# commentaries

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 If we put bits into horses' mouths to make them obedient to us, we can control the direction of their whole body as well. Look at ships, too. See how large they are and how they are driven by rough winds, and see how their course is altered by a very small rudder, wherever the pressure of the steersman desires. So, too, the tongue is a little member of the body, but it makes arrogant claims for itself.<p/></i><p/>It might be argued against James' terror of the tongue that it is a very small part of the body to make such a fuss about and to which to attach so much importance. To combat that argument James uses two pictures.<p/>(i) We put a bit into the mouth of a horse, knowing that if we can control its mouth, we can control its whole body. So James says that if we can control the tongue, we can control the whole body; but if the tongue is uncontrolled, the whole life is set on the wrong way.<p/>(ii) A rudder is very small in comparison with the size of a ship; and yet, by exerting pressure on that little rudder, the steersman can alter the course of the ship and direct it to safety. Long before, Aristotle had used this same picture when he was talking about the science of mechanics: "A rudder is small and it is attached to the very end of the ship, but it has such power that by this little rudder, and by the power of one man--and that a power gently exerted--the great bulk of ships can be moved." The tongue also is small, yet it can direct the whole course of a man's life.<p/>Philo called the mind the charioteer and steersman of man's life; it is when the mind controls every word and it itself is controlled by Christ that life is safe.<p/>James is not for a moment saying that silence is better than speech. He is not pleading for a Trappist life where speech is forbidden. He is pleading for the control of the tongue. Aristippus the Greek had a wise saying, "The conqueror of pleasure is not the man who never uses it. He is the man who uses pleasure as a rider guides a horse or a steersman directs a ship, and so directs them wherever he wishes." Abstention from anything is never a complete substitute for control in its use. James is not pleading for a cowardly silence but for a wise use of speech.<p/><b>A DESTRUCTIVE FIRE</b> (<a href='B:660 3:5'>Jas 3:5</a> <b>b-6)</b><p/><i> 3:5b-6 See how great a forest how little a fire can set alight. And the tongue is a fire; in the midst of our members the tongue stands for the whole wicked world, for it defiles the whole body and sets on fire the ever-recurring cycle of creation, and is itself set on fire by hell.<p/></i><p/>The damage the tongue can cause is like that caused by a forest fire. The picture of the forest fire is common in the Bible. It is the prayer of the Psalmist that God may make the wicked like chaff before the wind; and that his tempest may destroy them as fire consumes the forest and the flame sets the mountains ablaze (<a href='B:230 83:13-14'>Psa 83:13-14</a>). Isaiah says "wickedness burns like a fire, it consumes briers and thorns; it kindles the thickets of the forest" (<a href='B:290 9:18'>Isa 9:18</a>). Zechariah speaks of "a blazing pot in the midst of wood, like a flaming torch among sheaves" (<a href='B:450 12:6'>Zec 12:6</a>). The picture was one the Jews of Palestine knew well. In the dry season the scanty grass and low-growing thorn bushes and scrub were as dry as tinder. If they were set on fire, the flames spread like a wave which there was no stopping.<p/>The picture of the tongue as a fire is also a common Jewish picture. "A worthless man plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire, says the writer of the Proverbs (<a href='B:240 16:27'>Pro 16:27</a>). "As pitch and tow, so a hasty contention kindleth fire" (Sir_28:11). There are two reasons why the damage which the tongue can do is like a fire.<p/>(i) It is wide-ranging. The tongue can damage at a distance. A chance word dropped at one end of the country or the town can finish up by bringing grief and hurt at the other. The Jewish Rabbis had this picture: "Life and death are in the hand of the tongue. Has the tongue a hand? No, but as the hand kills, so the tongue. The hand kills only at close quarters; the tongue is called an arrow because it kills at a distance. An arrow kills at forty or fifty paces, but of the tongue it is said (<a href='B:230 73:9'>Psa 73:9</a>), 'They set their mouths against the heavens, and their tongue struts through the earth.' It ranges over the whole earth and reaches to heaven." That, indeed, is the peril of the tongue. A man can ward off a blow with the hand, for the striker must be in his presence. But a man can drop a malicious word, or repeat a scandalous and untrue story, about someone whom he does not even know or about someone who stays hundreds of miles away, and cause infinite harm.<p/>(ii) It is uncontrollable. In the tinder-dry conditions of Palestine a forest fire was almost immediately out of control; and no man can control the damage of the tongue. "Three things come not back--the spent arrow, the spoken word and the lost opportunity." There is nothing so impossible to kill as a rumour; there is nothing so impossible to obliterate as an idle and malignant story. Let a man, before he speaks, remember that once a word is spoken it is gone from his control; and let him think before he speaks because, although he cannot get it back, he will most certainly answer for it.<p/><b>THE CORRUPTION WITHIN</b> (<a href='B:660 3:5'>Jas 3:5</a> <b>b-6 continued)</b><p/> We must spend a little longer on this passage, because in it there are two specially difficult phrases.<p/>(i) The tongue, says the Revised Standard Version is an unrighteous world. That ought to be the unrighteous world. In our bodies, that is to say, the tongue stands for the whole wicked world. In Greek the phrase is ho (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) kosmos (<a href='S:G2899'>G2899</a>) tes (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) adikias (<a href='S:G93'>G93</a>), and we shall best get at its meaning by remembering that kosmos (<a href='S:G2889'>G2889</a>) can have two meanings.<p/>(a) It can mean adornment, although this is less usual. The phrase, therefore, could mean that the tongue is the adornment of evil. That would mean that it is the organ which can make evil attractive. By the tongue men can make the worse appear the better reason; by the tongue men can excuse and Justify their wicked ways; by the tongue men can persuade others into sin. There is no doubt that this gives excellent sense; but it is doubtful if the phrase really can mean that.<p/>(b) Kosmos (<a href='S:G2889'>G2889</a>) can mean world. In almost every part of the New Testament kosmos (<a href='S:G2889'>G2889</a>) means the world with more than a suggestion of the evil world. The world cannot receive the Spirit (<a href='B:500 14:17'>Joh 14:17</a>). Jesus manifests himself to the disciples but not to the world (<a href='B:500 14:22'>Joh 14:22</a>). The world hates him and therefore hates his disciples (<a href='B:500 15:18-19'>Joh 15:18-19</a>). Jesus' kingdom is not of this world (<a href='B:500 18:36'>Joh 18:36</a>). Paul condemns the wisdom of this world (<a href='B:530 1:20'>1Co 1:20</a>). The Christian must not be conformed to this world (<a href='B:520 12:2'>Rom 12:2</a>). When kosmos (<a href='S:G2889'>G2889</a>) is used in this sense it means the world without God, the world in its ignorance of, and often its hostility to, God. Therefore, if we call the tongue the evil kosmos (<a href='S:G2889'>G2889</a>), it means that it is that part of the body which is without God. An uncontrolled tongue is like a world hostile to God. It is the part of us which disobeys him.<p/>(ii) The second difficult phrase is what the Revised Standard Version translates the cycle of nature (trochos (<a href='S:G5164'>G5164</a>) geneseos, <a href='S:G1083'>G1083</a>). It literally means the wheel of being.<p/>The ancients used the picture of the wheel to describe life in four different ways.<p/>(i) The wheel is a circle, a rounded and complete whole, and, therefore, the wheel of life can mean the totality of life.<p/>(ii) Any particular point in the wheel is always moving up or down. Therefore, the wheel of life can stand for the ups and downs of life. In this sense the phrase very nearly means the wheel of fortune, always changing and always variable.<p/>(iii) The wheel is circular; it is always turning back upon itself in exactly the same circle; therefore, the wheel came to stand for the cyclical repetition of life, the weary round of an existence which is ever repeating itself without advancing.<p/>(iv) The phrase had one particular technical use. The Orphic religion believed that the human soul was continually undergoing a process of birth and death and rebirth; and the aim of life was to escape from this treadmill into infinite being. So the Orphic devotee who had achieved could say, "I have flown out of the sorrowful, weary wheel." In this sense the wheel of life can stand for the weary treadmill of constant reincarnation.<p/>It is unlikely that James knew anything about Orphic reincarnation. It is not at all likely that any Christian would think in terms of a cyclical life which was not going anywhere. It is not likely that a Christian would be afraid of the chances and changes of life. Therefore, the phrase most probably means the whole of life and living. What James is saying is that the tongue can kindle a destructive fire which can destroy all life; and the tongue itself is kindled with. the very fire of hell. Here indeed is its terror.<p/><b>BEYOND ALL TAMING</b> (<a href='B:660 3:7-8'>Jas 3:7-8</a>)


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 Every kind of beast and bird, and reptile and fish, is and has been tamed for the service of mankind; but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.<p/></i><p/>The idea of the taming of the animal creation in the service of mankind is one which often occurs in Jewish literature. We get it in the creation story. God said of man, "Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth" (<a href='B:10 1:28'>Gen 1:28</a>). It is, in fact, to that verse that James is very likely looking back. The same promise is repeated to Noah: "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every bird of the air, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea; into your hand they are delivered (<a href='B:10 9:2'>Gen 9:2</a>). The writer of Ecclesiasticus repeats the same idea: "God put the fear of man upon all flesh, and gave him dominion over beasts and fowls" (Sir_17:4). The Psalmist thought on the same lines: "Thou hast given him dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet; all sheep and oxen, and also the beasts of the field; the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the sea" (<a href='B:230 8:6-8'>Psa 8:6-8</a>). The Roman world knew of tame fish in the fish-ponds which were in the open central hall or atrium of a Roman house. The serpent was the emblem of Aesculapius, and in his temples tame serpents glided about and were supposed to be incarnations of the god. People who were ill slept in the temples of Aesculapius at night, and if one of these tame serpents glided over them, that was supposed to be the healing touch of the god.<p/>Man's ingenuity has tamed every wild creature in the sense of controlling and making useful; that, says James, is what no man by his own unaided efforts has ever been able to do with the tongue.<p/><b>BLESSING AND CURSING</b> (<a href='B:660 3:9-12'>Jas 3:9-12</a>)


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 With it we bless the Lord and Father and with it we curse the men who have been made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth there emerge blessing and cursing. These things should not be so, my brothers. Surely the one stream from the same cleft in the rock does not gush forth fresh and salt water? Surely, brothers, a fig-tree cannot produce olives, nor a vine figs, nor can salt water produce fresh water?<p/></i><p/>We know only too well from experience that there is a cleavage in human nature. In man there is something of the ape and something of the angel, something of the hero and something of the villain, something of the saint and much of the sinner. It is James' conviction that nowhere is this contradiction more evident than in the tongue.<p/>With it, he says, we bless God. This was specially relevant to a Jew. Whenever the name of God was mentioned, a Jew must respond: "Blessed be he!" Three times a day the devout Jew had to repeat the Shemoneh Esreh, the famous eighteen prayers called Eulogies, every one of which begins, "Blessed be thou, O God." God was indeed eulogetos (<a href='S:G2128'>G2128</a>), The Blessed One, the One who was continually blessed. And yet the very mouths and tongues which had frequently and piously blessed God, were the very same mouths and tongues which cursed fellowmen. To James there was something unnatural about this; it was as unnatural as for a stream to gush out both fresh and salt water or a bush to bear opposite kinds of fruit. Unnatural and wrong such things might be, but they were tragically common.<p/>Peter could say, "Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you" (<a href='B:470 26:35'>Mat 26:35</a>), and that very same tongue of his denied Jesus with oaths and curses (<a href='B:470 26:69-75'>Mat 26:69-75</a>). The John who said, "Little children, love one another, was the same who had once wished to call down fire from heaven in order to blast a Samaritan village out of existence (<a href='B:490 9:51-56'>Luk 9:51-56</a>). Even the tongues of the apostles could say very different things.<p/>John Bunyan tells us of Talkative: "He was a saint abroad and a devil at home." Many a man speaks with perfect courtesy to strangers and even preaches love and gentleness, and yet snaps with impatient irritability at his own family. It has not been unknown for a man to speak with piety on Sunday and to curse a squad of workmen on Monday. It has not been unknown for a man to utter the most pious sentiments one day and to repeat the most questionable stories the next. It has not been unknown for a woman to speak with sweet graciousness at a religious meeting and then to go outside to murder someone's reputation with a malicious tongue.<p/>These things, said James, should not be. Some drugs are at once poisons and cures; they are benefits to a man when wisely controlled by his doctor but harmful when used unwisely. The tongue can bless or curse; it can wound or soothe; it can speak the fairest or the foulest things. It is one of life's hardest and plainest duties to see that the tongue does not contradict itself but speaks only such words as we would wish God to hear.<p/><b>THE MAN WHO OUGHT NEVER TO BE A TEACHER</b> (<a href='B:660 3:13-14'>Jas 3:13-14</a>)


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 Who among you is a man of wisdom and of understanding? Let him show by the loveliness of his behaviour that all he does is done with gentleness. If in your hearts you have a zeal that is bitter, and selfish ambition, do not be arrogantly boastful about your attainments, for you are false to the truth.<p/></i><p/>James goes back, as it were, to the beginning of the chapter. His argument runs like this: "Is there any of you who wishes to be a real sage and a real teacher? Then let him live a life of such beautiful graciousness that he will prove to all that gentleness is enthroned as the controlling power within his heart. For, if he has a fanatical bitterness and is obviously controlled by selfish and personal ambition, then, whatever claims he makes in his arrogance, all he does is to be false to the truth which he professes to teach."<p/>James uses two interesting words. His word for zeal is zelos (<a href='S:G2205'>G2205</a>). Zelos (<a href='S:G2205'>G2205</a>) need not be a bad word. It could mean the noble emulation which a man felt when confronted with some picture of greatness and goodness. But there is a very narrow dividing line between noble emulation and ignoble envy. The word he uses for selfish ambition is eritheia (<a href='S:G2052'>G2052</a>) which was also a word with no necessarily bad meaning. It originally meant spinning for hire and was used of serving women. Then it came to mean any work done for pay. Then it came to mean the kind of work done solely for what could be got out of it. Then it entered politics and came to mean that selfish ambition which was out for self and for nothing else and was ready to use any means to gain its ends.<p/>A scholar and a teacher is always under a double temptation.<p/>(i) He is under the temptation to arrogance. Arrogance was the besetting sin of the Rabbis. The greatest of the Jewish teachers were well aware of that. In The Sayings of the Fathers we read, "He that is arrogant in decision is foolish, wicked, puffed up in spirit." It was the advice of one of the wise men: "It rests with thy colleagues to choose whether they will adopt thy opinion: it is not for thee to force it upon them." Few are in such constant spiritual peril as teachers and preachers. They are used to being listened to and to having their words accepted. All unconsciously they tend, as Shakespeare had it, to say,<p/>"I am Sir Oracle,<p/>And when I open my lips let no dog bark!"<p/>It is very difficult to be a teacher or a preacher and to remain humble; but it is absolutely necessary.<p/>(ii) He is under the temptation to bitterness. We know how easily "learned discussion can produce passion." The odium theologicum is notorious. Sir Thomas Browne has a passage on the savagery of scholars to each other: "Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius' razor; their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder: I had rather stand the shock of a basilisco, than the fury of a merciless pen." Philip Lilley reminds us that Dr. H. F. Stewart said that the arguments of Pascal with the Jesuits reminded him of Alan Breck's fight with the crew of the Covenant in Stevenson's Kidnapped: "The sword in his hand flashed like quicksilver into the middle of our flying enemies, and at every flash came the scream of a man hurt." One of the most difficult things in the world is to argue without passion and to meet arguments without wounding. To be utterly convinced of one's own beliefs without at the same time being bitter to those of others is no easy thing; and yet it is a first necessity for the Christian teacher and scholar.<p/>We may find in this passage four characteristics of the wrong kind of teaching.<p/>(i) It is fanatical. The truth it holds is held with unbalanced violence rather than with reasoned conviction.<p/>(ii) It is bitter. It regards its opponents as enemies to be annihilated rather than as friends to be persuaded.<p/>(iii) It is selfishly ambitious. It is, in the end, more eager to display itself than to display the truth; and it is interested more in the victory of its own opinions than in the victory of the truth.<p/>(iv) It is arrogant. Its attitude is pride in its knowledge rather than humility in its ignorance. The real scholar will be far more aware of what he does not know than of what he knows.<p/><b>THE WRONG KIND OF WISDOM</b> (<a href='B:660 3:15-16'>Jas 3:15-16</a>)


