truth affirmed that such an accumulation of woes was never brought to bear at one moment on one man. He knew to a certainty that He had no deliverance to look for; that Judas, His companion, would betray Him; that the princes and rulers would condemn Him; that the people would reject Him and save Barabbas; and that His enemies would heap their persecutions upon Him to the last. In the mere anticipation of what He was about to undergo, our Redeemer had full cause for the agony which He experienced and expressed in the garden of Gethsemane. But, with such aggravations suggested by His own prophetic spirit as no other man ever knew, Jesus was cut off by the very sublimity and holiness of His character, from a source of succour which, under similar circumstances, has often afforded relief to other men. If they do not actually extract the sting of human suffering, they serve to divert the thoughts, and thus to allay the pain of it. But what are those passions? They are either a sullen pride which will not allow the afflicted under any circumstances to confess themselves subdued; or a fierce resentment which induces them to baffle the malice of their enemies by opposing a mask of obstinate insensibility to every attack; or an empty vanity which leads them in the lowest depths of wretchedness, and on the very borders of the grave, to angle for the applauses of the world by putting on a light appearance of unconcern. But whatever support such feelings might afford to others, they could have afforded none to Jesus in the hour of His agony. They are repugnant to the dispositions by which His gentle heart was animated. But it may be conceived that Jesus, under all His troubles, might still have found relief in the consciousness of His innocence. If there are occasions when this reflection may prove a source of secret comfort to the sufferer; there are others when it serves as the severest aggravation to his misery. If an elder brother who had mercifully interposed to save the children of their common parents from destitution, who had succeeded in placing them in a prosperous condition, should, after all, detect them conspiring with his enemies to malign and ruin him, would it be any consolation to reflect that he had not deserved such treatment at their hands? Even so must the consciousness of His innocence have affected the heart of Jesus. It must have been the most galling addition to the weight of those oppressions which were heaped upon Him by His countrymen. The consideration that they, who would be the authors of His oppressions, ought to have been bound together by the remembrance of His loving kindnesses, as His firm protectors, must have struck far deeper into His heart than ever the soldiers spear wound in His side could pierce. But not only on His own account: His compassionate nature would grieve for others; for His disciples, whom the profession of the faith in His name should render obnoxious to the enmity of their friends, and expose to persecution. But, as yet, we have only surveyed our Saviours agony in the garden as resulting from human feelings. We will now proceed to regard it as affected by those views which would have been suggested by the religious aim of His approaching passion. Our Saviour, by His death upon the Cross, was about to pay the price of the transgressions of the whole world. He was about to suffer for our sins; and those sins for which His death was demanded, would naturally engage His contemplations. He would now see before Him the multitude of those offences for which a sacrifice was to be offered; the heinousness of them; the outrage that they were against the majesty of God; the ruin, the destitution which they had spread over the face of the earth; and the weight of the punishment they deserved. The bare idea of any one of those wicked acts which are daily committed by the cruel or the impure, is hateful to every innocent mind. What horror then must necessarily have filled the soul of our Saviour when, not singly, but in their aggregate amount, those mortal offences were brought before His holy view, as He estimated the extent of the ransom which was due, and which He had Himself undertaken to discharge? But our Lord thus suffered for us, says St. Peter in my text, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. The lessons which His sufferings ought to teach us:

1. We should learn from them to submit ourselves in every condition of life with an unreserved obedience to the will of the Almighty.

2. We should learn from our Lords conduct never to despair of the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father, but to rely upon His unfailing goodness; to look to Him for succour and relief; and to feel assured that, if He see not fit to remove our cause of sorrow, He will, in His infinite mercy, answer our prayers for assistance, by vouchsafing to our souls the ability to support it.

3. We should learn humility from the example of our Saviours sufferings.

4. We should learn from our Lords example the extent of that Christian love which, as His disciples, we are bound to bear our fellow creatures. Our Lord suffered for us. He exhibited, in dying for us, the fulness of that brotherly charity with which our hearts should glow towards each other. He condemned every affection which emanates from a selfish and ungenerous source, by His willing immolation of Himself for the sins of the world that had condemned Him. His thus dying for us teaches us not only the value we ought to set upon our own salvation, but the value we ought to set upon the salvation of others. (W. Harness, M. A.)

Christ our example

The first reason for the gift of the Incarnate Son to a perishing world, is that He might be a sacrifice for its sin. The second reason is, that He might be an ensample of godly life to those who believe in Him. We sinners cannot invert the order, and say that He was given, first as our example, and secondly as our sin offering before God. For we cannot imitate Him until He has redeemed us from the power and guilt of sin; the first need of a sinner is pardon and moral freedom, the second, the ideal of a new life.

I. Why we need such an example at all. Let us ask ourselves what it is which makes human nature radically different from that of any of the creatures that surround us. The great characteristic of man is the possession of free will. The growth of the human body indeed is as little within mans control as is that of an animal. But human character, and so much of the bodily life as bears on character, is as much under our control as are the canvas and the colours under that of a painter. Our passions, our inclinations, our thoughts, our sympathies, our antipathies, our habits, are at the disposal of our wills; we are what we have gradually made ourselves. Man, then, is an artist. And as an artist he needs not merely the material out of which to mould some expression of thought, but an example, an ideal, to copy. It may indeed be asked whether it will not do as well to obey a precept as to copy an example. Example, it is said, is vague; precept is explicit. Precept is active; it seeks you out and addresses you. Example is passive; it lets you imitate if you will. Example merely says, This may be done because it has been done. Precept says, Do it. No, you especially who, as parents or masters, are responsible for influence on others; assuredly, no. Example goes further than precept. Precept leads us to the foot of a precipitous mountain, and it cries, Scale that height. But example whispers: Mark what I do, and then do it; it cannot be hard for you since it is easy for me, Look how I step over that crevice, and rest on this projecting foothold, and tread lightly and quickly along that insecure bit of the path. Watch me; keep close to me. Then all will be well in the end.

II. We do then need an example, and our Lord has satisfied this need of our nature and completely. In Him we have before us an example which is unique. He passed through life in the humblest circumstances: yet He belongs to the human race. He alone in the world is the universal man; He is the one man who corresponds to that ideal of humanity of which there are traces in the minds of all of us; He is the great example.

1. That which strikes us, first of all, in the example which He has left us, is its faultlessness. We are startled by His own sense of this. He never utters one word to the Father or to man which implies the consciousness of a defect. I do always those things that please the Father. The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me. Was this an illusion, or did it correspond with the fact? He was surrounded by jealous observers. He could reckon on no forbearance, no generosity, no equity, in His opponents. Yet He passed their criticism unscathed. Which of you, He could say, convinceth Me of sin? And there was silence. In this sinlessness He is, although our model, yet beyond our full reach of imitation. The best of men knows that in his best moments he is beset by motives, or thoughts, or inclinations, from which Christ was utterly free. But this does not destroy, it rather enhances, the value of our Lords example. In all departments of thought and work, the ideal is, strictly speaking, unattainable by man; yet man should never lose sight of it.

2. We are struck by the balance and proportion of excellences in our Lords human character. As a rule, if a man possesses some one excellence in an unusual degree, he will be found to exhibit some fault or shortcoming in an opposite direction. Our finite and fallen nature exhausts itself by an effort in a single direction; it would almost seem bound to atone for a temporary success by some compensating failure. Of this want of balance in excellence, of this exaggeration in particular forms of excellence which entails an accompanying defect, there is no trace in our Lord. Read His life over and over again, with this point in view; and nothing will strike you more than its faultless proportions. In so vast a field, take one illustration out of many: the balance which He keeps between severity and tenderness.

3. Consider again a feature which runs through His whole character: its simplicity. In nothing that He says or does can we detect any trace of contrivance or of aiming at effect. He takes the illustrations which come ready to His hand, or which meet His eye: the birds of the air, the rain, the red and lowering sky, the lily, the grain of mustard seed, the corn, the ruined tower of Siloam. On these He grafts this or that fragment of eternal truth. We cannot enrich His teaching by any additions. Our crude efforts could not but disfigure its incomparable beauty. As with His words, so is it with His actions. He acts with a view to the glory of God the Father, and with a view to nothing else. Hence a directness and transparency in His conduct, which we feel in every detail of it.

4. One further point to be remarked in our Lords example is the stress which it lays upon those forms of excellence which make no great show, such as patience, humility, meekness, and the like. As we read the gospels, we are led to see that the highest type of human excellence consists less in acting well than in suffering well. It is this side of His example of which St. Peter is thinking as being so useful to the Christian slaves to whom for the moment he is writing (verse23). Christ had before Him a purpose of infinite beneficence; that of recovering man to God and to endless happiness. Yet in carrying it out He met with scorn, resistance, hatred, persecution. Yet no unkind or impatient word falls from Him. He bears in silence the contradiction of sinners against Himself. He prays, Father, forgive them. He is obedient unto death. Leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps. Yes, it is said, it is a beautiful, a transcendental picture; and if Christ were merely man, we might perhaps imitate Him! But then He is God as well as man; and this seems to remove Him from the category of beings whom man can imitate. His theological glory in the fourth gospel is fatal to His moral value as a human model in the first three. The difference between Jesus Christ and ourselves is indeed infinite; it is the difference between the Creator and the creature. And yet He is also truly man; and for the purposes of imitation the truth of His manhood secures all that we require. For the purposes of imitation, He is practically not more out of our reach than is a father of great genius and goodness out of the reach of his child. Certainly we cannot imitate Jesus Christ when He heals the sick, or raises the dead. But we can enter into and cherish the spirit of those high works of mercy. We can do the natural kindnesses which are akin to them. And there are deeds and words of His which we can copy in the letter as well as the spirit. Indeed, the objection has been already solved by the experience of eighteen centuries. The imitation of Christ is the perpetual source of saintly effort in the Church of Christ. Generation follows generation, looking unto Jesus. One man says, I will imitate His patience; and another, I will copy His humility; and a third, I would practise, though afar off, His obedience; and a fourth, His love for men; and another, His simplicity; and another, His benevolence; and another, His perpetual communion with the Father; and another, His renunciation of His Own will. When one point is gained, others follow. Thus, little by little, Christ is formed, in the characters of His servants. This imitation of our Lord is not a duty which we are free to accept or decline. The elect, says St. Paul, are predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son of God. If there is no effort at conformity, there is no true note of predestination. A devoted layman of the Church of England said on his deathbed, that, on reviewing his life, the omission which he chiefly deplored was that he had not made a daily effort to study and imitate Jesus Christ as He is described in the gospels. Is not this a common omission even with serious Christians? Should we not do what we may, while yet we may, thus to follow in the footsteps of the Perfect Man? (Canon Liddon.)

The Christian ideal

The Christian is the noblest type of man, says our Christian poet; and, assuredly, if the Christian be, in any extent, a reflection of the spirit of Christ, this language must be true. Whatever the grace we seek to inculcate we may find in Him a perfect illustration. Amid all lifes trials, perplexities, temptations, and requirements we can have no law so suited to every occasion as this: Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

I. An unconscious and indirect evidence of this is the frequent use of the term Christlike as an epithet descriptive of the noblest type of human character.

II. The essential difference between the morality which the world professes to honour and that of the gospel, is to be found in the endeavour of the latter to reflect the mind of Christ as it actually exists. I do not mean, of course, the morality of pure selfishness-if it be worthy the name of morality at all-which is all that numbers would acknowledge, but that which is cultivated by those who would develop a character higher than the Christian-the morality of the Religion of Humanity, and of those who hang on its outskirts, approaching more or less nearly to its ideas. What is it, and how does it differ from that which the Church of Christ commends to the acceptance of men? It is clear that up to a certain point there is no outward difference. The law of truth, righteousness, sobriety is common to both. Further, the morality outside the Church is different from that which was in the world before the gospel, in that it has incorporated with its precept that law of gentleness, mercy, self-forgetfulness which was first set before men in the life of the Lord Jesus. Here, then, is likeness so great, that there are some only too eager to conclude that they are the same. These are the graces for which we seek lofty aims, pure desires, gentle thoughts, loving deeds. What can Christianity do more? Alas! has it not failed even to do as much? Without entering at length into the controversy here, it is at all events clear to those who will look beneath the surface, that this is not Christianity. The characteristic of the Lord was that the zeal of Gods house had eaten Him up. In other words, the central idea of His life was to please God. It would be misleading in the very highest degree to describe a life out of which this ruling idea of the Saviours conduct, this inspiration of His whole being, was omitted as Christlike. The difference is an essential one. It goes to the root of the whole being, affects every motive, touches every principle, regulates the whole ambition of the soul.

III. One of the first and most frequent charges against the teaching of the Church is, that it encourages a selfish type of religion. A grave impeachment this, and one which, if sustained, certainly indicates a separation from the spirit of Christ. It is a mere truism to say that there is no feature more prominent in His entire ministry than that of unselfishness. The one ruling thought of His life on earth was the salvation of others, and the sacrifice of Himself for this end. And as with His life, so with His teaching; it was full of emphatic warnings repeated against selfishness. This certainly, is lost sight of in too many of the current representations as to the nature of salvation. How often is the stress of exhortation laid upon happiness, whether here or hereafter, rather than upon holiness as the supreme object of Christian endeavour! Nay, how often is the idea of salvation almost restricted to this one point of deliverance from the wrath of God and the sentence of the law!

IV. In the distinctness and prominence given to the thought, that the object of the Gospel is to change the condition of men only by a change amounting to an entire renewal of heart in the men themselves, is to be sought the true answer to the suggestion that the Church is only fostering a higher type of selfishness. Looked at thus, salvation is the richest blessing which can be conferred upon man. It means salvation from himself-from the evil heart of unbelief which makes him depart from the living God; but which also places him in selfish antagonism to his fellowmen; from the sway of passions which scorn all restraints of right and duty; from the curse of a restless, discontented, repining, ambitious heart. The effect of a work like that can be only to purify and ennoble the character. Its polar star is no longer happiness but duty, and duty defined for it by its understanding of the will of God.

V. The question which is of grave and critical importance, is whether the Church is earnestly working to this ideal, and seeking to enforce it upon men. It is not to be denied that there are those whose only desire is for safety, and who wish to secure even that at the least possible cost, and that they do very much to awaken the prejudices of men by the representation they give of Christian life. It is, in truth, little better than a ghastly caricature. They are not distinguished from others by nobility of character, generosity of spirit, tenderness of heart, active and sympathetic charity. They are not courageous in their assertion of principle, still less are they foremost in the exposure and condemnation of wrong. They have not keen instincts of justice, still less have they strong impulses of benevolence. If they try to reach the average standard of service, they never exhibit a spirit of self-denying devotion. Yet with all this there may be unctuous words on their lips, and occasionally an apparent spiritual excitement. But the conscience is not sensitive; the heart is not tender; perhaps there is not an intelligent conception of what religion ought to be. If we could probe their principles and motives, we should probably find that they had accepted the selfish conception of religion. They want to be sure for eternity, and they endeavour to obtain this assurance by a rigid conformity to their ideas of the Divine requirements. It is from professors of this type, who are not so uncommon as we should desire, that unbelievers take their conceptions of the Christian ideal. These, they would say, are your saints. In what are they better than those whom they would describe as sinners? They may seek a different kind of happiness, but the one class is as selfish in its views and aims as the other. If this be Christianity, there is in it nothing to awaken our reverence or constrain our faith. The only answer that can be found is the exhibition of a different spirit. It is for us to meet, by publishing the gospel of the kingdom that Christ died, rose, and lives again, that He may be the Lord both of the dead and living; that they only eat of the tree of life who keep His commandments; that the test of discipleship is obedience, conformity to the example He has given, that we may follow in His steps. (J. G. Rogers, B. A.)

The example of Christ

Christ came to give us a religion-but this is not all. By a wise and beautiful ordination of providence, He was sent to show forth His religion in Himself. Christianity is not a mere code of laws, not an abstract system, such as theologians frame. It is a living, embodied religion. It comes to us in a human form; it offers itself to our eyes as well as ears; it breathes, it moves in our sight. The importance of example who does not understand? The temptation is strong to take, as our standard, the average character of the society in which we live, and to satisfy ourselves with decencies and attainments which secure to us among the multitude the name of respectable men. On the other hand, there is a power in the presence, conversation, and example of a man of strong principle and magnanimity, to lift us, at least for the moment, from our vulgar and tame habits of thought, and to kindle some generous aspirations after the excellence which we were made to attain. I hardly need say to you, that it is impossible to place ourselves under any influence of this nature so quickening as the example of Jesus. This introduces us to the highest order of virtues. This is fitted to awaken the whole mind. There is one cause, which has done much to defeat this good influence of Christs character and example, and which ought to be exposed. It is this. Multitudes think of Jesus as a being to be admired, rather than approached. I wish to prevent the discouraging influence of the greatness of Jesus Christ, to show that, however exalted, He is not placed beyond the reach of our sympathy and imitation.

1. I begin with the general observation, that real greatness of character, greatness of the highest order, far from being repulsive and discouraging, is singularly accessible and imitable, and, instead of severing a being from others, fits him to be their friend and model. Greatness is not a secret, solitary principle, working by itself and refusing participation, but frank and open hearted, so large in its views, so liberal in its feelings, so expansive in its purposes, so beneficent in its labours, as naturally and necessarily to attract sympathy and cooperation. It is selfishness that repels men; and true greatness has not a stronger characteristic than its freedom from every selfish taint. A superior mind, enlightened and kindled by just views of God and of the creation, regards its gifts and powers as so many bonds of union with other beings, as given it, not to nourish self-elation, but to be employed for others, and still more to be communicated to others. I know not in history an individual so easily comprehended as Jesus Christ, for nothing is so intelligible as sincere, disinterested love. I know not any being who is so fitted to take hold on all orders of minds; and accordingly He drew after Him the unenlightened, the publican, and the sinner. It is a sad mistake, then, that Jesus Christ is too great to allow us to think of intimacy with Him, and to think of making Him our standard.

2. Let me confirm this truth by another order of reflections. You tell me that Jesus Christ is so high that He cannot be your model; I grant the exaltation of His character. I believe Him to be a more than human being. But on this account He is not less a standard, nor is He to discourage us, but on the contrary to breathe into us a more exhilarating hope; for though so far above us, He is still one of us, and is only an illustration of the capacities which we all possess. This is a great truth. Let me strive to unfold it. Perhaps I cannot better express my views, than by saying that I regard all minds as of one family. When we speak of higher orders of beings, of angels and archangels, we are apt to conceive of distinct kinds or races of beings, separated from us and from each other by impassable barriers. But it is not so. There is no such partition in the spiritual world as you see in the material. All minds are essentially of one origin, one nature, kindled from one Divine flame, and are all tending to one centre, one happiness. I am not only one of the human race; I am one of the great intellectual family of God. There is no spirit so exalted, with which I have not common thoughts and feelings. That conception, which I have gained, of one universal Father, whose love is the fountain and centre of all things, is the dawn of the highest and most magnificent views in the universe; and if I look up to this being with filial love, I have the spring and beginning of the noblest sentiments and joys which are known in the universe. No greatness therefore of a being separates me from Him, or makes Him unapproachable by me. The mind of Jesus Christ and your mind are of one family; nor was there anything in His, of which you have not the principle, the capacity, the promise in yourself. This is the very impression which He intends to give. The relation which He came to establish between Himself and mankind, was not that of master and slave, but that of friends. We read too these remarkable words in His prayer for His disciples, I have given to them the glory Thou gavest Me; and I am persuaded that there is not a glory, a virtue, a power, a joy, possessed by Jesus Christ, to which His disciples will not successively rise. In the spirit of these remarks, the apostle says, Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ. I have said that, all minds being of one family, the greatness of the mind of Christ is no discouragement to our adoption of Him as our model. I now observe, that there is one attribute of mind, to which I have alluded, that should particularly animate us to propose to ourselves a sublime standard, as sublime as Jesus Christ. I refer to the principle of growth in human nature. Our faculties are germs, and given for an expansion, to which nothing authorises us to set bounds. The soul bears the impress of illimitableness, in the unquenchable thirst, which it brings with it into being, for a power, knowledge, happiness, which it never gains, and which always carry it forward into futurity. When I consider this principle or capacity of the human soul, I cannot restrain the hope which it awakens. The partition walls which imagination has reared between men and higher orders of beings vanish. I no longer see aught to prevent our becoming whatever was good and great in Jesus on earth. In truth I feel my utter inability to conceive what a mind is to attain which is to advance forever. To encourage these thoughts and hopes, our Creator has set before us delightful exemplifications, even now, of this principle of growth both in outward nature and in the human mind. We meet them in nature. Suppose you were to carry a man, wholly unacquainted with vegetation, to the most majestic tree in our forests, and, whilst he was admiring its extent and proportions, suppose you should take from the earth at its root a little downy substance, which breath might blow away, and say to him, that tree was once such a seed as this; it was wrapt up here; it once lived only within these delicate fibres, this narrow compass. With what incredulous wonder would he regard you. Such growth we witness in nature. A nobler hope we Christians are to cherish; and still more striking examples of the growth of mind are set before us in human history. We wonder, indeed, when we are told that one day we shall be as the angels of God. I apprehend that as great a wonder has been realised already on the earth. I apprehend that the distance between the mind of Newton and of a Hottentot may have been as great as between Newton and an angel. There is another view still more striking. This Newton, who lifted his calm, sublime eye to the heavens, and read, among the planets and the stars, the great law of the material universe, was, forty or fifty years before, an infant, without one clear perception, and unable to distinguish his nurses arm from the pillow on which he slept. Has not man already traversed as wide a space as separates him from angels? And why must he stop? There is no extravagance in the boldest anticipation. We may truly become one with Christ, a partaker of that celestial mind. Let us make Him our constant model. I know not that the doctrine, now laid down, is liable but to one abuse. It may unduly excite susceptible minds, and impel to a vehemence of hope and exertion, unfavourable in the end to the very progress which is proposed. To such I would say, hasten to conform yourselves to Christ, but hasten according to the laws of your nature. As the body cannot, by the concentration of its whole strength into one bound, scale the height of a mountain, neither can the mind free every obstacle and achieve perfection by an agony of the will. Continuous, patient effort, guided by wise deliberation, is the true means of spiritual progress. In religion, as in common life, mere force or vehemence will prove a fallacious substitute for the sobriety of wisdom.

3. The doctrine which I have chiefly laboured to maintain in this discourse, that minds are all of one family, are all brethren, and may be more and more nearly united to God, seems to me to have been felt peculiarly by Jesus Christ; and if I were to point out the distinction of His greatness, I should say it lay in this. He felt His superiority, but He never felt as if it separated Him from mankind, He saw in every human being a mind which might wear His own brightest glory. I insist on this view of His character, not only to encourage us to aspire after a likeness to Jesus; I consider it as peculiarly fitted to call forth love towards Him. With these views I feel that, though ascended to heaven, He is not gone beyond the reach of our hearts; that He has now the same interest in mankind as when He entered their dwellings; and that there is no being so approachable, none with whom such unreserved intercourse is to be enjoyed in the future world. I exhort you with calmness, but earnestness, to adopt Jesus Christ as your example, with the whole energy of your wills. Let not the false views of Christianity which prevail in the world, seduce you into the belief that Christ can bless you in any other way than by assimilating you to His own virtue, than by breathing into you His own mind. Do not imagine that any faith or love towards Jesus can avail you, but that which quickens you to conform yourselves to His spotless purity and unconquerable rectitude. Settle it as an immovable truth, that neither in this world nor in the next can you be happy, but in proportion to the sanctity and elevation of your characters. (W. E. Channing.)

Christ is our example

In these words, take notice-

1. Of one end of Christ in suffering: that He might leave us an example.

2. They were remarkable steps that Christ took when He was here in the days of His flesh. And among them all He did not take one wrong one.

3. The steps of Christ are to be followed. Our Lord did whatsoever became Him, and exactly fulfilled all righteousness (Mat 3:15).

4. Here is a special intimation of a Christians duty patiently to bear injuries, and to take up the Cross.

5. The sufferings of Christ and His example being joined together in the text, here is a signification that by His death He has purchased grace to enable us to follow His example.

I. Premise some things by way of caution.

1. Think not, as long as you remain in this world, to be altogether free from sin as Christ was.

2. Think not that Christ in all His actions is to be imitated. There are royalties belonging to Him, which none must invade. He alone is judge and lawgiver in Zion.

3. Think not that your obedience can be meritorious, as Christs was.

4. Think not that your greatest sufferings for the sake of righteousness are in the least expiatory of sin, as Christs were.

II. In what respects Christ is an example to be followed.

1. In His great self-denials (2Co 8:9; Rom 15:3; Joh 7:18).

2. In His patient enduring the worlds hatred, and the slights and contradiction of sinners (Joh 15:18-19; Heb 12:2; Mat 5:44).

3. In His resisting and overcoming the prince of dark ness (Mat 4:1-11).

4. In His contempt of the worlds glory, and contentment with a mean and low estate in it (Luk 4:5-6).

5. In His living a life so very beneficial, doing good being His perpetual business (Act 10:38; Eph 5:9; Tit 3:8).

6. In His most profitable and edifying communication (Psa 45:2; Luk 4:22; 1Pe 2:22-23; Mat 11:28).

7. In His manner of performing holy duties (Heb 5:7; Rom 12:11).

8. In His great humility and weakness (Mat 11:29; Pro 6:16-17).

9. In His love to God, great care to please Him, and fervent zeal for His name and glory (Joh 14:31; Joh 8:29).

10. In His sufferings and death (Heb 12:2).

III. Some arguments to persuade to the imitation of our Lord Jesus.

1. Consider the greatness of the person who gives you the example (Rev 19:16; Php 2:10).

2. Remember the relation wherein you that are saints do stand unto the Lord Jesus. You are members of His body (Eph 5:30). There fore you should grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ (Eph 4:15).

3. Consider that God did foreordain you that are believers m a conformity to the Lord Jesus (Rom 8:29).

4. Walking as Christ walked will make it evident that you are indeed in Him (1Jn 2:6; Gal 4:19).

5. Your following the example of Christ very much honours Him, and credits Christianity (Col 3:1).

6. Christ frequently speaks to you to follow Him, and observes whether and how you do it (Rev 1:14; Rev 2:23).

7. Follow Christs example, that you may enter into His glory (2Ti 2:11-12; Rev 3:21; Col 3:4).

IV. Some directions how you may be able to follow the example of our Lord Jesus.

1. Let your unlikeness to Christ be matter of your great humiliation.

2. Study more the admirable excellency and fairness of the copy which Christ has set you, and how desirable it is still to be growing up more and more into Him in all things.

3. Being sensible of your own impotency, live by faith on the Son of God (Isa 45:24; Joh 15:4-5).

4. Give up yourselves to the conduct of Christs own Spirit (Rev 2:7; Rev 2:11; Rev 2:17; Rev 2:29). (N. Vincent, M. A.)

Christ our example

I. The life of our blessed saviour is a most absolute and perfect pattern of holiness and goodness, complete and entire in all its parts, and perfect to the utmost degree, in the following whereof there is no danger of being misguided, whereas all other examples of mortal men are fallible and uncertain guides.

II. As the life of our blessed Saviour is a most perfect, so likewise it is a familiar and easy example. The Divine nature is the great pattern of perfection; but that is too remote from us, and above our sight; therefore God hath been pleased to condescend so far to our weakness, as to give us a visible example of those virtues He requires of us in His own Son, appearing in the likeness of sinful flesh, practised in such instances, and upon such occasions as do frequently happen in human life.

III. The life of our blessed Saviour is likewise an encouraging example. It cannot but give great life to all good resolutions and endeavours, to see all that which God requires of us performed by one in our nature, by a man like ourselves.

IV. It is an universal pattern. As the doctrine of our Saviour, so His example was of an universal nature and design, calculated for all times and places.

1. It is a pattern of the greatest and most substantial virtues: piety, obedience, purity and innocence, universal charity.

2. He was a pattern of the most rare and unusual virtues: sincerity, humility, contempt of the world, kindness and benignity.

3. The life of our blessed Saviour is likewise a pattern of such virtues as are most useful and beneficial to others. In His readiness to do good to all persons and all kinds; by instructing their ignorance, and supplying their wants, spiritual and temporal; by resolving their doubts, and comforting them in their sorrows. And then in His seeking opportunities for it, not content with those that offered themselves, and in His unwearied diligence in this work.

4. Our Saviour is likewise a pattern to us of such virtues as are most hard and difficult to be practised, such as are most against the grain of our corrupt nature, and most contrary to flesh and blood. Christ denied His own life, and gave up Himself wholly to the will of God (Joh 5:33; Joh 6:38; Mat 26:39; Mat 26:42). He denied His own will also in condescension to the prejudices and infirmities of men for their edification and good (Rom 15:2-3). He denied Himself, in the lawful pleasures and satisfactions, in the ease and accommodations of life: He lived meanly, and fared hardly. And He denied Himself likewise in one of the dearest things in the world, to the greatest minds, I mean in point of reputation: He made Himself of no reputation (Php 2:7). But that which I shall particularly take notice of, under this head, is His great meekness.

5. Our Saviour is likewise a pattern to us of the most needful virtues, and for the practice whereof there is the greatest and most frequent occasion in human life.

(1) The great humanity of His carriage and deportment, of which He gave manifold instances, in His free and familiar conversation with all sorts of people. He did not despise the meanest.

(2) Another very needful virtue, and for which our Lord was very eminent, was His disregard of the opinion of men, in comparison of His duty.

(3) Another virtue for which there is great occasion in human life, and for which our Lord was very remarkable, was His contentedness in a mean and poor condition; and such was His condition to the very lowest degree.

(4) The last virtue I shall instance in, and for the exercise whereof there is very great and frequent occasion in human life, is patience under sufferings, and such a perfect resignation of ourselves to the will of God, that whatever pleaseth Him should please us, how distasteful and grievous soever it be. And of this virtue our blessed Saviour was the greatest example that ever was.

V. Our Lords example is in the nature of it very powerful, to engage and oblige all men to the imitation of it. It is almost equally calculated for persons of all capacities and conditions, for the wise and the weak, for those of high and low degree; for all men are alike concerned to be happy. And the imitation of this example is the most effectual means we can use to compass this great and universal end; nay, it is not only the means, but the end, the best and most essential part of it. To be like our Lord, is to be as good as it is possible for men to be; and goodness is the highest perfection that any being is capable of; and the perfection of every being is its happiness. His life was even and of one tenour, quiet, and without noise and tumult, always employed about the same work, in doing the things which pleased God, and were of greatest benefit and advantage to men. Who would not write after such a copy. This pattern, which our religion proposeth to us, is the example of one whom we ought to reverence, and whom we have reason to love above any person in the world. Yet farther, it is the example of our best friend and greatest benefactor. (Abp. Tillotson.)

Christ our example

1. In the object of His life.

2. In the standard of His practice.

3. In His commerce and connection with the world.

4. In His condition of life.

5. In His sorrows and joys. (J. Cumming, D. D.)

Christs example is to be followed

1. Wholly.

2. Openly.

3. Fully. (J. Cumming, D. D.)

The necessity of a perfect model

1. It is worthy of observation that in the public services of our church we offer petitions for the literal granting of which we can scarcely dare took. We desire of God, for example, that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; and again, we beseech of Him to vouchsafe to keep us this day without sin; but there is not one of us who will presume to say that he ever passes a day without sin. It would argue the want of a real hatred of sin, and would therefore be highly dishonouring to God, to pray to be kept only from a certain degree of transgression, just as though any other degree might be allowed or overlooked. Besides, we cannot be ignorant that humility is at the root of all Christian graces, and that what encourages pride is most injurious to piety. Suppose, then, we were required to imitate a pattern which might be equalled, and is it not certain that as the resemblance seemed to grow, we should feel increasing self-complacency? The fine result of copying an imitable model is, that the vast distance at which we stand from perfection forbids our feeling proud of success. The advance appears nothing, when compared with the space which yet remains to be traversed. Oh! it is practically one of the most splendid things in Christianity, that it fixes our efforts on a model so immeasurably above us, that we have never time to calculate whether or not others are beneath us. We can never repose complacently on what we are; we must always find cause of humiliation in what we are not.

2. We have to go somewhat farther. You may say that whatever the evil consequences of erecting a low standard, there must be much that is disheartening in the copying a model which is confessedly inimitable. On the contrary, we argue, in the second place, that there is everything to encourage us in the fact that the standard cannot be reached; for it certainly is not essential to the suitableness of our example, that it is one whose excellence we may hope to overtake. This would be making our power of imitation, and not noble and beautiful qualities, the guide in selecting an example. It will not be questioned that a faultless work of art, if such there could be, can be only the best model for an artist, and yet the artist may not expect to produce what is faultless. Why is there to be introduced any different rule into the nobler science of moral imitation? Encouragement will depend mainly on the probability of improvement; and this probability being greater with a perfect than with an imperfect model, it follows that we have more cause to feel encouraged in imitating Christ, whom we cannot reach, than one of our fellow men, whom we might perhaps surpass. What the painter seeks is improvement in painting; what the orator seeks is improvement in oratory, and therefore each is anxious to study the prime master in the art. What the Christian seeks is improvement in spiritual graces, and he will gain more from copying Christ, in whom those graces were perfect, than by imitating any saint in whom they were necessarily defective. I know indeed what you may urge in objection to our statement. You may tell us that our illustrations are at fault; that the painter and the orator cherish a secret hope of equalling their models, and that hence they have an encouragement which is not afforded to the Christian. The Christian is not, then, sustained as is the painter or the orator, by the hope, however vague, of reaching, if not exceeding the standard; and the want, you say, of this stimulus, forbids our illustrating the one case by the other. But even if we allow that thorough accuracy of resemblance ought not at least to appear hopeless, we can still plead for the advantageousness of our being set to imitate Christ. Accuracy of resemblance is not hopeless. Beloved, said St. John, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when He shall appear we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. As, then, we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. So that as a Christian looks onward to the future he has more to encourage him than the dim possibility which you appeal to as stimulating the painter or the orator. His is the noble, the inspiring certainty, that however slowly, and however painfully goes forward now the imitative work, a day has to dawn, when, fashioned into perfect conformity to the model, he shall be presented unto God without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. He labours, therefore, as one who knows that his labour is not in vain in the Lord. We exhort you, then, to the imitation of Christ, assuring you, that the more you strive to acquire the resemblance, the more will you make sure of your calling and election, and the more frequent and delightful will be your foretastes of the joys which shall hereafter be awarded to the faithful. It is not indeed by your own skill or by your own energy that you may look to effect conformity to Jesus; but by the Holy Ghost, that Divine Agent whose special office it is to renew man after the lost image of his Maker. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The character of Christ

Christ suffered for us, and left us an example. There must be no division of the two. You must not regard the suffering on one hand, and the example on the other. You must not divide Christ. I love to contemplate the life of Christ as an example, and the death of Christ as an atonement for sin. If He were an atonement without being an example, He would have been no atonement. If He were an example and yet not an atonement, He would be no example. If I preach to you Christ as an atonement, but not an example, my doctrine would be immoral; and if I preach to you the example of Christ, leaving aside the atonement of Christ, my preaching would be worthless. The New Testament always couples the two elements in the life of Christ. The word example in the text, is synonymous with the word model, or the idea of design. I do not know of any system, or of any religion, which can place before men a life fit to copy, except that of Jesus Christ. In Him we have the model of a perfect character. In the next verse the apostle changes the figure. Here the apostle, after describing Christ as an example, proceeded to refer to Him as a Shepherd leading His sheep to the green pastures. The sheep followed the Shepherd. They had implicit reliance on Him. And Christ has left us an example which we may with equal certainty follow. It is devotion; it is worship; that is the sentiment which we cherish towards the Lord Jesus. It is not mere sentiment. Christ is not simply a hero-some one to wonder at, and strike men with astonishment. His life is something different, and something greater. His life is an example which all men might follow. No one in his senses would dream of living a life like Christ, so obscure and so self-sacrificing-no one would care to tread in His footsteps and stoop so low unless they looked at the whole plan, as a complete example, at the unity of aim, at the supreme objects to the attainment, by His life and death, of those distinguishing features which made the Lord Jesus Christ what He was. You will now see what the subject of the present discourse is-The Lord Jesus Christ as an example. What is a perfect example? How would you define the perfect man? There are four principal features in such a character.