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 Such wisdom is not the wisdom which comes down from above, but is earthly, characteristic of the natural man, inspired by the devil. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and every evil thing.<p/></i><p/>This bitter and arrogant wisdom, so-called, is very different from real wisdom. James first of all describes it in itself, and then in its effects. In itself it is three things.<p/>(i) It is earthly. Its standards and sources are earthly. It measures success in worldly terms; and its aims are worldly aims.<p/>(ii) It is characteristic of the natural man. The word James uses is difficult to translate. It is psuchikos (<a href='S:G5591'>G5591</a>), which comes from psuche (<a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>). The ancients divided man into three parts--body, soul and spirit. The body (soma, <a href='S:G4983'>G4983</a>) is our physical flesh and blood; the soul (psuche, <a href='S:G5590'>G5590</a>) is the physical life which we share with the beasts; the spirit (pneuma, <a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>) is that which man alone possesses, which differentiates him from the beasts, which makes him a rational creature and kin to God. This is a little confusing for us, because we are in the habit of using soul in the same sense as the ancient people used spirit. James is saying that this wrong kind of wisdom is no more than an animal kind of thing; it is the kind of wisdom which makes an animal snap and snarl with no other thought than that of prey or personal survival.<p/>(iii) It is devilish. Its source is not God, but the devil. It produces the kind of situation which the devil delights in, not God.<p/>James then describes this arrogant and bitter wisdom in its effects. The most notable thing about it is that it issues in disorder. That is to say, instead of bringing people together, it drives them apart. Instead of producing peace, it produces strife. There is a kind of person who is undoubtedly clever, with acute brain and skilful tongue; but his effect, nevertheless, in any committee, in any church, in any group, is to cause trouble and to disturb personal relationships. It is a sobering thing to remember that the wisdom he possesses is devilish rather than divine.<p/><b>THE TRUE WISDOM (1)</b> (<a href='B:660 3:17-18'>Jas 3:17-18</a>)


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 The wisdom which comes from above is first pure, then peaceable, considerate, willing to yield, full of mercy and of good fruits, undivided in mind, without hypocrisy. For the seed which one day produces the reward which righteousness brings can only be sown when personal relationships are right and by those whose conduct produces such relationships.<p/></i><p/>The Jewish sages were always agreed that the true wisdom came from above. It was not the attainment. of man but the gift of God. Wisdom describes this wisdom as "the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty" (Wis_7:25). The same book prays, "Give me the wisdom that sitteth by thy throne" (Wis_9:4); and again, "O send her from Thy holy heavens, and from the throne of thy glory" (Wis_9:8). Ben Sirach began his book with the sentence, "All wisdom cometh from the Lord, and is with him for ever" (Sir_1:1); and he makes Wisdom say, "I came out of the mouth of the Most High" (Sir_24:3). With one voice the Jewish sages agreed that wisdom came to men from God.<p/>James uses eight words to describe this wisdom, and every one has a great picture in it.<p/>(i) The true wisdom is pure. The Greek is hagnos (<a href='S:G53'>G53</a>) and its root meaning is pure enough to approach the gods. At first it had only a ceremonial meaning and meant nothing more than that a man had gone through the right ritual cleansings. So, for instance, Euripides can make one of his characters say, "My hands are pure, but my heart is not." At this stage hagnos (<a href='S:G53'>G53</a>) describes ritual, but not necessarily moral, purity. But as time went on the word came to describe the moral purity which alone can approach the gods. On the Temple of Aesculapius at Epidaurus there was the inscription at the entrance: "He who would enter the divine temple must be pure (hagnos, <a href='S:G53'>G53</a>) ; and purity is to have a mind which thinks holy thoughts." The true wisdom is so cleansed of all ulterior motives and of self that it has become pure enough to see God. Worldly wisdom might well wish to escape God's sight; the true wisdom is able to bear his very scrutiny.<p/>(ii) The true wisdom is eirenikos (<a href='S:G1516'>G1516</a>). We have translated this peaceable but it has a very special meaning. Eirene (<a href='S:G1515'>G1515</a>) means peace, and when it is used of men its basic meaning is right relationships between man and man, and between man and God The true wisdom produces right relationships. There is a kind of clever and arrogant wisdom which separates man from man, and which makes a man look with superior contempt on his fellows. There is a kind of cruel wisdom which takes a delight in hurting others with clever, but cutting, words. There is a kind of depraved wisdom which seduces men away from their loyalty to God. But the true wisdom at all times brings men closer to one another and to God.<p/>(iii) The true wisdom is epieikes (<a href='S:G1933'>G1933</a>). Of all Greek words in the New Testament this is the most untranslatable. Aristotle defined it as that "which is just beyond the written law" and as "justice and better than justice" and as that "which steps in to correct things when the law itself becomes unjust." The man who is epieikes (<a href='S:G1933'>G1933</a>) is the man who knows when it is actually wrong to apply the strict letter of the law. He knows how to forgive when strict justice gives him a Perfect right to condemn. He knows how to make allowances, when not to stand upon his rights, how to temper justice with mercy, always remembers that there are greater things in the world than rules and regulations. It is impossible to find an English word to translate this quality. Matthew Arnold called it "sweet reasonableness" and it is the ability to extend to others the kindly consideration we would wish to receive ourselves.<p/><b>THE TRUE WISDOM (2)</b> (<a href='B:660 3:17-18'>Jas 3:17-18</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (iv) The true wisdom is eupeithes (<a href='S:G2138'>G2138</a>). Here we must make a choice between two meanings. (a) Eupeithes (<a href='S:G2138'>G2138</a>) can mean ever ready to obey. The first of William Law's rules for life was, "To fix it deep in my mind that I have but one business upon my hands, to seek for eternal happiness by doing the will of God." If we take the word in this sense, it means that the truly wise man is for ever ready to obey whenever God's voice comes to him. (b) Eupeithes (<a href='S:G2138'>G2138</a>) can mean easy to persuade, not in the sense of being pliable and weak, but in the sense of not being stubborn and of being willing to listen to reason and to appeal. Coming as it does after epieikes (<a href='S:G1933'>G1933</a>), it probably bears this second meaning here. The true wisdom is not rigid but is willing to listen and skilled in knowing when wisely to yield.<p/>(v) We take the next two terms together. The true wisdom is full of mercy (eleos, <a href='S:G1656'>G1656</a>) and good fruits. Eleos (<a href='S:G1656'>G1656</a>) is a word which acquired a new meaning in Christian thought. The Greeks defined it as pity for the man who is suffering unjustly; but Christianity means far more than that by eleos (<a href='S:G1656'>G1656</a>). (a) In Christian thought eleos (<a href='S:G1656'>G1656</a>) means mercy for the man who is in trouble, even if the trouble is his own fault. Christian pity is the reflection of God's pity; and that went out to men, not only when they were suffering unjustly, but when they were suffering through their own fault. We are so apt to say of someone in trouble, "It is his own fault; he brought it on himself, and, therefore, to feel no responsibility for him. Christian mercy is mercy for any man who is in trouble, even if he has brought that trouble on himself. (b) In Christian thought eleos (<a href='S:G1656'>G1656</a>) means mercy which issues in good fruits, that is, which issues in practical help. Christian pity is not merely an emotion; it is action. We can never say that we have truly pitied anyone until we have helped him.<p/>(vi) The true wisdom is adiakritos (<a href='S:G87'>G87</a>), undivided. This means that it is not wavering and vacillating; it knows its own mind, chooses its course and abides by it. There are those who think that it is clever never to make one's mind up about anything. They speak about having an open mind and about suspending judgment. But the Christian wisdom is based on the Christian certainties which come to us from God through Jesus Christ.<p/>(vii) The true wisdom is anupokritos (<a href='S:G505'>G505</a>), without hypocrisy. That is to say, it is not a pose and does not deal in deception. It is honest; it never pretends to be what it is not; and it never acts a part to gain its own ends.<p/>Finally, James says something which every Christian Church and every Christian group should have written on its heart. The Revised Standard Version correctly translates the Greek literally: "The harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace." This is a highly compressed sentence. Let us remember that peace, eirene (<a href='S:G1515'>G1515</a>), means right relationships between man and man. So, then, what James is saying is this, "We are all trying to reap the harvest which a good life brings. But the seeds which bring the rich harvest can never flourish in any atmosphere other than one of right relationships between man and man. And the only people who can sow these seeds and reap the reward are those whose life work it has been to produce such right relationships."<p/>That is to say, nothing good can ever grow in an atmosphere where men are at variance with one another. A group where there is bitterness and strife is a barren soil in which the seeds of righteousness can never grow and out of which no reward can ever come, The man who disturbs personal relationships and is responsible for strife and bitterness has cut himself off from the reward which God gives to those who live his life. 


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 Whence come feuds and whence come fights among you? Is this not their source--do they not arise because of these desires for pleasures which carry on their constant warring campaign within your members? You desire but you do not possess; you murder; you covet but you cannot obtain. You fight and war but you do not possess, because you do not ask. You ask but you do not receive, because you ask wrongly, for your only desire is to spend what you receive on your own pleasures.<p/></i><p/>James is setting before his people a basic question--whether their aim in life is to submit to the will of God or to gratify their own desires for the pleasures of this world? He warns that, if pleasure is the policy of life, nothing but strife and hatred and division can possibly follow. He says that the result of the over-mastering search for pleasure is polemoi (<a href='S:G4171'>G4171</a>) "wars" and machai (<a href='S:G3163'>G3163</a>) "battles." He means that the feverish search for pleasure issues in long-drawn-out resentments which are like wars, and sudden explosions of enmity which are like battles. The ancient moralists would have thoroughly agreed with him.<p/>When we look at human society we so often see a seething mass of hatred and strife. Philo writes, "Consider the continual war which prevails among men even in times of peace, and which exists not only between nations and countries and cities, but also between private houses, or, I might rather say, is present with every individual man; observe the unspeakable raging storm in men's souls that is excited by the violent rush of the affairs of life; and you may well wonder whether anyone can enjoy tranquility in such a storm, and maintain calm amidst the surge of this billowing sea."<p/>The root cause of this unceasing and bitter conflict is nothing other than desire. Philo points out that the Ten Commandments culminate in the forbidding of covetousness or desire, for desire is the worst of all the passions of the soul. "Is it not because of this passion that relations are broken, and this natural goodwill changed into desperate enmity? that great and populous countries are desolated by domestic dissensions? and land and sea filled with ever new disasters by naval battles and land campaigns? For the wars famous in tragedy...have all flowed from one source--desire either for money or glory or pleasure. Over these things the human race goes mad." Lucian writes, "All the evils which come upon man--revolutions and wars, stratagems and slaughters--spring from desire. All these things have as their fountain-head the desire for more." Plato writes, "The sole cause of wars and revolutions and battles is nothing other than the body and its desires." Cicero writes, "It is insatiable desires which overturn not only individual men, but whole families, and which even bring down the state. From desires there spring hatred, schisms, discords, seditions and wars." Desire is at the root of all the evils which ruin life and divide men.<p/>The New Testament is clear that this overmastering desire for the pleasures of this world is always a threatening danger to the spiritual life. It is the cares and riches and pleasures of this life which combine to choke the good seed (<a href='B:490 8:14'>Luk 8:14</a>). A man can become a slave to passions and pleasures and when he does malice and envy and hatred enter into life (<a href='B:630 3:3'>Tit 3:3</a>).<p/>The ultimate choice in life lies between pleasing oneself and pleasing God; and a world in which men's first aim is to please themselves is a battleground of savagery and division.<p/><b>THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE PLEASURE-DOMINATED LIFE</b> (<a href='B:660 4:1-3'>Jas 4:1-3</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> This pleasure-dominated life has certain inevitable consequences.<p/>(i) It sets men at each other's throats. Desires, as James sees it, are inherently warring powers. He does not mean that they war within a man--although that is also true--but that they set men warring against each other. The basic desires are for the same things--for money, for power, for prestige, for worldly possessions, for the gratification of bodily lusts. When all men are striving to possess the same things, life inevitably becomes a competitive arena. They trample each other down in the rush to grasp them. They will do anything to eliminate a rival. Obedience to the will of God draws men together, for it is that will that they should love and serve one another; obedience to the craving for pleasure drives men apart, for it drives them to internecine rivalry for the same things.<p/>(ii) The craving for pleasure drives men to shameful deeds. It drives them to envy and to enmity; and even to murder. Before a man can arrive at a deed there must be a certain driving emotion in his heart. He may restrain himself from the things that the desire for pleasure incites him to do; but so tong as that desire is in his heart he is not safe. It may at any time explode into ruinous action.<p/>The steps of the process are simple and terrible. A man allows himself to desire something. That thing begins to dominate his thoughts; he finds himself involuntarily thinking about it in his waking hours and dreaming of it when he sleeps. It begins to be what is aptly called a ruling passion. He begins to form imaginary schemes to obtain it; and these schemes may well involve ways of eliminating those who stand in his way. For long enough all this may go on in his mind. Then one day the imaginings may blaze into action; and he may find himself taking the terrible steps necessary to obtain his desire. Every crime in this world has come from desire which was first only a feeling in the heart but which, being nourished long enough, came in the end to action.<p/>(iii) The craving for pleasure in the end shuts the door of prayer. If a man's prayers are simply for the things which will gratify his desires, they are essentially selfish and, therefore, it is not possible for God to answer them. The true end of prayer is to say to God, "Thy will be done." The prayer of the man who is pleasure-dominated is: "My desires be satisfied." It is one of the grim facts of life that a selfish man can hardly ever pray aright; no one can ever pray aright until he removes self from the centre of his life and puts God there.<p/>In this life we have to choose whether to make our main object our own desires or the will of God. And, if we choose our own desires, we have thereby separated ourselves from our fellow-men and from God.<p/><b>INFIDELITY TO GOD</b> (<a href='B:660 4:4-7'>Jas 4:4-7</a>)