1. A perfect example must be sinless. Christ is not a mere fragment of a man. Men have peered into the life of Christ, bringing microscopic criticism to bear upon its minutest details, but have failed to discover a single fault. Voltaire tried, and failed; Strauss has tried, and Renan. They have all failed, and many of them were men whose genius was sufficiently creative in its character to discover faults where there were no faults; but in the case of Christ they found no sin. And yet Christ was no recluse.

2. It was not sufficient that the life be a sinless one-difficulties must be overcome; that must be a characteristic of the perfect man, the great example of humanity. Now, there are the angels. An angel is perfect, but has not overcome difficulties. Could anyone conceive of any combination of circumstances in which the anguish could be so keen, in which the suffering could be so intense, difficulties so insuperable as those which Christ experienced and overcame?

3. A perfect example must be more than an example: it must hold out pardon for the past. We cannot forgive ourselves. Our past is so sinful that we falter before it. Robertson has said that man can afford to forgive himself if Jesus Christ can afford to forgive him! That is right; that is true. It is possible to break the links connecting the man with the old life and to restart in a heavenly direction by the aid of the Holy Spirit of God.

4. The Christ of the gospel is a living Christ. That is the foundation of the gospel. It would not pay me to preach philosophy to you, if I could do so. I would not preach poetry without a living Christ; I would not preach doctrine to you without a living Christ. The Bible would not be worth anything for the purpose of preaching but that it contains a living Christ. The atonement would be valueless except for a living Christ. (T. C. Edwards.)

Christ an example in His sufferings

I. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were an illustration of His innocence.

II. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were a display of patience and magnanimity.

III. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were a display of piety.

IV. The sufferings of Christ are an example to His followers, as they were a display of good affections. (G. Hill, D. D.)

On the example of Christ

The example of Christ-is it not an effort beyond humanity? Can the example of purity and perfection be urged upon frail creatures, whose passions and infirmities place them forever beyond the hope of such attainments? In the first place, then, let it be remarked that imitation is not attainment-that our professing to follow an example is a plain confession of our inferiority to what we propose-and that men might be engaged, as they are in science, in a perpetual progress of improvement, useful and consoling, though they can never flatter themselves with the hope of arriving at a point beyond which there is no further improvement, But it may be said the example of Christ, a model of sinless purity, is unfit for beings who neither possess His nature nor hope for His perfections. Here let us mark the plain distinction between the office of the Divine legislator and the duties of the man: the latter all are called on to fulfil, the former none but He could execute, Even in the most exalted parts of His character-those that seem most remote from human agency-there are many things the spirit of which may be transfused into our conduct, and make the disciple not unworthy of his Master, It is not for us to march in triumph to Jerusalem, while those that went before and those that followed cried, saying, Hosanna; but it is for us to mark the progress of His grace in our hearts and those of His faithful followers. We cannot, like Him, raise the dead to life, banish the infirmities of nature by a word, and heal disease by a touch; but we can watch in patience by the bed of sickness, and by patience, and gentleness and spiritual consolation turn the visitation into a blessing. But it is not alone to the public character of Christ that we are to look for objects of imitation; they may be found in every part of life, for all the declivities of life He humbled Himself to tread. (C. R. Maturin.)

On the example of Christ

Let us begin with observing, in general, the great superiority of this to every other example. Here are to be found all the graces and virtues collecting their strongest heat and spreading their brightest lustre, to fire the soul with a virtuous ardour, to enlighten and direct the path of life. It is another obvious advantage of this example that it is calculated to extend its influence to all the world. Christ appeared not in those affluent circumstances in which there may be little opportunity of the exercise of the most substantial and, at the same time, the most difficult graces, or in which the benefit of His pattern would have been confined to the smallest part of the world, but in those more mean and humble scenes of life which constitute the general lot of men, where His example might have the most extensive influence, and suit most effectually the present condition and necessities of human nature. Let us now proceed to select from the numerous graces which adorned the character of our Redeemer a few of the most important. And here it will surely be unnecessary to observe that it is not every branch of that character which we are required to imitate. His supernatural operations were the displays of essential perfection, peculiar to the Deity Himself, incommunicable to His creatures. The great line in which we are to follow the Author and Finisher of our faith is in the practice of those distinguished virtues which adorned His character, and which constituted it the standard of moral excellence.

1. The first feature of this kind which we take notice of is His piety to God. His temper was ever calm and peaceful, such as might naturally be expected within a mind rejoicing in those blessed exercises whose natural effect is not to sour and corrupt the heart, but to improve its most excellent feelings, to mould it to the image and likeness of that God whom we adore, to render it merciful, and generous, and humane, like Him who is the great source of love.

2. Another very capital feature in the character of the Redeemer was His contempt of the pomp and vanities of life. Put on His humility, and it shall clothe thee.

3. Another most important feature in this illustrious character was the ardour of His benevolence. From Him no calamity departed unrelieved, no suppliant who did not receive the requested boon.

4. The last feature of His great character which we take notice of at present was His meekness and patience. If His character is not distinguished by those specious and dazzling qualities which are often most dangerous and detrimental to the world, but which excite the wonder of unthinking men, it exhibits ornaments infinitely more real, and recommends to our imitation qualities more truly great and generous. (John Main, D. D.)

The perfect ideal

I. Christ the perfect ideal of submission, amidst the most appalling conflicts of life.

II. Christ the perfect ideal of obedience to duty, amidst the strongest counter influences.

III. Christ the perfect ideal of unselfish love, amidst intensest selfishness. The mother, pale with incessant vigils by the bedside of a sick child, exhibits unselfish love. Howard, dying of fever caught in dungeons where he was following after his Divine ideal, presents to us a picture of love. But it would be easier to measure the heavens with a span, or weigh the mountains in scales, than to fully portray Christs love. (Homilist.)

The imitation of Christ

I. Mistakes made connected with it. Imitating the out ward actions only. Failing to see the essential connection between the outward act and the inward principle. What is visible is but a portion of the deed. Some try to imitate Christ to procure a justifying righteousness. Others endeavour to imitate Christ to become like Him. To walk in Christs steps we must be possessed by Christs spirit.

II. Imitate him is the renunciation of self.

III. Imitate him in his consecration to God.

IV. Imitate him in his dependence upon his father. (E. H. Hopkins.)

Christ our copy

I. The text fixes the absolute standard for the Christian life. Christ is the Christians example. The word translated example, found nowhere else in the New Testament, means, first of all, a writing copy such as is given to a child learning to write. The standard for the measurement and aim of the Christian life is therefore-

1. Christ, and not the best human life.

2. Christ, and not distorted representations of Him. Christ as revealed in the simple clearness of the Gospels.

3. Christ, and not the high tide mark of present day Christianity. A subtle evil, into which all are in danger of falling, is to feel that to be as good as others is to be good enough.

II. The text points out the practical meaning of Christs life for us. The word example-copy-appeals to the universal faculty of imitation. A great factor in all education. Christ did not live for the purpose of winning admiration or applause. To imitate is more than to adore.

III. Strength for and progress in this imitation of Christ will come to those who are constantly in His presence. Where the child puts its copy before it, there we may put Christ. In His presence we get strength to become like Him. Things in contact assimilate, the stronger predominating. Things in touch are reliant, the weaker on the stronger. (J. D. Thomas.)

Copying but a fragment of the Christ

Nothing is more striking to a close observer of human life than the almost infinite variety of character which exists among those who profess to be Christians. No two are alike. Even those who are alike revered for their saintliness show the widest diversity in individual traits, and in the cast and mould of their character. Yet all are sitting before the same model, all are imitators of the same blessed life. There is but one standard of true Christian character-the likeness of Christ. Why, then, is there such variety of character and disposition among those who aim to follow the same example?

1. One reason for this is that God does not bestow upon all His children the same gifts, the same natural qualities. Life is not minted as gold is. Grace does not transform Peter into a John, nor Paul into a Barnabas, nor Luther into a Melancthon. It makes them all like Christ in holiness, but it does not touch those features which give to each his personal identity. You drop twenty different seeds in the same garden bed, and they spring up into twenty different kinds of plants, from the delicate mignonette to the flaunting sunflower. In like manner each believer grows up into his own peculiar self. Regeneration neither adds to nor takes from our natural gifts.

2. Another reason for this diversity among Christians is because even the best and holiest saints realise but a little of the image of Christ, have only one little fragment of His likeness in their souls. The reason is that the character of Christ is so great, so majestic, that it is impossible to copy all of it into any one little human life; and again, each human character is so imperfect and limited that it cannot reach out in all directions after the infinite character of Christ. It is as if a great company of artists were sent to paint each one a picture of the Alps. Each chooses his own point of observation, and selects the particular feature of the Alps he desires to paint. They all bring back their pictures; but lo! no two of them are alike. The truth is, the Alps as a whole are too varied, too vast, for any one artist to take into his perspective, and paint upon his canvas. The best he can do is to portray some one or two features-the features his eye can see from where he stands. And Christ is too great in His infinite perfection, in the many sidedness of His beauty, for any one of His finite followers to copy the whole of His image into his own little life. The most that any of us can do is to get into our own soul one little fragment of the wonderful likeness of our Lord. (J. R. Miller, D. D.)

Christ our ideal

These are words which betray their authorship. As we read our thoughts fly back to the upper room in Jerusalem, when, on the eve of His approaching sacrifice, during supper our Lord left His place at the head of the table where He was reclining, laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself, and, pouring water into a basin, proceeded to wash His disciples feet, and wiped them with the towel wherewith He was girded. All of them wondered: one of them, Simon Peter, remonstrated with Him, but He would not be stayed in His strange work. And when He had resumed His place, He answered their questioning looks and told them what it meant. I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you. Can we wonder that the scene, the words, were cut so indelibly into the memory of St. Peter that years after, just as though it all happened yesterday, he writes, Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye should follow His steps. It is in its adaptation to the necessities of mankind the secret of the power of Christianity consists. This is why it lives on, ever fresh, ever vigorous. It is made for man as he is, apart from the mere outward circumstances and environment of his life it is as suited for man today in his advanced civilisation as it was in the crude days of past centuries. For it gives man what his higher nature wants to have, it tells man what his spiritual being yearns to know, it meets in man the God-implanted instincts of his inner self, and therefore it claims for itself the admiration and reverence and love of all men. What, then, is the great need which is alluded to here? It is this. Man wants an ideal which shall call forth his enthusiasm and awaken his energies. He must have one. It is a necessity of his being, for every man is made up of two selves-there is the self of the man as he is, and there is the self of the man as he would be or ought to be. All through life this need makes itself felt. As soon as the childs mind begins to open and the little one commences to observe and think for itself, it all unconsciously looks round for an ideal; and if it has a loving mother, it finds what it wants in her. The child becomes the boy, and for a time, at any rate, his father is his ideal of strength and wisdom. The boy goes to school, and some schoolfellow skilled in games, or clever in learning, or born to rule his fellows becomes his ideal. The youth passes into manhood, but even in the full maturity of his developed power, even in the consciousness of his self-reliance, he seeks an ideal still, the embodiment of strength, or wisdom, or industry, or success. Ay, and not only is this ideal a deep necessity, but it is a real force. It moulds the character; it influences the actions; it shapes the life; it fills with enthusiasm. It is a great motive power. And the one man to be despaired of is the man without an ideal. See, then, how Christianity steps in and meets this yearning. It puts before man the only ideal which will satisfy his needs and meet his necessities. For it has to be borne in mind that if an ideal is to be a power it must possess certain characteristics and qualities.

1. An ideal must be definite. Many men mistake an idea for an ideal. And many lives are wasted because they are lived running after ideas which evade their grasp, and slip from their hold, and lack definiteness.

2. An ideal must be universal. This is what humanity craves. An ideal ought to be a bond of union. Alas! too often an ideal separates. Men choose each his own ideal and go their way, too busy to think of, or care for, or help their struggling comrades.

3. An ideal must be perfect. It is in this the danger of ideals consists. The man must have an ideal, and in his haste and lack of right judgment he oftentimes selects that which is unworthy. What is the consequence? It drags down the man.

4. And therefore an ideal, just in proportion as it possesses these qualifications, must be final. The restlessness within the man is calmed down and dies away before such an ideal.

And in the Christian ideal all these requirements are found brought together. Is it not so?

1. The Christian ideal is definite. It stands out like a snow-capped mountain against the blue sky, its outline distinctly defined, each peak and crag, each chasm and precipice clearly mapped out. The life of the Christ has been lived before men. It is beautifully portrayed for us in the four Gospels. Each inspired artist has viewed it from a somewhat different aspect; each dwells on that part which comes most closely home to him; each puts the Christ before us as he best knew and understood Him. But there is no contradiction. Christ is a reality, not a fancy, a history, not a fiction, a substance, not a shadow. His deeds are familiar to us; His words are recorded for us. Now it is holiness-Like as He which called you is holy, be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living. Now it is charity-Walk in love, as Christ also loved you. Now it is patience-Consider Him that hath endured such gainsaying of sinners against Himself, that ye wax not weary, fainting in your souls. Now it is self-denial-Let each one of us please his neighbour for that which is good, to edifying, for Christ pleased not Himself. Now it is Forgiveness-Forbearing one another and forgiving each other, even as Christ forgave you.

2. The Christians ideal is universal. It is not an esoteric religion, such as is the fashion of the day, whose chief recommendation is that it is unintelligible to the many, suited only to the select few, a small circle; it is for all, not for some. Christ is the ideal of all nations. But no people was ever so strong in this sense of nationality as the Jew. And Jesus was a Jew, born of a Jewish mother, brought up in a Jewish home; His environment all through His life was Jewish. Take the picture out of its Jewish frame, place it in Gentile surroundings, and though the frame is changed, the picture is just as attractive and soul inspiring. He is the ideal for all. He is the universal pattern as He is the universal Saviour. Christ is the ideal for all men. He lived the ordinary life of ordinary men and women. Christ is the ideal for all sorts and conditions of men. He was rich-yea, who so rich as He? He was poor, for though He was rich, for our sakes He became poor-yea, He had not where to lay His head. He was learned above the most intellectual of men, for He was the Wisdom of the Father, and they who heard Him were astonished, for He taught as one having authority. He was unlearned, for did they not say of Him, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned? Christ is the ideal for all men in all circumstances of life. We see Him in solitude, in the home, in society. Christ is the ideal for all ages. The child, the boy, the young man just entering lifes arena, the matured in body and mind, all find in Him their ideal.

3. The Christian ideal is perfect. Where else shall we find an ideal that can pretend to lay claim to perfection? Not in the heroes of classic times. Not in Socrates, with his grave moral blemishes, Cicero, with his childish vanity, Seneca, with his miserable avarice and cowardice. We shall not find it among the great and good men of Old Testament times. He is perfect, for all virtues are concentrated in Him. He is perfect. This is the well nigh universal testimony of men. And therefore the Christians ideal is final. We cannot sum it up better than in the pithy words of Renan, After Jesus there is nothing more but to fructify and develop, or, as a great lay writer says of it, It comprehends all future history. The moral efforts of all ages will be efforts to realise this character and make it actually as it is potentially universal. Humanity as it advances in excellence will only be approximating to the Christian type. Any divergence from that will not be progress, but debasement and corruption. How shall we explain this perfection? What does this character of the Christ mean? Let these men solve the difficulty if they can, who while they bear witness to His perfection refuse to accept His teaching, or else explain away His words. Our answer rings forth in the words of the Nicene Creed, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, or as we sing, Perfect God and perfect man. This, then, is the Christians ideal. It is the Christians duty and privilege to follow and imitate Christ. It is hard, for no mere external resemblance will suffice. Christ is not a model, but an ideal, as has well been said. If He were a model it might be enough for us to copy its outline; but if He be an ideal we must imitate His spirit. It is hard, for the ideal is perfect, and therefore far above out of our reach. The higher we climb, the further the summit seems to be lost in the clouds of eternal perfection. It is hard, but it is not impossible. We can walk in the steps of our great example. How shall this likeness be ours? Little by little, through patience and perseverance. Little by little, for it is nothing less than the formation of character, and the formation of character is always slow and gradual. It is like the growth of a tree with its hard knots, its twisted branches, its smooth twigs. How gradually it has become what it is! How slow the process by which the twig of one year becomes the branch of next year! How shall this likeness be ours? Answer me another question and I will tell you. What is the lever power of the world? It is love, you say. And has love no place in the Christians efforts to be like Christ? Surely, yes. Think again of that pale, anxious student. He is copying a lifeless face. From the picture there comes no power to inspirit him in his toil. But we are imitating a living, loving Christ. Gaze on His features. Remember He is our sacrifice as well as our ideal. (C. J. Ridgeway, M. A.)

Reviled not again–

Equanimity under reproach

A person expressing to Bengel his sympathy for him at being so virulently written against, he replied, You will not regret this when I tell you that such very trials teach me only the better how to gather up and strengthen the testimony of my conscience. I have learnt a good method of cheerfully enduring reproach. I think of the reproachings and revilings which the Son of God has been receiving from the Jews for 1,700 years, and of His wonderful long suffering with them all this while. Thus I learn not to fret at a few relics of the same which may be thrown at me. (Bengels Life.)

Who did no sin, neither was guile found.–

Christ without sin

The apostles of our Lord notice with much complacency the individual virtues which dignified or adorned His character, just as the Evangelists have related the actions in which they were displayed, with much unaffected simplicity. But while they mention particular virtues, they do not lose sight of the effect which they may collectively produce in illustrating the merit of Him in whose deportment they appeared.

I. The moral perfection here attributed to Christ. Christ did no sin. This phrase, according to its original conception, means nothing more than harmlessness; and is not understood to comprehend any positive or superior excellence. But as applied to Christ it means a great deal more; and, indeed, it should in every case mean a great deal more, considering what the Divine law prescribes, and what sin is in reference to it. Sin essentially consists in transgressing or refusing obedience to the Divine law. And the law does not merely prohibit many things which we are accustomed to call sinful, it also enjoins many things which we are accustomed to call holy. The injunctions are as much a part of the law as the prohibitions. He who will not relieve the distress of his neighbour when he has it in his power, is as really a sinner as he who wantonly inflicted the injury which called for this expression of kindness. It is only when a moral agent performs every deed which is commanded as well as abstains from every deed which is forbidden, that he can properly be said to have done no sin. Now, it is in this strict and elevated sense that Christ did no sin. All the requirements of the law were fulfilled in His character. Nor can the eye of the most scrutinising observer discover in it one feature of nonconformity, or one act of opposition to the will of Him who ruleth over all. There may be particular virtues, or particular modifications and degrees of virtue, of which His life will afford you no instance. These are wanting, however, only for this reason-that in the execution of His appointed work, and in the peculiar sphere in which He was destined to move, no opportunities occurred for practising them. The path of obedience which was assigned to Him was a long and a rugged one, and He walked in it with undeviating steady fastness, and He walked in it to the very end-manifesting from the very commencement to the very termination of His progress an unreserved acquiescence in the demands of Gods law. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals, we are generally necessitated to fix upon some one leading virtue by which they have distinguished themselves; but with regard to Christ we perceive all the virtues adorning His character, and we feel at a loss in determining to which of them we should give the preeminence. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals we are frequently obliged to dwell upon the excellence of their external conduct, and to conceal the principles and motives by which they were influenced. But with regard to Christ, so far as they have been developed to us, the principles on which He proceeded were as Divine, and the motives which impelled Him as disinterested and worthy as the actions themselves. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals we must always accompany our eulogium with certain exceptions to their disadvantage-certain shortcomings which detract from the splendour or from the value of the good qualities for which we commend them, or certain vices which counterbalance them and render our commendations less cordial. But with regard to Christ we can discern no such imperfection or demerit. In speaking with approbation of our fellow mortals we are always supposed, even when our laudatory language is most unbounded, to allow that we wish not to be strictly apprehended, and to leave it to be understood that there is need for that charity which seeks not to detect the failings of humanity, and tries to cover them when they are known: but with regard to Christ this charity has no room to operate. Nor is this moral perfection either an imaginary or an exaggerated attribute of Christ. As certainly as we know that He lived and died, so certainly do we know that in His life and in His death He was without sin. For this we have every degree of evidence of which the case admits, or which can be desired to satisfy our minds.

II. Let us now make our application of this truth. It is applicable, as we formerly stated, to various useful purposes.

1. And it serves to confirm our belief in the truth of Christs mission. This effect is produced in some degree simply by viewing Christ in the light of a person of good principle and of excellent character. He holds Himself out as a witness. It is to the truth of revelation that He gives His testimony, or rather it is His own Divine origin and embassy that He certifies. And therefore in proportion to the confidence that we repose in His general worth will be the credit that we give to what He says respecting Himself, and to the message which He brings from heaven. But the argument comes still closer to us than this. Had the Author of Christianity been an impostor, it is impossible to conceive that He should have been of such holy and unblemished character as we find Him to have been. The depravity of heart which gave birth to such a system of artifice, as in this view He must be supposed to have contrived and published, could not fail to have given birth also to a great variety of crimes and vices. On the supposition that Christ was an impostor, it was no ordinary or harmless deception that He was playing off upon mankind. It was founded on the assumption of Divine power; it pretended to aim at the Divine glory; it affected to promulgate the Divine will; it invoked a solemn and visible manifestation of the Divine presence. And while it thus blasphemed against God, it trifled with the understanding and the affections of man. It called upon him to believe what was not true. Now I ask you if it be possible to reconcile such impiety towards God, and such unfeelingness towards men, with that reverence for God, and that tender compassion towards men by which our Lord was so eminently characterised in every other instance? I ask you, if such light and such darkness, such righteousness and such unrighteousness could possibly dwell together, and operate together, in the mind and in the conduct of the same individual? The answer to all these questions must necessarily be in the negative. Christ cannot be a deceiver as to His gospel, and yet in all other respects without sin. You must either give up the one proposition or the other. There is yet another view to be taken of this point. Christ did more than hold Himself out as a Divine messenger-He held Himself out as standing in a peculiar relation to God, as being His only begotten Son, as having the attributes of Deity, as being one with the Father. With these pretensions His sinfulness, even His commission of one sin, would have been completely inconsistent, and would have rendered them utterly false and groundless. His perfect freedom from sin, therefore, is essential to the proof of His Divine mission. It does hot prove that He was God, for He might have been a creature and yet have been preserved from all unrighteousness by Gods almighty power. But as He claimed the honour and asserted the possession of supreme Deity, it was necessary that no unrighteousness should cleave to Him. I have still further to observe that the sinlessness of Christ is to be viewed as a miracle, which establishes the truth of His mission as much as any of the miracles which are usually resorted to for this purpose. And it was not possible for Him to be thus sinless, except by the special interposition of heaven. The laws which govern human nature and human condition were here suspended, as it were, for producing that effect. A person wearing the form of fallen humanity exhibited not a vestige of the weakness and the wickedness by which, in every other case, fallen humanity has been characterised.

2. Let us apply the subject for the purpose of encouraging our dependence upon Christ as the foundation of our hope. The law of God has demands upon us that must be fully satisfied before we can obtain His forgiveness and enjoy His favour, and be admitted into His heavenly presence. It demands punishment, and it demands obedience; and we must suffer the one and yield the other, either in our own persons or by a substitute. We are very apt indeed to trust in our own strength for the justification of which as sinners we stand in need. But a little consideration of what our own strength is, and of the achievement to which we propose to apply it, must satisfy us that such a trust is vain. Our only refuge, then, is in a substitute; and it is the great business of the gospel to reveal this substitute as both willing and able to do for us what we are incompetent to do for ourselves. Now, in order that our faith in Him as our surety, who is to redeem us by His vicarious obedience, may be justified, we must have clear demonstrations of His sufficiency for sustaining that important character. It is with this view especially that Christ is represented so distinctly, and declared so frequently, to be without sin. For supposing Him to have been otherwise, then our belief in His adequacy to the undertaking He had engaged in would have been shaken or destroyed. Let this truth be always present to your minds when you think of Christ as the ground of your acceptance; and especially when you look to His death as the sacrifice of atonement which He offered up for your iniquities, and as the finishing act of that obedience which in your stead He rendered to the law of God. Be not faithless but believing. Let not a sense of your unworthiness and guilt fill your souls with desponding fears and apprehensions. But place unlimited confidence in the holy one and the just. His sacrifice is faultless. His merit is infinite. His work is perfect.

3. Finally, let us apply the subject for one direction in that course of life which we must pursue as candidates for heaven. Though Christ by His unspotted sacrifice and perfect obedience has renewed our title to life and immortality, yet it is still true that without personal holiness we cannot see the Lord. This character is pointed out to us by the precepts and maxims of the gospel. But we have the additional advantage of having it illustrated and enforced by the example of our Saviour. The exhibition of this example was one, though a subordinate, purpose of His incarnation. He has left it upon record expressly and authoritatively, that we should follow His steps. (A. Thomson, D. D.)

Sinless and guileless

I. His conduct. Did no sin.

1. Though tempted severely and continually.

2. Though surrounded by sinful men.

3. Though exposed to poverty of the deepest kind.

4. Though wearing a body subject to infirmities.

II. His converse. Neither was guile found.

1. He never disguised His abhorrence of falsehood.

2. He did not promise more than He intended to perform.

3. He did not hide from His followers the consequences of their position.

Application:-

1. The purity of Jesus in word and deed should be sought by us.

2. Hereafter we shall be as He was and is.

3. This purity can never be congenial to us until our hearts are regenerated. (R. A. Griffin.)

Bore our sins in His own body.–

The sin bearer

This wonderful passage is a part of Peters address to servants; and in his day nearly all servants were slaves. If we are in a lowly condition of life, we shall find our best comfort in thinking of the lowly Saviour bearing our sins in all patience and submission. If we are called to suffer, as servants often were in the Roman times, we shall be solaced by a vision of our Lord buffeted, scourged, and crucified, yet silent in the majesty of His endurance. We ourselves now know by experience that there is no place for comfort like the Cross. Truly in this case like cures like. By the suffering of our Lord Jesus our suffering is made light.

I. The bearing of err sins by our Lord. Jesus did really bear the sins of His people.

1. How literal is the language! Words mean nothing if substitution is not stated here.

2. Note how personal are the terms here employed! Who His own self bare our sins in His own body. It was not by delegation, but His own self, and it was not in imagination, but in His own body. Observe also the personality from our side of the question, He bare our sins, that is to say, my sins and your sins. As surely as it was Christs own self that suffered on the Cross, so truly was it our own sins that Jesus bore in His own body on the tree.

3. This sin bearing on our Lords part was continual. The passage before us has been forced beyond its teaching by being made to assert that our Lord Jesus bore our sins nowhere but on the Cross, which the words do not say. The tree was the place where beyond all other places we see our Lord bearing the chastisement due to our sins; but before this He had felt the weight of the enormous load. The marginal reading, which is perfectly correct, is Who His own self bare our sins in His own body to the tree. Our Lord carried the burden of our sins up to the tree, and there and then He made an end of it.

4. This sin bearing is final. He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, but He bears them now no more. The sinner and the sinners Surety are both free, for the law is vindicated, the honour of government is cleared, the substitutionary sacrifice is complete.

II. The change in our condition, which the text describes as coming out of the Lords bearing of our sins. That we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.

1. We are henceforth legally dead to the punishment of sin. What a wonderful deliverance for us! Bless the Lord, O my soul!

2. But Peter also means to remind us that, by and through the influence of Christs death upon our hearts, the Holy Ghost has made us now to be actually dead to sins: that is to say, we no longer love them, and they have ceased to hold dominion over us. The newborn life within us has no dealings with sin; it is dead to sin. The Greek word here used cannot be fully rendered into English-it signifies being unborn to sins. We were born in sin, but by the death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit upon us, that birth is undone, we are unborn to sins.

3. But our Lords sin bearing has also brought us into life. Dead to evil according to law, we also live in newness of life in the kingdom of grace. Our Lords object is that we should live unto righteousness. Not only are our lives to be righteous, which I trust they are, but we are quickened and made sensitive and vigorous unto righteousness; through our Lords death we are made quick of eye, and quick of thought, and quick of lip, and quick of heart unto righteousness. Certainly, if the doctrine of His atoning sacrifice does not vivify us, nothing will.

III. The healing of our diseases by this death. We were healed, and we remain so. It is not a thing to be done in the future; it has been wrought. Peter describes our disease in the words which compose verse 25. What was it, then?

1. First, it was brutishness. Ye were as sheep. Sin has made us so that we are only fit to be compared to beasts, and to those of the least intelligence. We were as sheep, but we are now men redeemed unto God.

2. We are cured also of the proneness to wander which is so remarkable in sheep. Ye were as sheep going astray, always going astray, loving to go astray, delighting in it. We wander still, but not as sheep wander; we now seek the right way, and desire to follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth. If we wander it is through ignorance or temptation. We can truly say, My soul followeth hard after Thee.

3. Another disease of ours was inability to return: Ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned. Dogs and even swine are more likely to return home than wandering sheep. But now, though we wandered we have returned, and do still return to our Shepherd. Our soul cries, Whom have I in heaven but Thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside Thee. Thus, by the virtue of our Lords death an immortal love is created in us, which leads us to seek His face, and renew our fellowship with Him.

4. Our Lords death has also cured us of our readiness to follow other leaders. Faith in Jesus creates a sacred independence of mind. We have learned so entire a dependence upon our crucified Lord that we have none to spare for men.

5. Finally, when we were wandering we were like sheep exposed to wolves, but we are delivered from this by being near the Shepherd. We were in danger of death, in danger from the devil, in danger from a thousand temptations, which, like ravenous beasts, prowled around us. Having ended our wandering, we are now in a place of safety. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Death for sin, and death to sin

I. Our Lords death for sin. And here, ere we approach to behold the great sight, let us put off our shoes from off our feet, and bow down in lowliest reverence of repenting grief, for, remember, if Jesus had not died for sins, we must have died, and died eternally too. Oh, the bitterness of our souls had we been in such a state!

1. There was a substitution for our sins, and by that substitution believers are saved. It was not merely a transfer of punishment from one to another, but there was a transfer of sin in some deep sense, or else the Scripture speaketh not what it meaneth: He bare our sins in His own body on the tree.

2. Now I want you to pause, having noted the fact of substitution, to consider the substitute. He His own self bare our sins. And who was He? I want you to feel a personal love to our dear Lord and Master. I want your souls at this moment to realise the actual character of His existence and His true personality. Though thus God over all, He became a man like unto ourselves. And He, in that double nature but united person, was Jesus, Son of God and Son of the Virgin; He it was who bare our sins in His own body on the tree.

3. Here we call to your remembrance the fact stated in the text so positively, that the substitution of Christ was carried out by Him personally, not by proxy. The priest of old brought a substitution, but it was a lamb. He struck the knife and the warm blood flowed adown it, but our Lord Jesus Christ had no substitute for Himself, He His own self bare our sins in His own body.

4. Notice, also, that the substitution of Christ is described in our text in a way which suggests consciousness, willinghood, and great pain. He His own self bare our sins. They were upon Him, they pressed Him. The Greek word for bare suggests the idea of a great weight, He bare our sins-stooped under them, as it were; they were a load to Him.

5. And He bore those sins manifestly. I think that is the mind of the Spirit; when He says in His own body, He means to give vividness to the thought. We are so constituted that we do not think so forcibly of mental and spiritual things as we do of bodily things; but our Lord bare our sins in His own body. His visage was more marred than that of any man, and His form more than the sons of men. Remember another text-Yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God. Mark the tree or Cross for a moment with much attention.

(1) It was the place of pain. No death could be more full of agony than that of crucifixion. Blessed be Thy love, O Jesus, that Thou couldest bear pain and death for us.

(2) But the Cross was not the place of pain merely; it was the place of scorn. To be fastened to the Cross! Why, they would not put the meanest Roman thereon, though he committed murder; it was a death for slaves and menials. To be laughed at when you suffer is to suffer sevenfold.

(3) But more, it was the place of the curse, for cursed is every one that hangeth on the tree, and the Word has told us that He was made a curse for us.

(4) Last of all, it was the place of death.

II. Our death to sin. That we, being dead to sin, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. Now, observe right well that we are dead to the condemning power of sin. Henceforth I have nothing to do but to live as a righteous man, accepted in the Beloved, to live by His righteousness and rejoice in it, blessing and magnifying His holy name. As many of you as have looked to Jesus Christ bearing your sins in His own body on the tree, are dead to sin as to its reigning power.

1. Dead, first, because we have seen its detestable nature. It had its charms, but now we have perceived its hypocrisies. The false prophet Mokanna, who wore the silver veil upon his brow, deceived many, for he said that should that veil be lifted, the light which would gleam from under it would strike men blind, the glory was so great; but when one had once perceived that the man was leprous, and that on his brow instead of brightness there were the white scales of a leper, nobody would become his disciple; and so, O sin, at the Cross I see thy silver veil removed, and I mark the desperate leprosy that is on thee. I cannot harbour thee in my heart.

2. We are dead to sin, again, because another passion has absorbed all the forces of our life.

3. And yet again, sin appears to us now to be too mean and trivial a thing for us to care about. We have lost now, by Gods grace, the faculty which once was gratified with these things. They tell us we deny ourselves many pleasures. Oh, there is a sense in which a Christian lives a self-denying life, but there is another sense in which he practises no self-denial at all, for he only denies himself what he does not want, what he would not have if he could. If you could force it upon him it would be misery to him, his views and tastes are now so changed. Let these eyes be forever sightless as the eyes of night, and let these ears be forever deaf as silence, rather than sin should have a charm for me, or anything should take up my spirit save the Lord of love, who bled Himself to death that He might redeem me unto Himself. This is the royal road to sanctification. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Burden bearers

I dont like this idea of somebody else bearing my burden, said an objector to the atonement recently. The reply was, Friend, somebody else has been bearing your burden ever since you came into the world. So is it with us all. Our mothers bore the burden of our infancy. The sailor bears the burden that brings us good news from afar. The miner bears the burden that warms our dwelling, and the reaper bears the burden that gives us bread. That we, being dead to sins.

Dead to sin by Christs death

Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour that it makes the soul like Him, assimilates and conforms it to His death, as the apostle speaks. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true in a spiritual sense of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer; it takes the very print of His death by beholding Him and dies to sin, and then takes that of His rising again, and lives to righteousness. (Abp. Leighton.)

Dead to sin: living to righteousness

A legend of the Jews relates that the Prophet Ezekiel once raised a number of his countrymen from the dead, but the miracle was so far imperfect that the resuscitated men ever after retained the complexion of corpses, and their garments the smell of the sepulchre. Some believe it is after this fashion that the Lord Jesus raises us from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. So far, at least, as this world is concerned, we must expect to retain the blemishes and scent of moral corruption. We have not so learned Christ. (W. L. Watkinson.)

By whose stripes ye were healed–

On the diseases and health of the soul

I. Consider sin as destroying the health of the soul.

1. Bodily distempers are very often conveyed by descent from others. So the sin of our first parents has spread a fatal corruption through the whole human race. Man is not only liable to many bodily distempers from inheritance, he brings many upon himself by imprudence and by sinful gratifications. In like manner, besides what is called original sin, we are chargeable with many actual transgressions.

2. Having spoken of the origin of sin, let us now trace the manner of its progress.

(1) Vices, like diseases, steal upon us by slow degrees. Their first attack is often imperceptible.

(2) As bodily distempers are frequently most dangerous when the patient is least sensible of them, so it is a bad symptom of the soul when it has not a just sense of the evil of iniquity.

3. Having considered sin as to its source and progress, we shall also take a view of its effects.

(1) Sickness weakens the body, debilitates the nerves, and unfits mankind so long as it continues for enjoying and discharging the affairs of human life. Sin also enfeebles the mind by curbing and confusing the reasoning powers.

(2) Nor is this the only effect; for as sickness often brings much pain, so sin also is accompanied, or will be followed, by sorrow and sufferings.

(3) As diseases produce the death of the body, so sin, if unpardoned and unremoved, will destroy the soul.

II. The nature of the remedies prescribed, and the capacity of the Physician who directs and also applies them.

1. Jesus Christ is the Physician, and the means prescribed are His Word, His ordinances, and His providences, made effectual by the Spirit.

(1) His Word is medicinal. A text of the Bible, well applied and directed to the heart by the Holy Spirit, has produced very valuable effects.

(2) The ordinances of Christ, under which are included all acts of worship, prayer, praise, and the Lords Supper, are designed to increase our hatred of sin and love for holiness.

(3) All events are in the hand of God. Providential dispensations are employed to reclaim and reform sinners. Sometimes more awful, sometimes more mild exertions are requisite.

(4) The office of the Holy Spirit is another of the means promised and prescribed by the mercy of God for the recovery of the health of souls. He is the Divine Agent who gives efficacy to the other means.

2. The character and capacity of Jesus Christ, our glorious Physician, shall now be a little considered.

(1) His knowledge and capacity are infinitely great.

(2) Our blessed Saviour is not only able and skilful, He is also friendly and compassionate.

(3) Our blessed Redeemer is very humble and condescending.

(4) The Son of God is a Physician to whom you may have access in all places and at all times.

Application:

1. As we derive by our birth a weak and depraved nature, and are daily increasing the number of our offences, what strong reasons are these, not to think of ourselves more highly than we ought to think, but to think soberly!

2. The progress of vice, as above considered, should excite in us the greatest jealousy and circumspection.

3. The effects of sin, formerly mentioned, show that vice is, of all evils, the most formidable to mankind.

4. It is our duty to follow exactly the prescriptions for spiritual health which Jesus Christ has been pleased to direct.

5. Remember that it is by a believing reliance on the blood of Jesus Christ that the remedies in the gospel prove means of spiritual health. (Robert Foote.)

The stripes of Jesus

There is much that is mysterious about disease, and probably much that will always remain so, even after human industry and skill have done their best to fathom its secrets. But in ancient times, when medical science was almost if not altogether unknown, the causes that produced it seemed to be impenetrable. Its progress was fitful and capricious. In the same way the process of healing was equally uncertain. A few simple remedies were used for simple ailments, and if these were futile, men were helpless. Their pharmacy was exhausted. Nothing was left but to submit to the inevitable. And we can well understand how in such circumstances disease was felt to be an appropriate symbol of moral evil which was enveloped in similar mystery, and seemed to be as little amenable to control. But the fact that disease was recognised as so appropriate a symbol of moral evil rested on something more than external resemblance. In some cases it was known to be the penalty of a moral offence. Sin produces and is succeeded by suffering in obedience to the same law by which the fruit is developed from the blossom, or the organism from the germ. And hence, when Scripture speaks of us as needing healing, this is not merely a figure, it is a reality. Sin contains suffering, as an essential element in itself. We have, then, to consider what this conception of sin as a disease is intended to teach, and the aspect under which its cure is presented by the apostle.

I. First, this conception of sin reminds us that it is something abnormal or unnatural. It is an infliction that has disturbed the harmony of our nature and thrown it out of gear. In the case of disease this is shown by the fact that we invariably protest against it, and endeavour to throw it off. When we fail to do this, it is either owing to our being unconscious of its presence, or to its having reached such an advanced stage in its development that it has paralysed our powers of resistance. It is the same also with sin. The religions of the world, with their crude and often revolting methods of sacrifice, bear pathetic witness to the unrest of conscience, and the conviction that something is wrong between man and the powers above him. And wherever the instincts of human nature have been healthiest, and the moral sense has been most widely awake, the efforts made to pacify the offended Deity have been most earnest and sustained. And there are the same attempts to avert a menacing future, not, it may be, by the offering of sacrifice, but by more refined and subtle efforts at atonement-the religion of many dissolving itself into a mere lifelong effort to put themselves right with God. And how are we to explain this dislocation? What has been its cause? What, but that we have all violated the eternal law of righteousness, and placed ourselves at variance with God? And no one can break that law and remain unreconciled to Him without suffering. It would be infinitely worse for us if we could.

II. Secondly, disease disables us by impairing our strength. What we can undertake in health we cannot undertake when health has failed. Some things we must give up entirely; others we can only do partially, if we do them at all. Perhaps we hardly realise the enormous waste for which sin is responsible, and how far short humanity falls of its possible attainments. Our proudest and most brilliant achievements, what are they but solitary and occasional flowers which show what the wilderness might have been?

III. In the third place, we know that the natural end of disease is death. It can be checked. Its violence can be reduced. It may be entirely overcome. But treat it as though it did not exist, and allow it to take its way, then, however trifling its beginnings and fitful its progress, it will set up a trouble and disturbance in the whole system that will certainly lead to its ultimate destruction. So the wages of sin is death. There can be no doubt about this. The connection between the two is invariable. And as every sickness can be most easily cured in its initial stage, or, at least, before neglect has complicated the symptoms, so it is with sin. Trifle with it, indulge it, let it go on, and it will rivet its hold, and infect your moral nature till the will is hopelessly enslaved and the only termination is death. And what is the death that comes as sins terrible wages? Is it the death of the body? Is it exhausted and done with when the last debt of nature has been paid? No. For sin is not resident in the body, so that we can lay it aside when we shuffle off this mortal coil. It is a spiritual act, the result of a certain spiritual condition. And this spiritual condition is not changed by the mere fact of physical death. That, indeed, separates the soul from the body, and hands over the latter to the powers of dissolution. But the former remains as it was. And if it has not renounced its sin, and been quickened by the life that wages a perpetual warfare against it, death will not sever it from its ruinous ally. It will simply introduce it to that final and hopeless separation from God which is the essence of spiritual death. For it will no longer be surrounded by what here alleviates and conceals the awfulness of such a state. We have now to consider the aspect under which the removal of sin is here presented. It is described as a healing or making whole, and it is effected by the stripes of Christ. By His stripes we are healed. That is, by what Christ suffered our sufferings are brought to an end; their source or fountain is staunched. But how are we to understand this? It is true in a sense that all suffering, when it becomes severe, can only be cured by the suffering of others. It imposes this penalty to some extent on those who undertake to relieve it. The strength and skill of the physician are often heavily taxed to save his patient. And the same remark is true in a still higher degree in the treatment of moral evil. To check even venial faults, so as to help the defaulter to renounce them, requires a patient tact and affection which are rarely found combined. There can be no doubt that in dealing with us Jesus suffers in this way infinitely more acutely than we do, in proportion to His deeper hatred of sin and deeper love of holiness. But however great the sufferings of Christ in this sense may have been and still are, it is not to such the apostle here refers. He is thinking not of what Christ may still endure from the perversity and faithlessness of men, but of something which He endured once, and endures no longer. The very word he uses leads us in this direction. It neither suggests the suffering involved in the doing of good, nor the strain which a loving sympathy has to bear in sharing the sorrows of its fellows. Stripes are imposed by some one else. They indicate the infliction of a pain which is not the direct consequence of our own action, but to which we are subjected by the action of others. Moreover, they necessarily suggest the idea of punishment. They are a chastisement, and mark the man who receives them as obnoxious to justice and dealt with accordingly. Now, it is by the sufferings of Christ so understood the apostle says we are healed. They were stripes. And they were stripes, not for His own sin, because He had none, but for ours. He was made sin for us, who knew no sin. By His stripes we are healed. Yes, by His stripes. For all sin is due to our separation from God. It marks the ebb of life, the lowering of vital force, the feverishness that ensues from this fatal severance. And what hinders the healing of the breach is just the fact that this sin is the violation of a righteous law which refuses to be at peace with us till its claims are satisfied. And these claims are met by the sacrifice of Christ. God was in Him, reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing unto men their trespasses. The streams of life have begun to flow into its wasted framework, and wherever they reach the ravages of sin are checked. Peace comes in place of restlessness, content for dissatisfaction, hope for despair, and the spectre of fear is banished. Slowly but surely the love of goodness is developed. And Christs healing relieves from a pain and apprehension that can scarcely be uttered. It triumphs over an unworthiness that is deeper than words. It brings a hope and gladness that transfigures life, and opens a fountain of new inspiration. What labour is then too great, what enterprise too forlorn, when His grace has healed us, and bound up our painful wounds? There was no foe which could not be conquered, no misery which could not be relieved. The tide had turned. The watchword was, Forward!-forgetting the things that are behind. Messengers of peace and goodwill hastened abroad. Right struggled to subordinate the power of might, and has never given up the fight. Philanthropy arose, and the echo of her footsteps was heard in the waste and desolate places of the earth. And what is our magnificent array of modern Charities, our agencies of help that reach out a hand of succour to every soul depressed below the general level of comfort or advantage? What are the labours of the economist, the statesman, the physician, as they push their way into the problems before them with a sure triumphant conviction of ultimate victory, but the fruits of that great healing of Christ that has turned darkness into light, and the dull wretchedness of despair into bright and keen-eyed hope? By His stripes we are healed. Have you received this healing of Christ? (C. Moinet, M. A.)

Healed by Christs stripes

The slaves whom the apostle was addressing understood full well the meaning of stripes. The Greek word means the weal left by a stripe. From the grave the Saviour came, bearing the weals of many stripes, wound marks in hands and feet and side; but those bruises and wounds tell a story which makes our hearts leap with joy. When the Great Shepherd, raised through the blood of the everlasting covenant, met His timid followers in the upper room, He bade them behold the print of the nails and the scar in His side. Then were the disciples glad. And as we consider the Lamb, as it had been slain, and discern those precious memorials of His finished work on our behalf, we too may break forth into new songs, like those in heaven. Those stripes are the price of our redemption, the evidence of our purchase, the sign manual of pardon. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

Salvation, what it cost

Mamma, said a little child to her mother when she was being put to bed at night-mamma, what makes your hand so scarred and twisted, and unlike other peoples hands? Well, said the mother, my child, when you were younger than you are now, years ago, one night, after I had put you to bed, I heard a cry, a shriek, upstairs. I came up, and found the bed was on fire, and you were on fire; and I took hold of you, and I tore off the burning garments, and while I was tearing them off and trying to get you away I burned my hand, and it has been scarred and twisted ever since, and hardly looks any more like a hand; but I got that, my child, in trying to save you. I wish today I could show you the burned hand of Christ-burned in plucking you out of the fire; burned in snatching you away from the flame. Aye, also the burned foot, and the burned brow, and the burned heart-burned for you. By His stripes we are healed. (T. De Witt Talmage.)

Ye were as sheep going astray.–

The former and present state of believers contrasted

I. Let me, then, call upon believers in Christ seriously to review their former condition, when they, as well as others, were as sheep going astray. The fitness of this similitude to exhibit the natural state of mankind may justly be inferred from the frequent use that is made of it in the sacred writings. Thus a sheep that has forsaken the good pasture and strayed into the barren wilderness presents to us, in the most affecting light, an emblem of indigence, perplexity, and disappointment. Again, this figurative representation denotes a state of danger as well as of indigence and dissatisfaction. Few animals are beset with more enemies than sheep; and perhaps none are possessed of less cunning to elude or of less courage to resist them. With what awful precision doth this part of the similitude exhibit to us the state of unconverted sinners! Their spiritual enemies are both numerous and mighty. Once more: though sheep are not the only creatures that are prone to wander, yet they of all others discover least sagacity in finding the way back to the place from whence they strayed; so that in them we likewise behold a most descriptive emblem of mans helpless state by nature, and of his utter inability by any efforts of his own to regain his primeval happiness and glory. But still there remains one other ingredient in mans apostasy from God to which the similitude, comprehensive as it is, cannot be extended; the fatal ingredient I mean is guilt. A sheep gone astray is an object of pity rather than of blame. Mans apostasy was the effect not of weakness, but of wilfulness; the guilt that lieth upon us is nothing less than proud and obstinate rebellion-rebellion blackened with the vilest ingratitude.

II. Ye are now returned unto the shepherd and bishop of your souls. Ye are returned to Him who came from heaven to earth to seek and to save that which was lost; who, though infinitely offended by your criminal apostasy, hath Himself made atonement for your past wanderings, and expiated your guilt with His own precious blood. Ye are returned to Him who will henceforth watch over you with peculiar care, and guard you as His property which He purchased with His blood. Ye are returned to Him who hath not only almighty power to guard you against danger, but infinite compassion likewise to sympathise with you in all your distresses, and to comfort you in all your sorrows.

III. What they were by nature, and what they are by grace may suffice to direct us to that temper of heart with which we ought to approach the table of the Lord. And it is obvious-

1. That we should do it with the deepest humility. Are we sanctified? once we were impure. Are we found? once we were lost. Are we made alive? lately we were dead; it was God who quickened us, and not we ourselves. Surely, then, pride was not made for man.

2. We should perform this service with the warmest emotions of gratitude and love, giving thanks to the Father who spared not His own Son, but delivered Him to be a sacrifice and sin offering for us.

3. Godly sorrow for past offences, and holy purposes to offend no more, should likewise attend us to the table of the Lord.

4. These purposes must ever be accompanied with a sense of our own weakness, and of our absolute need of aid from above. Even after we are returned to the Bishop of our souls, if left to ourselves we should quickly stumble and fall.

5. This diffidence of ourselves ought always to be qualified with a steadfast trust, an unsuspecting confidence in the power and faithfulness of our great Redeemer. (R. Walker.)

Men as sheep

Amongst all the varied tribes of nature there could not be selected a more perfect type of a life liable to wander. The passage bird is never lost. High over the waves of the Atlantic it strikes a right path to its home a thousand leagues away. With unerring certainty the creature of the forest finds a right path to its cave; but the sheep has no such sure accuracy of self-direction; it is in its nature a helpless and dependent tiling, and but for its shepherd would lose its path to the final shelter. Just as helpless and dependent is your soul. If you travel in the right path it is not because you have an unerring instinct, or an unerring reason, or an unerring sense of right, but because you have an unerring Leader. (C. Stanford, D. D.)

Are now returned.–

The new life

The Israelites were a pastoral people. For although in the time of the apostle the pastoral life had largely given way to the agricultural, yet all their history, all those elements which excited their imagination and rejoiced their patriotism, were of the pastoral character. It went into their poetry, and the agricultural and pastoral figures exceed in number, and certainly equal in exquisite beauty, any others that are to be found in the whole range of not only the Bible, but of universal literature. This is eminently seen in the Old Testament, but the New Testament is not without a trace of such a feeling. Here we are called wanderers. Men that are converted are the men that have wand: red away from the right ideals of life, and have been brought back again; they were wanderers. We are represented as going astray from right dispositions, and from right actions, and from right directions. Our aims, our conduct, and our character are malformed. Religion in the soul is what the right use of the organs is to the body. When all the organs of a mans body are carried on according to the laws of nature you have health. So when a man has gone astray, he has lost nothing, except the right use of himself. He has not lost will power; he has not lost intellectual power. And when a man is recalled from wandering, and it is said he is born again, we mean that from his wrong use of himself he turns toward the right use of himself. He is brought to recognise a higher standard of living, body, mind, and soul, and enters upon that better understanding. Then we say he has been recalled by his shepherd; he has returned. Every organ of the body is, according to the design of God in nature, good. It is wrong use that produces evil. Every faculty of the human mind and soul is right and needful to the body and soul, to social relations and universal truth. But the wrong use of right things is sinfulness. It may be in a single act, or in a continuity of acts until they become habit; then it is character; and character is nothing but an automatic practice of wrong uses induced by individual acts of sin. Now, on the other hand, when a man is called of God, here is the one grand ideal: Love is the fulfilling of the law. He who carries his whole nature obediently to the grand law of love and all its interpretations in Gods Word, that man has been restored to himself, and in so far to his God. Conversion, then, is the beginning, under inspirations teaching, an example of the reconstruction of a mans voluntary life. It is the beginning of rebuilding character and conduct, on the basis of love. It is the beginning. It is no more than the beginning. The Church is not, then, an assembly of saints. It is a school with all manner of instruments that are designed to help men. Merely being in the Church does not save men. It is an assembly of men beginning, mostly, and certainly the incoming into any Church is of men that have been lost, wandered, gone out of pasture, gone away, and they are called back again. A man coming into the Christian Church is coming into right conditions in which be may learn how to rectify the aberrations of his conduct, and, so far as his nature has been positively made morbid, rectify his nature. A man has found out that the way of his life, the way of selfishness, of pride and evil passions is the bad way; it is contrary to God and nature-the best nature-contrary to the welfare of society, of the family, and of the individual. He is so convinced of it that in covenant, in his secret thought with God he says, If Thou wilt help me, I will from this hour undertake to re-educate myself into the Christ spirit. If you want to know whether you are sinful or not, just take any of these great characteristic commands of Jesus Christ; take any point of example in Himself, any conduct, anywhere, and try it on. How shall a man know whether his clothes fit or not? He goes into a store and says to his tailor, Look here, how do 1 know what size I want? He looks at him a moment, then takes a boys coat and says, Try that on, if you please. He gets one arm half way down, and he cant find any armhole on the other side. Oh, that is a world too small for me. I cant get into that. Try moral qualities in the same way. You have one text that leads to this very analogy or figure, Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, as a garment. Put it on your con science. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ as an element of love. Put on the saving and helping of men, instead of hating men. Try on each one of these Christian graces, and see whether they fit you, or whether you can get them on. A person should come into the Church of Christ joyfully, yet not so much on account of attainment, but because he has put himself now in the way of attaining, and may hope to grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ unto the end. (H. W. Beecher.)

The return of the flock

It is well to look back sometimes.

I. Estrangement. For ye were as sheep going astray. All we like sheep have gone astray. There is a depth of meaning in the expression going astray which very fittingly represents the condition of man with regard to Divine things. It implies-

1. A state of dissatisfaction. Neither men nor animals, as a rule, leave that which gives them satisfaction and enjoyment. With regard to man and God the word very far from expresses the real state. Man is more than dissatisfied. He abhors the necessities which the Divine fold entails. He hates the restraint, the associations, the duties.

2. A state of unrest. It is a constant wandering; a going hither and thither without a settled purpose; a drifting on the sea without an aim; going whither chance or the whim of the moment may lead.

3. A state of danger.

II. Reconciliation. But are now returned. There is something very pleasant in the word return. It speaks of old associations renewed, severed connections reunited. It means something so different to a new breaking of the ground. The reunion with old familiar places, persons, or things has a charm which has in itself the spirit of poetry and the reality of prose. The sheep returning to the fold goes back to the familiar ways, familiar surroundings, and the familiar voice of the shepherd. And so the soul going to God is only returning to its normal condition. Dont let us forget that the coming to the fold of Christ is a return. An important point concerning this return is that it is not natural. It is not easy or pleasant to retrace our steps, to acknowledge our folly.

III. Safety. Return to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. Here is ample protection, security, and supply. (Homilist.)

The Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.–

The Shepherd and Bishop of souls

There is no symbol upon which the early Church seems to have dwelt with more delight than that of Christ as the Good Shepherd, bringing home to the fold the lost sheep. It was engraved on gems; it furnished the legends of seals; it gives today an almost fabulous value to fragments of broken glass; it was painted upon the chalice of the Holy Communion, it was carved upon the tomb of martyrs in the catacombs. In the text there is presented to us a two-fold truth.

I. The first is the aspect of infinite love, as revealed in the office and function of a shepherd; and the second is the weakness and helplessness of human souls, as revealed in the figure of a flock. And these are expanded by the additional idea of our Lords episcopate as the Bishop of souls, and the implied necessity of a fold where there is a flock. And then, as the shadow of sin must ever rest upon our brightest hope, and the wail of penitence mingle with our highest song of praise, there is the reminder of the fact, that from the care of this eternal Shepherd, and the safety of this Divine fold, there are those who are going astray. What, then, does this word teach us of Christs care for His people? Now, the vocation of a shepherd has always been the symbol of the most tender and vigilant watchfulness. The ruling idea of the shepherds vocation was that he was the appointed defender of his flock, and their safety was committed to him. When the lion and the bear came upon the flock which the youthful David was tending, he slew them both, and delivered the lamb, even at the peril of his own life. And yet, bold as the shepherd was to all that would assail his flock, to the flock itself he was the embodiment of tenderness and care. His authority was the power of love. His only emblem of authority was the pastoral crook; the well-known tones of his voice were the guiding power; and, going before his flock, he led them through green pastures, calling them all by their names, and carrying the lambs in his bosom. In this day of intenser activities, we can hardly appreciate all that is meant by such a metaphor. But these are the hints which the symbol gives us, of the tender watch care of the great Shepherd of souls over His flock, as He first rescues them from the devil going about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour, and then folds them safely within the sacred enclosure of His Church, and then watches over them in every pathway of their daily life. The symbol of a flock suggests the complementary truth, and teaches us the lesson of trust and reciprocal duty. For it defines our relation to Him, and the obligations involved in that relation. Within the fold of Christ we are not compared to cattle, to be driven by force or fear; we are not as swine, to wallow in the mire and filth of sin; but we are sheep, to follow a Divine Shepherds voice. If the tenderness and love of Christ be not a sufficient power to make us obedient, He will use no force. If the constraining power of the Cross fails to guide our wayward feet, then we will not be guided by Him at all. And the severest penalty of our disobedience will be our own going astray; our self-exclusion from the fold of Christ; our loss of His watchful care, and our exposure to the power of the adversary. And then, as if to interpret for all time the fulness of this office of our Lord, another word is added, whose meaning was destined to be permanently fresh in every age. The pastoral life of Oriental lands might lose its meaning when transplanted to other lands and centuries; but the office and function of a bishop is preserved forever from oblivion by its inherent position in the organisation of the Church. And this word the apostle places side by side with the other word of local significance, that both might go down the ages together, and each interpret the meaning of the other. And so the Good Shepherd is also the Bishop of souls. The title, in its comprehensive significance, lifts our thoughts to that Divine episcopate whose cathedral is the temple not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; whose diocese is the universe of souls, and whose affairs are administered today from the right hand of the Majesty on high. The collective pastorate of the Church on earth, acting in His name, is but the representative of the infinite care and ominiscient watchfulness of the great Shepherd above. (W. A. Snively, D. D.)

The Guardian of souls

I. That men have souls. First, the fact is the most demonstrable fact to man.

1. All the evidence that we have both for the existence of matter and mind is derived from phenomena. The essence of both is hidden.

2. The essence whose phenomena come most powerfully under consciousness is most demonstrated.

3. The phenomena of mind come far more powerfully under consciousness than that of matter. Thought, feeling, volition, we are conscious of these. Secondly, the fact is the most important fact to man. Consider the capacities, relations, influence, deathlessness of a soul. Thirdly, the fact is the most practically disbelieved fact by man. Most men profess to believe it, but few men really do so.

II. That mens souls require a guardian; an , an overseer. This is clear from three things. First, from the natural fallibility of souls. No finite intelligence, however holy and exalted, can do without a guardian. Secondly, from the fallen condition of souls. They have gone astray. Look at the mistakes they make about the chief good, worship, etc. Thirdly, from the natural instincts of souls. Souls through all ages have been crying out for guardians.

III. That Christ is the one guardian of human souls. He is the Bishop. What should be the qualification of him who can take care of human souls? He that would do so should at least have four things. First, immense knowledge. He should know the nature of souls, the moral situation of souls, the right way of influencing souls. Secondly, unbounded love and forbearance. The waywardness, the insults, the rebellion of souls would soon exhaust any finite amount of love and patience. Thirdly, ever increasing charms. Souls are to be drawn, not driven. Fourthly, inexhaustible power. Power to extricate from present difficulties, to guard against future, and to lead on through interminable ages. Christ has all these qualifications, and more. Let Him, then, be my overseer. (Homilist.)

The great Shepherd

I. The individual soul has a Shepherd who knows it and cares for it.

II. The sinful soul has a Shepherd who seeks its rescue even by his own death.

III. The restored soul has a Shepherd who is filled with divine satisfaction at its recovery.

IV. The lonely soul has a Shepherd who will meet all the necessities of its nature.

V. The loyal soul has a Shepherd who will provide for all its wants. (U. R. Thomas.)

Wandering sheep

In these words we have a brief and yet clear representation of the wretchedness of natural conditions and of our happiness in Christ. It imports indeed the loss of a better condition, the loss of the safety and happiness of the soul, of that good which is proper to it, as the suitable good of the brute creature here named is safe amid good pasture. That we may know there is no one exempt in nature from the guiltiness and misery of this wandering, the prophet is express as to the universality of it: All we like sheep have gone astray. Yea, the prophet adds, We have turned every one to his own way. We agree in this, that we all wander, though we differ in several ways. Truth is but one; error endless and interminable. Thy tongue, it may be, wanders not in the common path road of oaths and curses, yet it wanders in secret calumnies, in defaming of others, or, if thou speak them not, yet thou art pleased to hear them. It wanders in trifling away the precious hours of irrecoverable time, with vain unprofitable babblings in thy converse; or, if thou art much alone, or in company much silent, yet is not thy foolish mind still hunting vanity, following this self-pleasing design or the other, and seldom and very slightly, if at all, conversant with God and the things of heaven, which, although they alone have the truest and the highest pleasure in them, yet to thy carnal mind are tasteless and unsavoury? Men account little of the wandering of their hearts, and yet truly that is most of all to be considered. It is the heart that hath forgotten God, and is roving after vanity: this causes all the errors of mens words and actions. A wandering heart makes wandering eyes, feet, and tongue: it is the leading wanderer that misleads all the rest. But are now returned. Whatsoever are the several ways of our straying, all our wandering originates in the aversion of the heart from God, whence of necessity follows a continual unsettledness and disquiet. The mind tumbles from one sin and vanity to another, and finds no rest; or as a sick person tosses from one part of his bed to another, and perhaps changes his bed in hope of ease, but still it is further off, thus is the soul in all its wanderings. But shift and change as it will, no rest shall it find until it come to this returning. But is not that God in whom we expect rest incensed against us for our wandering? and is He not, being offended, a consuming fire? True; but this is the way to find acceptance, and peace, and satisfying comforts in returning: come first to this Shepherd of souls, Jesus Christ, and by Him come unto the Father. There be three things necessary to restore us to our happiness, whence we have departed in our wanderings.

1. To take away the guiltiness of those former wanderings.

2. To reduce us into the way again.

3. To keep and lead us in it.

Now all these are performable only by this great Shepherd.

1. He did satisfy for the offence of our wanderings, and so remove our guiltiness.

2. He brings them back into the way of life-Ye are returned. but think not it is by their own knowledge and skill that they discover their error and find out the right path, or that by their own strength they return into it. Men may have confused thoughts of returning, but to know the way and to come, unless they be sought out, they are unable. This is Davids suit, though acquainted with the fold, I have gone astray like a lost sheep; Lord, seek Thy servant.

3. He keeps and leads us on in that way into which He hath restored us. He leaves us not again to try our own skill, whether we can walk to heaven alone, being set into the path of it, but He still conducts us in it by His own hand, and that is the cause of our persisting in it and attaining the blessed end of it (Psa 23:3). Are we led in the paths of righteousness? Do we delight ourselves in Him and in His ways? Can we discern His voice, and does it draw our hearts so that we follow it? The Shepherd and the Bishop. It was the style of kings to be called shepherds, and is the dignity of the ministers of the gospel to have both these names. But this great Shepherd and Bishop is peculiarly worthy of these names as supreme. (Abp. Leighton.)

.

Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Verse 18. Servants, be subject] See Clarke on Eph 6:5; “Col 3:22“; and “Tit 2:9“.

With all fear] With all submission and reverence.

The good and gentle] Those who are ever just in their commands, never requiring more work than is necessary or proper, and always allowing sufficient food and sufficient time.

The froward.] . The crooked, perverse, unreasonable morose, and austere. Your time belongs to your master; obey him in every thing that is not sinful; if he employs you about unreasonable or foolish things, let him answer for it. He may waste your time, and thus play the fool with his own property; you can only fill up your time: let him assign the work; it is your duty to obey.

Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible

Servants; the word is not the same which Paul useth, Col 3:22, but may well comprehend the servants he speaks of, as implying not only slaves, but those that were made free, yet continued still in the family; and so signifies servants of whatsoever condition.

Be subject to your masters with all fear; not only reverence of masters, and fear of offending them, is to be understood, but fear of God, as appears by the parallel place, Col 3:22; see Eph 6:5-7.

Not only to the good and gentle; by good he means not gracious or holy, but, as the next word explains it, gentle, just, equal.

But also to the froward; morose, crabbed, unjust, unmerciful.

Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole

18. ServantsGreek,“household servants”: not here the Greek for”slaves.” Probably including freedmen stillremaining in their master’s house. Masters were not commonlyChristians: he therefore mentions only the duties of the servants.These were then often persecuted by their unbelieving masters.Peter’s special object seems to be to teach them submission,whatever the character of the masters might be. Paul not having thisas his prominent design, includes masters in his monitions.

be subjectGreek,“being subject”: the participle expresses a particularinstance of the general exhortation to good conduct, 1Pe 2:11;1Pe 2:12, of which the firstparticular precept is given 1Pe2:13, “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for theLord’s sake.” The general exhortation is taken up again in 1Pe2:16; and so the participle 1Pe2:18, “being subject,” is joined to the hortatoryimperatives going before, namely, “abstain,” “submityourselves.” “honor all men.”

withGreek,“in.”

allall possible: underall circumstances, such as are presently detailed.

fearthe awe of onesubject: God, however, is the ultimate object of the “fear”:fear “for the Lord’s sake” (1Pe2:13), not merely slavish fear of masters.

goodkind.

gentleindulgenttowards errors: considerate: yielding, not exacting all which justicemight demand.

frowardperverse:harsh. Those bound to obey must not make the disposition and behaviorof the superior the measure of the fulfilment of their obligations.

Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible

Servants, be subject to your masters,…. This was another notion of the Jews, that because they were the seed of Abraham, they ought not to be the servants of any; and particularly such as were believers in Christ thought they ought not to serve unbelieving masters, nor indeed believing ones, because they were equally brethren in Christ with them; hence the Apostle Peter, here, as the Apostle Paul frequently elsewhere, inculcates this duty of servants to their masters; see 1Co 7:20 2Ti 2:9 the manner in which they are to be subject to them is,

with all fear; with reverence to their persons, strict regard to their commands, faithfulness in any trust reposed in them, diligence in the discharge of their duty, and carefulness of offending them: and all this,

not only to the good and gentle; those that are good natured, kind, beneficent, and merciful; that do not use them with rigour and severity; are moderate in their demands of service; require no more to be done than what is reasonable; allow them sufficient diet, give them good wages, and pay them duly:

but also to the froward; the ill natured, morose, and rigorous; who exact more labour than is requisite; give hard words, and harder blows; withhold sufficiency of food from them, and keep back the hire of their labours.

Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

Servants ( ). Note article with the class as with (3:7), though not with (3:1). , old word from (house), means one in the same house with another (Latin domesticus), particularly house servants (slaves) in distinction from the general term (slave). “Ye domestics.” See similar directions to Christian servants (slaves) in Col 3:22-25; Eph 6:5-7; 1Tim 6:1; Titus 2:9. in N.T. occurs only here, Luke 16:13; Acts 10:7; Rom 14:4.

Be in subjection (). Present middle participle of , common late compound to subject oneself to one (Lu 2:51). Either the participle is here used as an imperative (so in 1Pet 3:1; 1Pet 3:7) as in Ro 12:16f., or the imperative has to be supplied (Robertson, Grammar, p. 945).

To your masters ( ). Dative case of , old word for absolute owner in contrast with . It is used also of God (Luke 2:29; Acts 4:24; Acts 4:29) and of Christ (2Pet 2:1; Judg 1:4). has a wider meaning and not necessarily suggesting absolute power.

To the good and gentle ( ). Dative case also with the article with class. For see on Jas 3:17. There were slave-owners (masters) like this as there are housekeepers and employers of workmen today. This is no argument for slavery, but only a sidelight on a condition bad enough at its best.

To the froward ( ). “To the crooked.” Old word, also in Luke 3:5; Acts 2:40; Phil 2:15. Unfortunately there were slave-holders as there are employers today, like this group. The test of obedience comes precisely toward this group.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Servants [] . Household servants. So Rev., in margin. Not a common term in the New Testament, occurring only in three other passages : Luk 16:13; Act 10:7; Rom 14:4. Some suppose that Peter intended to cover by it freedmen and other dependents in the household, or that he uses it with a conciliatory purpose, as presenting the slave in closer relation with the family.

Gentle (ejpieikesin). A common derivation of this word is from eikw, to yield. Hence the meaning, mild, yielding, indulgent. But the true derivation if from eijkov, reasonable; and the word implies rather the not being unduly rigorous : “Wherein not strictness of legal right, but consideration for one another, is the rule of practice” (Alford). Compare Phi 4:5, where, for moderation [ ] , Rev. gives forbearance, with gentleness in margin. According to Aristotle, the word stands in contrast with ajkribodikaiov, one who is exactingly just, as one who is satisfied with less than his due.

Froward [] . Lit., crooked. See Luk 3:5. Peter uses the word in Act 2:40 (untoward); and Paul, in Phi 2:15 (crooked). The word froward is Anglo – Saxon fream – ward or from – ward, the opposite of to – ward. (See untoward, above.) Thus Ben Jonson :

“Those that are froward to an appetite;” i e., averse. Compare the phrases to – God – ward (2Co 3:4); to – us – ward.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

1) “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear.” While citizens are to be subject to rulers in civil matters, servants of slave masters were by inspiration instructed to “be subject” to their masters (owners), with respectful fear. See also Eph 6:5-6.

2) “Not only to the good and gentle.” This subjection was to be not only to the good and (epikesin) forbearing masters-those who treated them well – not to be subject only when their masters were watching, to please the masters. Eph 6:6-7.

3) “But also to the froward,” But they were to be obedient, submissive servants to the unbelieving, unsaved (Gk. skoliois) perverse, harsh, threatening masters.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

18 Servants, be subject Though this is a particular admonition, yet it is connected with what is gone before, as well as the other things which follow; for the obedience of servants to masters, and of wives also to their husbands, forms a part of civil or social subjection. (30)

He first would have servants to be subject with all fear; by which expression he means that sincere and willing reverence, which they acknowledge by their office to be due. He then sets this fear in opposition to dissimulation as well as to forced subjection; for an eye-service ( ὀφθαλμοδουλεία, Col 3:22,) as Paul calls it, is the opposite of this fear; and further, if servants clamor against severe treatment, being ready to throw off the yoke if they could, they cannot be said properly to fear. In short, fear arises from a right knowledge of duty. And though no exception is added in this place, yet, according to other places, it is to be understood. For subjection due to men is not to be so far extended as to lessen the authority of God. Then servants are to be subject to their masters, only as far as God permits, or as far as the altars, as they say. But as the word here is not δοῦλοι, slaves, but οἰκέται , domestics, we may understand the free as well as the bond servants to be meant, though it be a difference of little moment.

Not only to the good Though as to the duty of servants to obey their masters, it is wholly a matter of conscience; if, however, they are unjustly treated, as to themselves, they ought not to resist authority. Whatever, then, masters may be, there is no excuse for servants for not faithfully obeying them. For when a superior abuses his power, he must indeed hereafter render an account to God, yet he does not for the present lose his right. For this law is laid on servants, that they are to serve their masters, though they may be unworthy. For the froward he sets in opposition to the equitable or humane; and by this word he refers to the cruel and the perverse, or those who have no humanity and kindness. (31)

It is a wonder what could have induced an interpreter to change one Greek word for another, and render it “wayward.” I should say nothing of the gross ignorance of the Sorbons, who commonly understand by wayward, ( dyscolos ,) the dissolute or dissipated, were it not that they seek by this absurd rendering to build up for us an article of faith, that we ought to obey the Pope and his horned wild beasts, however grievous and intolerable a tyranny they may exercise. This passage, then, shews how boldly they trifle with the Word of God.

(30) The word for “servants,” οἰκέται properly means “domestics,” or household servants. They are mentioned as they came more in contact with their masters, and were more liable to be ill-treated. — Ed.

(31) ”Good,” ἀγαθοῖς, the kind, benevolent; “gentle,” ἐπιεικέσιν, the yielding, mild, patient; “froward,” σκολιο̑ις the crooked, perverse, untoward, those of a cross disposition, self-willed, and hence cruel, being neither kind nor meek. — Ed.

Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

1Pe. 2:18. Servants.Slaves. Many of the early Christians came from the ranks of slaves, or freedmen. And their freedom in Christ made their bondage to an earthly master specially irksome. Perhaps the here addressed are domestic servants, who were more exposed to the bad temper of their masters than the servants in the field. Froward.Crooked. One who is unreasonably exacting, capricious, and cross-grained.

1Pe. 2:19. Conscience toward God.Better, consciousness of God. This essentially belongs to the new life. Conscious of Gods presence as seeing, judging, helping, His servants. Wrongfully.Without having given just occasion.

1Pe. 2:20. Buffeted.Cuffed with the hand, or smitten with the stick, as servants then were. Acceptable.Same word as thankworthy, in 1Pe. 2:19.

1Pe. 2:21. Were ye called.Or, this is involved in your call. Example.Of patience in bearing suffering, with the inward assurance of innocence. The Greek word suggests a drawing which the student is to copy.

1Pe. 2:24. Bare our sins.See Isa. 53:12. Our sins, not His own. The Hebrew word may mean either to carry, or to lift or raise. It is not clear which precise meaning St. Peter intends. On the tree.Cross. R.V. upon the tree; marg. up to the tree. Stripes.Prophetic reference, Isaiah 53; historic reference, our Lords scourging by command of Pilate.

1Pe. 2:25. Shepherd and bishop.Episcopos, guardian, protector. See Eze. 34:11-12. Alford thinks that the apostle transfers the well-known name of the elders of the Churches, , to the great Head of the Church, of whom they were all the servants and representatives.

NOTE ON 1Pe. 2:19.Dr. R. W. Dale translates thus: For this is acceptable, if through consciousness of God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. He holds that the Greek word which Peter used has sometimes the meaning consciousness and sometimes that of conscience. In this passage the former meaning is much more appropriate, and Dr. Dale uses it very effectively to prove that the knowledge or consciousness that Christians have of God becomes an effective force in the moral life. Such a knowledge is open to every Christian, for Peter here writes to slaves when he says, This is acceptable if, through consciousness of God, a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.

MAIN HOMILETIGS OF THE PARAGRAPH.1Pe. 2:18-25

The Example of Suffering.However general may be made the applications of this paragraph, it is well-to observe that its counsels, and arguments, and persuasions, are directly addressed to slaves, and that, in their form, they are precisely adapted to such persons. The servants of the New Testament are not persons who offered free service upon fixed wage terms, but individuals whose personal liberty was lost, who were the property of some other man, and whose powers of body and mindwhose lives, indeedwere absolutely at their masters command. We need not associate African, West Indian, or American slave-horrors with the ancient slave-system, though it is true that Roman and other Pagan slaves often had the bitterest of bitter lots in other ways. The term that is here translated servants points to domestic slavesthose sustaining household relations, and occupied in household duties; and we have to think of the kinds of suffering which they would have to endure, more especially when they had become converts to the faith of Christ, as so many of this class had in those early days. We know enough of the difficulties which our servants have to endure now, when they are amongst ungodly and scornful fellow-servants, and in pleasure-loving, self-indulging families, to be able to imagine what burdens, and what trials, a Christian slave in an ancient Pagan family might have to bear. It was most fitting that the apostle should directly address these kindly, reassuring, and inspiring messages to them. A large proportion of the early Christian converts are known to have belonged to this class. It has been noticed that nearly all the names given in Romans 16, and many of those of other members of the Church, are found in the Columbaria, or Catacombs of Rome, as belonging to slaves or freedom. Conscious of a new and higher life, and of thoughts and hopes altogether transcending their human lot, these slaves could not fail to fret under their humiliating conditions; and they might easily fail to meet their daily responsibilities, and unduly repine under disabilities which now seemed to be overwhelming. Indeed, the question often came up before the regenerate slave, Ought I to remain in this degrading servitude I Ought I not, at any cost, to strike for personal liberty? If such an one took his question to the apostles, we know that they would have bidden him keep his place, and serve Christ, by fitting nobly into his position, and living before his fellow-servants and the family in the most attractive Christian spirit. Let every man wherein he is called, therein abide with God is the apostolic principle applied to the slaves of that day. But St. Peter seems to know enough of the actual lot of these slaves to take them as types of the kind of suffering which Christians were then called to endure. He is not, it should be carefully noticed, dealing here with the sufferings which come from the accidents, disasters, or calamities of life, nor with those which belong to the inroads of disease, or to bodily infirmities, or to the action of heredity. He has in mind the sufferings which come out of our various relations with others, and especially the sufferings which attend on our endeavour to live out our Christian principles in those relations. The force of the Christly example, which he presents, is only seen when its sphere is thus circumscribed. It is quite true that our Lord is, in a general and comprehensive sense, our example; but here St. Peter does but present Him as an example of suffering, and of precisely such suffering as these slaves were called to endure. If these remarks seem, at first, to unduly limit the applications of this familiar passage, it will be found, on further examination, that it opens up detailed applications, within the limitations, which give fresh point to the apostolic advice. For it will be found to-day that most of our serious sufferings come in connection with our human relationships. Precisely what these Christian slaves felt was the bitterness of being punished when they were innocent. And this they often were, in the anger, or the tyranny, or the malice, of their masters. They also felt the difficulty of keeping patient under peculiar aggravations, and the apparent uselessness of their most heroic efforts to serve well; for they constantly failed to alter the conditions under which they so grievously suffered. This is St. Peters message to them: For hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps. Jeremy Taylor has a suggestive illustration of the help we may find by following the example of our Lords sufferings. St. Wenceslaus, the Bohemian king, one winter night, going to his devotions in a remote church, barefooted, in the snow and sharpness of unequal and pointed ice, his servant, Redevivus, who waited upon his Masters piety and endeavoured to imitate his affections, began to faint through the violence of the snow and cold, till the king commanded him to follow him, and set his feet in the same footsteps which his feet should mark for him. The servant did so, and either fancied a cure or found one, for he followed his prince, helped forward with shame and zeal to his imitation, and by the forming footsteps in the snow. In the same manner does the blessed Jesus; for, since our way is troublesome, obscure, full of objection and danger, apt to be mistaken, and to affright our industry, He commands us to mark His footsteps, to tread where His feet have stood, and not only invites us forward by the argument of His example, but He hath trodden down much of the difficulty, and made the way easier and fit for our feet.

I. The Christly example of suffering is the example of suffering innocence.Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth. This is precisely adapted to St. Peters declaration to the slaves: For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endure griefs, suffering wrongfully. St. Peter is not intending to make any general declaration here concerning the sinlessness of Jesus. He has no doctrine about it. He says, Take any case of our Lords suffering; take the supreme case of His suffering the death of shame;you will always find this to be true: He never suffered for a fault; His suffering could never be thought of as punishment for wrong-doing. See what sympathy with Jesus the poor slaves would feel, when it was thus brought right home to them that their Divine Lord also suffered wrongfullysuffered in innocence. Even we may find how wonderfully near that brings the Lord Jesus to us. For the thing that sometimes almost overwhelmingly oppresses us is the thought of how much we had, and have, to bear in life, which has no relation whatever to our own wrong-doing, or even to our mistakes or negligences, and over which we have had, and can have, no sort of control. Our Lord felt the same oppressive burden. He did no sin, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him: He hath put Him to grief. There is our example of suffering innocence. It may not have been straightforwardly presented to us, that suffering which is the proper recognition of wrong-doing and sin is not Christian suffering. It is the proper lot of moral beingsthere is nothing distinctively Christian about it; and Christ offers us no example of bearing the punishment of sin in that sense. There is much good advice to be given to those who suffer for their wrong-doing. But Christs example cannot be offered to them for their inspiration, since it does not in any way concern them. Keeping loyalty and obedience; walking in righteousness; preserving the vessel of your body in sanctification and honour; meeting nobly all your earthly obligations, nevertheless, is the fact for you that life brings round to you sufferings and distresses? White-souled with Christ are you, and is it nevertheless the fact that, along with Christ, you are misunderstood, maligned, illtreated, persecuted, turned out, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief? Then the inspiring, comforting example of Christ is precisely for you.

II. The Christly example of suffering is the example of suffering patience.Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. It will at once be seen how precisely this example fits into the persuasion and argument which St. Peter addresses to the slaves. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. And concerning precisely this you have the helpful example of Christ. We are led in thought to the Palace of the High Priest; to the Prtorium; to Herods Judgment Hall; to thorn-crowned Calvary. There is scorn, accusation, smiting, mockery, howling, scourging, taunt, and cruelty; and all this strain made it a poor, exhausted victim that at last they hung mid earth and heaven, as if He were unfit for either. And no resistance was offered by Him, no reproach was madea silent Man amid His foes. Taken as a lamb to the slaughter, and like a sheep dumb before the shearers. And there was the sublimest triumphmoral triumphearth has ever witnessed. There is, for slaves, or for us, the entrancing example of suffering patience. It is Christian suffering when we suffer in innocency. It is yet more truly Christian suffering when, so suffering, we suffer silently, with the heroism of a patient endurance. Buffeted for nothing, as Christ was; taking it patiently, as Christ did;this is acceptable with God. But could any example be presented to us that could be so searching and so humbling as this is? It reveals our supreme life-failures. Just what we seem never able to do is to suffer innocently, and at the same time to suffer patiently. Oh how ready we are to proclaim our wrongs! Oh the bitter things we say of those who do us wrong! Oh the frettings and the chafings under the wrongs which seem to us so wholly undeserved! See once again how He stands, calm and silent, dressed in the mock royal robes. See how restrainedly He bears the cruel scourge. See how He submits when the nails are driven through the living flesh. He, with His holy example, shames us into the dust. We can scarcely dare to look upon His holy example and by it appraise our conduct When He suffered He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judgeth righteously. Christly suffering is suffering patiently. And that is something for us yet to win.

III. The Christly example of suffering is the example of suffering love.This indeed explains how the patient bearing became possible. Christ was sustained by a cherished purposea purpose of love. He could so calmly endure, He could be so restrainedly patient, because His sufferings were vicarious. Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree. He so endured in the inspiration of this most loving purpose, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness. All was borne so well in the persuasion of service to others. We have reached at once the point of the example, and the power of the example. That suffering was borne, not for sin; not as accident, or necessity; but in the purpose of redeeming lovelove to us. For love of us He bled, for love of us He died. Christly suffering, suffering after the pattern and example of Christ, is vicarious suffering; suffering, not because we ought; not because we must; but suffering endured because we want to serveand he alone can serve and save his brother who can suffer for him. Let the slave suffer for the Masters sake. Let us see that if we follow the example of Christ, we present an example to others for Christ; and our suffering may be our bearing of sins, that those whom we love may die unto sin, and live unto righteousness. We shall never suffer well, never suffer after the Christly example, until we rise into a vicariousness of suffering like our Lords. When we take up somebodys burden on our own hearts we can go on to our cross as calmly, as sweetly, as patiently, as Jesus went on to His. Look once again at what alone is Christian sufferingsuffering after the example of Christs sufferings. You have much to suffer as a consequence and penalty of your sin. Christ never bore any such suffering, for He did no sin. You have much suffering to bear from circumstances altogether beyond your controlhereditary disabilities, natural calamities, social distresses, insidious diseases; and in all that natural sphere of suffering your Lord shared with you. But only because He shared with you in being a man. There is nothing specifically Christian in the suffering which belongs to the common human lot. But you have sufferings which come to you for somebodys sake; which belong to your effort to serve others; which follow upon your whole-hearted purpose to serve Christ, in His purpose to save men. You suffer as mothers suffer for their childrens sake. You suffer as deliverers suffer who rescue the imperilled from flood and fire. You suffer by bearing somebody elses woes upon your own mind and heart and life. You suffer in absolute loyalty of witness to Him who is for you the king of righteousness. You suffer as the martyr suffers rather than bring dishonour upon the Name that is above every name. Then you know what Christian suffering is. You knowand you may recall to mind what you knowthat the Christly suffering is suffering innocence, and suffering patience, and suffering love. It is bearing somebodys sin, or somebodys woe, or somebodys recovery, or somebodys well-being, in your own body, on some tree of agony or shame. It is this: you suffer, because you want somebody to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

1Pe. 2:19. Suffering.St. Peter is writing here to one particular class of Christiansto household slaves. Slaves, he begins, be subject to your masters. As St. Peter thinks over his Jewish flock of converts, he remembers that multitudes of them are Christian slaves in Pagan households. He teaches that suffering is thankworthy, a gift from God, and acceptable in turn to Him, if it be accompanied by two conditions.

1. It must be understood.

2. The suffering must be for conscience toward God.This is it which makes pair at once bearable and bracing, when the conscience of the sufferer can ask the perfect Moral Being to take note of it. Mere suffering, which a man dares not offer to God, though borne patiently through pluck, as we term it, has no spiritual value. Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit. This is the consecration prayer uttered on the cross, uttered, if in other language, wherever men suffer for conscience toward God; and by it suffering is changed into moral victory. There are two questions raised by our text.

I. Why did not the apostles denounce slavery as an intolerable wrong?By advising slaves to honour and obey their owners, they seem to sanction it indirectly. Nothing can well be more antipathetic than the spirit of the gospel and the spirit of slavery. The gospel proclaims the unity of the human race, and the equality of all its members before God. But the business of the apostles lay rather with the other world than with thiswith this just so far as it bore upon the other. And the exact question for them to consider was whether slavery ruined the prospects of the human soul.

II. Does not the advice of me apostle to submit quietly to wrong destroy manliness and force of character if acted on?Moral strength, when at its best, is generally passive and unobtrusive. No moral strength ever approached that which was displayed on Calvary, when all that was before Him was present from the first to the mind of the Divine Victim, who when He was reviled, reviled not again.

III. This truth, announced by St. Peter, is always applicable in every age and country.Among ourselves there are many who endure grief for conscience toward God. It is no monopoly of any one class. Every rank in society has its petty tyrants. Law can do but little for these sufferers, but religion can do much, by pointing to the Crucified.Canon Liddon.

1Pe. 2:21. The Imitableness of Christs Character.Christ came to give us a religion. By a wise and beautiful ordination of Providence, he was sent to show forth His religion in Himself. Christianity is not a mere code of laws, nor an abstract system such as theologians frame. It is a living, embodied religion. It comes to us in a human form; it offers itself to our eyes as well as ears; it breathes, it moves in our sight. It is more than precept; it is example and action. The importance of example, who does not understand? And it is impossible to place ourselves under any influence so quickening as the example of Jesus. This introduces us to the highest order of virtues. This is fitted to awaken the whole mind. Nothing has equal power to neutralise the coarse, selfish, and sensual influences amidst which we are plunged, to refine our conception of duty, and to reveal to us the perfection on which our hopes and most strenuous desires should habitually fasten. It is possible, however, so to present the greatness of Jesus as to place Him beyond the reach of our sympathy and imitation. This needs to be carefully dealt with.

1. Real greatness of character, greatness of the highest order, far from being repulsive and discouraging, is singularly accessible and imitable. Greatness of character is a communicable attribute; I should say, singularly communicable. It has nothing exclusive in its nature. I know not in history an individual so easily comprehended as Jesus Christ, for nothing is so intelligible as sincere, disinterested love. I know not any being who is so fitted to take hold on all orders of minds; and accordingly He drew after Him the unenlightened, the publican, and the sinner. It is a sad mistake, then, that Jesus Christ should be presented as too great to allow us to think of intimacy with Him, or to think of making Him our standard.
2. Though so far above us, as at once man, and other than man, Christ is still one of us, and is only an illustration of the capacities which we all possess. All minds are of one family. When we speak of higher orders of beings, of angels and archangels, we are apt to conceive of distinct kinds and races of beings, separated from us and from each other by impassable barriers. But it is not so. There is no such partition in the spiritual world as you see in the material. All minds are essentially of one origin, one nature, kindled from one Divine flame, and all are tending to one centre, one happiness. This truth mingles, unperceived, with all our worship of God, which uniformly takes for granted that He is a mind having thought, affection, and volition, like ourselves. It is also demonstrable from the consideration that Truth, the object and nutriment of mind, is one and immutable, so that the whole family of intelligent beings must have the same views, the same motives, and the same general ends. All souls are one in nature, approach one another, and have grounds and bonds of communion with one another. I am not only one of the human race; I am one of the great intellectual family of God. There is no spirit so exalted, with which I have not common thoughts and feelings. No greatness of a being separates me from him, or makes him unapproachable by me. Christ never holds Himself up as an inimitable and unapproachable being, but directly the reverse.
3. There is one attribute of mind that should particularly animate us to propose to ourselves a sublime standard, as sublime as Jesus Christ. It is the principle of growth in human nature. We were made to grow. Our faculties are germs, and given for expansion, to which nothing authorises us to set bounds. The soul bears the impress of illimitableness, in the thirst, the unquenchable thirst, which it brings with it into being, for a power, knowledge, happiness, which it never gains, and which always carry it forward into futurity. When I consider this principle or capacity of the human soul, I cannot restrain the hope which it awakens. I no longer see aught to prevent our becoming whatever was good and great in Jesus on earth.W. E. Channing, D.D.

Of Patience.In these words two things appear especially observable: a deity implied (the duty of patience), and a reason expressed, which enforceth the practice of that duty the example of Christ). We shall, using no more preface or circumstance, first briefly, in way of explication and direction, touch the duty itself, then more largely describe and urge the example. The word patience hath, in common usage, a double meaning, taken from the respect it hath unto two sorts of objects, somewhat different. As it respecteth provocations to anger and revenge by injuries or discourtesies, it signifieth a disposition of mind to bear them with charitable meekness; as it relateth to adversities and crosses disposed to us by providence, it importeth a pious undergoing and sustaining them. That both these kinds of patience may here be understood, we may, consulting and considering the context, easily discern: that which immediately precedeth If when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable to God relateth to good endurance of adversity; that which presently followeth who when He was reviled, reviled not again, when He suffered He threatened not referreth to meek comporting with provocations: the text therefore, as it looketh backward, doth recommend the patience of adversities; as forward, the patience of contumelies. But seeing both these objects are reducible to one more general, comprising boththat is, things seeming evil to us, or offensive to our sensewe may so explicate the the duty of patience as to include them both. Patience, then, is that virtue which qualifieth us to bear all conditions and all events, by Gods disposal incident to us, with such apprehensions and persuasions of mind, such dispositions and affections of heart, such external deportments and practices of life, as God requireth and good reason directeth. Its nature will, I conceive, be understood best by considering the chief acts which it produceth, and wherein especially the practice thereof consisteth.

1. A thorough persuasion that nothing befals us by fate, or chance, or the mere agency of inferior causes; but that all proceeds from the dispensation, or with the allowance, of God: quotations on this point from holy writ.
2. A firm belief that all occurrences, however adverse and cross to our desires, are consistent with the justice, wisdom, and goodness of God; so that we cannot reasonably complain of them.
3. A full satisfaction of mind, that all, even the most bitter and sad accidents, do by Gods purpose tend and conduce to our good, according to those sacred aphorisms, Happy is the man whom God correcteth, etc.
4. An entire submission and resignation of our wills to the will of God, with a suppression of all rebellious sentiments against his providence.
5. Bearing adversities calmly, cheerfully, and courageously, so as not to be discomposed with anger or grief, not to be dejected or disheartened; but to resemble in our disposition of mind the primitive saints, who were as grieved, but always rejoicing, etc.
6. A hopeful confidence in God for the removal or alleviation of our afflictions, and for His gracious aid to support them well, agreeably to Scripture rules and precepts.
7. A willingness to continue, during Gods pleasure, in our afflicted state, without weariness or irksome longings for alteration, according to the wise mans advice: My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, etc.
8. A lowly frame of mind, sensible of our unworthiness and manifold defects; deeply affected with reverence towards the awful majesty of God, etc.
9. Restraining our tongues from all discontented complaints and murmurings, all profane and harsh expressions, importing displeasure or dissatisfaction in Gods dealings with us, or desperation and distrust in Him.
10. Blessing and praising God (that is, declaring our hearty satisfaction in Gods proceedings with us, acknowledging His wisdom, justice, and goodness therein, expressing a grateful sense thereof, as wholesome and beneficial to us), in conformity to Job, who, on the loss of all his comforts, did thus vent his mind: The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
11. Particularly in regard to those, who, by injurious and offensive usage, do provoke us, patience importeth
(1) That we be not hastily, over-easily, not immoderately, not pertinaciously incensed with anger toward them, according to those Divine precepts and aphorisms: Be slow to wrath. Be not hasty in thy spirit to be angry, for anger resteth in the bosom of fools. Give place to wrath (that is, remove it). Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice. Cease from anger, let go displeasure, fret not thyself in anywise to do evil.
(2) That we do not in our hearts harbour any ill will, or ill wishes, or ill designs toward them, but that we truly desire their good, and purpose to further it, as we shall have ability and occasion, according to that law (even charged on the Jews), Thou shalt not bear any grudge against the children of thy people; but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; and according to that noble command of our Saviour, Love your enemies; pray for them which despitefully use you and persecute you.
(3) That in effect we do not execute any revenge, or for requital do any mischief to them, either in word or deed; but for their reproaches exchange blessings (or good words and wishes), for their outrages repay benefits and good turns, according to those evangelical rules: Do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you. Bless them that persecute you; bless and curse not. See that none render evil for evil. Be pitiful, be courteous, not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing, but contrariwise blessing. If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. Say not, I will do to him as he hath done to me; I will render to the man according to his work. Say thou not, I will recompense evil, but wait on the Lord, and He shall save thee. In fine, patience doth include and produce a general meekness and kindness of affection, together with an enlarged sweetness and pleasantness in conversation and carriage toward all men; implying that how hard soever our case, how sorry or sad our condition is, we are not therefore angry with the world, because we do not thrive or flourish in it; that we are not dissatisfied or disgusted with the prosperous estate of other men; that we are not become sullen and froward toward any man, because his fortune excelleth ours, but that rather we do rejoice with them that rejoice; we do find complacence and delight in their good success; we borrow satisfaction and pleasure from their enjoyments.Dr. Isaac Barrow.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2

1Pe. 2:15. Silencing the Foolish.To a young infidel who was scoffing at Christianity because of the misconduct of its professors, the late Dr. Mason once said, Did you ever know an uproar to be made because an infidel went astray from the paths of morality? The infidel admitted that he had not. Then do you not see, said Dr. Mason, that by expecting professors of Christianity to be holy you admit it to be a holy religion, and thus pay it the highest compliment in your power? The infidel, of course, had no reply to make.

1Pe. 2:17. Honour all Men. Love the Brotherhood.When we speak of the larger class, Honour all men, it is as if we should say all waters, comprehending those that are in the sea, in the earth, and in the air; the salt and the fresh, the pure and the impure; absolutely and universally, all waters. When we speak of the smaller class, Love the brotherhood, it is as if we should say all the clouds. These are waters, too; these waters were once lying in the sea, and lashing themselves into fury there, or seething, putrifying under the sun in hollows of the earths surface; but they have been sublimed thence, they are now in their resurrection state, and all their impurity has been left behind. They are waters still, as completely and perfectly as any that have been left below. But these waters float in the upper air, far above the defilements of the earth and the tumults of the sea. Although they remain essentially of the same nature with that which stagnates cm the earth, or rages in the ocean, they are sustained aloft by the soft, strong grasp of a secret, universal law. No hand is seen to hold them, yet they are held on high. As the clouds which soar in the sky to the universal mass of waters, so are the brotherhood of Gods regenerated children to the whole family of man. Of mankind these brothers are in origin and nature, but they have been drawn out and from the rest by an unseen, omnipotent law. Their nature is the same, and yet it is a new nature. They are men of flesh and blood, but they have been eleyated in stature and purified in character. They are nearer God in place, and liker God in character. They are washed, and justified, and sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God. Besides the command, Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, which they have heard and obeyed, the promise has been fulfilled in them, Ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.Rev. William Arnot.

1Pe. 2:21. In the Footsteps of Christ.Many seem to think that to go to Jerusalem and tread literally upon the ground He trod is following the footsteps of Christ; as if one, when showed a tree bearing delicious and wholesome and nourishing fruit, should neglect the fruit and try to feed on the leaves or bark: or as if, when he had received a package of most valuable goods, he should lay them by and make no use of them, but wear with much pride the canvas wrapper in which they were packed up.Archbishop Whately.

Footsteps as a Copy.He left His footsteps as a copy, so the word in the original imports, to be followed by us. Every step of His is a letter of this copy, and particularly in this point of suffering He wrote us a pure and perfect copy of obedience, in clear and great letters, in His own blood. His whole life is our rule; not, indeed, His miraculous worksHis footsteps walking on the sea, and such likethey are net for our following; but His obedience, holiness, meekness, and humility are our copy, which we should continually study.Leighton,

Looking unto Jesus.The soldier whose officer says not Go on, but Come on, has tenfold the spirit for entering the battle. The mowers who mow in line have much more heart during the burden and heat of the day when their scythes sweep through the grass, keeping time to the stroke of a fellow-workman in front. Even walking along the roads ourselves, we know that we can walk better and continue longer if we be following some one that is a little way ahead. We have One always to look to, and we can most go out of ourselves when we look at Him.

CHAPTER 3

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

2. Toward Masters 2:1825

1Pe. 2:18 Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

Expanded Translation

You domestic servants (or household slaves), be subjecting yourselves to your master-owners, with all respect and deference; not only to the good (kind), and gentle (fair), but also to the perverse and ill-natured.

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Servants, be in subjection to your masters

SERVANTSoiketes, is equivalent to the Latin word domesticus, hence our word domestic, i.e., one who lives in the same house with another, spoken of all who are under the authority of one and the same householder, especially a servant. The word is more restricted in meaning than the normal word rendered servant (doulos), and designates one holding closer relations to the family than other slaves.

MASTERdespotes, meaning a lord, master, especially of slaves. . . . denotes absolute ownership and uncontrolled power (Thayer). See discussion under lord in 1Pe. 3:6.

BE IN SUBJECTIONThe phrase is here in the middle voice, indicating action with regard to ones self. Thus Youngs literal translation: be subjecting yourselves . . .

with all fear;

Phobos, as we have seen in the verb of the previous verse, though customarily meaning fear, terror, or fright, is here used in the sense of respect or deference, The latter word Webster defines: a yielding of judgment or preference from respect to the wishes or opinions of another; courteous or complaisant regard for anothers wishes.

Two types of masters are now described, We are to be in subjection to either type.

not only to the good and gentle,

GOODagathos. Benevolent, kind, generous, etc.

GENTLEepieikes, equitable, fair mild. It expresses that considerateness that looks humanly and reasonably at the facts of a case. We all appreciate such men, and it is usually not difficult to submit to their oversight.

but also to the froward,

Skolios (whence the name of our disease, scoliosis), meaning crooked, curved; metaphorically, perverse, wicked, unfair, surly, It is when we must subject ourselves to this type of man that our real Christian character (or lack of it) is revealed. How blessed we are in the present age to have rulers who, as a rule, do not openly oppose and antagonize us as we pursue the Christ-like life.

1Pe. 2:19-20 For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

Expanded Translation

For this is what causes God to regard you with favor, if, because of consciousness of God, a man bears up under griefs and sorrows, suffering unjustly (undeservedly). For what credit is it to you to bear up patiently under it, if, being a sinner, you are punished (literally, beaten with the fist) for it?

For this is acceptable,

Acceptablecharts, so many times rendered grace in the Scriptures. Abbott-Smith says its basic meaning is that which causes favorable regard, here, of course, in the eyes of God.

if for conscience toward God

Consciencesuneidesis. The normal definition is the soul as distinguishing between what is morally good and bad, prompting to do the former and shun the latter, commending the one and condemning the other. However, in this case our definition may be more simple. The phrase, for conscience toward God, also may be read because you are conscious of God, that is, His presence, His all-seeing eye, etc. Literally, the phrase reads because of consciousness of God. Most modern translators have adopted the latter rendering.

a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.

Wrongfullyadikos, is an adverb meaning unjustly, undeservedly, without fault.

For what glory is it,

Glorykleos, properly rumour, report; then good report, praise, credit.

if, when ye sin,

Sinis here a present participle, hence the meaning when (as) you are sinning, or being a sinful one, or being a sinner. The word, hamartano, means literally to miss the mark, hence to be guilty of wrong.

and are buffeted for it,

Buffetedkolaphidzo, derived from kolaphos (a blow with the fist), hence to beat with the fist, buffet. See especially Mat. 26:67 for a familiar example. It is likely here, however, that the specific term is used for the general meaning of harsh treatment.

ye shall take it patiently,

Patientlyliterally, to stay or remain behind (when others have departed). Then to bear up under, endure, persevere.