text:
 Renegades to your vows, do you not know that love for this world is enmity to God? Whoever makes it his aim to be the friend of this world thereby becomes the enemy of God. Do you think that the saying of Scripture is only an idle saying: "God jealously yearns for the spirit which he has made to dwell within us"? But God gives the more grace. That is why Scripture says, "God sets himself against the haughty, but gives grace to the humble." So, then, submit yourselves to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you; draw near to God and he will draw near to you.<p/></i><p/>The King James Version makes this passage even more difficult than it is. In it the warning is addressed to adulterers and adulteresses. In the correct text the word occurs only in the feminine. Further, the word is not intended to be taken literally; the reference is not to physical but to spiritual adultery. The whole conception is based on the common Old Testament idea of Jahweh as the husband of Israel and Israel as the bride of God. "Your Maker is your husband; the Lord of hosts is his name" (<a href='B:290 54:5'>Isa 54:5</a>). "Surely as a faithless wife leaves her husband, so have you been faithless to me, O house of Israel, says the Lord" (<a href='B:300 3:20'>Jer 3:20</a>). This idea of Jahweh as the husband and the nation of Israel as the wife, explains the way in which the Old Testament constantly expresses spiritual infidelity in terms of physical adultery. To make a covenant with the gods of a strange land and to sacrifice to them and to intermarry with their people is "to play the harlot after their gods" (<a href='B:20 34:15-16'>Exo 34:15-16</a>). It is God's forewarning to Moses that the day will come when the people "will rise and play the harlot after the strange gods of the land, where they go to be among them," and that they will forsake him (<a href='B:50 31:16'>Deu 31:16</a>). It is Hosea's complaint that the people have played the harlot and forsaken God (<a href='B:350 9:1'>Hos 9:1</a>). It is in this spiritual sense that the New Testament speaks of "an adulterous generation" (<a href='B:470 16:4'>Mat 16:4</a>; <a href='B:480 8:38'>Mar 8:38</a>). And the picture came into Christian thought in the conception of the Church as the Bride of Christ (<a href='B:540 11:1-2'>2Co 11:1-2</a>; <a href='B:560 5:24-28'>Eph 5:24-28</a>; <a href='B:730 19:7'>Rev 19:7</a>; <a href='B:730 21:9'>Rev 21:9</a>).<p/>This form of expression may offend some delicate modern ears; but the picture of Israel as the bride of God and of God as the husband of Israel has something very precious in it. It means that to disobey God is like breaking the marriage vow. It means that all sin is sin against love. It means that our relationship to God is not like the distant relationship of king and subject or master and slave, but like the intimate relationship of husband and wife. It means that when we sin we break God's heart, as the heart of one partner in a marriage may be broken by the desertion of the other.<p/><b>FRIENDSHIP WITH THE WORLD AND ENMITY WITH GOD</b> (<a href='B:660 4:4-7'>Jas 4:4-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In this passage James says that love of the world is enmity with God and that he who is the friend of the world thereby becomes the enemy of God. It is important to understand what he means.<p/>(i) This is not spoken out of contempt for the world. It is not spoken from the point of view which regards earth as a desert drear and which denigrates everything in the natural world. There is a story of a Puritan who was out for a walk in the country with a friend. The friend noticed a very lovely flower at the roadside and said, "That is a lovely flower." The Puritan replied, "I have learned to call nothing lovely in this lost and sinful world." That is not James' point of view; he would have agreed that this world is the creation of God; and like Jesus he would have rejoiced in its beauty.<p/>(ii) We have already seen that the New Testament often uses the word kosmos (<a href='S:G2889'>G2889</a>) in the sense of the world apart from God There are two New Testament passages which well illustrate what James means. Paul writes, "The mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God;...those who are in the flesh cannot please God" (<a href='B:520 8:7-8'>Rom 8:7-8</a>). What he means is that those who insist on assessing everything by purely human standards are necessarily at variance with God. The second passage is one of the most poignant epitaphs on the Christian life in all literature: "Demas, in love with this present world, has deserted me" (<a href='B:620 4:10'>2Ti 4:10</a>). The idea is that of worldliness. If material things are the things to which he dedicates his life, clearly he cannot dedicate his life to God. In that sense the man who has dedicated his life to the world is at enmity with God.<p/>(iii) The best commentary on this saying is that of Jesus: "No one can serve two masters" (<a href='B:470 6:24'>Mat 6:24</a>). There are two attitudes to the things of this world and the things of time. We may be so dominated by them that the world becomes our master. Or we may so use them as to serve our fellow-men and prepare ourselves for eternity, in which case the world is not our master but our servant. A man may either use the world or be used by it. To use the world as the servant of God and men is to be the friend of God, for that is what God meant the world to be. To use the world as the controller and dictator of life is to be at enmity with God, for that is what God never meant the world to be.<p/><b>GOD, THE JEALOUS LOVER</b> (<a href='B:660 4:4-7'>Jas 4:4-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> <a href='B:660 4:5'>Jas 4:5</a> is exceedingly difficult. To begin with, it is cited as a quotation from Scripture, but there is no part of Scripture of which it is, in fact, anything like a recognizable quotation. We may either assume that James is quoting from some book now lost which he regarded as Scripture; or, that he is summing up in one sentence what is the eternal sense of the Old Testament and not meaning to quote any particular passage.<p/>Further, the translation is difficult: There are two alternative renderings which in the end give much the same sense. "He (that is, God) jealously yearns for the devotion of the spirit which he has made to dwell within us, or, "The Spirit which God has made to dwell within us jealously yearns for the full devotion of our hearts."<p/>In either case the meaning is that God is the jealous lover who will brook no rival. The Old Testament was never afraid to apply the word jealous to God. Moses says of God to the people: "They stirred him to jealousy with strange gods" (<a href='B:50 32:16'>Deu 32:16</a>). He hears God say, "They have stirred me to jealousy with what is no God" (<a href='B:50 32:21'>Deu 32:21</a>). In insisting on his sole right to worship, God in the Ten Commandments says, "I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (<a href='B:20 20:5'>Exo 20:5</a>). "You shall worship no other god, for the Lord whose name is Jealous is a jealous God" (<a href='B:20 34:14'>Exo 34:14</a>). Zechariah hears God say, "Thus says the Lord of hosts: I am jealous for Zion with great jealousy" (<a href='B:450 8:2'>Zec 8:2</a>). Jealous comes from the Greek zelos (<a href='S:G2205'>G2205</a>) which has in it the idea of burning heat. The idea is that God loves men with such a passion that he cannot bear any other love within the hearts of men.<p/>It may be that jealous is a word which nowadays we find it difficult to connect with God, for it has acquired a lower significance; but behind it is the amazing truth that God is the lover of the souls of men. There is a sense in which love must be diffused among all men and over all God's children; but there is also a sense in which love gives and demands an exclusive devotion to one person. It is profoundly true that a man can be in love only with one person at one time; if he thinks otherwise, he does not know the meaning of love.<p/><b>THE GLORY OF HUMILITY AND THE TRAGEDY OF PRIDE</b> (<a href='B:660 4:4-7'>Jas 4:4-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> James goes on to meet an almost inevitable reaction to this picture of God as the jealous lover. If God is like that, how can any man give to him the devotion he demands? James' answer is that, if God makes a great demand, he gives great grace to fulfil it; and the greater the demand, the greater the grace God gives.<p/>But grace has a constant characteristic--a man cannot receive it until he has realized his need of it, and has come to God humbly pleading for help. Therefore, it must always remain true that God sets himself against the proud and gives lavishly of his grace to the humble. "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." This is a quotation from <a href='B:240 3:34'>Pro 3:34</a>; and it is made again in <a href='B:670 5:5'>1Pe 5:5</a>.<p/>What is this destructive pride? The word for proud is huperephanos (<a href='S:G5244'>G5244</a>) which literally means one who shows himself above other people. Even the Greeks hated pride. Theophrastus described it as "a certain contempt for all other people." Theophylact, the Christian writer, called it, "the citadel and summit of all evils." Its real terror is that it is a thing of the heart. It means haughtiness; but the man who suffers from it might well appear to be walking in downcast humility, while all the time there is in his heart a vast contempt for all his fellow-men. It shuts itself off from God for three reasons.<p/>(i) It does not know its own need. It so admires itself that it recognizes no need to be supplied. (ii) It cherishes its own independence. It will be beholden to no man and not even to God. (iii) It does not recognize its own sin. It is occupied with thinking of its own goodness and never realizes that it has any sin from which it needs to be saved. A pride like that cannot receive help, because it does not know that it needs help, and, therefore, it cannot ask.<p/>The humility for which James pleads is no cringing thing. It has two great characteristics.<p/>(i) It knows that if a man takes a resolute stand against the devil, he will prove him a coward. "The Devil, as Hermas puts it, "can wrestle against the Christian, but he cannot throw him." This is a truth of which the Christians were fond, for Peter says the same thing (<a href='B:670 5:8-9'>1Pe 5:8-9</a>). The great example and inspiration is Jesus in his own temptations. In them Jesus showed that the devil is not invincible; when he is confronted with the word of God, he can be put to flight. The Christian has the humility which knows that he must fight his battles with the tempter, not in his own power, but in the power of God.<p/>(ii) It knows that it has the greatest privilege of all, access to God. This is a tremendous thing, for the right of approach to God under the old order of things belonged only to the priests (<a href='B:20 19:22'>Exo 19:22</a>). The office of the priest was to come near to God for sin-stained people (<a href='B:330 44:13'>Eze 44:13</a>). But through the work of Jesus Christ any man can come boldly before the throne of God, certain that he will find mercy and grace to help in time of need (<a href='B:650 4:16'>Heb 4:16</a>). There was a time when only the High Priest might enter the Holy of Holies, but we have a new and a living way, a better hope by which we draw near to God (<a href='B:650 7:19'>Heb 7:19</a>).<p/>The Christian must have humility, but it is a humility which gives him dauntless courage and knows that the way to God is open to the most fearful saint.<p/><b>GODLY PURITY</b> (<a href='B:660 4:8-10'>Jas 4:8-10</a>)


text:
 Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. Be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to sorrow, and your joy to gloom. Humble yourself before God and then he will exalt you.<p/></i><p/>In James' thought the ethical demand of Christianity is never far away. He has talked about the grace which God gives to the humble and which enables a man to meet his great demands. But James is sure that there is something needed beyond asking and passive receiving. He is sure that moral effort is a prime necessity.<p/>His appeal is addressed to sinners. The word used for sinner is hamartolos (<a href='S:G268'>G268</a>), which means the hardened sinner, the man whose sin is obvious and notorious. Suidas defines hamartoloi (<a href='S:G268'>G268</a>) as "those who choose to live in company with disobedience to the law, and who love a corrupt life." From such people James demands a moral reform which will embrace both their outward conduct and their inner desires. He demands both clean hands and a pure heart (<a href='B:230 24:4'>Psa 24:4</a>).<p/>The phrase cleanse your hands originally denoted nothing more than ceremonial cleansing, the ritual washing with water which made a man ceremonially fit to approach the worship of God. The priests must wash and bathe themselves before they entered on their service (<a href='B:20 30:19-21'>Exo 30:19-21</a>; <a href='B:30 16:4'>Lev 16:4</a>). The orthodox Jew must ceremonially wash his hands before he ate (<a href='B:480 7:3'>Mar 7:3</a>). But men came to see that God required much more than an outward washing; and so the phrase came to stand for moral purity. "I wash my hands in innocence, says the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 26:6'>Psa 26:6</a>). It is Isaiah's demand that men should "wash yourselves; make yourselves clean, and that is equated with ceasing to do evil (<a href='B:290 1:16'>Isa 1:16</a>). In the letter to Timothy men are urged to lift holy hands to God in prayer (<a href='B:610 2:8'>1Ti 2:8</a>). The history of the phrase shows a deepening consciousness of what God demanded. Men began by thinking in terms of an outward washing, a ritual thing; and ended by seeing that the demand of God was moral, not ritual.<p/>Biblical thought demands a fourfold cleansing. It demands a cleansing of the lips (<a href='B:290 6:5-6'>Isa 6:5-6</a>). It demands a cleansing of the hands (<a href='B:230 24:4'>Psa 24:4</a>). It demands a cleansing of the heart (<a href='B:230 73:13'>Psa 73:13</a>). It demands a cleansing of the mind (<a href='B:660 4:8'>Jas 4:8</a>). That is to say, the ethical demand of the Bible is that a man's words and deeds and emotions and thoughts should all be purified. Inwardly and outwardly a man must be clean, for only the pure in heart shall see God (<a href='B:470 5:8'>Mat 5:8</a>).<p/><b>THE GODLY SORROW</b> (<a href='B:660 4:8-10'>Jas 4:8-10</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In his demand for a godly sorrow James is going back to the fact that Jesus had said, "Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted" (<a href='B:470 5:4'>Mat 5:4</a>; <a href='B:490 6:20-26'>Luk 6:20-26</a>). We must not read into this passage something James does not mean. He is not denying the joy of the Christian life. He is not demanding that men should live a gloom-encompassed life in a shadowed world. He is doing two things. He is pleading for sobriety in place of frivolousness, and is doing so with all the intensity of one whose natural instincts are puritan; and he is describing, not the end, but the beginning of the Christian life. He demands three things.<p/>(i) He demands what he calls affliction. The verb is talaiporein (<a href='S:G5003'>G5003</a>) and it can describe--Thucydides so uses it--the experiences of an army whose food is gone and who have no shelter from the stormy weather. What James is here demanding is a voluntary abstinence from lavish luxury and effeminate comfort. He is talking to people who are in love with the world; and he is pleading with them not to make luxury and comfort the standards by which they judge all life. It is discipline which produces the scholar; it is rigorous training which creates the athlete; and it is a wise abstinence which produces the Christian who knows how to use the world and its gifts aright.<p/>(ii) He demands that they should mourn, that their laughter should be turned to sorrow and their joy to gloom. Here, James is describing the first step of the Christian life which is taken when a man is confronted with God and with his own sin. That is a daunting experience. When Wesley preached to the miners of Kingswood, they were moved to such grief that the tears made runnels as they ran down the grime of their faces. But that is by no means the end of the Christian life. The terrible sorrow of the realization of sin moves on to the thrilling joy of sins forgiven. But to get to the second stage a man must go through the first. James is demanding that these self-satisfied, luxury-loving, unworried hearers of his should be confronted with their sins and should be ashamed, grief-stricken and afraid; for only then can they reach out for grace and go on to a joy far greater than their earthbound pleasures.<p/>(iii) He demands that they should weep. It is perhaps not reading too much into this to say that James may well be thinking of tears of sympathy. Up to this time these luxury-loving people have lived in utter selfishness, quite insensitive to what the poet called "the world's rain of tears." James is insisting that the griefs and the needs of others should pierce the armour of their own pleasure and comfort. A man is not a Christian until he becomes aware of the poignant cry of that humanity for which Christ died.<p/>So, then, in words deliberately chosen to waken the sleeping soul, James demands that his hearers should substitute the way of abstinence for the way of luxury; that they should become aware of their own sins and mourn for them; and that they should become conscious of the world's need and weep for it.<p/><b>THE GODLY HUMILITY</b> (<a href='B:660 4:8-10'>Jas 4:8-10</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> James concludes with the demand for a godly humility. All through the Bible there runs the conviction that it is only the humble who can know the blessings of God. God will save the humble person (<a href='B:220 22:29'>Job 22:29</a>). A man's pride will bring him low; but honour shall uphold the humble in spirit (<a href='B:240 29:23'>Pro 29:23</a>). God dwells on high, but he is also with him that is of a humble and a contrite spirit (<a href='B:290 57:15'>Isa 57:15</a>). They that fear the Lord will humble their souls in his sight, and the greater a man is the more he ought to humble himself, if he is to find favour in the sight of God (Sir_2:17 ; Sir_3:17). Jesus himself repeatedly declared that it was the man who humbled himself who alone would be exalted (<a href='B:470 23:12'>Mat 23:12</a>; <a href='B:490 14:11'>Luk 14:11</a>).<p/>Only when a man realizes his own ignorance will he ask God's guidance. Only when a man realizes his own poverty in the things that matter will he pray for the riches of God's grace. Only when a man realizes his weakness in necessary things will he come to draw upon God's strength. Only when a man realizes his own sin will he realize his need of a Saviour and of God's forgiveness.<p/>In life there is one sin which can be said to be the basis of all others; and that is forgetting that we are creatures and that God is creator. When a man realizes his essential creatureliness, he realizes his essential helplessness and goes to the source from which that helplessness can alone be supplied.<p/>Such a dependence begets the only real independence; for then a man faces life not in his own strength but in God's and is given victory. So long as a man regards himself as independent of God he is on the way to ultimate collapse and to defeat.<p/><b>THE SIN OF JUDGING OTHERS</b> (<a href='B:660 4:11-12'>Jas 4:11-12</a>)


text:
 Stop talking harshly about each other. He who speaks harshly of his brother, or who judges his brother, speaks harshly of the law and judges the law; and, if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge of it. One is law-giver and judge, he who is able to save and to destroy. Who are you to judge your neighbour?<p/></i><p/>The word James uses for to speak harshly of, or, to slander is katalalein (<a href='S:G2635'>G2635</a>). Usually this verb means to slander someone when he is not there to defend himself. This sin slander (the noun is katalalia, <a href='S:G2636'>G2636</a>) is condemned all through the Bible. It is the Psalmist's accusation against the wicked man: "You sit and speak against your brother; you slander your own mother's son" (<a href='B:230 50:20'>Psa 50:20</a>). The Psalmist hears God saying, "Him who slanders his neighbour secretly I will destroy" (<a href='B:230 101:5'>Psa 101:5</a>). Paul lists it among the sins which are characteristic of the unredeemed evil of the pagan world (<a href='B:520 1:30'>Rom 1:30</a>); and it is one of the sins which he fears to find in the warring Church of Corinth (<a href='B:540 12:20'>2Co 12:20</a>). It is significant to note that in both these passages slander comes in immediate connection with gossip. Katalalia (<a href='S:G2636'>G2636</a>) is the sin of those who meet in corners and gather in little groups and pass on confidential tidbits of information which destroy the good name of those who are not there to defend themselves. The same sin is condemned by Peter (<a href='B:670 2:1'>1Pe 2:1</a>).<p/>There is great necessity for this warning. People are slow to realize that there are few sins which the Bible so unsparingly condemns as the sin of irresponsible and malicious gossip. There are few activities in which the average person finds more delight than this; to tell and to listen to the slanderous story--especially about some distinguished person--is for most people a fascinating activity. We do well to remember what God thinks of it. James condemns it for two fundamental reasons.<p/>(i) It is a breach of the royal law that we should love our neighbour as ourselves (<a href='B:660 2:8'>Jas 2:8</a>; <a href='B:30 19:18'>Lev 19:18</a>). Obviously a man cannot love his neighbour as himself and speak slanderous evil about him. Now, if a man breaks a law knowingly, he sets himself above the law. That is to say, he has made himself a judge of the law. But a man's duty is not to judge the law, but to obey it. So the man who speaks evil of his neighbour has appointed himself a judge of the law and taken to himself the right to break it, and therefore stands condemned.<p/>(ii) It is an infringement of the prerogative of God. To slander our neighbour is, in fact, to pass judgment upon him. And no human being has any right to judge any other human; the right of judgment belongs to God alone.<p/>It is God alone who is able to save and to destroy. This great prerogative runs all through Scripture. "I kill and I make alive, says God (<a href='B:50 32:39'>Deu 32:39</a>). "The Lord kills and brings to life, says Hannah in her prayer (<a href='B:90 2:6'>1Sa 2:6</a>). "Am I God to kill and to make alive?" is the shocked question of the Israelite king to whom Naaman came with a demand for a cure for his leprosy (<a href='B:120 5:7'>2Ki 5:7</a>). Jesus warns that we should not fear men, who at the worst can only kill the body, but should fear him who can destroy both body and soul (<a href='B:470 10:28'>Mat 10:28</a>). As the Psalmist had it, it is to God alone that the issues of life and of death belong (<a href='B:230 68:20'>Psa 68:20</a>). To judge another is to take to ourselves a right to do what God alone has the right to do; and he is a reckless man who deliberately infringes the prerogatives of God.<p/>We might think that to speak evil of our neighbour is not a very serious sin. But Scripture would say that it is one of the worst of all because it is a breach of the royal law and an infringement of the rights of God.<p/><b>THE MISTAKEN CONFIDENCE</b> (<a href='B:660 4:13-17'>Jas 4:13-17</a>)


text:
 Come now, you who say, "Today, or tomorrow, we will go into this city, and we will spend a year there, and we will trade and make a profit." People like you do not know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life like? You are like a mist which appears for a little time and then disappears. And yet you talk like that instead of saying, "If the Lord wills, we shall live, and we shall do this or that." As it is, you make your arrogant claims in your braggart ways. All such arrogant claims are evil. So then, if a man knows what is good and does not do it, that to him is sin.<p/></i><p/>Here again is a contemporary picture which James' readers would recognize, and in which they might well see their own portrait. The Jews were the great traders of the ancient world; and in many ways that world gave them every opportunity to practise their commercial abilities. This was an age of the founding of cities; and often when cities were founded and their founders were looking for citizens to occupy them, citizenship was offered freely to the Jews, for where the Jews came money and trade followed. So the picture is of a man looking at a map. He points at a certain spot on it, and says, "Here is a new city where there are great trade chances. I'll go there; I'll get in on the ground floor; I'll trade for a year or so; I'll make my fortune and come back rich." James' answer is that no man has a right to make confident plans for the future, for he does not know what even a day may bring forth. Man may propose but God disposes.<p/>The essential uncertainty of the future was deeply impressed on the minds of men of all nations. The Hebrew sage wrote, "Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth" (<a href='B:240 27:1'>Pro 27:1</a>). Jesus told his story of the rich but foolish man who made his fortune and built up his plans for the future, and forgot that his soul might be required of him that very night (<a href='B:490 12:16-21'>Luk 12:16-21</a>). Ben Sirach wrote, "There is that waxeth rich by his wariness and pinching, and this is the portion of his reward: whereas, he saith, 'I have found rest and now will eat continually of my goods'; and yet he knoweth not what time shall come upon him and that death approacheth; and that he must leave these things to others and die" (Sir_11:18-19). Seneca said: "How foolish it is for a man to make plans for his life, when not even tomorrow is in his control." And again: "No man has such rich friends that he can promise himself tomorrow." The Rabbis had a proverb: "Care not for the morrow, for ye know not what a day may bring forth. Perhaps you may not find tomorrow." Dennis Mackail was the friend of Sir James Barrie. He tells that, as Barrie grew older, he would never make an arrangement for even a social engagement at any distant date. "Short notice now!" he would always say.<p/>James goes on. This uncertainty of life is not a cause either for fear or for inaction. it is a reason for realizing our complete dependence on God. It has always been the mark of a serious-minded man that he makes his plans in such dependence. Paul writes to the Corinthians: "I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills" (<a href='B:530 4:19'>1Co 4:19</a>). "I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits" (<a href='B:530 16:7'>1Co 16:7</a>). Xenophon writes, "May all these things be, if the gods so will. If anyone wonders that we often find the phrase written, 'if the gods will,' I would have him to know that, once he has experienced the risks of life, he will not wonder nearly so much." Plato relates a conversation between Socrates and Alcibiades. Alcibiades says: "I will do so if you wish, Socrates." Socrates answers, "Alcibiades, that is not the way to talk. And how ought you to speak? You ought to say, 'If God so wishes.'" Minucius Felix writes, "'God grant it'--it comes instinctively to the ordinary man to speak like that." Constantly among the Arabs there is heard the expressions: "Imsh' Allah--if Allah wills." The curious thing is that there seems to have been no corresponding phrase which the Jews used. In this they had to learn.<p/>The true Christian way is not to be terrorized into fear and paralysed into inaction by the uncertainty of the future; but to commit the future and all our plans into the hands of God, always remembering that these plans may not be within God's purpose.<p/>The man who does not remember that, is guilty of arrogant boasting. The word is alazoneia (<a href='S:G212'>G212</a>). Alazoneia was originally the characteristic of the wandering quack. He offered cures which were no cures and boasted of things that he was not able to do. The future is not within the hands of men and no man can arrogantly claim that he has power to decide it.<p/>James ends with a threat. If a man knows that a thing is wrong and still continues to do it, that to him is sin. James is in effect saying, "You have been warned; the truth has been placed before your eyes." To continue now in the self-confident habit of seeking to dispose of one's own life is sin for the man who has been reminded that the future is not in his hands but in God's. 


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 Come now, you rich, weep and wail at the miseries which are coming upon you. Your wealth is rotten and your garments are food for moths. Your gold and silver are corroded clean through with rust; and their rust is proof to you of how worthless they are. It is a rust which will eat into your very flesh like fire. It is a treasure indeed that you have amassed for yourselves in the last days!<p/></i><p/><a href='B:660 5:1-6'>Jas 5:1-6</a> has two aims. First, to show the ultimate worthlessness of all earthly riches; and second, to show the detestable character of those who possess them. By doing this he hopes to prevent his readers from placing all their hopes and desires on earthly things.<p/>If you knew what you were doing, he says to the rich, you would weep and wail for the terror of the judgment that is coming upon you at the Day of the Lord. The vividness of the picture is increased by the word which James uses for to nail. It is the verb ololuzein (<a href='S:G3649'>G3649</a>), which is onomatopoeic and carries its meaning in its very sound. It means even more than to wail, it means to shriek, and in the King James Version is often translated to howl; and it depicts the frantic terror of those on whom the judgment of God has come (<a href='B:290 13:6'>Isa 13:6</a>; <a href='B:290 14:31'>Isa 14:31</a>; <a href='B:290 15:2-3'>Isa 15:2-3</a>; <a href='B:290 16:7'>Isa 16:7</a>; <a href='B:290 23:1'>Isa 23:1</a>; <a href='B:290 23:14'>Isa 23:14</a>; <a href='B:290 65:14'>Isa 65:14</a>; <a href='B:370 8:3'>Amo 8:3</a>). We might well say that it is the word which describes those undergoing the tortures of the damned.<p/>All through this passage the words are vivid and pictorial and carefully chosen. In the east there were three main sources of wealth and James has a word for the decay of each of them.<p/>There were corn and grain. That is the wealth which grows rotten (sepein, <a href='S:G4595'>G4595</a>).<p/>There were garments. In the east garments were wealth. Joseph gave changes of garments to his brothers (<a href='B:10 45:22'>Gen 45:22</a>). It was for a beautiful mantle from Shinar that Achan brought disaster on the nation and death on himself and his family (<a href='B:60 7:21'>Jos 7:21</a>). It was changes of garments that Samson promised to anyone who would solve his riddle (<a href='B:70 14:12'>Jdg 14:12</a>). It was garments that Naaman brought as a gift to the prophet of Israel and to obtain which Gehazi sinned his soul (<a href='B:120 5:5'>2Ki 5:5</a>; <a href='B:120 5:22'>2Ki 5:22</a>). It was Paul's claim that he had coveted no man's money or apparel (<a href='B:510 20:33'>Act 20:33</a>). These garments, which are so splendid, will be food for moths (setobrotos (<a href='S:G4598'>G4598</a>, compare <a href='B:470 6:19'>Mat 6:19</a>).<p/>The climax of the world's inevitable decay comes at the end. Even their gold and silver will be rusted clean through (katiasthai, <a href='S:G2728'>G2728</a>). The point is that gold and silver do not actually rust; so James in the most vivid way is warning men that even the most precious and apparently most indestructible things are doomed to decay.<p/>This rust is proof of the impermanence and ultimate valuelessness of all earthly things. More, it is a dread warning. The desire for these things is like a dread rust eating into men's bodies and souls. Then comes a grim sarcasm. It is a fine treasure indeed that any man who concentrates on these things is heaping up for himself at the last. The only treasure he will possess is a consuming fire which will wipe him out.<p/>It is James' conviction that to concentrate on material things is not only to concentrate on a decaying delusion; it is to concentrate on self-produced destruction.<p/><b>THE SOCIAL PASSION OF THE BIBLE</b> (<a href='B:660 5:1-3'>Jas 5:1-3</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Not even the most cursory reader of the Bible can fail to be impressed with the social passion which blazes through its pages. No book condemns dishonest and selfish wealth with such searing passion as it does. The book of the prophet Amos was called by J. E. McFadyen "The Cry for Social Justice." Amos condemns those who store up violence and robbery in their palaces (<a href='B:370 3:10'>Amo 3:10</a>). He condemns those who tread on the poor and themselves have houses of hewn stone and pleasant vineyards--which in the wrath of God they will never enjoy (<a href='B:370 5:11'>Amo 5:11</a>). He lets loose his wrath on those who give short weight and short measure, who buy the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of shoes, and who palm off on the poor the refuse of their wheat. "I will never forget any of their deeds," says God (<a href='B:370 8:4-7'>Amo 8:4-7</a>). Isaiah warns those who build up great estates by adding house to house and field to field (<a href='B:290 5:8'>Isa 5:8</a>). The sage insisted that he who trusts in riches shall fall (<a href='B:240 11:28'>Pro 11:28</a>). Luke quotes Jesus as saying, "Woe to you that are rich!" (<a href='B:490 6:24'>Luk 6:24</a>). It is only with difficulty that those who have riches enter into the Kingdom of God (<a href='B:490 18:24'>Luk 18:24</a>). Riches are a temptation and a snare; the rich are liable to foolish and hurtful lusts which end in ruin, for the love of money is the root of all evils (<a href='B:610 6:9-10'>1Ti 6:9-10</a>).<p/>In the inter-testamental literature there is the same note. "Woe to you who acquire silver and gold in unrighteousness.... They shall perish with their possessions, and in shame will their spirits be cast into the furnace of fire" (Enoch 97: 8). In the Wisdom of Solomon there is a savage passage in which the sage makes the selfish rich speak of their own way of life as compared with that of the righteous. "Come on, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that are present; and let us speedily use created things like as in youth. Let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments: and let no flower of the spring pass by us. Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they be withered; let there be no meadow but our luxury shall pass through it. Let none of us go without his part of our voluptuousness; let us leave tokens of our joyfulness in every place; for this is our portion, and our lot is this. Let us oppress the poor righteous man, let us not spare the widow, nor reverence the ancient grey hairs of the aged.... Therefore, let us lie in wait for the righteous; because he is not for our turn and is clean contrary to our doings; he upbraideth us with our offending of the law, and objecteth to our infamy, the sins of our way of life" (Wis_2:6-12).<p/>One of the mysteries of social thought is how the Christian religion ever came to be regarded as "the opiate of the people" or to seem an other-worldly affair. There is no book in any literature which speaks so explosively of social injustice as the Bible, nor any book which has proved so powerful a social dynamic. It does not condemn wealth as such but there is no book which more strenuously insists on wealth's responsibility and on the perils which surround a man who is abundantly blessed with this world's goods.<p/><b>THE WAY OF SELFISHNESS AND ITS END</b> (<a href='B:660 5:4-6'>Jas 5:4-6</a>)


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 Look you, the pay of the reapers who reaped your estates, the pay kept back from them by you, cries against you, and the cries of those who reaped have come to the ears of the Lord of Hosts. On the earth you have lived in soft luxury and played the wanton; you have fattened your hearts for the day of slaughter. You condemned, you killed the righteous man, and he does not resist you.<p/></i><p/>Here is condemnation of selfish riches and warning of where they must end.<p/>(i) The selfish rich have gained their wealth by injustice. The Bible is always sure that the labourer is worthy of his hire (<a href='B:490 10:7'>Luk 10:7</a>; <a href='B:610 5:18'>1Ti 5:18</a>). The day labourer in Palestine lived on the very verge of starvation. His wage was small; it was impossible for him to save anything; and if the wage was withheld from him, even for a day, he and his family simply could not eat. That is why the merciful laws of Scripture again and again insist on the prompt payment of his wages to the hired labourer. "You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy.... You shall give him his hire on the day he earns it, before the sun goes down (for he is poor, and sets his heart upon it); lest he cry against you to the Lord, and it be sin in you" (<a href='B:50 24:14-15'>Deu 24:14-15</a>). "The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning" (<a href='B:30 19:13'>Lev 19:13</a>). "Do not say to your neighbour, 'Go, and come again, tomorrow I will give it'--when you have it with you" (<a href='B:240 3:27-28'>Pro 3:27-28</a>). "Woe to him that builds his house by unrighteousness and his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbour serve him for nothing, and does not give him his wages" (<a href='B:300 22:13'>Jer 22:13</a>). "Those that oppress the hireling in his wages" are under the judgment of God (<a href='B:460 3:5'>Mal 3:5</a>). "He that taketh away his neighbour's living, the bread gotten by sweat, slayeth him; and he that defraudeth the labourer of his hire, defraudeth his Maker, and shall receive a bitter reward, for he is brother to him that is a blood-shedder" (Sir_34:22). "Let not the wages of any man which hath wrought for thee tarry with thee, but give it him out of hand" (Tob_4:14).<p/>The law of the Bible is nothing less than the charter of the labouring man. The social concern of the Bible speaks in the words of the Law and of the Prophets and of the Sages alike. Here it is said that the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts! The hosts are the hosts of heaven, the stars and the heavenly powers. It is the teaching of the Bible in its every part that the Lord of the universe is concerned for the rights of the labouring man.<p/>(ii) The selfish rich have used their wealth selfishly. They have lived in soft luxury and have played the wanton. The word translated to live in soft luxury is truphein (<a href='S:G5171'>G5171</a>). It comes from a root which means to break down; and it describes the soft living which in the end saps and destroys a man's moral fibre. The word translated to play the wanton is spatalan (<a href='S:G4684'>G4684</a>). It is a much worse word; it means to live in lewdness and lasciviousness. It is the condemnation of the selfish rich that they have used their possessions to gratify their own love of comfort and to satisfy their own lusts, and that they have forgotten all duty to their fellow-men.<p/>(iii) But anyone who chooses this pathway has also chosen its end. The end of specially fattened cattle is that they will be slaughtered for some feast; and those who have sought this easy luxury and selfish wantonness are like men who have fattened themselves for the day of judgment. The end of their pleasure is grief and the goal of their luxury is death. Selfishness always leads to the destruction of the soul.<p/>(iv) The selfish rich have slain the unresisting righteous man. it is doubtful to whom this refers. It could be a reference to Jesus. "You denied the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you" (<a href='B:510 3:14'>Act 3:14</a>). It is Stephen's charge that the Jews always slew God's messengers even before the coming of the Just One (<a href='B:510 7:52'>Act 7:52</a>). It is Paul's declaration that God chose the Jews to see the Just One although they rejected him (<a href='B:510 22:14'>Act 22:14</a>). Peter says that Christ suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a>). The suffering servant of the Lord offered no resistance. He opened not his mouth and like a sheep before his shearers he was dumb (<a href='B:290 53:7'>Isa 53:7</a>), a passage which Peter quotes in his picture of Jesus (<a href='B:670 2:23'>1Pe 2:23</a>). It may well be that James is saying that in their oppression of the poor and the righteous man, the selfish rich have crucified Christ again. Every wound that selfishness inflicts on Christ's people is another wound inflicted on Christ.<p/>It may be that James is not specially thinking of Jesus when he speaks about the righteous man but of the evil man's instinctive hatred of the good man. We have already quoted the passage in The Wisdom of Solomon which describes the conduct of the rich. That passage goes on: "He (the righteous man) professeth to have the knowledge of God, and he calleth himself the child of the Lord. He was made to reprove our thoughts. He is grievous unto us even to behold: for his life is not like other men's, his ways are of another fashion. We are esteemed of him as counterfeits: he abstaineth from our ways as from filthiness: he pronounceth the end of the just to be blessed, and maketh his boast that God is his Father. Let us see if his words be true: and let us prove what shall happen in the end of him. For if the just man be the son of God, he will help him and deliver him from the hand of his enemies. Let us examine him with despitefulness and torture, that we may know his meekness and prove his patience. Let us condemn him with a shameful death: for by his own saying he shall be respected" (Wis_2:13-24). These, says the Sage, are the words of men whose wickedness has blinded them.<p/>Alcibiades, the friend of Socrates, for all his great talents often lived a riotous and debauched life. And there were times when he said to Socrates: "Socrates, I hate you; for every time I see you, you show me what I am." The evil man would gladly eliminate the good man, for he reminds him of what he is and of what he ought to be.<p/><b>WAITING FOR THE COMING OF THE LORD</b> (<a href='B:660 5:7-9'>Jas 5:7-9</a>)