On the whole passage, compare Mat. 5:10-12. See also Eph. 6:5, Col. 3:22-25.

1Pe. 2:21-22 For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.

Expanded Translation

For into this state (of suffering and bearing up under it properly) you have been called: Because Christ also suffered for you (and He Himself was faultless), leaving you an example to be copied, that you might tread in His footsteps; who did not commit an act of sin, neither was guile or deceit found in his mouth.

For hereunto were ye called

Or, to such experience you have been called, or that is the life to which you have been calledthat is, bearing up and enduring under trial and persecution. When accepting the call to follow Christ, we also accepted the call of a life of suffering and enduring, As Christ suffered and endured. (See Joh. 15:20.)

because Christ also suffered for you

This was prophesied and Christ knew it would be so, for it was necessary in Gods plan of redeeming the world. But in another sense it was wrongfullysee 1Pe. 2:22. Christ was given an unfair trial, wrongfully accused, etc. Thus He was a perfect illustration of the type of suffering that is virtuous, that type of suffering of which Peter just spoke (1Pe. 2:20).

leaving you an example,

EXAMPLEhupogrammos, means basically a writing-copy, including all the letters of the alphabet, given to beginners as an aid while learning to draw them. Hence, an example that is set before one.

Who has not, in his younger days, experienced the difficulty of following the perfect examples of written letters in his copy-book? However, if we would have continually striven to copy the letters after the perfect example in our book, we would surely have improved with time. The fault in most of our writing is that we do not continually pattern it after a perfect model. This is also the frequent fault of Christian people. Instead of copying Christ, their perfect copy-book, they are following the poor example of their fellow man or their own lives.

that ye should follow his steps

FOLLOWepakoloutheo, means to follow close upon, to follow after. Metaphorically it is used here of treading in anothers footsteps, that is, imitating anothers example, for we have here the phrase, that ye should follow his steps, There is a picture here of one walking, whose steps as he proceeds are visible (as when one walks in the dust or snow). Following such a person, we are not to follow his trail carelessly, but rather, place our footsteps in His.

The particular way that we are to follow in the very steps of Christ is in suffering wrongfully and yet being obedientin spite of the harshest persecution.
Notice who says this! Perhaps, as he wrote, it was with reflection upon his own life, when he (Peter) did not follow this very exhortation.

neither was guile found in his mouth.

GUILEsee definition under 1Pe. 2:1, and its opposite without guileunder 1Pe. 2:2.

FOUNDheurisko generally indicates to find or discover after searching, to find a thing sought after.

Notice especially that Jesus suffered though He was sinless, and thus suffered wrongfully. The inference is that you as a Christian may be called upon to suffer even though you are living as Christ lived. We should not be alarmed, therefore, if we suffer, even though we know of no particular reason for it. Christ was perfect, but He still suffered. 1Pe. 2:22 shows His perfection in both deed and word.

Concerning Christs sufferings we may say:

1.

He did suffer, and we will also if we are living as He did.

2.

He suffered unjustly, no real crime being proven against Him. So should it be with us.

3.

He suffered for the good and benefit of others.

4.

His manner of conduct in suffering provides a Divine copy for us to follow.

1Pe. 2:23 who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

Expanded Translation

Who being reviled did not revile back (did not return the same type of abusive speech); Suffering, was not threatening, but was committing himself to him who judges righteously and justly:

who, when he was reviled,

REVILEDloidoreo means to reproach, rail at, heap abuse upon. See its usage in Joh. 9:28, Act. 23:4, 1Co. 4:12.

reviled not again

Literally, did not revile back; that is, Jesus did not retaliate with the same type of abuse that was given Him. He lived what He taught: Mat. 5:38-48.

when he suffered, threatened not;

THREATENEDapeileo, to threaten, menace, rebuke. Compare Act. 4:17.

Our Saviour knew He was in the safe hands of His Father. He also knew His Father would render justice to those who had unjustly treated Him. But that was the Fathers duty, not His (Rom. 12:17-21).

1Pe. 2:24-25 who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

Expanded Translation

who himself carried the burden of our sins in his own body upon the cross, in order that we, after having died (ceased from) sin, might live for righteousness; by whose bloody wounds ye were healed, (restored from a state of sin and condemnation). For you were misled and wandering about like lost sheep, but are now returned (brought back) unto the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

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who his own self bare our sins in his body

The first part of 1Pe. 2:24 emphasizes the part of Christ in our redemption. It was Christ Himself who underwent such affliction for us, Why? That: (1) We might die to sin and (2) Having died that death, live for righteousness.

having died unto sins

The words having died carries the basic idea of being removed from. When we die physically, the spirit is removed from the body. When we die to sin, we should be alienated from its influence and practice in our lives.

by whose stripes

Stripes, molops. Literally, the mark of a blow, then, a wound, a wound that bleeds. By enduring such suffering, involving both mental and physical agony, we were made spiritually whole. By His wounds on the cross, our spiritual wounds were healed.

ye were healed

The Bible in several places refers to our spiritual restoration as healing from our previous state of sickness: Isa. 1:5-6, Mat. 13:15, Heb. 12:12-13.

shepherd and bishop of your souls

Bishop would be better rendered overseer or watcher. Christ is our guide, protector, guardian, and provider. Such care is ours, if we will only commit ourselves into His hands. (See comments, 1Pe. 5:2-3.)

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(18) ServantsSecond division of the second prudential rule: subordination social. This word is not the same as is used by St. Paule.g., Eph. 6:5; Col. 3:22but is used only besides in Luk. 16:13; Act. 10:7; Rom. 14:4. It brings forward the family or household relation of servant or slave to master, and not (as does the common word used in 1Pe. 2:16) the mere fact of ownership. We need not be surprised at directions for household servants, or slaves, in a letter addressed to Jewish Christians, for there were large numbers of Hebrews in this position both now and later; St. Clement, for example, was probably both.

Be subject.Rather, being subject, or submitting yourselves. The participle joins this clause loosely to the submit yourselves of 1Pe. 2:13, where the word is the same. (Comp. 1Pe. 3:1.)

With all fear.All implies everything which goes to make up true fear, every kind of fear; and the fear (as when we speak of the fear of God) is not intended to mean any unmanly cowardice, dread of punishment, or such terror as is involved in having secrets which one dreads to have divulged. One commentator well defines it as the shrinking from transgressing the masters will, based on the consciousness of ones own inferiority.

Masters.This is the word which properly corresponds to the word by which the servants are described, not merely owners, as in Eph. 6:5; Col. 3:22.

The froward.Literally, the crooked. Its meaning is made clear by the contrasted adjectives, good, i.e., kindly, considerate; and gentle, or, rather, reasonable, not disposed to take too stern a view of matters. A froward master, then, is one with a warped nature, who is unreasonably exacting, capricious, and cross-grained; in fact, one who will deal with his servants in the manner spoken of in the following verses.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

4. Patience of servants under ill-treatment, 1Pe 2:18-25.

Servants, though free in Christ, and spiritually ennobled, might not indulge impatience and resentment toward their earthly masters, however tyrannical and brutal they might be.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

18. Servants Domestic servants, but perhaps including all grades of service, from slaves to employees.

All fear The highest degree of respect and submission; easy to kind and considerate masters, but distasteful and difficult to the perverse and morose. Yet the obligation is the same in both cases.

Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

‘Household servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.’

The fact that instructions were given to household servants/slaves would have been startling to the ancient world. The general view was that it was masters who should be instructed on how to behave towards their servants, not slaves towards their masters. Slaves and servants had no say in the matter. But the Gospel turns things upside down. Peter, like Paul, gives the servants status, and puts them in the position of being those who could make a choice, thus increasing their own self-respect, and enabling them to recognise that they did have control over their own lives, even if they were slaves or menial servants.

His advice is provided to servants within a household, whether slave or free. They are to be obedient to their masters and treat them with due respect because they themselves (the servants) walk in the fear of God. And this not only to be towards the good and gentle but towards all, even those who are harsh, unfair or difficult to please. By this means they would be taking charge of their own lives and demonstrating that, although they were ‘God’s freedmen’, they still fulfilled their own duties and responsibilities as servants because they were obedient to Jesus Christ. This would then also bring Christianity into favour. And who knew whether by so doing they might win their masters for Christ? (Compare 1Pe 3:1). And after all to behave as good servants was a part of their calling (Mat 20:26-27).

By this means also they would avoid bringing Christianity into disrepute by being seen as encouragers of bad or insolent behaviour or of lawlessness. It would prevent their own behaviour as recognised Christians from being a bad witness and as a result causing problems for other Christian slaves, who might become tainted by any bad example, and it would demonstrate that the love of God towards their masters was active in their lives. It would be a living out of what they taught and believed (Mat 5:42-48).

And it would actually, in fact, help to ensure their own wellbeing, and the well-being of fellow-Christian servants. For on the one hand recalcitrant behaviour might well have resulted in Christian slaves being unnecessarily banned from attending Christian meetings, on the grounds that such meetings were subversive and produced bad servants, while on the other good behaviour might well have the opposite effect. Once masters discovered that becoming a Christian produced a good servant, they would be delighted for their servants to become Christians.

Normally in fact no master of those times would have been expected to discourage his servants from worshipping their own gods for it was recognised that even slaves must have time off to worship such gods (which many took advantage of for their own benefit), while to fail to provide them with the opportunity might bring the wrath of the god on themselves. But it would be quite another thing if such worship was found to produce insolent behaviour from one who felt superior because he considered that he was a ‘citizen of Heaven’, and therefore felt that he was too important to be expected to serve.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

Slaves Submit to their Masters In 1Pe 2:18-25 Peter tells slaves to submit to their masters (1Pe 2:18-21 a), then uses Christ Jesus as the supreme example of suffering under mistreatment (1Pe 2:21 b-24), which frequently happened in slavery.

1Pe 2:18  Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

1Pe 2:18 Comments – Slavery was a big part of the fabric of Roman society. J. Vernon McGee says that there were approximately sixty million slaves in the Roman Empire, which held a total population of one hundred and twenty million. [93] Thus, half of the population was bound in slavery. The cruel Roman government enforced this bondage because the success of its economy was dependent upon the sweat of slave labour. Thus, Paul had to be careful not to appear as if he was calling for a revolution of emancipation of slavery. He would have quickly been thrown in prison. Yet, his Jewish background found him against it. His understand of the Gospel led him to the understanding that slavery was not God’s will for mankind. Thus, every time Paul addresses this issue, he does it with carefulness by drawing attention to the spiritual laws of freedom in Christ and servanthood to one another.

[93] J. Vernon McGee, The Epistle to Philemon, in Thru the Bible With J. Vernon McGee (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Pub., 1998), in Libronix Digital Library System, v. 2.1c [CD-ROM] (Bellingham, WA: Libronix Corp., 2000-2004), “Introduction.”

1Co 7:21, “Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather.”

Eph 6:5-9, “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ; Not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart; With good will doing service, as to the Lord, and not to men: Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.”

Col 3:22, “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God:”

1Ti 6:1-2, “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour, that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed. And they that have believing masters, let them not despise them, because they are brethren; but rather do them service, because they are faithful and beloved, partakers of the benefit. These things teach and exhort.”

1Pe 2:19  For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.

1Pe 2:19 Comments – The Greek word used for “thankworthy” in 1Pe 2:19 is (G5485) (charis). When we endure suffering wrongfully, we find “favor” in God’s eyes. In other words, He recognizes such acts of faith and trust in Him. Peter uses this same Greek word “charis” again in 1Pe 2:20 when he says “this is acceptable with God.”

1Pe 2:20  For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

1Pe 2:21  For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:

1Pe 2:21 “For even hereunto were ye called” Comments – 1Pe 1:6-9 shows us that suffering is a part of our divine election. We understand from the context of this Epistle that it refers to suffering for righteousness.

1Pe 2:21 “because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps” – Comments – Note Paul’s statement to the Corinthian church explaining how our sufferings are used by God to bring comfort to others (1Co 1:3-5). Jesus Christ understood that His sufferings would be used by His Heavenly Father to comfort many others who put their faith in Him.

2Co 1:3-5, “Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.”

1Pe 2:22  Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

1Pe 2:22 Old Testament Quotes in the New Testament – Peter is quoting from Isa 53:9

Isa 53:9, “And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth .”

1Pe 2:23  Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

1Pe 2:23 “but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously” – Comments – David experienced the same. Note:

Psa 56:11, “In God have I put my trust: I will not be afraid what man can do unto me.”

1Pe 2:23 Comments – We find verses reminiscent of 1Pe 2:23 in Isa 53:7-8.

Isa 53:7-8, “ 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. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken.”

1Pe 2:24  Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

1Pe 2:24 “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” Comments – On two other occasions Peter described Jesus’ crucifixion as being hung on a tree (Act 5:30; Act 10:39).

Act 5:30, “The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.”

Act 10:39, ‘And we are witnesses of all things which he did both in the land of the Jews, and in Jerusalem; whom they slew and hanged on a tree:”

1Pe 2:24 “that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness” Comments – Rom 6:1-10 explains our identification with Christ’s death and resurrection. Our old man was crucified with him, destroying our sinful bodies, freeing us from sin, so that our new life would be lived for Him.

1Pe 2:24 “by whose stripes ye were healed” Word Study on “stripes” Strong says the Greek word “molops” ( ) (G3468) means, “a mole (black eye), a blow-mark.” BDAG says it means, “a welt, bruise, wound caused by blows.” This Greek word is used only once in the New Testament.

Comments – Peter is quoting from Isa 53:5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed .” The prophet Isaiah was speaking prophetically in the present tense, “calling things which be not as though they were.” (Rom 4:17), looking forward to the Passion and resurrection of Christ. Peter was looking back at the Cross, telling us that at this point in redemptive history, our healing was paid through the scourging he took before being nailed to the Cross. Thus, Kenneth Copeland says that we are not sick people trying to be healed, but we are healed people in which sickness is trying to take our healing. [94]

[94] Kenneth Copeland, Believer’s Voice of Victory (Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Fort Worth, Texas), on Trinity Broadcasting Network (Santa Ana, California), television program.

Illustration – For example, if someone goes to the bank to get a loan, he may or may not find favor with the loan office and receive the needed money, but if a customer of the bank comes to make a withdrawal on his account that has plenty of money, there is no doubt about the fact that he will get the money he needs. In a similar way, healing is on our spiritual bank account. It belongs to every believer.

1Pe 2:24 Comments – Just as we look to Christ’s redemptive work on Calvary in faith to receive the forgiveness of our sins, so do we look to the redemptive work brought about by Jesus’ scourging to receive our healing by faith. Both are received by faith, because Jesus Christ paid the price for both our sins and our sicknesses.

A person can cry out to God for help, but without him putting his faith in the atonement that Jesus accomplished on the Cross, their sins are not forgiven and God cannot help. Likewise, without us putting our faith in Jesus’ scourging as payment for our healing, God cannot heal us. Everything God does for us is done through the atonement, which took place at the whipping post and on the Cross, one for our physical healing and the other for our sins.

1Pe 2:25  For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

1Pe 2:25 Old Testament Quotes in the New Testament – Peter is paraphrasing from Isa 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Comments – The book of Isaiah portrays Israel as sheep going astray. We also find this analogy of a shepherd and his sheep in Zec 13:7 and quoted by Jesus in Mat 26:31.

Zec 13:7, “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the LORD of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones.”

Mat 26:31, “Then saith Jesus unto them, All ye shall be offended because of me this night: for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad.”

John’s Gospel makes a number of analogies of God’s people being sheep, particularly in Joh 10:1-30.

Joh 10:11, “I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.”

1Pe 2:21-25 Comments – Christ’s Example of Suffering Peter must have had Isa 53:1-12 in mind when he wrote 1Pe 2:21-25; for in this short passage he quotes from at least five verses in Isaiah (Isa 53:5-9). This was certainly one of the Old Testament prophecies that the prophets of old inquired about, as Peter explains in 1Pe 1:10-12.

Fuente: Everett’s Study Notes on the Holy Scriptures

The submission of slaves:

v. 18. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

v. 19. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.

v. 20. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

Having shown the proper relation of the citizens to their government, the apostle here delineates the attitude which God, according to the Fourth Commandment, expects from slaves, the majority of the members in the Asiatic congregations apparently belonging to this class: Servants, be in subjection in all fear to your masters, not only to the good and lenient, but also to the perverse. The word used by the apostle, “domestics, family servants,” is not SO harsh as the plain “slaves,” and it intimates that in many cases the masters granted to their slaves privileges which made them almost members of the family. Such Christian servants were not to be influenced by a false idea of Christian liberty and refuse to do their work, but they were, in free obedience, to be in subjection, in submission to their masters, and with all fear at that, Eph 6:5. They should feel a fear or dread of doing anything which might be contrary to the will of their masters, rather show all care and diligence in performing the work of their calling. And this was to be the case not only when the masters were good, kind, gentle, lenient, but also when they were of a perverse, morose disposition, when they were hard to please, when they were tyrannical.

This latter demand, which properly distinguished the Christian slaves from the unbelievers, the apostle substantiates: For this is grace, if on account of conscience toward God one patiently bears afflictions, suffering unjustly. There is no special distinction or praise in doing one’s work cheerfully and conscientiously if the master or employer is uniformly kind and lenient. But that is grace, that is pleasing and acceptable to God, that is a mark of His favor in granting the ability, that is a fine, excellent work in which God delights, if a person in that station, that of a slave, a servant, bears the afflictions of in justice, abuse, with patient endurance, if he takes upon himself even the unjust treatment administered by the temper of the master The Christian will put aside all provocation and not permit anger to get the better of him under such adverse circumstances, simply because he is conscious of the fact that it is the Lord who sends or permits such tribulations to come upon him, and because his conscience tells him that he owes it to God, his heavenly Father, to show patient endurance under such circumstances.

That a Christian servant will in just this way give evidence of his Christianity the apostle shows in a question which he now proposes: For what praise is it if you sin and then endure a beating patiently? But if you do right and then endure suffering, this is grace before God. There is no special credit in enduring beating, stripes, punishment, with a great show of patience if such punishment was soundly deserved on account of some willful defection, some wrong-doing. It is different, however, if a servant does right, does his work faithfully in every respect, and then is obliged to suffer, receives beatings, even though he does what he knows to be right and good before God. To endure patiently in a case of this kind, that is pleasing and acceptable to God, that can be done only by a gracious dispensation of strength on His part, that is a fine, excellent work. Mark: Although these words are addressed primarily to Christian slaves, their admonitions may well be heeded by all employees and servants everywhere; for a Christian will be faithful in his work and ready to endure even injustice, knowing that the good pleasure of the Lord rests upon him.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

1Pe 2:18. To the poor the Gospel was preached; and many of the inferior sort, who were free from the incumbrance of riches, and the prejudices of the learned and mighty, embraced Christianity. Among the rest many servants or slaves became the disciples of Jesus; for the Gospel was calculated for an universal blessing. The behaviour of those servants or slaves toward their masters was very likely to give a good or bad idea of Christianity. St. Peter was anxious for their behaving well, and earnestly recommends to them a prudent conduct, as St. Paul had often done with the like view. 1Pe 2:18-25.

Servants The word signifies domestic servants in general, whether hired servants or slaves; but the apostle seems to restrict it to slaves, (and to mean those, whom St. Paul has called by the term , Eph 6:5. Col 3:22. 1Ti 6:1.) by his using the word for masters; that is, such masters as had an absolute right and property in their servants. Some would understand the words with all fear, of the fear of God; but it seems rather to mean that fear and respect which was due to their masters. The like admonition is thus expressed in the Epistle of Barnabas, 100: 19. “Be ye subject unto the Lord, and unto inferior masters, as the representatives of God, with reverence and fear.”

Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke

1Pe 2:18 . An exhortation to the slaves, extending from this verse to the end of the chapter.

] , properly speaking, “a domestic,” a milder expression for . It is improbable that Peter employed this term in order to include the freedmen who had remained in the master’s house (Steiger).

. is vocative; nor is chap. 1Pe 1:3 (as Steiger thinks) opposed to this.

] It is quite arbitrary to supply (Oecumenius, etc.), or to assert that the participle is used here instead of the imperative. The participle rather shows that the exhortation is conceived of as dependent on a thought already expressed; not on 1Pe 2:17 (de Wette), but on 1Pe 2:13 , which 1Pe 2:11-12 serve to introduce; , the institution of the household implied in the relation of servant to master, is comprehended in the general term . .

] ( vid. 1Pe 1:17 ) is stronger than reverentia, it denotes the shrinking from transgressing the master’s will, based on the consciousness of subjection, cf. Eph 6:5 . [147] Doubtless this shrinking is in the case of the Christian based on the fear of God, but the word does not directly mean such fear, as Weiss (p. 169) holds and seeks to prove, especially from the circumstance that Peter in chap. 1Pe 3:6 ; 1Pe 3:14 condemns the fear of man, forgetting, however, that this fear too may be of different kinds, cf. in loco .

is intensive. is: every kind of fear ; a fear wanting in nothing that goes to make up true fear.

] cf. 1Ti 6:1 , Tit 2:9 , equals , Eph 6:5 ; Col 3:22 .

, ] The moral conduct of the servant, which consists in towards the master, must remain unchanged, whatever the character of the latter may be; the chief emphasis, however, rests here on .

here is equal to “ kind ;” for , cf. 1Ti 3:3 ; it does not mean “yielding” (Fronmller), but, properly speaking, one who “ acts with propriety ,” then “ gentle .”

, literally, “crooked,” “bent,” the opposite of straight , denotes metaphorically the perverse disposition; Phi 2:15 , synonymous with ; in Pro 28:18 , forms the antithesis to (cf. Luk 3:5 ). It has the same force in the classics (Athen. xv. p. 695; , opp. to ). It denotes, therefore, such masters as conduct themselves, not in a right, but in a perverse manner towards their servants are hard and unjust to them; Luther’s “ capricious ” is inexact. [148]

[147] Thus, too, in substance Schott: “Fear in general, as it is determined by the circumstances here mentioned.”

[148] That Peter made special reference to heathen masters lies in the nature of the circumstances, but is not to be concluded from the adject. (as opposed to Schott).

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

1Pe 2:18-25

Analysis:Exhortation of believing servants to self-denying obedience in doing and suffering after the example of Christ.

18 Servants,41 be subject to your masters with42 all fear; not only to the good and gentle,19 but also to the froward.43 For this is thankworthy,44 if a man for conscience45 toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 20For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it,46 ye take it patiently, this is acceptable47 with God. 21For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us48 an example, that ye should follow his steps: 22Who did no49 sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: 23Who, when he was reviled,50 reviled not again; when he suffered,51 he threatened not; but committed himself52 to him that judgeth righteously: 24Who his own self53 bare our sins in his own body on54 the tree, that we,55 being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes56 ye were healed. 25For ye were as sheep going astray;57 but are58 now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

1Pe 2:18. Domesticsbut also to the crooked. less harsh and more comprehensive than . Estius in Calov shrewdly suggests that the Apostle may have selected this designation because he was addressing Jewish Christians, to whom the term slave was obnoxious, as incompatible with the people of God.

.The most simple construction is to connect the Participle with the preceding Imperatives, especially with the , to which the following seems also to refer. It is the Apostles way to intertwine his sentences after this manner: the following exhortations begin with similar participial sentences, 1Pe 3:1; 1Pe 3:7-9. We learn from it, that he considers the duties to which he exhorts included in the principal duty, 1Pe 2:12. He particularizes the exhortation, 1Pe 2:13, as to the manner how the fear of God should be evidenced, 1Pe 2:17.

In all fear.Primarily, holy awe of God, after 1Pe 2:17. Cf. Col 3:22; Eph 6:5; with full, entire fear; but it also involves the dread of an earthly master. There are, as Cornelius observes, different kinds of fear: a, fear of punishment; b, fear of the guilt of offending God; c, fear of the offence of exciting masters to animosity against the faith.

good in themselves and kind to others. indicates a particular exhibition of =indulgent, yielding, kind like the Syrian captain, 2Ki 5:13-14., the contrary of the two other qualities, crooked in ways and therefore in heart, Psa 101:4; Pro 11:20; Pro 17:20; Pro 4:24, similar to a piece of crooked wood that cannot be bent and is not fit for use, perverse, contentious, morose in disposition and behaviour. Before such masters the false longings for liberty are most apt to break out: but here is just the point at which Christian views and principles appear in the strongest possible contrast with merely human and natural ones, and at which the peculiarity of the Christian calling, as a power of endurance, shows its marvellous glory. Wiesinger.

1Pe 2:19. For this is grace.The sense of these words is determined partly by the following , partly by the antithesis . This question suggests that of our Lord, Luk 6:32. For if you love them, which love you, what thanks have you? ; in Matt. it reads . The ideas of thanks, reward and praise are here conjoined. Here as there the reference is to thanks, praise, or honour before God. You have no praise before God, you cannot glory in your tribulations (cf. Rom 5:3), if you remain stedfast in troubles brought on by yourselves; but if, suffering wrongfully, you remain stedfast, you will have honour before God and secure His approval and good pleasure. Weiss compares the Hebrew ,= , Gen 6:8; Gen 18:3; Gen 30:27; cf. Luk 1:30; Luk 2:52; Act 2:47. As to the sense it is therefore=, cf. 1Ti 2:3; 1Ti 5:4. Col 3:20. The following explanation of Steiger is neither clear nor suited to the context. It is grace indeed, even in the sight of God, to be able to suffer for Gods sake. If he means: Grace effects and shows its power in this, or the power and blessing of grace are exhibited in this, militates against his view.

For consciousness of God, etc ., the sharing of some knowledge, from , I am conscious. Many take as Genit. obj. on account of our knowledge of God, of His good will and pleasure; but it seems more natural to interpret: because of the consciousness of God, because God knows all, because His eye sees all and because His arm punishes all evil, cf. Col 3:23. In this sense Joseph suffered innocently; he thought, how then can I do this great wickedness and sin against God? Gen 39:9. He suffered .To take here in the sense of conscience is forbidden by the addition of , although it often has that meaning, Joh 8:9; Act 23:1; Act 24:16; Rom 2:15; Rom 9:1; Rom 13:5; 1Co 8:7; 1Co 8:10; 1Co 10:25; 1Co 10:28; 2Co 1:12; 2Co 4:2; 1Ti 1:5; 1Ti 1:19; 1Ti 3:9; 2Ti 1:3; Tit 1:15; Heb 9:14; Heb 10:22; 1Pe 3:16.Weiss explains; The consciousness of God, as that of Him who has ordained this subjection, should ever accompany and prompt us to the discharge of this duty. The idea is here too much narrowed and taken subjectively instead of objectively.

equivalent to the following = to endure with constancy, 2Ti 3:11; 1Co 10:13, to bear up under afflictions and to carry them cheerfully on ones shoulders., events causing multiform grief.

1Pe 2:20. When ye be buffeted for your faultssuffer patiently. .The antithesis of =to beat with the fist (vulgo box the ear), if as malefactors and punished, you suffer afflictions patiently. [; Bengel says: pna servorum, eaque subita.M.] The world may praise such conduct as courage and bravery, it will not give you glory before God.Wrong: if the scourgings notwithstanding you persist in sinful courses; for the contrast is between merited suffering and martyr suffering. (Lachmann and Tischendorf read , but is wanting in many MSS.).

1Pe 2:21. For even hereunto were ye called,namely, to do good and to endure with patience, 1Pe 3:9, as we read, 1Th 3:3 : We are appointed, set thereunto, Act 14:22. The first reason of the endurance of wrongful sufferings and perseverance in well-doing was the favour of God; the second is the calling of Christians as a further inducement to which is mentioned the example of Christ. The words are primarily addressed to slaves, as Bengel explains: this belongs to your Christian calling, which finds you in the condition of slaves; but they may be applied to all Christians, as is evident from the adduced motive.

Because also Christ suffered for you. , even Christ, the wholly Innocent One, has suffered. refers to [Alford makes apply to on the ground that the last two words carry with them the , as explained below, 1Pe 2:24.M.].. Huss: Peter does not say what Christ did suffer, his object being to intimate that Christ endured for us every kind of suffering. Herein then we are to imitate Him, viz.: in patiently carrying whatever is laid upon us. As the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord, he may not refuse to endure such sufferings.

(Scholz and Tischendorf read ); may mean: in your stead, or for your benefit, or both. The last is probable, if reference be had not only to 1Pe 2:22-23, but also to 1Pe 2:24, cf. 1Pe 3:18, where the vicarious character of the death of Jesus is unmistakably asserted. Winer remarks at p. 458 that sometimes touches closely upon , because the agent, one acting for the benefit of another, in most instances becomes his substitute, cf. Gal 3:13; Rom 5:7; Rom 14:15 : Mat 20:28; Joh 15:13; Joh 10:15; Joh 6:51. The redemptive and typical nature of the sufferings of Christ are here intimately connected. Steiger justly asks: What is it that makes the example of Christ obligatory to us, unless it be the fact that that typical suffering was at once and primarily a suffering for us, an offering of Christ and a benefit, engaging us to serve Him?This passage expresses in pregnant language the double idea: 1. You are obliged to obey Christ, because He suffered for you. 2. You are consequently called to innocent suffering, though you be guiltless, because also Christ, in suffering for you, suffered innocently and with the intent that in this respect you should imitate Him.

Leaving yousteps. another form of . Bengel remarks, in abitu ad Patrum., 2Ma 2:29, a pattern to write or draw by, a copy-head such as a writing-master would give to his pupils. This requires a steady hand and daily practice. Hence, pattern, copy, example. It is characteristic of this epistle, that it lays great stress on the pattern of Christ, cf. Joh 13:15; Mat 11:29; Mat 20:28 with 1Pe 3:18; 1Pe 4:1; 1Pe 4:13.

, a footprint, also the heels of shoes. The figure of a copyhead passes into that of a guide, whose footprints travellers along a steep, narrow and slippery path must follow up step by step. The footprints of His readiness to suffer, of His gentleness and humility are particularly alluded to. dependent on , not on . The imitation and following of Christ consists especially in the daily taking up of the cross, Luk 9:23. [This passage is also imitated by Poly-carp, 100:8: , , . .

Tertullian de Patientia, c. 3. He Who is God, stooped to be born in the womb of His Mother, and waited patiently and grew up; and when grown up, was not impatient to be recognized as God. He was baptized by His servant, and repelled the tempter only by words. When He became a Teacher, He did not strive nor cry, nor did any one hear His voice in the streets. He did not break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. He scorned no mans company; He shunned no mans table. He conversed with publicans and sinners. He poured out water and washed His disciples feet. He would not injure the Samaritan village which did not receive Him, when His disciples called fire from heaven to consume it. He cured the unthankful; He withdrew from those who plotted against Him. He had the traitor constantly in His company and did not expose him. And when He is betrayed and is brought to execution, He is like a sheep which before his shearers is dumb, and a lamb that doth not open its mouth. He who, Lord of angelic Legions, did not approve the sword of Peter drawn in His defence, He is spit upon, scourged, mocked. Such long-suffering as His, is an example to all men, but is found in God alone.M.]

1Pe 2:22. Who did no sin, etc.This description of the innocent and patient suffering of Jesus is almost a literal quotation from the Septuagint version of Isa 53:9, the word , alone being substituted for . The passages Isaiah 1, 6; Isa 53:7, are more freely treated in 1Pe 2:23. The servant of God there designated is therefore none other than the Messiah. His perfect sinlessness is even more explicitly affirmed in Heb 7:26; 2Co 5:21.

not absolutely like , but: no guile could be discovered in or proved from His words, all watching and sifting notwithstanding, and yet He was condemned. See Winer p. 701, cf. Jam 3:2. Bengel notices the fitness of this exhortation to slaves, who were greatly liable to the temptation of deceiving, slandering and menacing their fellow-slaves.

1Pe 2:23. Who being reviledthreatened not.He fulfilled Pro 20:22; Pro 24:29; He did what David had done, 2Sa 16:10, etc. The strong and bitter words, which Jesus had sometimes to use, Mat 7:5; Mat 16:3; Mat 22:18; Mat 23:13; Mat 23:33; Mat 12:34, were not the utterings of personal hatred, nor retorts of insults heaped upon Him, but necessary evidences of the truth in order to cast a sting into the heart of His adversaries, and if possible to save them.

But deliveredrighteously.The second part of the sentence contains a climax. He even abstained from threatening, while He saw into the impending judgments, , He committed His cause to God, not however by invoking the vengeance of God on His enemies, but by praying for their conversion and pardon. If they persisted in repelling the overtures of grace, He left him to the justice of God. In this sense He said: I seek not mine own glory: there is One that seeketh and judgeth. Joh 8:50.Jeremiah spoke differently in the spirit of the Old Testament: Let me see Thy vengeance upon them, for unto Thee have I revealed my cause. Jer 11:20.

To Him that judgeth righteously, otherwise than the anger of the injured part, and the violence of ungodly enemies would make it. It is both a great consolation and an invitation to leave vengeance to Him, cf. Rom 12:19; Rom 2:6-11; 1Pe 3:9; 2Th 1:6; Luk 18:7-8; Luk 9:55. Lechler remarks, that the Apostles language was giving one the impression of coming in contact with an eye-witness of the arrest, of the trial, of the rough ill treatment and even of the crucifixion of the Lord. [Calvin has the following: Qui sibi ad expetendam vindictam indulgent, non judiciis officium Deo concedunt, sed quodam modo facere volunt suum carnificem.M.]