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 Brothers. have patience until the coming of the Lord. Look you, the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, patiently waiting for it until it receives the early and the late rains. So do you too be patient. Make firm your hearts for the coming of the Lord is near. Brothers, do not complain against each other, that you may not be condemned. Look you, the judge stands at the door.<p/></i><p/>The early church lived in expectation of the immediate Second Coming of Jesus Christ; and James exhorts his people to wait with patience for the few years which remain. The farmer has to wait for his crops until the early and the late rains have come. The early and the late rains are often spoken of in Scripture, for they were all-important to the farmer of Palestine (<a href='B:50 11:14'>Deu 11:14</a>; <a href='B:300 5:24'>Jer 5:24</a>; <a href='B:360 2:23'>Joe 2:23</a>). The early rain was the rain of late October and early November without which the seed would not germinate. The late rain was the rain of April and May without which the grain would not mature. The farmer needs patience to wait until nature does her work; and the Christian needs patience to wait until Christ comes.<p/>During that waiting they must confirm their faith. They must not blame one another for the troubles of the situation in which they find themselves for, if they do, they will be breaking the commandment which forbids Christians to judge one another (<a href='B:470 7:1'>Mat 7:1</a>); and if they break that commandment, they will be condemned. James has no doubt of the nearness of the coming of Christ. The judge is at the door, he says, using a phrase which Jesus himself had used (<a href='B:480 13:29'>Mar 13:29</a>; <a href='B:470 24:33'>Mat 24:33</a>).<p/>It so happened that the early church was mistaken. Jesus Christ did not return within a generation. But it will be of interest to gather up the New Testament's teaching about the Second Coming so that we may see the essential truth at its heart.<p/>We may first note that the New Testament uses three different words to describe the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.<p/>(i) The commonest is parousia (<a href='S:G3952'>G3952</a>), a word which has come into English as it stands. It is used in <a href='B:470 24:3'>Mat 24:3</a>; <a href='B:470 24:27'>Mat 24:27</a>; <a href='B:470 24:37'>Mat 24:37</a>; <a href='B:470 24:39'>Mat 24:39</a>; <a href='B:590 2:19'>1Th 2:19</a>; <a href='B:590 3:13'>1Th 3:13</a>; <a href='B:590 4:15'>1Th 4:15</a>; <a href='B:590 5:23'>1Th 5:23</a>; <a href='B:600 2:1'>2Th 2:1</a>; <a href='B:530 15:23'>1Co 15:23</a>; <a href='B:690 2:28'>1Jn 2:28</a>; <a href='B:680 1:16'>2Pe 1:16</a>; <a href='B:680 3:4'>2Pe 3:4</a>. In secular Greek this is the ordinary word for someone's presence or arrival. But it has two other usages, one of which became quite technical. It is used of the invasion of a country by an army and specially it is used of the visit of a king or a governor to a province of his empire. So, then, when this word is used of Jesus, it means that his Second Coming is the final invasion of earth by heaven and the coming of the King to receive the final submission and adoration of his subjects.<p/>(ii) The New Testament also uses the word epiphaneia (<a href='S:G2015'>G2015</a>) (<a href='B:630 2:13'>Tit 2:13</a>; <a href='B:620 4:1'>2Ti 4:1</a>; <a href='B:600 2:9'>2Th 2:9</a>). In ordinary Greek this word has two special usages. It is used of the appearance of a god to his worshipper; and it is used of the accession of an emperor to the imperial power of Rome. So, then, when this word is used of Jesus, it means that his Second Coming is God appearing to his people, both to those who are waiting for him and to those who are disregarding him.<p/>(iii) Finally the New Testament uses the word apokalupsis (<a href='S:G602'>G602</a>) (<a href='B:670 1:7'>1Pe 1:7</a>; <a href='B:670 1:13'>1Pe 1:13</a>). Apokalupsis in ordinary Greek means an unveiling or a laying bare; and when it is used of Jesus, it means that his Second Coming is the laying bare of the power and glory of God come upon men.<p/>Here, then, we have a series of great pictures. The Second Coming of Jesus is the arrival of the King; it is God appearing to his people and mounting his eternal throne; it is God directing on the world the full blaze of his heavenly glory.<p/><b>THE COMING OF THE KING</b> (<a href='B:660 5:7-9'>Jas 5:7-9</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> We may now gather up briefly the teaching of the New Testament about the Second Coming and the various uses it makes of the idea.<p/>(i) The New Testament is clear that no man knows the day or the hour when Christ comes again. So secret, in fact, is that time that Jesus himself does not know it; it is known to God alone (<a href='B:470 24:36'>Mat 24:36</a>; <a href='B:480 13:32'>Mar 13:32</a>). From this basic fact one thing is clear. Human speculation about the time of the Second Coming is not only useless, it is blasphemous; for surely no man should seek to gain a knowledge which is hidden from Jesus Christ himself and resides only in the mind of God.<p/>(ii) The one thing that the New Testament does say about the Second Coming is that it will be as sudden as the lightning and as unexpected as a thief in the night (<a href='B:470 24:27'>Mat 24:27</a>; <a href='B:470 24:37'>Mat 24:37</a>; <a href='B:470 24:39'>Mat 24:39</a>; <a href='B:590 5:2'>1Th 5:2</a>; <a href='B:680 3:10'>2Pe 3:10</a>). We cannot wait to get ready when it comes; we must be ready for its coming.<p/>So, the New Testament urges certain duties upon men.<p/>(i) They must be for ever on the watch (<a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a>). They are like servants whose master has gone away and who, not knowing when he will return, must have everything ready for his return, whether it be at morning, at midday, or at evening (<a href='B:470 24:36-51'>Mat 24:36-51</a>).<p/>(ii) Long delay must not produce despair or forgetfulness (<a href='B:680 3:4'>2Pe 3:4</a>). God does not see time as men do. To him a thousand years are as a watch in the night and even if the years pass on, it does not mean that he has either changed or abandoned his design.<p/>(iii) Men must use the time given them to prepare for the coming of the King. They must be sober (<a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a>). They must get to themselves holiness (<a href='B:590 3:13'>1Th 3:13</a>). By the grace of God they must become blameless in body and in spirit (<a href='B:590 5:23'>1Th 5:23</a>). They must put off the works of darkness and put on the armour of light now that the day is far spent (<a href='B:520 13:11-14'>Rom 13:11-14</a>). Men must use the time given them to make themselves such that they can greet the coming of the King with joy and without shame.<p/>(iv) When that time comes, they must be found in fellowship. Peter uses the thought of the Second Coming to urge men to love and mutual hospitality (<a href='B:670 4:8-9'>1Pe 4:8-9</a>). Paul commands that all things be done in love--Maran-atha (<a href='S:G3134'>G3134</a>) --the Lord is at hand (<a href='B:530 16:14'>1Co 16:14</a>; <a href='B:530 16:22'>1Co 16:22</a>). He says that our forbearance must be known to all men because the Lord is at hand (Php_4:5). The word translated "forbearance" is epieikes (<a href='S:G1933'>G1933</a>) which means the spirit that is more ready to offer forgiveness than to demand justice. The writer to the Hebrews demands mutual help, mutual Christian fellowship, mutual encouragement because the day is coming near (<a href='B:650 10:24-25'>Heb 10:24-25</a>). The New Testament is sure that in view of the Coming of Christ we must have our personal relationships right with our fellow-men. The New Testament would urge that no man ought to end a day with an unhealed breach between himself and a fellow-man, lest in the night Christ should come.<p/>(v) John uses the Second Coming as a reason for urging men to abide in Christ (<a href='B:690 2:28'>1Jn 2:28</a>). Surely the best preparation for meeting Christ is to live close to him every day.<p/>Much of the imagery attached to the Second Coming is Jewish, part of the traditional apparatus of the last things in the ancient Jewish mind. There are many things which we are not meant to take literally. But the great truth behind all the temporary pictures of the Second Coming is that this world is not purposeless but going somewhere, that there is one divine far-off event to which the whole creation moves.<p/><b>THE TRIUMPHANT PATIENCE</b> (<a href='B:660 5:10-11'>Jas 5:10-11</a>)


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 Brothers, take as an example of patience in hardship the prophets who spoke in the name of the Lord. Look you, we count those who endure blessed. You have heard of Job's steadfast endurance and you have seen the conclusion of his troubles which the Lord gave to him, and you have proof that the Lord is very kind and merciful.<p/></i><p/>It is always a comfort to feel that others have gone through what we have to go through. James reminds his readers that the prophets and the men of God could never have done their work and borne their witness had they not patiently endured. He reminds them that Jesus himself had said that the man who endured to the end was blessed for he would be saved (<a href='B:470 24:13'>Mat 24:13</a>).<p/>Then he quotes the example of Job, of whom in the synagogue discourses they had often heard. We generally speak of the patience of Job which is the word the King James Version uses. But patience is far too passive a word. There is a sense in which Job was anything but patient. As we read the tremendous drama of his life we see him passionately resenting what has come upon him, passionately questioning the conventional arguments of his so-called friends, passionately agonizing over the terrible thought that God might have forsaken him. Few men have spoken such passionate words as he did; but the great fact about him is that in spite of all the agonizing questionings which tore at his heart, he never lost his faith in God. "Behold, he will slay me; I have no hope;" (<a href='B:220 13:15'>Job 13:15</a>). "My witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high" (<a href='B:220 16:19'>Job 16:19</a>). "I know that my redeemer lives" (<a href='B:220 19:25'>Job 19:25</a>). His is no unquestioning submission; he struggled and questioned, and sometimes even defied, but the flame of his faith was never extinguished.<p/>The word used of him is that great New Testament word hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>), which describes, not a passive patience, but that gallant spirit which can breast the tides of doubt and sorrow and disaster and come out with faith still stronger on the other side. There may be a faith which never complained or questioned; but still greater is the faith which was tortured by questions and still believed. It was the faith which held grimly on that came out on the other side, for "the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning" (<a href='B:220 42:12'>Job 42:12</a>).<p/>There will be moments in life when we think that God has forgotten, but if we cling to the remnants of faith, at the end we, too, shall see that God is very kind and very merciful.<p/><b>THE NEEDLESSNESS AND THE FOLLY OF OATHS</b> (<a href='B:660 5:12'>Jas 5:12</a>)<p/><i> 5:12 Above all things, my brothers, do not swear, neither by heaven nor by earth nor by any other oath. Let your yes be a simple yes and your no a simple no, lest you fall under judgment.<p/></i><p/>James is repeating the teaching of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount (<a href='B:470 5:33-37'>Mat 5:33-37</a>), teaching which was very necessary in the days of the early church. James is not thinking of what we call bad language but of confirming a statement or a promise or an undertaking by an oath. In the ancient world, there were two evil practices.<p/>(i) There was a distinction--especially in the Jewish world--between oaths which were binding and oaths which were not binding. Any oath in which the name of God was directly used was considered to be definitely binding; but any oath in which direct mention of the name of God was not made was held not to be binding. The idea was that, once God's name was definitely used, he became an active partner in the transaction, but he did not become a partner unless his name was so introduced. The result of this was that it became a matter of skill and sharp practice to find an oath which was not binding. This made a mockery of the whole practice of confirming anything by an oath.<p/>(ii) There was in this age an extraordinary amount of oath-taking. This in itself was quite wrong. For one thing, the value of an oath depends to a large extent on the fact of it being very seldom necessary to take one. When oaths became a commonplace, they ceased to be respected as they ought to be. For another thing, the practice of taking frequent oaths was nothing other than a proof of the prevalence of lying and cheating. In an honest society no oath is needed; it is only when men cannot be trusted to tell the truth that they have to be put upon oath.<p/>In this the ancient writers on morals thoroughly agreed with Jesus. Philo says, "Frequent swearing is bound to beget perjury and impiety." The Jewish Rabbis said, "Accustom not thyself to vows, for sooner or later thou wilt swear false oaths." The Essenes forbade all oaths. They held that if a man required an oath to make him tell the truth, he was already branded as untrustworthy. The great Greeks held that the best guarantee of any statement was not an oath but the character of the man who made it; and that the ideal was to make ourselves such that no one would ever think of demanding an oath from us because he would be certain that we would always speak the truth.<p/>The New Testament view is that every word is spoken in the presence of God and ought, therefore, to be true; and it would agree that the Christian must be known to be a man of such honour that it will be quite unnecessary ever to put him on oath. The New Testament would not entirely condemn oaths but it would deplore the human tendency to falsehood which on occasion makes oaths necessary.<p/><b>A SINGING CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:660 5:13-15'>Jas 5:13-15</a>)