1Pe 2:24. Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.This verse is connected with of 1Pe 2:21, and defines it more particularly; it also brings the antithesis to 1Pe 2:22 to a climax. Not only had He no sin, or did not sin Himself, but He bore our sins, etc.. The exegesis is determined by Isaiah 53 which evidently was before the Apostles mind. In that chapter occur the words , , . The LXX. render: ; in 1Pe 2:12, ; in 1Pe 2:10, When His soul shall make an offering for sin. All exegetical attempts to explain away the idea of substitution and the system of sacrifice closely connected with it, are altogether futile. As in the Old Testament, the expressions, to carry ones sin, or, to bear ones iniquity, are equivalent to suffer the punishment and guilt of ones sin, Lev 20:17; Lev 20:19; Lev 24:15; Eze 23:35, so to carry anothers sin, denotes to suffer the punishment and guilt of another, or to suffer vicariously, Leviticus 3:19, 17; Num 14:33; Lam 5:7; Eze 18:19-20. Can this be done in any other way than by the imputation of the guilt and sin of others, as was the case in the sin and guilt-offerings? Weiss is quite arbitrary in persisting to exclude the idea of sacrifice from Isaiah 53, for 1Pe 2:10 clearly refers to it. From a Jewish point of view such a separation of the doctrine of substitution from the idea of sacrifice is simply impossible, cf. Joh 1:29; Lev 16:21-22.The juxtaposition of and both here and in Isaiah 53 is not insignificant, but gives prominence to the idea of substitution. Calvin says: As under the law the sinner, in order to become free from sin, offered a sacrifice in his stead, so Christ took upon Himself the curse which we have merited by our sins in order to expiate it before God. Calov. The cross of Christ was the lofty altar to which, when He was about to offer Himself, He ascended laden with our sins.

=to carry up to the tree of the cross and thus to carry away and blot out, cf. Jam 2:21; Heb 9:28. The expression tree for cross is by no means undesigned, but selected as in Act 5:30; Act 10:39, with reference to Deu 21:23, cf. Gal 3:13, where it is said of him that is hanged on a tree, he is accursed of God.

not sin-offerings or offerings for our sins, a rendering which is inadmissible on grammatical grounds, but the guilt and punishment of our sins;these He took upon Himself and expiated them, cf. Col 2:14; Gal 3:13; 2Co 5:21.

In His own body, cf. Eph 2:15. This expression is far from singular in connection with the fact that Christ bore the punishment of sin also in His holy soul, provided we start from the idea of sacrifice and assume that Peter was comparing the body of Christ with the body of the slain victim. Gerhard says: The body is mentioned in particular, because it was visibly suspended from the cross, and because His bodily sufferings were more immediately perceptible by the senses. Weiss tries to find a reference to the words of the institution of the Lords Supperbut this seems to be rather far-fetched. How this carrying of the punishment of mans sinwhich goes far beyond a compassionating entering into the feelings of our sinful miserywas possible must ever remain a wonderful mystery, on which the Petrine and Johannean doctrine of Christ as the real and original Head of mankind, sheds only a feeble light.

That having died to sins, we should live to the righteousness of Him.Calov. Peter combines the two benefits of the death of Christ, 1st, by it our sins are expiated, and 2d, in virtue of it sin is killed in us. We add, that the combination gives prominence to holiness as the end and aim of the atonement.

=, cf. Rom 6:2. Bengel remarks: means to become somebodys slave, denotes removal. The body of Christ was removed, taken away from that tree, up to which He had carried our sins; thus we should remove ourselves from sin, become free from it. This explanation is more acute than satisfactory. The negative, dying unto sin, must go hand in hand with the positive. The connection of holiness and renovation with the death of Jesus is not indicated here, but may be supplied by recollecting that the gift of the Holy Ghost and the power of faith were acquired by the death of Jesus. Thereby the vital strength of sin is broken and the desire of righteousness planted in the soul. to live in the service of righteousness, in keeping the commandments of God and Christ instead of the former service of sin. Bengel: The whole of righteousness is one, sin manifold.

By whose stripe ye were healed., a wound like that inflicted on slaves by scourging, a stripe or rather the weal left by a stripe. The Singular is used here as in Isaiah 53; the sacred body of Jesus was so tortured that it was, as it were, only one wound or stripe. . (Lachmann and Griesbach. omit ; Tischendorf retains it as the more difficult reading in his last edition). More emphatic than the relative by itself; supply before it.. The apostle passes from the first person to the second, resuming his direct address to Christian slaves. So also at 1Pe 2:25; the whole section from 1Pe 2:18-25 is addressed to them. and suggest the secondary thought: You have to endure no kind of sufferings and wounds, but Christ, your Lord, endured them also; your Master exacts not more from you than He has borne Himself; He bears all in your stead in order to save you; how much more ought you, who are sinful, quietly and patiently to endure suffering?But how shall we solve the prophetical and apostolical paradox, that Christs stripe is our healing? Healing is here primarily not to be understood as a sinners entire restoration to the image of God, else the preceding exhortation would not have been necessary, but as designating the healing of the stings of conscience, caused by sin; but this involves of course the principle that entire healing is rendered possible. Sins, committed against, our conscience, hurt the soul and leave scars which ever and anon open afresh, sting the conscience and hurt the soul. Steinhofer.These wounds of your soul were healed when by faith in the atoning death of Jesus you received forgiveness. He suffered the smiters to draw long furrows on His back, Psa 129:3, to wound His head and face, His hands and feet, and to pierce His heart that in our stead, as the Head for the members, He might make atonement.

Thou didst suffer stripe and weal,
Treatment full of shame and pain,
That my plague thou mightest heal,
And my peace forever gain.
[German Hymn,
Du hast lassen Wunden schlagen,
Dich erbrmlich richten zu,
Um zu heilen meine Plagen,
Um zu setzen mich in Ruh!M.]
Tauler:He had to die that we might live: He was afflicted that we might rejoice; He was wounded that we might be healed: He shed His blood that we might be cleansed: the blood of the Physician was shed and made the patients remedy.

1Pe 2:25. For ye were straying like sheep.The Apostle adds how and from what state they came to this healing. For ye were straying like sheep. A sheep is a stupid animal: so is the sinner, repelling salvation and straying in the ways of corruption. Sheep, as Aristotle observes, are subject to as many diseases as man. Stray sheep, separated from the shepherd and the flock, lack food and care, are exposed to many dangers, may become a prey to the wolf or fall into some abyss. The expression is taken from Isaiah 53, and the figure is of frequent occurrence in the Old Testament, Num 27:17; 1Ki 22:17; Psa 119:176; Eze 34:5; Eze 34:11, and in the New, Luk 15:4, etc.; Joh 10:15 etc.; Mat 9:36. It may have been particularly appropriate to the case of slaves of the dispersion who often changed masters and their place of domicile. Straying and sickness are often conjoined. The figure of stray sheep alludes to original union with God and represents straying as alienation from God in consequence of sin. Joh 10:12. Wiesinger.

But ye are now brought back (from the wilderness of sin, error and death) to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls., ye have been converted and have suffered yourselves to be converted. By faith you have laid hold of the atonement made for all and have returned from your wanderings. Christ is the arch-Shepherd, the true, the good Shepherd, promised already in the Old Testament, Isa 40:11; Eze 34:23; Eze 37:24; Psa 23:1; cf. John 10, 11; Heb 13:20; 1Pe 5:4. He even gives His life for the sheep, Joh 10:12. The Apostle turns to that side of the pastoral relation of Christ which exhibits Him as the Bishop and Guardian of souls. is used of God in the LXX. version of Job 20:29; the phrase is however more probably taken from Eze 34:11-12, where we read: For thus saith the Lord God, Behold I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out (). As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. He is ever careful of the salvation of His sheep and seeks to protect them from destruction. He is the Shepherd and Guardian of souls. not without special significance as it relates to slaves, and servants who are so often treated, as if they had no immortal soul, and who may therefore so much the more readily forget that they have a soul which they may lose, and that with the soul lost, all else is lost.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. The Divine origin of Christianity may also be demonstrated by the fact that it enters into and hallows every relation of life and descends to the most degraded of men and to the lowest conditions of society.
2. The glory of the Christian vocation is peculiarly manifested by endurance of wrong and indefatigable well-doing under it.
3. Plato anticipated the ideal of such a righteous man in the following passage of his second book on the State: Without doing any wrong, he must have the greatest appearance of unrighteousness in order to be thoroughly approved in righteousness, since even slander and its consequences cannot move him, and although all his life-long considered unrighteous, he is yet righteous. The righteous, thus minded will be bound, scourged, tortured, blinded in both eyes and finally, having endured every possible evil, he will be hung. Platos ideal and conception find their strongest fulfilment and reality in Christianity.

4. The exhortation that we should copy in ourselves, the pattern which Christ has left us in His life and death is enclosed forwards and backwards, 1Pe 2:21 and 1Pe 2:24, by the recollection that He was crucified for us. This is the impelling motive which at once enables us to imitate Christ and to do it cheerfully.

5. The vicarious sacrificial death of Jesus, based on Isaiah 53, is here affirmed with so much clearness that even rationalistic adversaries are unable to resist it, cf. Wegschneider, Instit. p. 407, 6th ed. How we are healed by the wounds of Jesus, is a mystery which reason cannot fully solve, and to which we have to submit by faith in the clear testimony of Holy Writ. Jesus, who by His blood has effected our reconciliation, is Himself the Physician who heals our souls. Even Dr. Baur is constrained to admit that the idea of substitution cannot be denied in such passages of the New Testament as Rom 4:25; Gal 1:4; Rom 8:3; 1Co 15:3; 2Co 5:19, that the preposition denotes both the idea of substitution and what takes place for the benefit of man; that these two points are passing the one into the other, so as to interpenetrate each other, but that the latter is decidedly predominant; that according to the Apostles doctrine the justice of God had to be satisfied by an actual atonement for the punishment of sin; that viewing the death of Jesus from the stand-point of Divine justice, is only the outer side of the event and its merely judicial aspect, but that the inmost ground of the Divinely-made institution is the grace of God, Rom 3:24, 2Co 5:19, and a point so much more extensive than the other as to constrain us to regard only as an emanation of Divine grace whatever Divine justice may claim of the death of Jesus; that it was grace that God would not allow men to be punished in their own persons, but in their substitute. See Baur, Lehrbegriff des Ap. Paulus p. 541. This is certainly a wonderful testimony from the lips of an unbeliever.

6. The medicine has been prepared by His wounds, the balsam has been cleared under the press of the cross.The blood of Jesus is the most precious balsam with which Jesus washes and heals our wounds, as the good Samaritan poured oil and wine in the wounds of the bleeding and half-dead man to lessen their smart and to heal them. There is vital strength in this crimson oil whereby we are fully healed. Steinhofer, Evang. Glaubensgrund, p. 434.

7. Observe the important distinction between the atonement as the objective act of God in Christ in virtue of which salvation has been acquired for and is offered to sinners, and the subjective appropriation of salvation by means of conversion. The words of Paul: Ye are washed, ye are sanctified, ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God, 1Co 6:11, apply only to those who have sought Christ in penitence and faith and laid hold of His merits.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

How may the much-lamented difficulties relating to domestics be remedied? 1. By the return of the fear of God into the houses and hearts of men; 2. By masters and servants entering upon the imitation of Christ.The secret of partaking more and more of the grace of God.The Christian call, 1. To a state of grace, in order to be and live in it; 2. To suffer innocently and patiently; 3. To persevere in well-doing.The Christians consolation in innocent suffering.Righteousness of life must flow from righteousness by faith.The sufferings of Christ for us and before us.The power of Christs example.The great change in conversion.Man a stray sheep, while excluded from the calling of God in Christ.

Starke:God ordains, that one should rule and another serve.Bad masters are for the trial and perhaps also for the chastisement of servants.Masters are often decried as whimsical for desiring propriety and right in things spiritual and temporal. Servants, be ashamed and do not slander your godly masters, but learn to be wise and to do all things right after the will of God and their mindMany masters may deal ill with their people, but if they endure wrong patiently, attend to their service in the fear of God, pray diligently for their masters, they are Gods people and God will be their helper and reward, Gen 31:12.As it is the shame of servants to be punished for ill-doing, so it is their veritable honour and glory before God and man if they endure wrong innocently and patiently, 1Pe 4:15-16.Christians are not called to voluptuousness and good days but to the cross, 1Pe 2:21.We should often look at ourselves in the sufferings of Christ, as if they were a mirror, that we may be glorified into the same image, Heb 12:3.Christ is our Gift and Pattern, our Mediator and Head, our Shepherd and Light. What is our duty? To believe and to obey (follow) Joh 8:12.The words, the ways and the works of Christ are, as it were, living letters and footprints for us to copy and follow, Heb 12:6.If you have a just cause and yet are oppressed, be still and persevere, God will maintain your cause, Psa 94:15.Away with foolish sacrifices for the living or the dead! The one sacrifice of our High-priest Jesus Christ on the cross is sufficient for the reconciliation of the whole world, Heb 9:12; Heb 9:26; Heb 10:11-12.The exaltation and glory of Christians blossom forth from the cross.Sin was sacrificed and slain by Christ that it should also be dead in us. Where it lives, the virtue of the death of Christ is as yet unfelt, Rom 6:6.Sin is like a maze: whoso enters the same cannot easily find his way out.Whoso remains in the wilderness out of Christ (extra) must at last fall into the abyss of hell and eternally despair, Act 4:12; Psa 119:176.

Augustine:We must not cease to hope for the wicked, but rather pray for them the more diligently, that they may become good, because the number of saints has at all times been increased by the number of the ungodly. Those who are goats to-day, may be sheep to-morrow, those who are weeds to-day, to-morrow may be wheat.

Kapff:What is necessary in conversion? 1. That we should be healed by the wounds of Jesus. 2. That we should die to sin and live to righteousness.

[Leighton:

1Pe 2:18. It is a thing of much concernment, the right ordering of families; for all other societies, civil and religious are made up of these. Villages and cities and churches and commonwealths and kingdoms, are but a collection of families: and therefore such as these are, for the most part, such must the whole societies predominantly be. One particular house is but a very small part of a kingdom, yet the wickedness and lewdness of that house, be it but the meanest in it, as of servants one or more; and though it seem but a small thing, yet goes in to make up that heap of sin that provokes the wrath of God and draws on public calamity.Servants. 1. Their duty (be subject); 2. Its extent (to the froward); 3. Its principle (for conscience toward God).The eagle may fly high and yet have its eye down upon some carrion on earth; even so a man may be standing on the earth and on some low part of it, and yet have his eye upon heaven and be contemplating it. That which one man cannot at all see in another, is the very thing that is most considerable in their action, namely, the principle whence they flow and the end to which they tend. This is the form and life of actions, that by which they are earthly or heavenly. Whatsoever be the matter of them, the spiritual mind hath that alchymy indeed, of burning base metals unto gold, earthly employments into heavenly.1Pe 2:21. The particular things that Christians are here said to be called to, are suffering, as their lot, and patience, as their duty, even under the most unjust and undeserved sufferings.He that aims high, shoots the higher for it, though he shoot not so high as he aims. This is that which ennobles the spirit of a Christian, the propounding of this our high pattern, the example of Jesus Christ.1Pe 2:24. The eye of a godly man is not fixed on the false sparkling of the worlds pomp, honour and wealth. It is dead to them, being quite dazzled with a greater beauty. The grass looks fine in the morning, when it is set with those liquid pearls, the drops of dew that shine upon it; but if you can look but a little while on the body of the sun, and then look down again, the eye is as it were dead; it is not that faint shining on the earth that it thought so gay before: and as the eye is blinded and dies to it, so within a few hours that gayety quite vanishes and dies itself.Faith looks so steadfastly on its suffering Saviour, that, as they say (Intellectus fit illud quod intelligit), it makes the soul like Him, assimilates and conforms it to His death, as the Apostle speaks. That which Papists fabulously say of some of their saints, that they received the impression of the wounds of Christ in their body, is true in a spiritual sense of the soul of every one that is indeed a saint and a believer; it takes the very print of His death by beholding Him and dies to sin, and then takes that of His rising again, and lives to righteousness; as it applies it to justify, so to mortify, drawing virtue from it. Thus said one, Christ aimed at this in all those sufferings that with so much love He went through; and shall I disappoint Him and not serve His end?M.]

[On the duties of Christian servants see Bp. Fleetwoods Sermons on relative duties.M.]

[Jortin:

1Pe 2:18. The law of nature knows no such thing as slavery, for by nature all men are free and equal; but by the civil laws, and by the practice of nations, it was established, and still continues among those who know not the Gospel; and the more is the shame and the pity, it is to be found in some places where Christianity is professed. The religion of Christ, when it first made its progress in the world, left the civil laws of nations, in a great measure, as it found them, lest by altering or repealing them, it should bring confusion and disturbance into human society; but, as by its own genius and tendency, it leads men gently back to the precepts of nature and equity, to kindness and to mercy, it put an end by degrees, in most civilized nations, to that excessive distance and difference between masters and slaves, which owed its origin to outrage and war, to violence and calamity; so that in Christian countries the service which is performed is usually, as it ought to be, voluntary and by agreement. But what the writers of the New Testament have said concerning slaves, holds true concerning hired servants and all those who are employed in other denominations under a master, that they discharge their office modestly, diligently and willingly, and act with faithfulness and integrity in every thing that is committed to them.M.]

[Macknight:In this verse the Apostle establishes one of the most noble and important principles of morality, namely, that our obligation to relative duties does not depend, either on the character of the persons to whom they are to be performed, or on their performance of the duties which they owe to us, but on the unalterable relations of things established by God.M.]

[Bp. Horne:

1Pe 2:21. Our Lord was both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life. (Collect for second Sunday after Easter.) By His sacrifice He procured us grace to follow His example, which otherwise would have been proposed to us in vain; by His example He showed us how to make a right use of that grace, which, unless we do, it is given in vain. So that if he who regards Him as an example, and not as a Redeemer, will be lost, because he cannot follow Him; he who takes Him for a Redeemer, and not for an example, will be lost, because he does not follow Him, since redemption was in order to holiness; and although it be most certain that without Christ no man can attain unto holiness, yet it is no less certain that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. He only is fully and effectually redeemed, and has evidence to assure him of it, who bears stamped on his soul the image and superscription of his Saviour.M.]

[Dean Stanhope:

1Pe 2:24-25. A consideration of the purpose for which our Saviour suffered should be a matter of great consolation to us, when we meditate upon His sufferings, and cause us to mingle tears of joy with those of grief. The latter we should be insensible not to pay to the excruciating agonies of our beloved Master; the former we should be unthankful and cruel to ourselves not to give to the happy effects of the misery which He so graciously condescended to undergo for us. But, to make both effectual, let us, inflamed with zeal and gratitude and love unfeigned, endeavour for our own particular, and most devoutly beg for the rest, as the best of Churches teaches us, that the innumerable benefits of this precious blood-shedding may have their full extent and free course; that we and the whole Church of Christ may receive remission of sins and all the other blessed effects of His passion; that He, who hath made a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world, would cause His way to be known, and show His saving health to the yet dark and unbelieving nations; and that all, who do already know it, may walk worthy of their knowledge and of the high vocation wherewith they are called. And O! that the death tasted by our Redeemer for every man may be effectual to the saving of every man! Even so, blessed Jesus, by thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and passion, good Lord, deliver us.M.]

Footnotes:

[41]1Pe 2:18. [Domestics, family servants, not so harsh as . In all fear be subject to your masters, Cod. Sin.M.]

[42]1Pe 2:18. [=in, not with.M.]

[43] 1Pe 2:18. [= Deu 32:5, crooked, perverse. These are salvi et intractabiles, duri ac morosi, so Gerhard.M.]

[Cod. Sin. . . .M.]

[44]1Pe 2:19. [For this is grace, so German for , but not=gratia divina but=laus. Cf. Calvin, Idem valet nomen grati quod laudis. Intelligit enim nullam gratiam vel laudem conciliari nobis coram Deo, si pnam sustinemus quam nostris delictis simus promeriti: sed qui patienter ferunt injurias, eos laude dignos esse, et opus facere Deo acceptum.M.]

[45] 1Pe 2:19. [Consciousness, not conscience. The man knows that God is cognizant of his suffering, and acts rather with respect to God than to man. German: Mitwissen, not Gewissen, the former denoting cognizance in the sense of joint knowing, the latter, conscience. Render the whole verse, For this is grace, if, on account of Gods cognizance, any one endures tribulations (), suffering wrongfully.M.]

1Pe 2:20. [=German was fr ein, or English, what kind of.M.]

[46]1Pe 2:20. [Cod. Sin. . German, suffer patiently. The participial construction of the Greek is, on the whole, preferable to English version. For what kind of glory (is it) if doing wrong (sinning), and being buffeted, ye endure it patiently? but if well doing, and suffering (for it), ye endure (it) patiently, this is grace.M.]

[47]1Pe 2:20. [, as above, with God. The idea here, and in 1Pe 2:19, seems to be that such conduct is the evidence of grace received, as none but a child of grace would thus act.M.]

[48]

1Pe 2:21. [Cod. Sin. reads (died) for (suffered). is the reading supported by the greatest number of MSS. Another reading, , according to Syr. Copt. Ephr. Aug., and still another, , Elzevir, Alford; on this last is based the German version, which renders suffered for you, leaving you, etc.M.]

[=a copy-head,=a pattern, to write or paint by.M.]

[49]

1Pe 2:22. [, the Aorist, as distinguished from the Imperfect, , has the force of never in a single instance. Alford.M.]

[Cod. Sin. .M.]

1Pe 2:23. [The German retains the preferable participial form.M.]

[50]1Pe 2:23. [Render thus: Who being reviled, reviled not again, suffering, threatened not.M.]

[51]1Pe 2:23. [Render thus: Who being reviled, reviled not again, suffering, threatened not.M.]

[52]

1Pe 2:23. [, either, delivered (His enemies) up to (the Father), so Alford, or, delivered (His cause) up to (the Father); in either case, as Alford suggests, perhaps not without reference to Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.M.]

[Cod Sin. *.M.]

[53]1Pe 2:24. [Who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree.M.]

[54]1Pe 2:24. [The force of is that He took our sins to the tree, and offered them up on it. Alford. Cf. Vitringa in Huther: Vix uno verbo vocis exprimi potest. Nota Ferre et Offerre. Primo dicere voluit Petrus, Christum portasse peccata nostra, in quantum illa ipsi erant imposita, Secundo, ita tulisse peccata nostra, ut ea secum obtulerit in altari. Respicit ad animantes, quibus peccata primo imponebantur, quique deinceps peccatis onusti offerebantur. Sed in quam aram? ait Petrus, lignum, h. e. crucem.M.]

[55]1Pe 2:24. [=having died. The German renders, that, having died to sins (i. e., our own), we should live to the righteousness of Him by whose stripe ye are healed; but this construction is untenable on textual grounds.M.]

[56]

1Pe 2:24. [Stripe, singular, is the right rendering of . . Paradoxon apostolicum: vibice sanati estis. Est autem vibex, frequens in corpore servili, Sirach 12, 12. Bengel.M.]

[Cod. Sin. * without .. without .M.]

[57]1Pe 2:25. [Translate: For ye were straying ( ) like sheep.M.]

[58]

1Pe 2:25. [The German renders passively, ye are brought back; but the 2 Aor. Pass, , is often found in a Middle sense, cf. Mat 9:22; Mat 10:13; Mar 5:30,translate, therefore, but ye have returned.M.]

[Cod. Sin. .M.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

Ver. 18. To the froward ] Cross, crooked, trample, foolish. Tortuosis, curvis. The Greek word comes of a Hebrew word that signifies a fool.

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

18 25 .] Exhortation to servants to be obedient to their masters .

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

18 .] Ye servants ( , a domestic servant: a milder designation than . Possibly, as Steiger supposes, it may be here used to include the ‘liberti’ who still remained in their master’s house), [ by being ] in subjection (the part. carries on, immediately, the above; but also belongs, at a greater distance, to the whole of the last paragraph, as a general designation of the habitual conduct, in and by which they were to shew forth an honest conversation among the Gentiles) in all fear ( provides, by its wide generality, for the case by and by to be specially commented on. , not merely the reverence of an inferior, but the awe of one in subjection) to your masters; not only to the good (kind) and considerate (see note, ref. Phil.: those who make reasonable allowances, and exact no more), but also to the perverse ( = , ref. Deut.: crooked, in deviating from right and justice, see note on ref. Phil. These masters are, as Gerh., “svi et intractabiles, duri ac morosi”).

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: 1Pe 2:18-25

18Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. 19For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.20For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God. 21For you have been called for this purpose, since Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example for you to follow in His steps, 22who committed no sin, nor was any deceit found in His mouth; 23and while being reviled, He did not revile in return; while suffering, He uttered no threats, but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously; 24and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. 25For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.

1Pe 2:18 “Servants, be submissive to your masters” This is a present middle participle used as an imperative (see note and Special Topic at 1Pe 2:13). Believing slaves respect their earthly masters because they respect God! This even refers to those unbelieving masters who are unfair and cruel or Christian slave masters who are acting inappropriately. In our day an application of this admonition would relate to Christian employers and Christian employees. This is similar to Paul’s teachings in Eph 6:5-9. Notice #3 in the Special Topic below.

This is a good place to discuss the cultural aspect of biblical interpretation. If the gospel had challenged (1) the first century Greek-Roman patriarchal culture or (2) its slave culture, it would have been rejected and destroyed by first century society. By preaching the gospel both of these barriers fell in time! The Bible must always be interpreted in its historical setting and then the inspired truths applied to our day and culture with the same power and impact. It does not mean that we try to reproduce the first century culture as God’s will for every society in every age. The goal is the preaching of the eternal truth of the gospel which impacts individuals and ultimately society itself.

SPECIAL TOPIC: PAUL’S ADMONITIONS TO SLAVES

1Pe 2:19

NASB”For this finds favor”

NKJV”For this is commendable”

NRSV”For it is a credit to you”

TEV”God will bless you for this”

NJB”You see, there is merit”

This refers to God’s approval of submission even amidst persecution, when this suffering is related to our Christian convictions and trust in Christ (cf. 1Pe 3:14; 1Pe 3:17; 1Pe 4:13-14; 1Pe 4:16). “Favor” is the Greek term charis (grace) used in its non-theological sense.

“if” This is a first class conditional sentence, which is assumed to be true from the author’s perspective or for his literary purposes. Christian slaves were suffering under cruel masters for Christ’s sake.

“conscience” See note at 1Pe 3:16.

1Pe 2:20 “for what credit is there” This is a term for honor connected to one’s reputation (cf. Luk 6:32-34). It is from the Greek verb kale, which means to call. Therefore, it refers to calling praise, honor, or glory on someone.

“if” There are two first class conditional sentences in this verse, which are assumed to be true. The first conditional sentence is used in a negative sense and the second in a positive sense. God is pleased when believers suffer unfairly, but patiently, for being believers (cf. 1 Pet. 1:29; 3:24,27; 4:12-16; Mat 5:10-16).

1Pe 2:21 “For you have been called for this purpose” This is an aorist passive indicative. In context this phrase means that believers were called to emulate Jesus’ life, which brings glory to God and salvation to mankind. This is a call to submissiveness on behalf of all believers which will bring spiritual maturity and a powerful gospel witness.

That believers are called by God to suffering is a startling statement, especially to a western culture which thinks of Christianity in terms of (1) “what’s in it for me” or (2) a health, wealth, and prosperity gospel. The persecution of believers is a real possibility in a fallen world (cf. Act 14:22; Rom 5:3-4; Rom 8:17; Php 1:29; 1Th 3:3-4; 2Ti 3:12; Jas 1:2-4; 1Pe 3:14; 1Pe 4:12-19).

“Christ also suffered” The suffering of the Messiah was a surprise to the Jews who expected a conquering military Messiah. There are specific hints in the OT (cf. Gen 3:15; Psalms 22; Isaiah 53). Jesus Himself showed (1) His Apostles (cf. Mat 16:21; Mat 17:12; Mat 17:22-23; Mat 20:18-19) and (2) the early church these prophetic passages (cf. Luk 24:25-27).

His suffering and death were an integral part of the apostolic preaching of the early church in Acts called the Kerygma (cf. Act 2:23; Act 3:13-14; Act 3:18; Act 17:3; Act 26:23). See Special Topic at 1Pe 1:11.

There are several key theological truths connected with His suffering.

1. Christ is our example (1Pe 2:21)

2. Christ bore our sins on the cross (1Pe 2:24)

3. Christ’s work caused us to die to sin and live for God (1Pe 2:24)

4. Christ is the Shepherd and Guardian of our souls (1Pe 2:25)

The term “suffered” (epathen) is found in MSS P72, A, B, and C, but other ancient MSS, P81, have “died” (apethanen). The UBS4 gives the first reading an “A” rating (certain), assuming that “died” has been transposed by copyists from 1Pe 3:18.

“an example” The NT gives three reasons why Christ came:

1. To be the vicarious, substitutionary atonement. He, the innocent, blameless (cf. 1Pe 2:22) Lamb of God (cf. Joh 1:29), offered Himself on our behalf (cf. 1Pe 2:24).

2. To be the full revelation of the Father (cf. Joh 1:1-14; Joh 14:8-9).

3. To be an example for believers (cf. 1Pe 2:21) to emulate. He is the ideal Israelite, the perfect man, what humanity should have been, could be, and one day, will be.

1Pe 2:22 “who committed no sin” This is a quote from Isa 53:9. This concept is also expressed in Joh 8:46; Joh 14:30; Luk 23:41; 2Co 5:21; Heb 4:15; Heb 7:26-27; 1Pe 1:19; 1Pe 2:22; 1Pe 3:18, 1Jn 3:5. He could die on our behalf because He did not have to die for His own sin!

“nor was any deceit found in his mouth” Jesus was the ideal Israelite (cf. Isa 53:9 and Zep 3:13).

1Pe 2:23 “while being reviled, He did not revile in return” There is a series of three imperfect active indicatives, which mean repeated action in past time. The first one is an allusion to Isa 53:7. Jesus fulfilled this prophecy in His trials before Caiaphas, Annas the High Priest, Pilate, and Herod.

“while suffering, He uttered no threats” He did speak, but in forgiveness to all those involved in His death (cf. Luk 23:34).

“but kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously” This entrusting was the normal attitude of Jesus’ life. It is seen so powerfully in Luk 22:42; Luk 23:46.

1Pe 2:24 “He Himself bore our sins” This is obviously from Isa 53:4; Isa 53:11-12. The term “bore” is used of a sacrifice in Lev 14:20 and Jas 2:21. This is the essence of the vicarious, substitutionary atonement (cf. Mar 10:45; Rom 5:6; Rom 5:8; Rom 5:10; 2Co 5:21).

“in His body on the cross” Although there is no specific Gnostic element connected to 1 Peter (an early Christian/Greek philosophy asserted that Jesus was not truly human, cf. Col.; 1 Tim.; 1 John). This text is another powerful affirmation of the true humanity and physical death of Jesus of Nazareth (cf. Col 1:22).

The phrase “on the cross” may have a connection to Deu 21:23, where anyone who was impaled on a stake (i.e., tree) instead of being properly buried was cursed by God. By Jesus’ day the rabbis had interpreted this as including Roman crucifixion. Jesus was accused of blasphemy which, according to the Mosaic Law, demanded stoning. Why then did the Jewish leaders want Him crucified, which required Roman approval and ceremonial defilement for them before the Passover? Some have said they did this because the Jews did not have the authority under Roman law to put someone to death, but what about Stephen in Acts 7?

I think they wanted Jesus crucified to suggest that this messianic pretender was cursed by God! But this is exactly what happened. Jesus became the curse for us (cf. Gal 3:13). The OT itself had become a curse (cf. Col 2:14). It states that the soul that sins must die (cf. 2Ki 14:6; Eze 18:4; Eze 18:20). But all humans have sinned (cf. Rom 3:9-18; Rom 3:23; Gal 3:22). Therefore, all deserve to die and were under its death penalty. Jesus the sinless Lamb of God (Joh 1:29) bore the sin of the entire fallen world (cf. Rom 5:12-21)

“that we might die to sin and live to righteousness” This is a purpose (hina) clause. This is the goal of Christianity (cf. Rom 6:20; Gal 2:20). It is the restoration of the image of God in humans which restores intimate fellowship with God.

“by His wounds you were healed” This is an aorist passive indicative. In Isa 53:4-6 this speaks of our spiritual healing, not that physical healing. I do not deny physical healing as an ongoing act of a gracious God, but I do deny that it is a promised aspect of the atonement of Christ. In the OT sin was characterized as physical illness (cf. Isa 1:5-6; Psa 103:3). This is a metaphor for the forgiveness of sin, not a promise that if believers have enough faith God will heal every physical problem of every believer.

For a good discussion of Isa 53:4 and its use in Mat 8:17, F. F. Bruce’s Answers to Questions, pp. 44-45, is very helpful.

1Pe 2:25 “for you were continually straying” This is an allusion to Isa 53:6. It is an imperfect passive periphrastic, which refers to repeated action in past time or the beginning of an action. Does this refer to

1. OT Jews (cf. Rom 3:9-18, which is a series of OT quotes)

2. all humanity

3. Gentile believers who were succumbing to persecution (i.e., possibly denying Jesus at trial)

4. believers, Jews and Gentiles, who were losing the daily battle to the sin nature

“but now you have returned” This is an aorist passive indicative which implies a decisive return by the agency of God, Christ, or the Spirit (cf. TEV “you have been brought back”). Most English versions translate it as a middle (cf. NASB, NRSV, NJB, NIV). In the OT “turn” or “return” (shub) is often used for God’s people repenting and coming back to Him.

“Shepherd” This title is used of God (cf. Psa 23:1, Ezekiel 34) and here of Jesus as in Joh 10:1-18 and Heb 13:20. It connotes tender, thoughtful, continuous care. This title may even reflect Peter’s discussion with Jesus in John 21 (cf. 1Pe 5:1-3).

NASB, NRSV,

NJB”Guardian”

NKJV”Overseer”

TEV”Keeper”

Here the term episkopos is used of Jesus, but usually it refers to local church leaders. The term translates as “bishop” or “overseer” and has a Greek city/state background, while the synonymous term “elder” (presbuteros) has a Hebrew tribal background. These terms are usually used synonymously to refer to the NT role of pastor (cf. Act 20:17; Act 20:28; Tit 1:5; Tit 1:7).