text:
 Is any among you in trouble? Let him pray. Is any in good spirits? Let him sing a hymn. Is any among you sick? Let him call in the elders of the Church; and let them anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, and pray over him; and the believing prayer will restore to health the ailing person, and the Lord will enable him to rise from his bed; and even if he has committed sin, he will receive forgiveness.<p/></i><p/>Here we have set out before us certain dominant characteristics of the early church.<p/>It was a singing church; the early Christians were always ready to burst into song. In Paul's description of the meetings of the Church at Corinth, we find singing an integral part (<a href='B:530 14:15'>1Co 14:15</a>; <a href='B:530 14:26'>1Co 14:26</a>). When he thinks of the grace of God going out to the Gentiles, it reminds him of the joyous saying of the Psalmist: "I will praise thee among the Gentiles, and sing to thy name" (<a href='B:520 15:9'>Rom 15:9</a>; compare <a href='B:230 18:49'>Psa 18:49</a>). The Christians they speak to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in their hearts to the Lord (<a href='B:560 5:19'>Eph 5:19</a>). The word of Christ dwells in them, and they teach and admonish each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in their hearts to the Lord (<a href='B:580 3:16'>Col 3:16</a>). There was a joy in the heart of the Christians which issued from their lips in songs of praise for the mercy and the grace of God.<p/>The fact is that the heathen world has always been sad and weary and frightened. Matthew Arnold wrote a poem describing its bored weariness.<p/>"On that hard Pagan world disgust<p/>And secret loathing fell;<p/>Deep weariness and sated lust<p/>Made human life a hell.<p/>In his cool hall, with haggard eyes,<p/>The Roman noble lay;<p/>He drove abroad in furious guise<p/>Along the Appian Way;<p/>He made a feast, drank fierce and fast,<p/>And crowned his hair with flowers--<p/>No easier nor no quicker past<p/>The impracticable hours."<p/>In contrast with that weary mood the accent of the Christian is singing joy. That was what impressed John Bunyan when he heard four poor old women talking, as they sat at a door in the sun: "Methought they spake, as if joy did make them speak." When Bilney, the martyr, grasped the wonder of redeeming grace, he said, "It was as if dawn suddenly broke on a dark night." Archibald Lang Fleming, the first Bishop of the Arctic, tells of the saying of an Eskimo hunter: "Before you came the road was dark and we were afraid. Now we are not afraid, for the darkness has gone away and all is light as we walk the Jesus way."<p/>Always the church has been a singing Church. When Pliny, governor of Bithynia, wrote to Trajan, the Roman Emperor, in A.D. 111 to tell him of this new sect of Christians, he said that his information was that "they are in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it is light, when they sing in alternate verses a hymn to Christ as God." In the orthodox Jewish synagogue, since the Fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70, there has been no music, for, when they worship, they remember a tragedy; but in the Christian Church, from the beginning until now, there has been the music of praise, for the Christian remembers an Infinite love and enjoys a present glory.<p/><b>A HEALING CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:660 5:13-15'>Jas 5:13-15</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Another great characteristic of the early church was that it was a healing Church. Here it inherited its tradition from Judaism. When a Jew was ill, it was to the Rabbi he went rather than to the doctor; and the Rabbi anointed him with oil--which Galen the Greek doctor called "the best of all medicines"--and prayed over him. Few communities can have been so devotedly attentive to their sick as the early church was. Justin Martyr writes that numberless demoniacs were healed by the Christians when all other exorcists had been helpless to cure them and all drugs had been unavailing. Irenaeus, writing far down the second century, tells us that the sick were still healed by having hands laid on them. Tertullian, writing midway through the third century, says that no less a person than the Roman Emperor, Alexander Severus, was healed by anointing at the hands of a Christian called Torpacion and that in his gratitude he kept Torpacion as a guest in his palace until the day of his death.<p/>One of the earliest books concerning Church administration is the Canons of Hippolytus, which goes back to the end of the second century or the beginning of the third. It is there laid down that men who have the gift of healing are to be ordained as presbyters after investigation has been made to ensure that they really do possess the gift and that it comes from God. That same book gives the noble prayer used at the consecration of the local bishops, part of which runs: "Grant unto him, O Lord...the power to break all the chains of the evil power of the demons, to cure all the sick, and speedily to subdue Satan beneath his feet." In the Clementine Letters the duties of the deacons are laid down; and they include the rule: "Let the deacons of the Church move about intelligently and act as eyes for the bishop.... Let them find out those who are sick in the flesh, and bring such to the notice of the main body who know nothing of them, that they may visit them, and supply their wants." In the First Epistle of Clement the prayer of the Church is: "Heal the sick; raise up the weak; cheer the faint-hearted." A very early Church code lays it down that each congregation must appoint at least one widow to take care of women who are sick. For many centuries the Church consistently used anointing as a means of healing the sick. In fact it is important to note that the sacrament of unction, or anointing, was in the early centuries always designed as a means of cure, and not as a preparation for death as it now is in the Roman Catholic Church. It was not until A.D. 852 that this sacrament did, in fact, become the Sacrament of Extreme Unction, administered to prepare for death.<p/>The Church has always cared for her sick; and in her there has always resided the gift of healing. The social gospel is not an appendix to Christianity; it is the very essence of the Christian faith and life.<p/><b>A PRAYING CHURCH</b> (<a href='B:660 5:16-18'>Jas 5:16-18</a>)


text:
 Confess your sins to each other, and pray for each other, that you may be healed. The prayer of a good man, when it is set to work, is very powerful. Elijah was a man with the same emotions as ourselves, and he prayed earnestly that it should not rain, and for three years and six months no rain fell upon the earth. And he prayed again and the heaven gave rain; and the earth put forth her fruit.<p/></i><p/>There are in this passage three basic ideas of Jewish religion.<p/>(i) There is the idea that all sickness is due to sin. It was a deeply-rooted Jewish belief that where there were sickness and suffering, there must have been sin. "There is no death without guilt, said the Rabbis, "and no suffering without sin." The Rabbis, therefore, believed that before a man could be healed of his sickness his sins must be forgiven by God. Rabbi Alexandrai said, "No man gets up from his sickness until God has forgiven him all his sins." That is why Jesus began his healing of the man with the palsy by saying, "My son, your sins are forgiven" (<a href='B:480 2:5'>Mar 2:5</a>). The Jew always identified suffering and sin. Nowadays we cannot make this mechanical identification; but this remains true--that no man can know any health of soul or mind or body until he is right with God.<p/>(ii) There is the idea that, to be effective, confession of sin has to be made to men, and especially to the person wronged, as well as to God. In a very real sense it is easier to confess sins to God than to confess them to men; and yet in sin there are two barriers to be removed--the barrier it sets up between us and God, and the barrier it sets up between us and our fellow-men. If both these barriers are to be removed, both kinds of confession must be made. This was, in fact, the custom of the Moravian Church and Wesley took it over for his earliest Methodist classes. They used to meet two or three times a week "to confess their faults to one another and to pray for one another that they might be healed." This is clearly a principle which must be used with wisdom. It is quite true that there may be cases where confession of sin to each other may do infinitely more harm than good; but where a barrier has been erected because of some wrong which has been done, a man must put himself right both with God and his fellow-man.<p/>(iii) Above all, there is the idea that no limits can be set to the power of prayer. The Jews had a saying that he who prays surrounds his house with a wall stronger than iron. They said, "Penitence can do something; but prayer can do everything." To them prayer was nothing less than contacting the power of God; it was the channel through which the strength and grace life. How much more must this be so for a Christian?<p/>Tennyson wrote:<p/>"More things are wrought by prayer<p/>Than this world dreams of. Wherefore, let thy voice<p/>Rise like a fountain for me night and day.<p/>For what are men better than sheep or goats<p/>That nourish a blind life within the brain,<p/>If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer<p/>Both for themselves and those who call them friend?<p/>For so the whole round earth is every way<p/>Bound by gold chains about the feet of God."<p/>As the Jew saw it, and as indeed it is, to cure the his of life we need to be right with God and right with men, and we need to bring to bear upon men through prayer the mercy and the might of God.<p/>Before we leave this passage there is one interesting technical fact that we must note. It quotes Elijah as an example of the power of prayer. This is an excellent illustration of how Jewish rabbinic exegesis developed the meaning of Scripture. The full story is in <a href='B:110 17:1-24'>1Ki 17:1-24</a>; <a href='B:110 18:1-46'>1Ki 18:1-46</a>. The three years and six months--a period also quoted in <a href='B:490 4:25'>Luk 4:25</a> --is a deduction from <a href='B:110 18:1'>1Ki 18:1</a>. Further, the Old Testament narrative does not say that either the coming or the cessation of the drought was due to the prayers of Elijah; he was merely the prophet who announced its coming and its going. But the Rabbis always studied Scripture under the microscope. In <a href='B:110 17:1'>1Ki 17:1</a> we read: "As the Lord the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word." Now the Jewish attitude of prayer was standing before God; and so in this phrase the Rabbis found what was to them an indication that the drought was the result of the prayers of Elijah. In <a href='B:110 18:42'>1Ki 18:42</a> we read that Elijah went up to Carmel, bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees. Once again the Rabbis saw the attitude of agonizing prayer; and so found what was to them an indication that it was the prayer of Elijah which brought the drought to an end.<p/><b>THE TRUTH WHICH MUST BE DONE</b> (<a href='B:660 5:19-20'>Jas 5:19-20</a>)