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Servants. App-190.

be subject = submit, 1Pe 2:13.

masters. App-98.

with = in. App-104.

gentle. Greek. epieikes. See Php 1:4, Php 1:5.

also, &c. = to the froward also.

froward. Greek. skolios. See Act 2:40.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

18-25.] Exhortation to servants to be obedient to their masters.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

Peter is very practical in his Epistles. In the early days of the faith, Christians occupied a far more difficult and dangerous position than they do today. They were few in number, and greatly despised. All manner of crimes were falsely alleged against them; they were accused of things too vile for me to mention. The apostle, in writing to these Christians, begs them so to behave that they should commend the gospel of Christ. Very many of them were servants or slaves; so the apostle says to these lowly followers of Christ, Here are your duties:

1Pe 2:18-20. Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

A sense of injustice stings a man; he does not like to lose his rights, or to be buffeted when he has done no ill; but the Spirit of Christ teaches us to endure grief, suffering wrongfully, to bear still, and still to bear. We are to be like the anvil; let others strike us if they will, but we shall wear out the hammers if we only know how to stand still and bear all that is put upon us.

1Pe 2:21-23. For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

There was no reason why he should be made to suffer, for he had done no wrong. He was buffeted for no fault of his own, yet how patiently he endured it all! He did not even open his mouth to murmur or complain; but he handed the whole matter over to the Supreme Court of Appeal: to him that judgeth righteously. It will be wise for us also to feel that we can afford to wait, knowing that our Avenger liveth, and that, in his own good time, he will rectify all wrongs, and justify his people against all their accusers. It is sweet, for the dear love of Jesus, to put up with a thousand things which, otherwise, we should resent. But, says one, if you tread on a worm, it will turn. Perhaps it will, but a Christian is not a worm; he is a being of a nobler order than that, and he does not go for his example to reptiles; he looks up to Christ, and follows his steps.

1Pe 2:24-25. Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

Wherefore, since you have been brought back by the rich grace of God, continue to bear and forbear, that you may be the means of bringing others back. That is Peters counsel to servants, or slaves, as most of them were.

This exposition consisted of readings from 1Pe 2:18-25; and 1Pe 3:1-17.

Fuente: Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible

1Pe 2:18. , servants) He prescribes duties to these, and not to masters, the greater part of whom were heathens.-, subject) The participle, for the imperative, depending upon , 1Pe 2:13; from which the form of the imperative ought to be repeated by Zeugma. So also ch. 1Pe 3:1.- , not only) Gentleness obtains obedience more easily than harshness.-, to the good) who inflict no injury.-, the gentle or indulgent) who readily pardon errors.-, the froward) who without cause have recourse to severity, blows, and reproaches.

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

1Pe 2:18-25

3. DUTIES OF SERVANTS TO MASTERS

1Pe 2:18-25

18 Servants, be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.–A common word for “servant,” and that by which Paul often designated himself in the familiar phrase, “servant of Jesus Christ” (Rom 1:1; Php 1:1; Tit 1:1), is doulos, slave. Here, “servants” is from the milder oiketes, a domestic servant, a household slave. This class of servants, being more constantly in contact with their masters than would those slaves whose work was customarily in the fields and shops, would be subjected to greater provocation from evil masters, and are thus particularly addressed here. It is well known that many in the church during the apostolic age were in bondage; and instruction to those under such restraint is significantly large in the New Testament. (Eph 6:5-8; Col 3:22; 1Ti 6:1-2.) The reason is obvious. As Christians, they had learned of their equality with all men before God, and had come to recognize that in Christ Jesus all fleshly distinctions have been abolished. (Gal 3:28-29.) There was thus grave danger that these considerations would prompt them to disregard their obligations, and to repudiate the relationship which subsisted between them and their earthly masters. The institution of slavery was opposed to the very spirit and genius of Christianity, and destined to perish as the influence thereof came to be dominently felt; yet, so deeply rooted was it in the social and economic fabric of the time that a frontal attack upon it would have been disastrous to the cause of Christianity. The sacred writers thus tolerated it and regulated it until such time as it would disintegrate under the impact of the cross.

The relationship must have been an exceedingly trying one, particularly to those with heathen masters. In the first place it was difficult for them to reconcile subjection to men with spiritual liberty; and most difficult of all when these masters were evil men, and disposed to oppress and mistreat them. Yet, it was a relationship which, for the time, they could not escape; and these instructions were vitally essential to the progress and good name of Christianity among the heathen.

The “subjection” enjoined is to be related to that designated in verse 13, “be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake,” the relationship of servants and masters being one of the ordinances of men there implied. It is also to be identified with the teaching of the entire context as another means by which to “silence” (muzzle) the mouths of their accusers and prompt those about them to “glorify God in the day of visitation.”

The service commanded was to be rendered “with all fear.” There are many kinds of fear: fear of punishment; fear of offending God; fear of bringing reproach on the name of Christ–all of which is to be included here. These to whom Peter wrote were not only to fear the displeasure of their earthly masters, but especially God, their highest Master. (Eph 6:5.) Moreover, their service was to be the same whether their masters were kind and benevolent or cruel and vindicative. It was to be given “not in the way of eye-service, as men-pleasers, but as servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart.” (Eph.. 6:6.) The word “good,” descriptive of humane masters, denotes inner goodness, kindness of heart; “gentle,” that which is mild and considerate; “froward” is, literally, crooked, here figuratively used to indicate that disposition which is perverse, surly, opposed to gentle. Good and gentle masters were those who showed consideration for their servants; the froward were masters who oppressed and abused them.

19 For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.–“This” (touto, neuter singular, this thing) refers to that immediately preceding–obedience to wicked and oppressive masters. “Acceptable” is translated from the same word (charis) as “thank” in the passage, “And if ye love them that love you, what thank have ye” (Luk 6:32), where it signifies not only thanks, but also reward and praise. Here, as in that passage, such is contemplated as being witnessed by the Father, i.e., under his eye, and proceeding from his hand. The term is descriptive of the credit which belongs to those who exceed what might be ordinarily expected. Slaves of the world resent and rebel against the surly disposition and abusive conduct of their wicked masters; but Christians, in the same relationship, suffer such uncomplainingly because of their consciousness of God’s presence and approval. Peter is not to be understood as affirming here that suffering of itself is an occasion for commendation from God it is only when such proceeds from one’s determination to do that which is right that it is “acceptable” (thankworthy, A.V.) in God’s sight.

20 For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.–“Glory” here is not that which affords occasion for boasting, but is that impression which, by worthy conduct, is made upon others. The word literally signifies renown, fame, praise earned by commendable achievement. Where punishment is suffered because of improper conduct, no praise accrues to the sufferer; good people feel that in such cases the culprit is merely receiving that which he deserved. “Buffeted” (kolaphizo, to strike with the fist, here present passive participle) means to be repeatedly. pummelled, perhaps literally here to indicate the type and extent of the punishment slaves often received from their “froward” masters. When punishment is undeserved, and is administered because of the wickedness of the master, and Christian slaves endure it patiently because they desire to do their duty to God, he approves and blesses. The word “acceptable” is similarly derived, and means the same as in verse 19. When men endure such treatment for conscience sake they are exceeding that which their fellows ordinarily do under such circumstances, and are therefore regarded as “thankworthy” in God’s sight. The early Christians often found occasion to rejoice amidst the most severe persecution and trial. (Act 5:40-42; Act 16:25.)

21 For hereunto were ye called:–Verses 18-20 deal with the duty of servants to continue in well doing, and to submit patiently to whatever trials it is their lot to bear; verses 21-25 establish the motive which should prompt to such manner of life. “Here-unto (eis touto) is, literally, “into this,” i.e., into such a life as they were experiencing had they been called (by the gospel) to do good and to suffer patiently. While primarily applicable to Christian slaves, these words have a general application to all saints, for it is “through much tribulation” that we “enter into the kingdom of God” (Act 14:22), and Paul warned that all who would live godly in Christ Jesus shall “suffer persecution” (2Ti 3:12). These saints to whom Peter wrote were “called” to such suffering, this being an inevitable consequence of their lot in life. Christianity is, itself, a calling (2Th 2:13-14), and trials an invariable characteristic thereof. “Because to you it hath been granted in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer in his behalf.” (Php 1:29.)

Because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow in his steps:–The calling alluded to in the first clause of verse 21 is here explained: “because Christ also (literally, even Christ) suffered for you.” Since the disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord, such suffering was to be expected. Two ideas are here advanced: (1) Christ suffered; hence, you, his servants, must likewise suffer ; (2) in suffering the Lord left an example for his disciples to imitate in enduring similar trials.

“Example,” in the text, is from hupogrammon, accusative singular of hupogrammos, from the preposition hupo, under, and gramma, literally, to write under; to copy, and here figuratively, a pattern or model for imitation. It is a figure suggested by the copybook method of teaching penmanship. Christ thus becomes the copyhead, the beautiful writing at the top of the page. Implied in the figure is a copybook, a perfect pattern of writing, a white, unblemished sheet of paper, the student’s effort to transcribe the copy, the awkward attempts in the beginning, persistent determination, constant and unremitting practice; and then, eventually–success!

The purpose for which such an example has been provided is that we should “follow in his steps.” “Steps” is from ichnos, the heel of a shoe; also, a footprint. At this point the figure changes from a copyhead to a guide who goes before and breaks out the path that others may safely and surely follow. The Lord thus becomes for us not only an example of patient resignation in suffering trial and hardship, he went before us marking out the path and leaving us footprints of meekness, gentleness, and fortitude.

Christ’s example was cited as a particular encouragement to the Christian slaves among those to whom Peter wrote to bear patiently the unjust and undeserved reproaches which they received from their heathen masters. Suffering for evil conduct they might have accepted as that which should be expected under the circumstances; but to suffer unjustly and at the hands of unbelieving heathens was indeed a difficult trial to bear. Christ, as an example of an innocent sufferer, is offered to sustain them in bearing similar trials. Though he suffered, and suffered unjustly, this did not prompt him to sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. This pattern Peter’s readers should strive to follow. The conduct of Christ under such great provocation is next alluded to by the apostle.

22 Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth –These words are cited, with slight variation, from the Septuagint translation of Isa 53:9, sin (hamartia) being substituted for violence (anomia, lawlessness) in our version of the Hebrew text. (See, also, Zep 3:13.) “Did” is from epoiesen, aorist tense of poieo, with the negative signifying that never in a single instance did Jesus commit sin. For the meaning of the word “guile,” see comments on 1Pe 2:1. “Found” is from a word (eurisko) which means to search diligently. No guile (deceit, deception) could be found in the words of our Lord, despite the fact that his enemies sought diligently and searched carefully to discover such. The Saviour’s sincerity thus stood the test of hostile scrutiny. Peter may have cited this prophecy of Isaiah as especially significant to slaves because the Messiah is designated by that prophet as the servant of Jehovah (Isa 52:13), and an oppressed and afflicted one. (Isa 53:7-8.) Other passages where the sinlessness of Jesus is expressly affirmed are Heb 7:26; 2Co 5:21 ; and 1Jn 3:5. He himself alluded to the fact in his challenge to his enemies, “Which of you convicteth me of sin? (Joh 8:46), a challenge infidels for twenty centuries have never accepted. Jesus did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth, thus exhibiting perfect sinlessness, both in word and in deed. These words were especially relevant to slaves whose servitude and consequent oppression by evil masters laid them open to greater temptation to practice deception and deceit, and to resort to trickery and artifice in evading and avoiding the accusations of their masters. However great the provocation, Peter would have them remember, and imitate the Christ they followed. These words are as pertinent to us today as to those to whom they were originally penned.

23 Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:–The antecedent of “who” is Christ. (Verse 21.) The verbs “reviled” are translated from Greek imperfects, the force of which is to signify that when our Lord was being constantly reviled, he did not retaliate with railing for railing; while suffering the bitter taunts of his most determined enemies he did not utter vain and meaningless imprecations, but committed (Greek, kept on committing) himself to God with the assurance that, though being greatly wronged by man, he would receive righteous judgment at the hands of the Father.

The biographies of Jesus abound with instances of that to which Peter here alludes. The Jews charged him with being a devil, a winebibber, and a glutton, in league with Beelzebub, a blasphemer of God, and violator of the law. When on trial before the Sanhedrin–the supreme court of the Jews–the judges thereof ridiculed his claims, heaped scorn and contempt on his head, and spit in his face. Common soldiers, in further derision of his claims to royalty, placed a purple robe about his shoulders and did mock obeisance at his feet. While dying on the cross a bloodthirsty mob milled and surged about him, shouting, “He saved others himself he cannot save.” (Mat 27:39.) The stark tragedy of those fateful hours was deeply etched in Peter’s consciousness, and he penned these words in vivid remembrance of scenes in which he himself had performed a disgraceful part.

Again, it should be noted that this instruction was especially pertinent to the Christian slaves to whom it was particularly addressed. (1Pe 2:18.) They must often have been tempted to retaliate when reviled by their heartless masters. Even so, they were not to forget that their Master under circumstances even more trying had met such ungodly taunts with silent patience. In the indignation which they felt for undeserved and evil treatment incident to their position as slaves they were doubtless often sorely tempted to threaten dire vengeance against their oppressors. They must, in all such instances, remember that while the Lord could have brought to his side twelve legions of angels, he made no defense of himself, and gave utterance to no threats, quietly committing himself into the hands of his Father. As their master had done, so were his servants to do.

The pointed words of condemnation which Jesus sometimes hurled at the Pharisees and others (Mat 7:5; Mat 16:3; Mat 22:18; Mat 23:13; Mat 23:25-36) were not the bitter taunts of personal malice, nor the retaliatory retorts for insults received, but the probings of one capable of looking into the innermost recesses of the heart and exposing the corruption there, with the design of saving, if possible, the persons so possessed.

Our Saviour thus not only taught non-retaliation (Matt. 5 38-48); he practiced it, and under the most trying circumstances possible to conceive. It is only when his disciples do likewise that they reflect his spirit and demonstrate in their lives his influence. Far from calling down upon his enemies the vengeance of his Father, he prayed for and sought their conversion and salvation. “Say not, I will do so to him as he hath done to me; I will render to the man according to his work.” (Pro 24:29.) “All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so de ye also unto them: for this is the law and the prophets.” It is idle to claim the Spirit of Christ while disregarding, under any circumstances, the principles taught in this passage. They are universal in nature and applicable to every relationship possible to the Christian.

24 Who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree,–In the verses’ immediately preceding (21-23), the example of Christ, as a patient and uncomplaining suffered under extreme provocation, was brought forth, and the Christian slaves, to whom Peter was particularly addressing this instruction, were admonished to “follow in his steps.” Having thus had occasion to refer to the suffering and death of Christ on the cross, and unwilling to pass from this momentous theme when thus far he had pictured the Lord as merely a martyr courageously suffering and dying for a cherished cause, he here dwells on and considers his death in its relation to the redemption of man. Already, in the context, he had pointed out that Christ suffered “for you,” and lest this should be interpreted as meaning no more than an example of patient endurance and an encouragement to holy living, he passes to the contemplation of his death in its atoning aspects and sharpens and extends the remarkable statement of verse 22. Not only had our Lord no sin, not only did he not sin himself, he also bore our sins in his body on the tree.

The word “bore” is translated from the Greek anenegken, second aorist active indicative of anaphero, the word used in the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament of the bearing up on the altar of the sacrificial victim by the priest. Inherent in the word is thus the idea of sacrifice, and it is idle to attempt to weaken its meaning by its exclusion. The Lord not only died in our behalf; he also died in our stead. The vicarious aspect of the death of Christ is clearly taught here, as often elsewhere in the sacred writings. (Mat 20:28 Mar 10:45; 1 Tim:2:6.) The position of the pronoun is emphatic he, himself, bore our sins, he alone. This verse is an obvious allusion to the well-known prophecy of Isaiah 53 : “He shall see the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by the knowledge of himself shall my righteous servant justify many; and he shall bear their iniquities. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors: yet he bare the sins of man, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isa 53:11-12.)

The Lord, in bearing the sins of the world, simply allowed the penalty of the law to fall upon him, the execution of which he suffered in our stead. Moreover, he bore our sins “in his own body.” His body thus became the sacrificial victim, and the cross the altar on which it was offered. Christ in his death became both priest and victim; he bore our sins, thus making an offering for us ; he bore our sins “in his own body,” thus serving as the victim of sacrifice which he offered. (Heb 9:25-28.)

He bore our sins in his body “on the tree.” For the cross the apostle uses here the word “tree” (xulon), the same term by which he designated the cross in his speeches in Acts. (Act 5:30; Act 10:39.) Paul alluded to the cross in similar fashion (Gal 3:13), and both apostles were doubtless influenced to this end by Deu 21:23.

That we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; –The two effects of Christ’s death are here prominently exhibited: (1) by it our sins have been removed; (2) through its effects we are privileged to live unto righteousness. “Having died” is in the aorist tense, and thus refers to a definite and consummated act of renunciation of sin occurring in repentance and the reformation which follows; and the life of righteousness begins when one is raised from the baptismal grave. (Rom 6:1-6.) To live unto righteousness is simply to live in the service of righteousness. “Righteousness” is that state or condition existing when one keeps the commandments. (Psa 119:172.) The word “died” in this clause is an unusual one, occurring nowhere else in the scriptures. Its literal meaning is “having ceased to be.” By virtue of the sacrificial atonement of Christ, when we turn from a life of sin the relationship which has thus far subsisted ceases to be, and when the “old man of sin” is buried in the watery grave, a new life unto righteousness ensues. (Rom 6:1-6.)

By whose stripes ye were healed.–These words are quoted from the Greek translation of Isa 53:5. “Stripes” is from the Greek molops, a bruised and swollen welt from which blood trickles, the livid mark on the quivering flesh, red and raw, from scourging. In the Greek the word is singular, as it also is in Isa 53:5, the body of Jesus being so bruised from the brutal beating he received that there was but one wound or stripe, and this covered his entire body. The instrument by which this punishment was inflicted–the scourge–was a leather whip of cords into which had been woven jagged bits of brass or iron. When these Christian slaves were beaten they were to remember that, however cruel and brutal such beatings were, none equaled that which the Lord suffered prior to his crucifixion.

By his stripes we “were healed.” The word “healed” is here figuratively used for the salvation of the soul from sin, and may not properly be extended to include miraculous healing of the body from disease. The sickness implied in the word is of the soul, and the healing, redemption. An instance of such use by the Lord will be seen in Mat 13:15. Evidence that bodily healing as a part of the atonement is not taught here or elsewhere in the scriptures follows from the fact that (1) instances abound of individuals known to be saved who nevertheless suffered bodily affliction (Php 2:27; 2Ti 4:20; 2Co 12:7; 1Ti 5:23); (2) were healing a part of the atonement, sickness in an individual would be proof that the soul is unsaved (3) the context here clearly points to the fact that it is salvation from sin, and not physical healing of the body contemplated in this passage. So-called modern divine healers are guilty of a perversion of this text in extending it to include healing of the body from affliction and disease.

25 For ye were going astray like sheep;–The figure of sheep as representative of a people confused, bewildered, and without a leader is a common one in the scriptures. (Mat 9:36 Luk 15:4; Num 27:17 1Ki 22:17.) Wandering sheep, away from the fold, and exposed to the manifold dangers of the wilderness, are a fitting representation of those who have forsaken the right way and have gone astray. While the reference here is primarily to Isa 53:6 (“All we like sheep have gone astray”), Peter must have recalled the many allusions thereto by the Lord during his public ministry, and particularly the parable of the Good Shepherd. (Joh 10:1-16.)

But are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.–“Returned” is in the aorist tense, and thus indicates a single act, and a definite occasion when they returned–viz., at their conversion. The verb is also in the passive voice, often used as here with middle sense, to show that the subject acted upon itself to accomplish the desired result. Thus, these to whom Peter wrote, by their obedience to the gospel, were saved from the wandering life of sheep and the dangers incident thereto, and returned unto the”shepherd and bishop” of their souls. The Lord is presented here under two aspects: (1) he is a shepherd, in that he feeds, guides, and protects his sheep; (2) he is a bishop (overseer) because he superintends, supervises, and directs their activity. Those whose duty it is to direct the affairs of the churches are undershepherds in feeding, guiding, and directing the work of the church; and they are bishops in overseeing, under Christ, the work committed into their hands. (Eph 4:11; Act 20:28.) The author of this epistle was an elder (1Pe 5:1), and Christ is presented as the “chief shepherd” (1Pe 5:4). There is perhaps significance in the fact that attention is drawn to Christ as shepherd and bishop of souls. Though these to whom Peter primarily wrote were in bondage in the flesh, their souls, their higher nature was free and answerable only to the Great Shepherd

Commentary on 1Pe 2:18-25 by N.T. Caton

1Pe 2:18-Servants, be subject to your masters.

To such among the addressed believers as are in the station of a servant, I say to you it is your duty to be subject to the orders of those who are for the time being over you as masters. You must be careful not to discriminate. Some masters may be good and gentle; others, ill-natured and cross, even severe. Render faithful service alike to all. This is their due, considering your relations to each other.

1Pe 2:19-For this is thankworthy.

That is to say, this kind of a service meets the approbation of God, whether the master is satisfied or not. Service rendered for conscience’ sake, although grief and suffering are endured wrongfully, God will approve.

1Pe 2:20-For what glory is it?

If one is guilty of faults and is punished, the punishment is just, and, while the suffering is borne patiently, no credit is due for the patience. But where one renders conscientious service, and is then buffeted and bears his punishment with patience, this is acceptable to God.

1Pe 2:21-For even hereunto were ye called.

Suffering for well-doing, when Peter wrote, seems to have been the experience of all, and it was to be expected. Believers had been warned, and are now warned, that suffering may arise at any time for the cause of Christ. Evil and good are in antagonism. Persecution may arise. Even so Christ suffered, and he is our great example. He has left his example with us, and left it that we should follow in his footsteps. That is, bear patiently suffering, when inflicted for doing right.

1Pe 2:22-Who did no sin.

His conduct was without a fault.

1Pe 2:22-Neither was guile found in his mouth.

No false word was by him uttered, hence he suffered without cause. The sufferings endured by Christ he did not deserve.

1Pe 2:23-Who, when he was reviled.

When reviled by the Jews no words of resentment were by him used. When he was crucified, he did not threaten his persecutors, but meekly committed his cause to God, who judges a righteous judgment.

1Pe 2:24-Who his own self bare our sins.

The apostle is still considering the example left by Christ. He died for our sins. He did not die for his own sins, for he had none, but he bare ours on the cross. Our burden of sin was by him borne. A sacrificial offering was made, and thereby we have an opportunity, by his gracious provisions, to become dead to sin. We believe the gospel. We are baptized into his death, coming forth new creatures. We live new lives. We live and pursue a righteous course marked out by him by whose stripes the means were provided, by which we are healed of the wounds and bruises of sin and of its dominion.

1Pe 2:25-For ye were as sheep going astray.

That is, formerly led astray by the evil, but now are, as it were, found, and have returned from wandering by coming to Christ.

1Pe 2:25-The Shepherd and Bishop.

He is the good Shepherd. This he has proven by his death. A good shepherd careth for his sheep. Of this we are assured, for he said of himself, “I am the good shepherd” (Joh 10:11-14), and Paul calls him “that great Shepherd of the sheep” (Heb 13:20). Bishop, one that watches over the flock, and who will guide and defend it. None other could be depended upon with so much certainty as the one who died for them. No greater proof could be given.

Commentary on 1Pe 2:18-25 by Burton Coffman

1Pe 2:18 –Servants be in subjection to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

In subjection to your masters … Peter’s instructions here are in full harmony with Paul’s instructions to the Ephesians and the Colossians (Eph 5:6 ff; Col 3:22 ff). “The sacred writers use language of studied moderation, carefully avoiding any expressions which might be regarded as exciting to violence or revolutionary outbreaks.”[47] Of course, Christianity was squarely opposed to the institution of slavery; but there were considerations of the most weighty nature that forbade any such thing as a campaign against it. Such an attack would have intensified the persecutions coming upon the church; and equally important is the fact that any overt championship of the cause of the slaves would have promptly inundated the church with a whole army of unregenerated persons, seeking not Christ, but their freedom from slavery. It was Christ’s purpose to change the world, but not with dynamite; the holy faith acts as leaven.

But also to the froward … Peter took into account the two kinds of slavemasters, the good and the bad, cautioning the slaves to give loyal and true service to both kinds, because that was God’s will. Up to here, Peter had only vaguely mentioned the suffering coming upon the church, but in this he passed to “a class who were (already) sufferers indeed, the slaves of the household.”[48] “Froward is an archaic English word that has a literal meaning of crooked, perverse, unreasonable, or cross-grained.”[49] Even such wicked masters were to be honored and faithfully served by the Christians who were slaves.

[47] B. C. Caffin, op. cit., p. 74.

[48] J. R. Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 1044.

[49] Elmer C. Homrighausen, The Interpreter’s Bible, Vol. XIII (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1957), p. 117.

1Pe 2:19 –For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully.

If for conscience toward God … “This comes from a Greek phrase which means awareness of God.[50]The point of its inclusion here is that of forbidding the notion that patient suffering is in itself pleasing to God, which is not the case at all, “unless it is grounded on consciousness of God’s presence.”[51]

Endureth griefs … This is a reference to the cruel, and even inhumane, sadistic treatment the slaves of that era often received from their masters. They had no legal rights whatever; they could be beaten, maimed, burned with fire, or tortured in any manner that a wicked imagination might suggest. Griefs indeed! No class of people on earth ever suffered any more than the unhappy slaves who constituted the working capital of the ancient pagan world. What an achievement for Christianity that such a scourge was finally banished.

[50] Raymond C. Kelcy, op. cit., p. 59.

[51] A. J. Mason, op. cit., p. 408.

1Pe 2:20 –For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.

This is another verse in this epistle which carries the true hallmark of consonance with the teachings of Jesus Christ, who in the Beatitudes blessed, not those who were persecuted, but those who were persecuted “for righteousness sake” (Mat 5:10), there being no honor for those who, through their own sins, might have been persecuted. Mat 5:11 also carries the same qualification regarding the blessing of those who are reproached “falsely.”

1Pe 2:21 –For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow his steps:

This and the following four verses are some of the noblest Scripture in all the Bible. In these five verses, there are no less than six references to Christ as the Suffering Servant, as depicted in Isaiah 53. It is just what should have been expected from the apostle who so boldly identified Jesus as “God’s Servant Jesus” (Act 3:13).

Hereunto were ye called … Christ suffered vicariously for all people; and it is incumbent upon his followers that they should not shrink from any duty because of any suffering that might be incurred. There is also the thought here that, just as slaves were obligated to obey their masters, so Christians are also obligated to obey Christ.

Leaving you an example … “The word from which `example’ comes is found nowhere else in the New Testament”;[52] and the meaning of it is very similar to words translated “figure” in Act 7:44 and “pattern” inHebrews 8:5. The word is [@hupogrammos], and means “a writing copy,”[53] that is, a pattern for a copybook. This is therefore a valuable witness for existence of a heavenly pattern, not merely for the building of the church and the ordering of its worship, government and program, but also for the behavior and life-style of Christians as well.

[52] David H. Wheaton, op. cit., p. 1242.

[53] W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, 2(Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940), p. 54.

1Pe 2:22 –who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth:

The absolute sinlessness of our Lord is affirmed by this. Jesus, despite the perfection of his life, suffered; and the thought. for the slaves is that even if they could be sinless, there would still be occasions of suffering. And how shall the soul endure such injustice? By remembering that the Sinless One also suffered for us.

1Pe 2:23 –who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously:

This is a further deployment upon the sacred page of the beautiful and sinless character of the Saviour. Any person familiar with the Passion of Jesus can visualize what Peter related here. In fact the very words Peter wrote seem to have a suggestion of eyewitness testimony; and this is natural, coming from Peter who was indeed an eyewitness of those very things.

Committed himself unto him that judgeth righteously … Interestingly enough, the Douay Version translates this, “Committed himself to him that judgeth unrighteously,” making the meaning to be that Jesus submitted himself to the judgment of Pilate. While true enough, in a sense, the thought is better in our version; because, although Jesus submitted to Pilate’s judgment, he did so in the full realization that Pilate had no power but from above (Joh 19:11). Of interest also is the marginal reading “his cause” instead of “himself that was committed. As a matter of fact, Jesus committed both himself and his cause to God.

1Pe 2:24 –who his own self bare our sins in his body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed.

See under 1Pe 2:25 for a list of references here to Isaiah 53. Scripture could not state more plainly the great redemptive offering of Christ for our sins on the cross. There was a time when Peter himself resented this (Mat 16:22), but how gloriously he had learned his lesson.

In what way did Christ bear our sins? He bore the consequence of our sin, which is death itself; he suffered separation, though briefly, from the presence of God; he was numbered with transgressors; and they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death. He endured a lifetime of exposure to the outrageous opposition of evil and unscrupulous men. How have we died to sins? See note 1, at end of chapter.

By whose stripes ye were healed … What kind of holy medicine is this, in which the physician pays the price and the sufferer receives the healing! Jesus, of course, was chastised literally; his precious body was marked with the stripes that redeemed us.

1Pe 2:25 –For ye were going astray like sheep; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.

The two titles, Shepherd and Bishop, are here applied to the Lord Jesus Christ. One can only marvel that a scholar like Barclay would ascribe these titles as being referred here to God. He said, “These are two precious names for God.”[54] Jesus himself said, “I am the good shepherd” (Joh 10:14), appropriating the title in such a manner as to affirm his Godhead, without giving the Pharisees any excuse for charging him with sedition. Furthermore, no other title of Jesus our Lord ever so completely captured the hearts and imaginations of the primitive church in exactly the same manner as did this one:

There is no symbol upon which the early church seems to have dwelt with more delight than that of Christ as the Good Shepherd, bringing home to the fold the lost sheep. It was engraved on gems; it furnished the legends of seals; it gives today an almost fabulous value to fragments of broken glass; it was painted upon the chalice of the Holy Communion; and it was carved upon the tombs of the martyrs in the catacombs![55]

There can really, therefore, be no other way of understanding these two magnificent titles than as being ascribed here to the blessed Saviour.

Bishop … This word has none of the ecclesiastical overtones that afterward became associated with the word, indicating a date around the middle of the first century, and denying the success of those who have vainly attempted to remove 1Peter from its rightful historical place.

One of the truly great things in these remarkable last five verses of the chapter is the correspondence of the whole paragraph with the Suffering Servant portion of Isaiah. We are indebted to Hunter for this analysis of it.”[56]

1 Peter 2 Isaiah 53

1Pe 2:21, Christ suffered Isa 53:4, He bears our sins. for us.

1Pe 2:22, He did no sin, Isa 53:9, He did no sin, nor neither was guile found in his was guile in his mouth. mouth.

1Pe 2:23, When reviled, he Isa 53:7, He opened not his reviled not again. mouth.

1Pe 2:24 a, Who his own self Isa 53:12, He bare the sins bare our sins, etc. of many.

1Pe 2:24 b, By whose stripes Isa 53:5, By his stripes were we are healed. we healed.

1Pe 2:25, For ye were as Isa 53:6. All we like sheep sheep going astray. have gone astray.

Note 1. In 1Pe 2:24, Peter mentioned the fact of Christians “having died unto sins”; and there are a number of things which are included in the meaning: (1) There is preeminently the fact that Christ paid for us the penalty of death, which was due; and, the penalty having already been paid, it is legally true that all Christians are dead to sin. Although his words here do not seem to be stressing this aspect of it, the whole context of the passage with its emphasis upon what Christ has done for us allows this meaning to come through. (2) Christians are also dead to sin as far as their purpose is concerned. The first impulse of the regenerated heart is the resolution to live above sin. Therefore, as regards the purpose of Christians toward sin, they are dead to sins. (3) As Macknight pointed out, from the viewpoint of the pagan world in which they lived, and in large measure the viewpoint of our own age, Christians are not available for the practice of sensuality, immorality and drunkenness expected of them in the secular society; and as far as that godless society is concerned, they are dead, being, to all practical purposes, dead to the popular practice of evil. (4) One thing that is not meant is any implication that Christians are no longer tempted by sin. Even Christ was tempted; and there is no state of sanctification or holiness which may be attained by a child of God that can free him from the temptations to which all flesh is heir.

[54] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 215.

[55] W. A. Snively, Biblical Illustrator, 1Peter (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1938), p. 242.

[56] Archibald M. Hunter, op. cit., p. 118.

“THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER”

Chapter Two

OBJECTIVES IN STUDYING THIS CHAPTER

1) To note what is necessary in order to grow spiritually

2) To reflect upon our privilege and duties as God’s special people,

living as sojourners and pilgrims in a world not our home

3) To review our duty to submit to governmental authorities, and to make application of the instructions to slaves in our lives as employees

SUMMARY

Having described how they were born again by the incorruptible Word of God, Peter admonishes his readers to put aside sinful attitudes and to grow spiritually with an infant-like longing for the Word (1Pe 2:1-3).

He then depicts Jesus as a living stone, and Christians as living stones. The latter are being built up as a spiritual house and holy priesthood in order to offer spiritual sacrifices through Christ. As foretold in the Scriptures, Jesus is the chief cornerstone that is precious to those who believe, while a stone of stumbling to those who are disobedient. Christians are called on to proclaim the praises of God as they are now a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people who have now obtained mercy (1Pe 2:4-10).

As the people of God, Christians are sojourners and pilgrims in this world. Their duties as such involve abstaining from fleshly lusts, and keeping their conduct honorable among the Gentiles (nations) through good works designed to glorify God. They are to honor and submit to governmental authorities, and honor all people while loving the brethren and fearing God (1Pe 2:11-17).

Christian slaves are told to submit to their masters, even when they are harsh and cause them to suffer grief wrongly. Peter reveals that such submission is commendable before God and follows the example of Jesus whose own suffering delivered us from sin (1Pe 2:18-25).

OUTLINE

I. A CALL TO SPIRITUAL GROWTH (1Pe 2:1-3)

A. WHAT TO LAY ASIDE (1Pe 2:1)

1. All malice, all deceit

2. Hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking

B. WHAT TO DESIRE (1Pe 2:2-3)

1. The pure milk of the word

a. As newborn babes

b. That you may grow thereby

2. If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious

II. OUR PRIVILEGE IN CHRIST (1Pe 2:4-10)

A. AS LIVING STONES (1Pe 2:4-8)

1. Coming to Christ as to a living stone

a. Who was rejected by men

b. Who is chosen by God and precious

2. We as living stones are being built up as a spiritual house

a. To be a holy priesthood

b. To offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through

Jesus Christ

3. Christ is the precious cornerstone

a. As foretold in Isa 28:16

1) God would lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect,

precious

2) He who believes on Him will by no means be put to shame

3) Precious to those who believe

b. As foretold in Psa 118:22 and Isa 8:14

1) A stone rejected by the builders, which has become the

chief cornerstone

2) A stone of stumbling and rock of offense to those who are

disobedient

3) To which they were appointed

B. AS PEOPLE OF GOD (1Pe 2:9-10)

1. They are now:

a. A chosen generation

b. A royal priesthood

c. A holy nation

d. His own special people

2. They are now:

a. To proclaim the praises of God, who called them:

1) Out of darkness

2) Into His marvelous light

b. The people of God, who once were not the people of God

1) Who had not obtained mercy

2) But now have obtained mercy

III. OUR DUTIES IN CHRIST (1Pe 2:11-25)

A. AS SOJOURNERS (1Pe 2:11-12)

1. To abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul

2. To have conduct honorable among the Gentiles

a. That when they speak against you as evildoers

b. They may glorify God in the day of visitation

c. Because of your good works they observe

B. AS CITIZENS (1Pe 2:13-17)

1. Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake

a. To the king as supreme

b. To governors as those sent by the king

1) For the punishment of evildoers

2) For the praise of those who do good

2. For this is the will of God, as bondservants of God

a. That by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of

foolish men

b. As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice

3. Therefore:

a. Honor all

b. Love the brotherhood

c. Fear God

d. Honor the king

C. AS SERVANTS (1Pe 2:18-25)

1. Submissive to your masters with all fear

a. Not only to the good and gentle

b. But also to the harsh

2. For this is commendable before God

a. If because of conscience before God one endures grief,

suffering wrongfully

b. What credit is there when beaten for your faults, you take

it patiently?

c. If when you do good and suffer, yet take it patiently, that

is commendable

3. For we were called to Follow in the steps of Jesus our example

a. Who committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth

(Isa 53:9)

1) When He was reviled, did not revile in return

2) When He suffered, He did not threaten

3) He committed Himself to Him who judges righteously

b. Who bore our sins in His own body on the tree

1) That we, having died to sins, might live for

righteousness

2) By whose stripes you were healed

3) You were like sheep going astray, but have now returned

to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls

REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR THE CHAPTER

1) What are the main points of this chapter?

– A call to spiritual growth (1Pe 2:1-3)

– Our privilege in Christ (1Pe 2:4-10)

– Our duties in Christ (1Pe 2:11-25)

2) What must we lay aside to grow spiritually? (1Pe 2:1)

– All malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking

3) How should we long for the Word if we want to grow spiritually? (1Pe 2:2)

– As newborn babes desire milk

4) What should motivate us to desire the Word with such longing? (1Pe 2:3)

– If we have already tasted that the Lord is gracious

5) What kind of stone is used to describe Jesus? (1Pe 2:4)

– A living stone

– Rejected by men, but chosen by God and precious

6) What two metaphors are used to describe Christians? (1Pe 2:5)

– Living stones, being built up as a spiritual house

– A holy priesthood, offering up spiritual sacrifices to God through

Christ

7) What prophecy foretells the laying of a chief cornerstone in Zion?

(1Pe 2:6)

– Isa 28:16

8) What is Jesus to those who believe in Him? To those who do not

believe? (1Pe 2:6-8)

– The chief cornerstone, elect, precious

– A stone of stumbling, a rock of offense

9) What is the appointed end of those who do not believe and are

disobedient? (1Pe 2:8)

– They stumble

10) How are Christians described by Peter? What is their duty? Why?

(1Pe 2:9-10)

– A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own

special people

– To proclaim the praises of Him who called them out of darkness into

His marvelous light

– They are now the people of God who have obtained mercy

11) What is our duty as sojourners and pilgrims in this world? Why?

(1Pe 2:11-12)

– Abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul

– Conduct ourselves honorably among the Gentiles

– That they might glorify God in the day of visitation because of our

good works

12) What is our duty toward the governments of men? Why? (1Pe 2:13-15)

– Submit to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake

– That by doing good we might silence the ignorance of foolish men

13) How are we use our freedom in Christ? (1Pe 2:16)

– Not as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God

14) What four admonitions summarize our duties to others? (1Pe 2:17)

– Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king

15) What is the duty of servants to their masters? (1Pe 2:18)

– Be submissive with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but

also to the harsh

16) What is commendable before God? (1Pe 2:19-20)

– To endure grief, suffering wrongfully though doing good, because of

conscience toward God

17) To what have we been called? (1Pe 2:21)

– To follow in the steps of Christ, who suffered for us and left us

an example

18) How did Jesus suffer wrongly and bear it patiently? (1Pe 2:22-23)

– He committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth

– When reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did

not threaten

– He committed Himself to God who judges righteously

20) What good did Jesus accomplish by suffering such abuse? (1Pe 2:24-25)

– He bore our sins in His own body on the tree

– Making it possible for us to die to sin and live for righteousness

(by His strips we were healed)

– Like sheep gone astray, we have now returned to the Shepherd and

Overseer of our souls

THE SPIRITUAL HOUSE OF LIVING STONES

1Pe 2:1-25.

1. What should new-born babes in Christ put away or lay aside? Ans. 1Pe 2:1.

2. What should they desire? Ans. 1Pe 2:2.

3. How is eternal salvation attained? Ans. 1Pe 2:2.

4. Identify and describe the “living stone”. Ans. 1Pe 2:4.

5. Of what is God’s spiritual house on earth composed? Ans. 1Pe 2:5.

6. Why are the people of God called a “holy priesthood”? Ans. 1Pe 2:5.

7. What has been laid in Zion? Ans. 1Pe 2:6; Isa 28:16.

8. What stone did the builders reject? Ans. 1Pe 2:7; Psa 118:22.

9. On what do the disobedient stumble? Ans. 1Pe 2:8.

10. Describe the people of God. Ans. 1Pe 2:9.

11. What should they show forth in their lives? Ans. 1Pe 2:9.

12. What were they before they became God’s servants? Ans. 1Pe 2:10.

13. From what should they abstain? Ans. 1Pe 2:11.

14. What effect do the good works of Christians have on unbelieving critics? Ans. 1Pe 2:12.

15. To whom must children of God be obedient? Ans. 1Pe 2:13-14.

16. What is the divinely appointed work of civil government? Ans. 1Pe 2:14; Rom 13:3-4.

17. Why should Christians be obedient to civil rulers when their laws do not conflict with the law of the Lord? Ans. 1Pe 2:15-16.

18. Discuss the four duties of 1Pe 2:17.

19. What is the duty of servants to their masters? Ans. 1Pe 2:18.

20. When is suffering praiseworthy? Ans. 1Pe 2:19-20.

21. Who is our example and how did he bear his suffering? Ans. 1Pe 2:21-23.

22. What did his sufferings and death accomplish for us? Ms. 1Pe 2:24.

23. What is he to our souls? Ans. 1Pe 2:25. `

Questions by E.M. Zerr On 1st Peter 2

1. Laying aside all what?

2. What manner of babes are they?

3. By what had they been begotten?

4. This would suggest what kind of milk?

5. Had they already tasted this milk?

6. This should cause what attitude toward it?

7. Is such attitude naturaJ?

8. For what purpose is this milk?

9. State the kind of stone they came unto.

10. What other stone had given life?

11. By what men was this last stone rejected?

12. How are Christians used as stones?

13. What kind of sacrifice should they offer?

14. What scripture is here quoted?

15. Where was this Sian?

16. State the purposes of this stone.

17. To whom only is he precious?

18. What kind of stone is he to others?

19. Whose fault is it so?

20. How were these a chosen generation?

21. Contrast royal priesthood with former one.

22. Who purchased them as a people?

23. Whose possession would that make them?

24. Is this why they are peculiar to him as a people:

25. For what use did Christ purchase them?

26. What were these people according to the flesh?

27. State the advantage of right kind of walk.

28. State proper conduct toward the governmeut.

29. By what may we silence foolish ignorance?

30. How are we free and servants at same time?

31. Honor and fear whom?

32. Love what?

33. Would this be restricted to ”home congregation”?

34. State the command to servants.

35. Any exceptions as to kind of masters?

36. What would get credit of being thankworthy?

37. How must we suffer to be approved of God?

38. Is suffering justly worthy of praise?

39. Toward whom must our conscience be pure?

40. To what experience have we been called?

41. What example do we have left to us?

42. In what sense can we follow his steps?

43. How did Jesus meet temptation to sin?

44. What was not found in his mouth?

45. How did he treat his revilers?

46. To whom did he commit his cause?

47. What did he bear on the tree?

48. State what part of his being bore the,e.

49. That we might do what?

50. How can his stripes heal us?

51. In what condition were those people formerly?

52. To whom have they returned?

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

Following the Shepherd of Souls

1Pe 2:18-25

The argument from this point seems to be: Since you have been redeemed, live worthily of your heavenly calling in relation to your fellow-believers, to God, and to the state, 1Pe 2:17; to your employers, 1Pe 2:18; to husbands, 1Pe 2:1; to wives, 1Pe 2:7; to everyone, 1Pe 2:8.

Some of the tenderest words in the Epistles are addressed to the household slaves, who constituted a very important part of the primitive Church. Masters and mistresses had absolute control over their chattels; and might put them to death without interference from the state. The Apostle endeavors to cheer them while bearing their nameless wrongs. They were to bear all their sorrows patiently and silently, following in the footsteps of their Lord, and certain that He would vindicate them.

Let employees remember that they have been placed in worldly and ungodly homes as lamps on dark landings, in order to bear witness to Jesus by the simplicity and beauty of their conversation. And the way of the Cross is the only safe way for us all, if we would keep in touch with our Shepherd and Protector.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

be: Eph 6:5-7, Col 3:22-25, 1Ti 6:1-3, Tit 2:9, Tit 2:10

the good: 2Co 10:1, Gal 5:22, Tit 3:2, Jam 3:17

but: Psa 101:4, Pro 3:32, Pro 8:13, Pro 10:32, Pro 11:20

Reciprocal: Gen 16:9 – submit Gen 30:29 – General Gen 31:6 – General Gen 31:35 – my lord 1Ki 18:8 – thy lord Psa 85:13 – shall set Pro 12:26 – righteous Pro 27:18 – shall be Rom 13:7 – fear to 1Co 7:21 – being

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

1Pe 2:18. The subject of servants is commented upon at length at Ephe-sians 6:5 and the reader is asked to see that place. The masters were not all of the same temperament and they showed it in their treatment of their servants. Froward means to be unfair and surly, but whether they were thus or were gentle, the servant was told to obey them even though it cause them much unpleasantness.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

1Pe 2:18. Servants, submit yourselves to your matters. The term for servants here is different from the one by which Paul so frequently expresses the idea of the bond-servant. It occurs only thrice again in the N. T., once in Pauls writings (Rom 14:4), and twice in Lukes (Gospel, Luk 16:13; Act 10:7). It means, literally, one belonging to ones house, a domestic, and in Act 10:7 it is translated by our A. V. household servant. In the best period of classical literature (e.g. Herod, viii. 106; Soph. Trach. 894), as also at least occasionally in the Apocrypha (Sir 4:30; Sir 6:11), it is applied not unfrequently to all the inmates of ones house, or to the family in the present sense. Hence some suppose that in the present passage it includes all domestics, bond and free. Others (Steiger, etc.) think it is selected in order to cover the class of freedmen who contributed largely to the earliest converts. But as the more usual sense of the word is that of slave, as it has that meaning in such passages of the LXX. and the Apocrypha as Exo 21:27, Pro 17:2, Sir 10:25, and as that idea is certainly most germane to the context here, it is generally taken to denote bond-servants in the present passage. Peter selects it probably with a conciliatory purpose, as a more courteous term than the common one. It presents the slave in closer relation to the family, and so conveys a softened view of his position. The phrase submit yourselves, or make yourselves subject, is really in the participle form, submitting yourselves, and is connected, therefore, either with the honour all men of 1Pe 2:17 (Alford, de Wette, etc.), with the general injunction of 1Pe 2:11-12, or, most naturally, with the submit yourselves of 1Pe 2:13. The slaves duty is thus given as an integral section of the great law of subjection to every ordinance of man for the Lords sake. The word used for masters conveys the idea of absolute power. It is used in the present application elsewhere only in the Pastoral Epistles (see refs.). It repeatedly occurs as a Divine title, Lord (Luk 2:29; Act 4:24; 2Pe 2:1; Jud 1:4; Rev 6:10).

in all fear. Statement of the spirit or temper in which the subjection is to be made good. Is the fear which is here intended fear towards God or towards man? On the ground that Peter afterwards (1Pe 3:6; 1Pe 3:14) warns against the fear of man, that Paul (Col 3:22) appends the definition fearing the Lord to similar counsels to servants, and that the term occurs at times without any explanatory addition in the sense of religious fear (1Pe 1:17), some good interpreters (Weiss, Dr. John Brown, etc.) take the idea here to be = give this submission in a pious spirit, in reverential awe of God. But the next clause seems to define the fear here under the other aspect, as the feeling proper to the position of subjection, even under trying circumstances. It means, therefore, careful solicitude to give faithful service, shrinking from transgressing the masters will (Huther). This is confirmed by the use of the stronger phrase, with fear and trembling, in the Pauline parallel (Eph 6:5), which (as also in 1Co 2:3; 2Co 7:15, and even Php 2:15) appears to express the broad idea of watchful, nervous anxiety to do what is right.

not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. The fear has been put absolutely, all fear, as extending to everything which can make demands upon the servants loyalty and patience. The same is now required in reference to cases where it is subjected to the most painful strain. It is not to be affected by the harshness of the yoke, but is due equally to two very different types of master. The one type is described by two adjectives, which are represented fairly well by the good and gentle of the A. V. The second of these, however, means more than simply gentle. Adjective and noun are of somewhat limited occurrence in the N. T., and are variously rendered by our A. V., e.g. gentleness, gentle, here and in 2Co 10:1; Tit 3:2; Jas 3:17; clemency, Act 24:4; moderation, Php 4:5; patient, 1Ti 3:3. It expresses the disposition which lets equity temper justice, is careful not to press rights of law to the extreme of moral wrongs, and shrinks from rigorously exacting under all circumstances its legal due. It might be rendered considerate, or forbearing. Wycliffe gives mild; Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan, courteous; the Rhemish, modest. The other type is described by an adjective, which means literally crooked, twisting (in which sense it is applied, e.g., to the river Maeander in Apoll. Rhod. 4, 1541), and then ethically what is not straightforward. Besides the present passage, it occurs only thrice in the N. T.,in Luk 3:5; Php 2:15 (in which cases the A. V. gives crooked); and Act 2:40 (where the A. V. has untoward). So here it means not exactly capricious (as Luther puts it) or wayward (the Rhemish), or even froward (as both the A. V. and the R. V. give it after Tyndale, Cranmer, and the Genevan), but harsh or perverse, the disposition that lacks the reasonable and considerate, and makes a tortuous use of the lawful. In ecclesiastical Greek it is used to denote the Evil One.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

Observe here, 1. The order and method of our apostle in the exhortations given to Christians in this epistle: he first excites them in the general practice of their duty, and to be holy in all manner of conversation, and next binds upon them the performance of relative and particular duties. In the foregoing verses he insisted upon the duties of subjects towards magistrates and governors; in this verse he propounds the duty of servants towards their masters. Thus let Christian servants be subject to their masters, whether Christian or heathen, giving due reverence and respect, not only to such as are kind and gentle, but to such as froward and wrathful.

Learn hence, That such as are in the lowest condition, being servants, yea, the meanest of servants, may glorify God in that condition.

Learn, 2. That servants, to the end that they may glorify God in there servile condition, must be subject to their masters with all fear; yea, even to wicked and froward masters; because the ground of their obedience is the will and command of God, which binds them to their duty to their masters; though their masters fail and fall short in their duty to them.

Observe, 2. The several arguments made use of by St. Peter to enforce this duty upon servants.

1. This is highly acceptable and well-pleasing unto God, and will procure a gracious reward. We shall certainly receive a glorious reward from God for what we suffer wrongfully and unjustly from men. This is thank-worthy, and this is acceptable with God.

2. From the indecency of the contrary; because it is no virtue, but a just punishment for evil doers, to suffer patiently when we suffer justly is praise-worthy, yet not comparible with the praise of suffering patiently when we suffer patiently, as for ill-doing, will meet with a gracious, yea, with a glorious reward. What glory is it, if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently? But if when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently; this is acceptable with God.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

Patiently Suffering for the Master

Peter knew that in Christ, all men are equal ( Gal 3:28-29 ). However, that did not change the obligation a Christian would have to those over him. Even slaves were instructed to obey good and bad, or crooked, masters ( Eph 6:5-8 ; Col 3:22-25 ; 1Ti 6:1-2 ). These verses teach Christians that service to Christ is a life changing thing. The apostle said they were to strive to give their best to others under all circumstances because they were the Lord’s representatives. Servants could subject themselves to bad masters because they knew they were enduring wrongs in order to live a life pleasing to God and be acceptable in His sight ( 1Pe 2:18-19 ).

No particular honor goes to the man who suffers patiently when he is beaten for his mistakes and wrong doing. However, Peter assured his readers that God would accept and honor the man who endured beatings wrongfully administered by a bad master because he wanted to please God ( Mat 5:10 ). Woods says “into such a life as they were experiencing had they been called (by the gospel) to do good and to suffer patiently.” Not only did slaves who became Christians suffer, but all Christians must suffer for the sake of their Lord ( 2Ti 3:12 ; Php 1:29 ). After all, He suffered, so his followers must be prepared to suffer. The word “example” presents the idea of a teacher writing the correct letters above and the students trying to copy them below on a page. Peter also portrayed Christ as having left heel prints in sand, or snow. He said Christians should try to place their feet exactly where Christ’s were when he walked on earth as the obedient Son of God ( 1Pe 2:20-21 ).

Fuente: Gary Hampton Commentary on Selected Books

1Pe 2:18-20. Servants , household servants, be subject to your masters Though heathen, in all things lawful; with all fear Of offending them or God; not only to the good The tender, kind; and gentle Mild, easy, forgiving; but also to the froward The ill-natured and severe. In this verse, as Macknight justly observes, the apostle establishes one of the noblest and most important principles of morality, namely, that our obligation to relative duties does not depend either on the character of the persons to whom they should be performed, or on their performing the duties they owe to us, but on the unalterable relations of things established by God. For this is thankworthy An acceptable thing to God. Greek, ; literally, this is grace; that is, a grand proof of true grace; if a man for conscience toward God From a pure desire of pleasing him; endure grief Severe treatment; suffering wrongfully The apostle here refers to those punishments which, according to the customs of that age, tyrannical masters were allowed to inflict on their servants, however contrary to justice and mercy such punishments might be. For what glory Or praise; is it if, when ye be buffeted Corrected or beaten; for your faults For acts of manifest disobedience; ye shall take it patiently Since the punishment being just, it ought in reason to be borne. But if when ye do well Do your duty conscientiously; and suffer for it As if you had neglected it; ye take it patiently Receive it in a meek and quiet spirit; this is acceptable, or this is grace, with God His eye, which always observes every individual of his people, and all their actions, is pleased with such a disposition and behaviour, though exhibited in the lowest ranks of human life.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

1Pe 2:18-25. This is one of the noblest passages in the NT on the real meaning of service. It raised the position of slave at one moment to the highest honour. A man could take all degradation out of it, for he might put into his slavery the whole spirit of Jesus. With exquisite reminiscences of prophetic language and touches of personal experience the writer sketches Christs life and death of ministry, which wrought righteousness and healing. So might their lives, thus ordered, bring a new reign of purity, sweetness, and well-ordered power in the world (and they did!). All this they know, for the wanderersslaves of sinhave returned to One who is Shepherd and Guardian. The Master transforms all service. Catching His spirit they can become gentle even to the harshest taskmaster, and rejoice in such an opportunity. Cf. p. 649.

1Pe 2:19. for conscience toward is more accurately rendered, from a sense of God, i.e. because one is conscious of Gods nature and requirements.

1Pe 2:21-23. An interesting illustration of these verses is found among the recently discovered Odes of Solomon, Ode 31, lines 8ff., But I endured and held my peace and was silent, as if not moved by them. But I stood unshaken like a firm rock which is beaten by the waves and endures. And I bore their bitterness for humilitys sake; in order that I might redeem my people!

1Pe 2:24. upon the tree: the word rendered tree (lit. wood) is used twice in Peters speeches in Ac. (Act 5:30, Act 10:39) in the same sense as here. The sacrificial ideas of priest and victim are here combined in one Person (Heb 9:14). The victim was always regarded as holy though he bore the sin. The recollection of this fact is essential to a right understanding of the theory of sacrifice.died unto sins: this analogy, so frequently used by Paul, is found here also.stripes: really weals, a word that would touch slaves.

1Pe 2:25. Bishop: here probably used in the most general sense as overseer. It is noteworthy, considering its later ecclesiastical usage, that Christ Himself should be termed Bishop, from whom, as we may say, Every bishopric on earth is named.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

Verse 18

These servants were in bondage. They are required to be submissive to their masters, and patient under the ills of their lot; for, however great may have been the wrongs they suffered, either in the very fact of being unjustly held in bondage by their masters, or in the particular acts of oppression which individuals endured, resistance, disobedience, or sullenness, on their part, would only have aggravated the evil.

Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament

2:18 {21} Servants, [be] subject to [your] masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.

(21) He goes to the duty of servants towards their masters, which he describes with these bounds, that servants submit themselves willingly and not by force, not only to the good and courteous, but also to the perverse and severe matters.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

2. Slaves’ respect for their masters 2:18-25

Peter proceeded to address the situation of Christians working under the authority of others.

"The unusual fact, unnoticed by most Bible readers, is that he [Peter], along with Paul (1Co 7:21; Eph 6:5-8; Col 3:22-25; 1Ti 6:1-2; Tit 2:9-10) and later Christian writers (Did. 4:11; Barn. 19:7), addresses slaves at all, for Jewish and Stoic duty codes (which in many respects this code in 1 Peter, as well as those in Ephesians and Colossians, resembles) put no such moral demands on slaves, only on masters.

"The reason for this difference between 1 Peter and other moral codes of his time is simple. For society at large slaves were not full persons and thus did not have moral responsibility. For the church slaves were full and equal persons, and thus quite appropriately addressed as such. The church never addressed the institution of slavery in society, for it was outside its province-society in that day did not claim to be representative, and certainly not representative of Christians, concepts that arrived with the Enlightenment-but it did address the situation in the church, where no social distinctions were to be allowed, for all were brothers and sisters (Gal 3:28; 1Co 12:13; Col 3:11; Phm 1:16), however shocking that was to society at large." [Note: Davids, pp. 105-6.]

Peter evidently addressed servants but not masters because he addressed a social situation in which some of his readers were household servants but few, if any, were masters. [Note: Michaels, p. 122.]

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

In Peter’s culture the servant was the person who faced the most difficulty in relating to the person over him or her in authority. Masters traditionally enjoyed great power over their slaves. The Greek word translated "servants" (oikelai) means domestic servants, but in that society those people were slaves in that they had some limitations on their personal freedom. In our culture Peter’s directions apply to how we behave in relation to those directly over us in society (employers, bosses, administrators, teachers, et al.). [Note: For a different view, see William J. Webb, Slaves, Women & Homosexuals, p. 36. See Wayne Grudem, "Should We Move Beyond the New Testament to a Better Ethic?" Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47:2 (June 2004):299-346, for a thorough and devastating, I believe, critique of Webb’s book.]

Again Peter commanded an attitude of respectful submission (cf. 1Pe 2:13). The master’s personal character or conduct is not the reason for this behavior. We are to respond this way regardless of his or her actions (cf. Eph 6:5-8).

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 8

CHRISTIAN SERVICE

1Pe 2:18-25

THE Gospel history shows very clearly that during our Lords lifetime His followers were drawn largely from the ranks of the poor. It was fitting that He who had been proclaimed in prophecy as “the servant of the Lord” should enter the world in humble estate; and, from the lowly position of the Virgin Mother and her husband, the life of Jesus for thirty years must have been spent in comparative poverty and amid poor surroundings. The major part of His chosen disciples were fisher-folk and such-like. And though we read of the wife of Herods steward among the women who ministered unto Him, and of the richer Joseph of Arimathaea as a secret disciple, these are marked exceptions. To the poor His Gospel was preached, and among the poor it first made its way. The question of the chief priests, “Hath any of the rulers believed on Him, or of the Pharisees?” {Joh 7:48} tells its own tale, as does also the significant record, “The common people heard Him gladly”. {Mar 12:37}

It need not therefore much surprise us if St. Peter, now that he begins to classify his counsels, addresses himself first to “household servants”: “Servants, be in subjection to your masters, with all fear.” We have, however, to bear in mind, as we consider the Apostles exhortation, that most of those whom he addresses were slaves. They had no power of withdrawing themselves, though their service should prove burdensome and grievous. St. Paul, in writing to the same class, nearly always employs the word which means “bondservants.” Yet his counsel agrees with St. Peters. Thus he exhorts that their service be “with fear and trembling”; {Eph 6:5} in Col 3:22, “Obey in all things them that are your masters.” And to Timothy and Titus it is given as a part of their charge to “exhort servants to be in subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing to them in all things”. {1Ti 6:1 Tit 2:9}

When St. Peter and St. Paul wrote, this slave population was everywhere very numerous. Gibbon calculates that in the reign of Claudius the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of the Roman world; Robertson places the estimate much higher. These formed, then, a very large share of the public to which the first preachers had to appeal, and we can understand the importance to the Christian cause of the behavior of these humble, but doubtless most numerous, members of the society. Their lives would be a daily sermon in the houses of their masters. Hence the very earnest exhortations addressed to them that by their conduct they should adorn the doctrine of God our Savior in all things; that they should count their masters worthy of all honor; that the name of God and of the doctrine be not blasphemed; that they should be in subjection with all fear. Everything in the New Testament concerning slaves goes to show that they were a most important factor in the early Christian societies.

Men wonder nowadays that there is so little said by any of the Apostles about freeing slaves from their bondage. The best men in those times and long before appear to have regarded slavery as one of the institutions with which they were bound to rest content. It flourished everywhere; it was countenanced in the Scriptures of the older dispensation. Eleazar was Abrahams slave, and the Law in many passages contemplates-the possession by Israelites of persons who were bought with their money. Hence we find no remonstrance against slave-holding in the New Testament writings, only advice to those who were in such bondage to cultivate a spirit which would render it less galling and to strive that by their behavior the cause of Christ might be advanced. St. Paul represents the ideas of his age when, writing to the Corinthians, he says, “Wast thou called being a bondservant? Care not for it; but if thou canst be made free, use it rather”. {1Co 7:21} Freedom was worth having, but any heroic effort to get rid of the yoke is not encouraged in the Epistles. Yet it must have been a lot which called for the exercise of much moral strength to make it bearable. Even from the house of the Christian Philemon the slave Onesimus found cause to run away. But St. Paul in his letter admits no right on the slaves part to take this course. With the Apostle there is no question that the first duty is to go back to his master. All that he urges is that the common profession of Christianity by slave and master ought to, and doubtless would, alleviate the conditions of servitude. There were in Christianity, as time has shown, germs which would fructify, a spirit which some day would strike off the chains of slaves. But the vision of such a time had not dawned either for St. Paul or St. Peter. Christ has overcome the world in many other matters beside slavery. It is only that Christians are so tardy in awaking to the fullness of His lessons.

So in apostolic days the rights and claims of slave-masters were looked upon as indisputable. Be subject, “not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.” There is to be no resistance, no lapse in duty. About service rendered to good masters there might be little apprehension, but even here St. Paul finds occasion for warning. “They that have believing masters,” he says, “let them not despise them because they are brethren.” {1Ti 6:2} Christian freedom was not without its dangers in many forms, especially to minds wherein liberty was a strange idea. But froward masters are to be faithfully served likewise, and care is to be taken withal to remove every occasion for their frowardness. The apostolic lesson is to make suffering endurable, noble, acceptable to God, by seeing that it be always undeserved. How strange a doctrine his in the eyes of the world! The rule of purely human conduct would be just the opposite. If wrong be undeserved, rebel at once. Christianity supplies a motive for the contrary course: “conscience toward God.” The worlds spirit is not His spirit, and to have praise with Him should be the Christians single aim. Men can at times be patient when rebuke is deserved, but the world sees that that deserves no credit. “What thank have ye?” they cry. But they give no praise for the bearing of unmerited rebuke.

The world counts such conduct weakness, and is still far from comprehending the Divineness of the virtue of yielding patiently to wrong. God has long been teaching the lesson, but it has been slowly learnt. He chose the milder, timid Jacob rather than the fiery Esau. Both had faults in multitude. With the world Esau is oft the favorite. At a later day he stamps with approval the noble mercy of David in sparing Saul, while round Daniel and his companions in Babylon there gathers something of a halo of New Testament sanctity by reason of the noble confession which they made under persecution. These are chapters in the Divine lesson-book. Such lives marked stages in the preparation for the Servant of the Lord. Men, if they would have hearkened, were being trained to estimate such a character at Gods value. Now Christs example is before us, and we are bidden to follow it.

“For hereunto were ye called.” Strange invitation to be dictated by love, a call to suffering! And yet the Master at first promises nothing else to His followers: “If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me”. {Mat 16:24} And what can a Christian wish for but to be like Christ? And the very reason given ought to make us love the cross. We are called unto suffering because Jesus suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. He has trodden the hard road, the winepress of the wrath of God, alone and for men. At this point the Apostle begins to apply to Christ Isaiahs description of the suffering “Servant of the Lord,” “who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth”. {Isa 53:1-12} But soon the memory of the scenes he had witnessed is present with him; and his words, though holding to the spirit of Isaiahs picture, become a description of what he himself had seen and heard when Jesus was taken and crucified: “Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” How the brief words sum up and recall the dark history-Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod; the mockery, the scourging, the railing crowd, the dying Jesus, and the parting prayer, “Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit.”

So far the Apostle speaks of the example of Christ, which, though far above and beyond us, we are exhorted and called on to follow. And there are many who will go with him thus far who value our Lords work only for its lofty example. Indeed, it is characteristic of those who deny the mediatorial office of Christ to be loudest in magnifying the grandeur of His character. To His good works, His love for men, His spotless life, His noble lessons, they accord untiring praise, as though thereby they would atone for denying Him that office which is more glorious still. But St. Peter stops at no such half-way house. He knows in whom he has believed, knows Him for the Son of the living God, a Teacher with whom were the words of eternal life. So in pregnant words he sets forth the doctrine of the Atonement as the end of Christs suffering: “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness.” He bare our sins. The words tell of something beyond our powers to comprehend; but some light is shed on them by a kindred passage, {Mat 8:17} where the Evangelist applies to the work of Jesus those other words from Isa 53:1-12, “Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses.” The narrative in the Gospel has just recorded how Jesus wrought many miracles. First, a leper was healed, then the centurions servant, next Simons wifes mother, and afterwards many sick and demoniacs beside. There is no record here of the effect produced on Jesus Himself by these exhibitions of miraculous power, but from other passages in the Gospels we do find that He was conscious in Himself of a demand on His power when such cures were wrought. Thus we are told, at the cure of the woman with the issue, that Jesus perceived in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth; {Mar 5:30} and again when many were cured, that “power came forth from Him and healed them.” {Luk 6:19} Of the woman Jesus says expressly, “Thy faith hath made thee whole”; and the manifestation of eagerness to touch Jesus is a sign of the faith of the others whom the Divine power blessed with health.

The Bible recognizes everywhere the analogy between sin and sickness. May we not trace some analogy between the Lords works of healing and that mightier deliverance from sin won by Christ upon the cross, an analogy which may help, if but a little, to give meaning to the bearing by Christ of human sins? A power went forth when the sick were healed; and through that imparted power they were restored to health, faith being the pathway which brought the Divine virtue to their aid. Thus Jesus bore their diseases and took them away. Look through this figure on the work of our redemption. Christ has borne the burden of sin. He has died for sin that men may die from sin, that sin may be slain in us, the fell disease healed by the power of His suffering. We cannot comprehend what was done for the sick when Christ was on earth, nor what is wrought for sinners by His grace in heaven. Those alone who reap the blessing know its certainty; and they can but say, as the blind man whose sight was restored, “One thing I know: that, whereas I was blind, now I see”. {Joh 9:25}

To this teaching, that Christs suffering wrought mans rescue, St. Peter adds emphasis by another quotation from that chapter of Isaiah which he has so much in mind: “by whose stripes ye were healed.” Christ was stricken, and God grants to His sufferings a power to heal the souls of those whom He loves because they strive to love Him. Healing through wounds! Soundness through that which speaks only of injury! Mysterious dispensation! But long ago it had been foreshadowed, and shown also how little connection there was to be, except through faith, between the remedy and the disease. Those who were bitten of the serpents in the wilderness gazed on the brazen serpent, and were healed. In the dead brass was no virtue, but God was pleased to make of it a speaking sacrament; so has it pleased Him to give healing of sins to those who by faith appropriate the sacrifice on Calvary. Christ has claimed the type for Himself: “I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself”. {Joh 12:32}

And now, as is so often his wont, St. Peter varies the figure. The wounded sinner finding cure becomes the wandering sheep that has been brought back into the fold: “for ye were going astray like sheep, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls.” But the message, the teaching, the love, is all the same. He who before was the great Exemplar, whose footsteps we should follow, is now the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, who goes before His sheep. This Shepherd has been a Sufferer, too. He has given Himself up as prey to the wolves that His flock might be saved. Now, with a voice of love, He calls His sheep by name; and hearing, they follow Him.

But He is more than this. Brought within the fold, the sheep still need His care; and it is freely given. He is the Bishop, the Overseer, the Watchman for His peoples safety, who, having gathered them within the fold, tends them with constant watchfulness. The figure passes over thus into the reality in the Apostles closing words. The cure which the great Healer desires to accomplish is in the souls of men. For them His care is bestowed, first to bring them safe out of the way of evil, then forever to keep them under the sheltering care of His abundant love.

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary

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