text:
 My brothers, if any among you wanders from the truth and if anyone turns him again to the right way, let him know that he who has turned a sinner from his wandering way will save his brothel's soul from death and will hide a multitude of his own sins.<p/></i><p/>In this passage there is set down the great differentiating characteristic of Christian truth. It is something from which a man can wander. It is not only intellectual, philosophical and abstract; it is always moral truth.<p/>This comes out very clearly when we go to the New Testament and look at the expressions which are used in connection with truth. Truth is something which a man must love (<a href='B:600 2:10'>2Th 2:10</a>); it is something which a man must obey (<a href='B:550 5:7'>Gal 5:7</a>); it is something which a man must display in life (<a href='B:540 4:2'>2Co 4:2</a>); it is something which must be spoken in love (<a href='B:560 4:15'>Eph 4:15</a>); it is something which must be witnessed to (<a href='B:500 18:37'>Joh 18:37</a>); it is something which must be manifested in a life of love (<a href='B:690 3:19'>1Jn 3:19</a>); it is something which liberates (<a href='B:500 8:32'>Joh 8:32</a>); and it is something which is the gift of the Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus Christ (<a href='B:500 16:13-14'>Joh 16:13-14</a>).<p/>Clearest of all is the phrase in <a href='B:500 3:21'>Joh 3:21</a>, he who does what is true. That is to say, Christian truth is something which must be done. It is not only the object of the search of the mind; it is always moral truth issuing in action. It is not only something to be studied but something to be done; not only something to which a man must submit only his mind but something to which he must submit his whole life.<p/><b>THE SUPREME HUMAN ACHIEVEMENT</b> (<a href='B:660 5:19-20'>Jas 5:19-20</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> James finishes his letter with one of the greatest and most uplifting thoughts in the New Testament; and yet one which occurs more than once in the Bible. Suppose a man goes wrong and strays away; and suppose a fellow-Christian rescues him from the error of his ways and brings him back to the right path. That man has not only saved his brother's soul, he has covered a multitude of his own sins. In other words, to save another's soul is the surest way to save one's own.<p/>Mayor points out that Origen has a wonderful passage in one of his Homilies in which he indicates these six ways in which a man may gain forgiveness of his sins--by baptism, by martyrdom, by almsgiving (<a href='B:490 11:41'>Luk 11:41</a>), by the forgiveness of others (<a href='B:470 6:14'>Mat 6:14</a>), by love (<a href='B:490 7:47'>Luk 7:47</a>), and by converting a sinner from the evil of his ways. God will forgive much to the man who has been the means of leading another brother back to him.<p/>This is a thought which shines forth every now and then from the pages of Scripture. Jeremiah says, "If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall be as my mouth" (<a href='B:300 15:19'>Jer 15:19</a>). Daniel writes: "And those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the firmament; and those who turn many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever" (<a href='B:340 12:3'>Dan 12:3</a>). The advice to the young Timothy is: "Take heed to yourself, and to your teaching; for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers" (<a href='B:610 4:16'>1Ti 4:16</a>).<p/>There is a saying of the Jewish Fathers: "Whosoever makes a man righteous, sin prevails not over him." Clement of Alexandria says that the true Christian reckons that which benefits his neighbour his own salvation. It is told that an ultra-evangelical lady once asked Wilberforce, the liberator of the slaves, if his soul was saved. "Madame, he answered, "I have been so busy trying to save the souls of others that I have had no time to think of my own." It has been said that those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves; and certainly those who bring the lives of others to God cannot keep God out of their own. The highest honour God can give is bestowed upon him who leads another to God; for the man who does that does nothing less than share in the work of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of men.<p/>FURTHER READING<p/>James<p/>E. C. Blackman, The Epistle of St. James (Tch; E)<p/>J. B. Mayor, The Epistle of St. James (MmC; G)<p/>C. L. Mitton, The Epistle of St. James<p/>J. Moffatt, The General Epistles: James, Peter and Jude (MC; E)<p/>J. H. Ropes, St. James (ICC; G)<p/>Abbreviations<p/>ICC: International Critical Commentary<p/>MC: Moffatt Commentary<p/>MmC: Macmillan Commentary<p/>Tch: Torch Commentary<p/>E: English Text<p/>G: Greek Text gian powder, was exported all over the world in solidified tablet form in the shape of little rolls. Laodicea was so conscious of its medical skill in the care of the eyes that it never realized that it was spiritually blind.<p/>The words of the Risen Christ arise directly from the prosperity and the skill in which Laodicea took so much pride and which had in the minds of its citizens, and even of its Church, eliminated the need for God.<p/>(iv) We add a final fact about Laodicea. It was in an area where there was a very large Jewish population. So many Jews emigrated here that the Rabbis inveighed against the Jews who sought the wines and baths of Phrygia. In 62 B.C. Flaccus, the governor of the province, became alarmed at the amount of currency which the Jews were exporting in payment of the Temple tax which every male Jew paid and put an embargo on the export of currency. The result was that twenty pounds weight of gold was seized as contraband in Laodicea and one hundred pounds in Apameia in Phrygia. That amount of gold would be equal to 15,000 silver drachmae. The Jewish Temple tax amounted to half a shekel, which was equal to two drachmae. This means that in the district there were at least 7,500 male Jews. In Hierapolis, six miles away from Laodicea, there was a "Congregation of Jews" which had power to levy and to retain fines, and an archive office where Jewish legal documents were specially kept. There can have been few areas where the Jews were wealthier and more influential.<p/>Laodicea, The Claims Of Christ (<a href='B:730 3:14-22'>Rev 3:14-22</a> Continued)<p/>Of all the seven Churches that of Laodicea is most unsparingly condemned. In it there is no redeeming feature. It is interesting to note that the third century work The Apostolic Constitutions (8: 46) says that Archippus was the first Bishop of the Church in Laodicea. When Paul was writing to the neighbouring Church of Colossae, he says sternly: "Say to Archippus, See that you fulfil the ministry which you have received in the Lord" (<a href='B:580 4:17'>Col 4:17</a>). It would seem that Archippus was somehow failing in his duty. That was thirty years before the Revelation was written; but it may be that as long ago as that the rot had set in in the Church in Laodicea and an unsatisfactory ministry had sown the seeds of degeneration.<p/>Like all the letters it begins with a series of great titles of Jesus Christ.<p/>(i) He is the Amen. This is a strange title and may go back to either of two origins.<p/>(a) In <a href='B:290 65:16'>Isa 65:16</a> God is called the God of truth; but in the Hebrew he is called the God of Amen. Amen is the word which is often put at the end of a solemn statement in order to guarantee its truth. If God is the God of Amen, he is utterly to be relied upon. This would mean that Jesus Christ is the One whose promises are true beyond all doubt.<p/>(b) In John's gospel Jesus' statements often begin: "Truly, truly, I say to you" (e.g. <a href='B:500 1:51'>Joh 1:51</a>; <a href='B:500 3:3'>Joh 3:3</a>; <a href='B:500 3:5'>Joh 3:5</a>; <a href='B:500 3:11'>Joh 3:11</a>). The Greek for truly is Amen. It is possible that when Jesus Christ is called the Amen it is a reminiscence of his own way of speaking. The meaning would be the same, Jesus is one whose promises can be relied upon.<p/>(ii) He is the witness on whom we can rely and who is true. Trench points out that a witness must satisfy three essential conditions. (a) He must have seen with his own eyes that of which he tells. (b) He must be absolutely honest, so that he repeats with accuracy that which he has heard and seen. (c) He must have the ability to tell what he has to say, so that his witness may make its true impression on those who hear. Jesus Christ perfectly satisfied these conditions. He can tell of God, because he came from him. We can rely on his words for he is the Amen. He is able to tell his message, for never did man speak as he did.<p/>(iii) As the Revised Standard Version has it, he is the beginning of God's creation. This phrase, as it stands in English, is ambiguous. It could mean, either, that Jesus was the first person to be created or that he began the process of creation, as Trench put it, "dynamically the beginning." It is the second meaning which is intended here. The word for beginning is arche (<a href='S:G746'>G746</a>). In early Christian writings we read that Satan is the arche (<a href='S:G746'>G746</a>) of death, that is to say, death takes its origin in him; and that God is the arche (<a href='S:G746'>G746</a>) of all things, that is, all things find their beginning in him.<p/>The connection of the Son with creation is frequently made in the New Testament. John begins his gospel by saying of the Word: "All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made" (<a href='B:500 1:3'>Joh 1:3</a>). "In him, says Paul, "all things were created" (<a href='B:580 1:15'>Col 1:15</a>; <a href='B:580 1:18'>Col 1:18</a>). The insistence on the Son's part in creation was due to the heretics who explained sin and disease by saying that the world had been created by a false and inferior god. It is the Christian insistence that this world is God's creation and that its sin and sorrow are not his fault, but are caused by the disobedience of men. As the Christian sees it, the God of creation and the God of redemption are one and the same.<p/>Laodicea, Neither One Thing Nor Another (<a href='B:730 3:14-22'>Rev 3:14-22</a> Continued)<p/>The condemnation of Laodicea begins with a picture of almost crude vividness; because the Laodiceans are neither cold nor hot, they have about them a kind of nauseating quality, which will make the Risen Christ vomit them out of his mouth.<p/>The exact meaning of the words is to be noted. Cold is psuchros (<a href='S:G5593'>G5593</a>) ; and it can mean cold to the point of freezing. Ecclesiasticus (Sir_43:20) speaks of the cold north wind which makes the ice congeal upon the waters. Hot is zestos (<a href='S:G2200'>G2200</a>) ; and it means hot to boiling point. Tepid is chliaros (<a href='S:G5513'>G5513</a>). Things which are tepid often have a nauseating effect. Hot food and cold food can both be appetizing, but tepid food will often make the stomach turn. Directly opposite Laodicea, on the other bank of the Lycus, and in full view, stood Hierapolis, famous for its hot mineral springs. Often hot mineral springs are nauseating in their taste and make the person who drinks them want to be physically sick. That is the way in which the Church at Laodicea affected the Risen Christ. Here is something to make us think:<p/>(i) The one attitude which the Risen Christ unsparingly condemns is indifference. It has been said that an author can write a good biography if he loves his subject or hates him but not if he is coldly indifferent. Of all things indifference is the hardest to combat. The problem of modern evangelism is not hostility to Christianity; it would be better if it were so. The problem is that to so many Christianity and the Church have ceased to have any relevance and men regard them with complete indifference. This indifference can be broken down only by the actual demonstration that Christianity is a power to make life strong and a grace to make life beautiful.<p/>(ii) The one impossible attitude to Christianity is neutrality. Jesus Christ works through men; and the man who remains completely detached in his attitude to him has by that very fact refused to undertake the work which is the divine purpose for him. The man who will not submit to Christ has necessarily resisted him.<p/>(iii) Hard as it may sound, the meaning of this terrible threat of the Risen Christ is that it is better not even to start on the Christian way than to start and then to drift into a conventional and meaningless Christianity. The fire must be kept burning. There is an unwritten saying of Jesus: "He who is near me is near the fire." And the way to "maintain the spiritual glow" (<a href='B:520 12:11'>Rom 12:11</a>, Moffatt) is to live close to Christ.<p/>Laodicea, The Wealth That Is Poverty (<a href='B:730 3:14-22'>Rev 3:14-22</a> Continued)<p/>The tragedy of Laodicea was that it was convinced of its own wealth and blind to its own poverty. Humanly speaking, anyone would say that there was not a more prosperous town in Asia Minor. Spiritually speaking, the Risen Christ declares that there was not a more poverty-stricken community. Laodicea prided itself on three things; and each is taken in turn and shown at its true value.<p/>(i) It prided itself on its financial wealth. It was rich and had acquired wealth and had need of nothing--so it thought. The Risen Christ advises Laodicea to buy gold refined in the fire. It may be that gold tried in the fire stands for faith for it is thus that Peter describes faith (<a href='B:670 1:7'>1Pe 1:7</a>). Wealth can do much but there are things that it can never do. It cannot buy happiness nor give a man health either of body or of mind; it cannot bring comfort in sorrow nor fellowship in loneliness. If all that a man has to meet life with is wealth, he is poor indeed. But if a man has a faith tried and refined in the crucible of experience, there is nothing which he cannot face; and he is rich indeed.<p/>(ii) Laodicea prided itself on its clothing trade. The garments made there were famous over all the world, and the wool of the sheep of Laodicea was a luxury article which all men knew, But, says the Risen Christ, Laodicea is spiritually naked; if it wants really to be clothed it must come to him. The Risen Christ speaks of "the shame of the nakedness of Laodicea."<p/>This would mean even more in the ancient world than now. In the ancient world to be stripped naked was the worst humiliation. It was thus that Hanum treated the servants of David (<a href='B:100 10:4'>2Sa 10:4</a>). The threat to Egypt is that Assyria will lead her people naked and barefoot (<a href='B:290 20:4'>Isa 20:4</a>). It was Ezekiel's threat to Israel that her enemies would strip her of her clothes (<a href='B:330 16:37-39'>Eze 16:37-39</a>; <a href='B:330 23:26-29'>Eze 23:26-29</a>; compare <a href='B:350 2:3'>Hos 2:3</a>; <a href='B:350 2:9'>Hos 2:9</a>; <a href='B:400 1:8'>Mic 1:8</a>; <a href='B:400 1:11'>Mic 1:11</a>). God's threat passed on by Nahum to the disobedient people was: "I will let nations look on your nakedness, and on your kingdoms shame" (<a href='B:410 3:5'>Nah 3:5</a>). On the other hand, to be clothed in fine raiment was the greatest honour. Pharaoh honoured Joseph by clothing him in vestures of fine linen (<a href='B:10 41:42'>Gen 41:42</a>). Daniel is clothed in purple by Belshazzar (<a href='B:340 5:29'>Dan 5:29</a>). The royal apparel is for the man whom the king honours (<a href='B:190 6:6-11'>Est 6:6-11</a>). When the prodigal son returns, it is the best robe that is put upon him (<a href='B:490 15:22'>Luk 15:22</a>).<p/>Laodicea prides itself on the magnificent garments it produces but spiritually it is naked and nakedness is shame. The Risen Christ urges it to buy white raiment from him. This may well stand for the beauties of life and character which only the grace of Christ can give. There is little point in a man adorning his body, if he has nothing to adorn his soul. Not all the clothes in the world will beautify a person whose nature is twisted and whose character is ugly.<p/>(iii) Laodicea prided itself on its famous eye-salve; but the facts of the case show that it was blind to its own poverty and nakedness. Trench says: "The beginning of all true amendment is to see ourselves as we are." All eye-salves in the ancient world caused the eyes to smart at their first application, and Laodicea had no wish to see itself as it was.<p/>Laodicea, Love's Chastisement (<a href='B:730 3:14-22'>Rev 3:14-22</a> Continued)<p/><a href='B:730 3:19'>Rev 3:19</a> is one whose teaching runs throughout Scripture. "I rebuke and discipline all those whom I love." There is a very lovely thing about the way this is put. It is a quotation from <a href='B:240 3:12'>Pro 3:12</a>, but one word is altered. In the Greek of the Septuagint the word for love is agapan (<a href='S:G25'>G25</a>) which indicates the unconquerable attitude of goodwill which nothing can turn to hate; but it is a word which maybe has more of the head than the heart in it; and in the quotation the Risen Christ changes agapan (<a href='S:G25'>G25</a>) to philein (<a href='S:G5368'>G5368</a>) which is the most tender affection. We might well paraphrase it: "It is the people who are dearest to me on whom I exercise the sternest discipline."<p/>Let us first take the word rebuke. The Greek is elegchein (<a href='S:G1651'>G1651</a>) and it describes the kind of rebuke which compels a man to see the error of his ways. Elegchos (<a href='S:G1650'>G1650</a>) is the corresponding noun, and Aristotle defines it: "Elegchos (<a href='S:G1650'>G1650</a>) is the proof that a thing cannot be otherwise than we say." The most vivid example of this kind of rebuke is the way in which Nathan opened David's eyes to his sin (<a href='B:100 12:1-14'>2Sa 12:1-14</a>). The rebuke of God is not so much punishment as illumination.<p/>Let us see how the idea of discipline runs through the Bible.<p/>It is very characteristic of the teaching of Proverbs. "He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him" (<a href='B:240 13:24'>Pro 13:24</a>). "Withhold not correction from the child; for, if you beat him with a rod he will not die. If you beat him with the rod you will save his life from Sheol" (<a href='B:240 23:13-14'>Pro 23:13-14</a>). "Faithful are the wounds of a friend" (<a href='B:240 27:6'>Pro 27:6</a>). "The rod and reproof give wisdom; but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother.... Discipline your son and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart" (<a href='B:240 29:15'>Pro 29:15</a>; <a href='B:240 29:17'>Pro 29:17</a>). "Blessed is the man whom thou dost chasten, O Lord, and whom thou dost teach out of thy law" (<a href='B:230 94:12'>Psa 94:12</a>). "Behold, happy is the man whom God reproves; therefore, despise not the chastening of the Almighty" (<a href='B:220 5:17'>Job 5:17</a>). "We are chastened of the Lord that we may not be condemned along with the world" (<a href='B:530 11:32'>1Co 11:32</a>). "For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves and chastises every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is testing you as sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons" (<a href='B:650 11:6'>Heb 11:6</a>; <a href='B:650 11:8'>Heb 11:8</a>). "He that loveth his son will continue to lay stripes upon him, that he may have joy of him in the end. He that chastiseth his son shall have profit of him and shall glory of him among his acquaintances" (Ecc 30:1).<p/>It is, in fact, God's final punishment to leave a man alone. "Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone" (<a href='B:350 4:17'>Hos 4:17</a>). As Trench has it: "The great Master-builder squares and polishes with many strokes of the chisel and hammer the stones which shall find a place at last in the walls of the heavenly Jerusalem.... It is the crushed grape, and not the untouched, from which the costly liquor distils." There is no surer way of allowing a child to end in ruin than to allow him to do as he likes. It is a fact of life that the best athlete and the finest scholar receive the most demanding training. The discipline of God is not something which we should resent, but something for which we should be devoutly thankful.<p/>Laodicea, The Christ Who Knocks (<a href='B:730 3:14-22'>Rev 3:14-22</a> Continued)<p/>In <a href='B:730 3:20'>Rev 3:20</a> we have one of the most famous pictures of Jesus in the whole New Testament. "Behold, says the Risen Christ, "I am standing at the door and knocking." This picture has been derived from two different sources.<p/>(i) It has been taken as a warning that the end is near, and that the Coming of Christ is at hand. The Christian must be ready to open whenever he hears his Lord knocking (<a href='B:490 12:36'>Luk 12:36</a>). When the signs come, the Christian will know that the last time is near, even at the doors (<a href='B:480 13:29'>Mar 13:29</a>; <a href='B:470 24:33'>Mat 24:33</a>). The Christian must live well and live in love because the judge is standing at the doors (<a href='B:660 5:9'>Jas 5:9</a>). It is true that the New Testament uses this picture to express the imminence of the coming of Christ. If that is the picture here, this phrase contains a warning and tells men to have a care, for Jesus Christ the Judge and King is at the door.<p/>(ii) We cannot say that that meaning is impossible and yet it does not seem to fit the context, for the atmosphere of the passage is not so much warning as love. It is much better to take this saying of Christ as expressing the appeal of the lover of the souls of men. The origin of the passage is much more likely to be in Solomon's Song when the lover stands at the door of his beloved and pleads with her to open. "Hark! my beloved is knocking. Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, perfect one" (SS 5:2-6). Here is Christ the lover knocking at the door of the hearts of men. And in this picture we see certain great truths of the Christian religion.<p/>(a) We see the pleading of Christ. He stands at the door of the human heart and knocks. The unique new fact that Christianity brought into this world is that God is the seeker of men. No other religion has the vision of a seeking God.<p/>In his book Out of Nazareth Donald Baillie cites three witnesses to the uniqueness of this conception. Montefiore, the great Jewish scholar, said that the one thing which no Jewish prophet or Rabbi ever conceived of is the "conception of God actually going out in quest of sinful men, who were not seeking him, but who were turned away from him." The National Christian Council of Japan in a document found the distinctive difference of Christianity from all other religions in, "Man not seeking God, but God taking the initiative in seeking man." St. Bernard away back in the twelfth century used often to say to his monks that, "However early they might wake and rise for prayer in their chapel on a cold mid-winter morning or even in the dead of night, they would always find God awake before them, waiting for them--nay, it was he who had awakened them to seek his face."<p/>Here is the picture of Christ searching for sinful men who did not want him. Surely love can go no further than that.<p/>(b) We see the offer of Christ. As the King James Version has it, "I will come in and sup with him." The word translated "sup" is deipnein (<a href='S:G1172'>G1172</a>) and its corresponding noun is deipnon (<a href='S:G1173'>G1173</a>). The Greeks had three meals in the day. There was akratisma, breakfast, which was no more than a piece of dried bread dipped in wine. There was ariston (<a href='S:G712'>G712</a>), the midday meal. A man did not go home for it; it was simply a picnic snack eaten by the side of the pavement, or in some colonnade, or in the city square. There was deipnon (<a href='S:G1173'>G1173</a>) ; this was the evening meal; the main meal of the day; people lingered over it, for the day's work was done. It was the deipnon (<a href='S:G1173'>G1173</a>) that Christ would share with the man who answered his knock, no hurried meal, but that where people lingered in fellowship. If a man will open the door, Jesus Christ will come in and linger long with him.<p/>(iii) We see human responsibility. Christ knocks and a man can answer or refuse to answer. Christ does not break in; he must be invited in. Even on the Emmaus road, "He appeared to be going further" (<a href='B:490 24:28'>Luk 24:28</a>). Holman Hunt was right when in his famous picture The Light of the World he painted the door of the human heart with no handle on the outside, for it can be opened only from within. As Trench has it: "Every man is lord of the house of his own heart; it is his fortress; he must open the gates of it, and he has "the mournful prerogative and privilege of refusing to open." The man who refuses to open is "blindly at strife with his own blessedness." He is a "miserable conqueror."<p/>Christ pleads and offers; but it is all to no avail if a man will not open the door.<p/>This Means You (<a href='B:730 3:14-22'>Rev 3:14-22</a> Continued)<p/>The promise of the Risen Christ is that the victor will sit with him in his own victorious throne. We will get the picture right if we remember that the eastern throne was more like a couch than a single seat. The victor in life will share the throne of the victorious Christ.<p/>Every letter finishes with the words: "Let him who has an ear hear what the Spirit is saying to the Churches." This saying does two things.<p/>(i) It individualizes the message of the letters. It says to every man: "This means you." So often we listen to a message which comes through a preacher and apply it to everyone but ourselves. In our heart of hearts we believe that the stern words cannot possibly be meant for us and that the promises are too good to be true for us. This phrase says to every one of us: "All these things are meant for you."<p/>(ii) It generalizes the message of the letters. It means that their message was not confined to the people in the seven Churches nineteen hundred years ago, but that through them the Spirit is speaking to every man in every generation. We have set these letters carefully against the local situations to which they were addressed; but their message is not local and temporary. It is eternal and in them the Spirit still speaks to us. 


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 Likewise, you wives, be submissive to your husbands, so that, if there are any who refuse to believe the word, they may be won for Christ without a word because they have seen your pure and reverent behaviour.<p/></i><p/>Peter turns to the domestic problems which Christianity inevitably produced. It was inevitable that one marriage partner might be won for Christ, while the other remained untouched by the appeal of the gospel; and such a situation inevitably had difficulties.<p/>It may seem strange that Peter's advice to wives is six times as long as that to husbands. This is because the wife's position was far more difficult than that of the husband. If a husband became a Christian, he would automatically bring his wife with him into the Church and there would be no problem. But if a wife became a Christian while her husband did not, she was taking a step which was unprecedented and which produced the acutest problems.<p/>In every sphere of ancient civilization, women had no rights at all. Under Jewish law a woman was a thing; she was owned by her husband in exactly the same way as he owned his sheep and his goats: on no account could she leave him, although he could dismiss her at any moment. For a wife to change her religion while her husband did not was unthinkable.<p/>In Greek civilization the duty of the woman was "to remain indoors and to be obedient to her husband." It was the sign of a good woman that she must see as little, hear as little and ask as little as possible. She had no kind of independent existence and no kind of mind of her own, and her husband could divorce her almost at caprice, so long as he returned her dowry.<p/>Under Roman law a woman had no rights. In law she remained for ever a child. When she was under her father she was under the patria potestas, the father's power, which gave the father the right even of life and death over her; and when she married she passed equally into the power of her husband. She was entirely subject to her husband and completely at his mercy. Cato the Censor, the typical ancient Roman, wrote: "If you were to catch your wife in an act of infidelity, you can kill her with impunity without a trial." Roman matrons were prohibited from drinking wine, and Egnatius beat his wife to death when he found her doing so. Sulpicius Gallus dismissed his wife because she had once appeared in the streets without a veil. Antistius Vetus divorced his wife because he saw her secretly speaking to a freed woman in public. Publius Sempronius Sophus divorced his wife because once she went to the public games. The whole attitude of ancient civilization was that no woman could dare take any decision for herself.<p/>What, then, must have been the problems of the wife who became a Christian while her husband remained faithful to the ancestral gods? It is almost impossible for us to realize what life must have been for the wife who was brave enough to become a Christian.<p/>What, then, is Peter's advice in such a case? We must first note what he does not advise.<p/>He does not advise the wife to leave her husband. In this he takes exactly the same attitude as Paul takes (<a href='B:530 7:13-16'>1Co 7:13-16</a>). Both Paul and Peter are quite sure that the Christian wife must remain with the heathen husband so long as he does not send her away. Peter does not tell the wife to preach or to argue. He does not tell her to insist that there is no difference between slave and freeman, Gentile and Jew, male and female, but that all are the same in the presence of the Christ whom she has come to know.<p/>He tells her something very simple--nothing else than to be a good wife. It is by the silent preaching of the loveliness of her life that she must break down the barriers of prejudice and hostility, and win her husband for her new Master.<p/>She must be submissive. It is not a spineless submission that is meant but, as someone has finely put it, a "voluntary selflessness." it is the submission which is based on the death of pride and the desire to serve. It is the submission not of fear but of perfect love.<p/>She must be pure. There must be in her life a lovely chastity and fidelity founded on love.<p/>She must be reverent. She must live in the conviction that the whole world is the Temple of God and that all life is lived in the presence of Christ.<p/><b>THE TRUE ADORNMENT</b> (<a href='B:670 3:3-6'>1Pe 3:3-6</a>)


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 Let not your adornment be an outward thing of braided hair and ornaments of gold and wearing of robes, but let it be an adornment of the inward personality of the heart, wrought by the unfading loveliness of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is very precious in the sight of God. For it was thus in days of old the holy women, who placed their hopes in God, adorned themselves in submission to their husbands. It was thus that Sara obeyed Abraham calling him, "Lord." And you have become her children, if you do good, and if you do not become a prey to fluttering fears.<p/></i><p/>Bengel speaks of "the labour bestowed on dress which consumes much time." Such labour is no modern thing. We have already seen that in the ancient world women had no part in public life whatsoever; they had nothing to pass their time; for that reason it was sometimes argued that they must be allowed an interest in dress and adornment. Cato the Censor insisted on simplicity; Lucius Valerius answered: "Why should men grudge women their ornaments and their dress? Women cannot hold public offices, or priesthoods, or gain triumphs; they have no public occupations. What, then, can they do but devote their time to adornment and to dress?" Undue interest in self-adornment was then, as it still is, a sign that the person who indulged in it had no greater things to occupy her mind.<p/>The ancient moralists condemned undue luxury as much as the Christian teachers did. Quintilian, the Roman master of oratory, wrote: "A tasteful and magnificent dress, as the Greek poet tells us, lends added dignity to the wearer: but effeminate and luxurious apparel fails to adorn the body, and only reveals the sordidness of the mind." Epictetus, the philosopher, thinking of the narrow life to which women were condemned in the ancient world, said, "Immediately after they are fourteen, women are called 'ladies' by men. And so, when they see that they have nothing else than to be bedfellows of men, they begin to beautify themselves and put all their hopes on that. It is, therefore, worthwhile for us to take pains to make them understand that they are honoured for nothing else but only for appearing modest and self-respecting." Epictetus and Peter agree.<p/>There is at least one passage in the Old Testament which lists the various items of female adornment and threatens the day of judgment in which they will be destroyed. The passage is <a href='B:290 3:18-24'>Isa 3:18-24</a>. It speaks of the "finery of the anklets, the headbands and the crescents; the pendants, the bracelets, and the scarfs; the headdresses, the armlets, the sashes, the perfume boxes and the amulets; the signet rings and nose rings; the festal robes, the mantles, the cloaks and the handbags; the garments of gauze, the linen garments, the turbans and the veils."<p/>In the world of the Greeks and the Romans it is interesting to collect the references to personal adornments. There were as many ways of dressing the hair as there were bees in Hybca. Hair was waved and dyed, sometimes black, more often auburn. Wigs were worn, especially blonde wigs, which are found even in the Christian catacombs; and hair to manufacture them was imported from Germany, and even from as far away as India. Hairbands, pins and combs were made of ivory, and boxwood, and tortoiseshell; and sometimes of gold, studded with gems.<p/>Purple was the favourite colour for clothes. One pound weight of the best Tyrian purple wool, strained twice through, cost 1,000 denarii, 43:50 British pounds. A tyrian cloak of the best purple cost well over 100 British pounds. In one year silks, pearls, scents and jewellery were imported from India to the value of 1,000,000 British pounds. Similar imports of luxury came from Arabia.<p/>Diamonds, emeralds, topazes, opals and the sardonyx were favourite stones. Struma Nonius had a ring valued at 21,250 British pounds. Pearls were loved most of all. Julius Caesar bought for Servilia a pearl which cost him 65,250 British pounds. Earrings were made of pearls and Seneca spoke of women with two or three fortunes in their ears. Slippers were encrusted with them; Nero even had a room whose walls were covered with them. Pliny saw Lollia Paulina, wife of Caligula, wearing a dress so covered with pearls and emeralds that it had cost 450,000 British pounds.<p/>Christianity came into a world of luxury and decadence combined.<p/>In face of all this Peter pleads for the graces which adorn the heart, which are precious in the sight of God. These were the jewels which adorned the holy women of old. Isaiah had called Sara the mother of God's faithful people (<a href='B:290 51:2'>Isa 51:2</a>); and if Christian wives are adorned with the same graces of modesty, humility and chastity, they too will be her daughters and will be within the family of the faithful people of God.<p/>A Christian wife of those times lived in a society where she would be tempted to senseless extravagance and where she might well go in fear of the caprices of her heathen husband; but she must live in selfless service, in goodness and in serene trust. That would be the best sermon she could preach to win her husband for Christ. There are few passages where the value of a lovely Christian life is so vividly stressed.<p/><b>THE HUSBAND'S OBLIGATION</b> (<a href='B:670 3:7'>1Pe 3:7</a>)<p/><i> 3:7 Likewise, you husbands, live understandingly with your wives, remembering that women are the weaker sex and assigning honour to them as fellow-heirs of the grace of life, so that there may be no barrier to your prayers.<p/></i><p/>Short as this passage is, it has in it much of the very essence of the Christian ethic. That ethic is what may be called a reciprocal ethic. It never places all the responsibility on one side. If it speaks of the duties of slaves, it speaks also of the obligations of masters. If it speaks of the duty of children, it speaks also of the obligations of parents (compare <a href='B:560 6:1-9'>Eph 6:1-9</a>; <a href='B:580 3:20-25'>Col 3:20-25</a>; <a href='B:580 4:1'>Col 4:1</a>). Peter has just laid down the duty of wives; now he lays down the duty of husbands. A marriage must be based on reciprocal obligation. A marriage in which all the privileges are on one side and all the obligations on the other is bound to be imperfect with every chance of failure. This was a new conception in the ancient world. We have already noted the woman's total lack of rights then and quoted Cato's statement of the rights of the husband. But we did not finish that quotation and we do so now: "If you were to catch your wife in an act of infidelity, you can kill her with impunity without a trial; but, if she were to catch you, she would not venture to touch you with her finger and, indeed, she has no right." In the Roman moral code all the obligation was on the wife and all the privilege with the husband. The Christian ethic never grants a privilege without a corresponding obligation.<p/>What are the obligations of the husband?<p/>(i) He must be understanding. He must be considerate and sensitive to the feelings of his wife. Somerset Maugham's mother was a very beautiful woman with the world at her feet but his father was unhandsome. Someone once asked her: "Why do you remain faithful to that ugly little man you married?" Her answer was: "Because he never hurts me." Understanding and considerateness had forged an unbreakable bond. The cruelty which is hardest to bear is often not deliberate but the product of sheer thoughtlessness.<p/>(ii) He must be chivalrous. He must remember that women are the weaker sex and treat them with courtesy. In the ancient world chivalry to women was well-nigh unknown. It was, and still is, no uncommon sight in the East to see the man riding on a donkey while the woman trudged by his side. It was Christianity which introduced chivalry into the relationship between men and women.<p/>(iii) He must remember that the woman has equal spiritual rights. She is a fellow-heir of the grace of life. Women did not share in the worship of the Greeks and the Romans. Even in the Jewish synagogue they had no share in the service, and in the orthodox synagogue still have none. When they were admitted to the synagogue at all, they were segregated from the men and hidden behind a screen. Here in Christianity emerged the revolutionary principle that women had equal spiritual rights and with that the relationship between the sexes was changed.<p/>(iv) Unless a man fulfils these obligations, there is a barrier between his prayers and God. As Bigg puts it: "The sighs of the injured wife come between the husband's prayers and God's hearing." Here is a great truth. Our relationships with God can never be right, if our relationships with our fellow-men are wrong. It is when we are at one with each other that we are at one with him.<p/><b>(1) THE MARKS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE</b> (<a href='B:670 3:8-12'>1Pe 3:8-12</a>)


text:
 Finally, you must all be of one mind; you must have sympathy with each other and you must live in brotherly love; you must be compassionate and humble; you must not return evil for evil, nor insult for insult; on the contrary, you must return blessing; for it was to give and to inherit blessing that you were called.<p/>He that would love life, And see good days, Let him keep his tongue from evil, And his lips from speaking guile: Let him turn away from evil and do right; Let him seek peace, and pursue it, For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, And his ears are open to their prayer; But the face of the Lord is against those that do evil.<p/></i><p/>Peter, as it were, gathers together the great qualities of the Christian life.<p/>(i) Right in the forefront he sets Christian unity. It is worth while to collect together the great New Testament passages about unity, in order to see how great a place it occupies in New Testament thought. The basis of the whole matter is in the words of Jesus who prayed for his people that they might all be one, as he and his Father were one (<a href='B:500 17:21-23'>Joh 17:21-23</a>). In the thrilling early days of the Church this prayer was fulfilled, for they were all of one heart and of soul (<a href='B:510 4:32'>Act 4:32</a>). Over and over again Paul exhorts men to this unity and prays for it. He reminds the Christians of Rome that, though they are many, they are one body, and he pleads with them to be of one mind (<a href='B:520 12:4'>Rom 12:4</a>; <a href='B:520 12:16'>Rom 12:16</a>). In writing to the Christians of Corinth, he uses the same picture of the Christians as members of one body in spite of all their differing qualities and gifts (<a href='B:530 12:12-31'>1Co 12:12-31</a>). He pleads with the quarrelling Corinthians that there should be no divisions among them and that they should be perfectly joined together in the same mind (<a href='B:530 1:10'>1Co 1:10</a>). He tells them that strifes and divisions are fleshly things, marks that they are living on purely human standards, without the mind of Christ (<a href='B:530 3:3'>1Co 3:3</a>). Because they have partaken of the one bread, they must be one body (<a href='B:530 10:17'>1Co 10:17</a>). He tells them that they must be of one mind and must live in peace (<a href='B:540 13:11'>2Co 13:11</a>). In Christ Jesus the dividing walls are down, and Jew and Greek are united into one (<a href='B:560 2:13-14'>Eph 2:13-14</a>). Christians must maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, remembering that there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all (<a href='B:560 4:3-6'>Eph 4:3-6</a>). The Philippians must stand fast in one spirit, striving together with one mind for the faith of the gospel; they will make Paul's happiness complete, if they have the same love and have one accord and one mind; the quarrelling Euodias and Syntyche are urged to be of one mind in the Lord (Php_1:27 ; Php_2:2 ; Php_4:2).<p/>All through the New Testament rings this plea for Christian unity. It is more than a plea; it is an announcement that no man can live the Christian life unless in his personal relationships he is at unity with his fellow-men; and that the Church cannot be truly Christian if there are divisions within it. It is tragic to realize how far men are from realizing this unity in their personal lives and how far the Church is from realizing it within herself. C. E. B. Cranfield writes so finely of this that we cannot do other than quote his whole comment in full, lengthy though it is: "The New Testament never treats this agreeing in Christ as an unnecessary though highly desirable spiritual luxury, but as something essential to the true being of the Church. Divisions, whether disagreements between individual members or the existence of factions and parties and--how much more!--our present-day denominations, constitute a calling in question of the Gospel itself and a sign that those who are involved are carnal. The more seriously we take the New Testament, the more urgent and painful becomes our sense of the sinfulness of the divisions, and the more earnest our prayers and strivings after the peace and unity of the Church on earth. That does not mean that the like-mindedness we are to strive for is to be a drab uniformity of the sort beloved of bureaucrats. Rather is it to be a unity in which powerful tensions are held together by an over-mastering loyalty, and strong antipathies of race and colour, temperament and taste, social position and economic interest, are overcome in common worship and common obedience. Such unity will only come when Christians are humble and bold enough to lay hold on the unity already given in Christ and to take it more seriously than their own self-importance and sin, and to make of these deep differences of doctrine, which originate in our imperfect understanding of the Gospel and which we dare not belittle, not an excuse for letting go of one another or staying apart, but rather an incentive for a more earnest seeking in fellowship together to hear and obey the voice of Christ." There speaks the prophetic voice to our modern condition.<p/><b>(2)THE MARKS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE</b> (<a href='B:670 3:8-12'>1Pe 3:8-12</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (ii) Second, Peter sets sympathy. Here again the whole New Testament urges this duty upon us. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice and to weep with those who weep (<a href='B:520 12:15'>Rom 12:15</a>). When one member of the body suffers all the other members suffer with it; and when one member is honoured, all the members rejoice with it (<a href='B:530 12:26'>1Co 12:26</a>), and it must be so with Christians, who are the body of Christ. One thing is clear, sympathy and selfishness cannot coexist. So long as the self is the most important thing in the world, there can be no such thing as sympathy; sympathy depends on the willingness to forget self and to identify oneself with the pains and sorrows of others. Sympathy comes to the heart when Christ reigns there.<p/>(iii) Third, Peter sets brotherly love. Again the matter goes back to the words of Jesus. "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another.... By this will all men know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another" (<a href='B:500 13:34-35'>Joh 13:34-35</a>). Here the New Testament speaks with unmistakable definiteness and with almost frightening directness. "We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brethren. He who does not love remains in death. Any one who hates his brother is a murderer" (<a href='B:690 3:14-15'>1Jn 3:14-15</a>). "If anyone says, I love God, and hates his brother, he is a liar" (<a href='B:690 4:20'>1Jn 4:20</a>). The simple fact is that love of God and love of man go hand in hand; the one cannot exist without the other. The simplest test of the reality of the Christianity of a man or a Church is whether or not it makes them love their fellow-men.<p/>(iv) Fourth, Peter sets compassion. There is a sense in which pity is in danger of becoming a lost virtue. The conditions of our own age tend to blunt the edge of the mind to sensitiveness in pity. As C. E. B. Cranfield puts it: "We got used to hearing on the radio of a thousand-bomber raid as we ate our breakfast. We have got used to the idea of millions of people becoming refugees." We can read of the thousands of casualties on the roads with no reaction within our hearts, forgetting that each means a broken body or a broken heart for someone. It is easy to lose the sense of pity and still easier to be satisfied with a sentimentalism which feels a moment's comfortable sorrow and does nothing. Pity is of the very essence of God and compassion of the very being of Jesus Christ; a pity so great that God sent his only Son to die for men, a compassion so intense that it took Christ to the Cross. There can be no Christianity without compassion.<p/>(v) Fifth, Peter sets humility. Christian humility comes from two things. It comes, first, from the sense of creatureliness. The Christian is humble because he is constantly aware of his utter dependence on God and that of himself he can do nothing. It comes, second, from the fact that the Christian has a new standard of comparison. It may well be that when he compares himself with his fellow-men, he has nothing to fear from the comparison. But the Christian's standard of comparison is Christ, and, compared with his sinless perfection, he is ever in default. When the Christian remembers his dependence on God and keeps before him the standard of Christ, he must remain humble.<p/>(vi) Lastly, and as a climax, Peter sets forgiveness. It is to receive forgiveness from God and to give forgiveness to men that the Christian is called. The one cannot exist without the other; it is only when we forgive others their sins against us that we are forgiven our sins against God (<a href='B:470 6:12'>Mat 6:12</a>; <a href='B:470 6:14-15'>Mat 6:14-15</a>). The mark of the Christian is that he forgives others as God has forgiven him (<a href='B:560 4:32'>Eph 4:32</a>).<p/>As was natural for him, Peter sums the matter up by quoting <a href='B:230 34:1-22'>Psa 34:1-22</a>, with its picture of the man whom God receives and the man whom God rejects.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN'S SECURITY IN A THREATENING WORLD</b> (<a href='B:670 3:13-15'>1Pe 3:13-15</a> <b>a)</b>


text:
a Who will hurt you, if you are ardent lovers of goodness? Even if you do have to suffer for the sake of righteousness, you are blessed. Have no fear of them; do not be troubled; but in your hearts give Christ a unique place.<p/></i><p/>In this passage we can see how Peter was soaked in the Old Testament; there are two Old Testament foundations for it. It is not so much that he actually quotes them, as that he could not have written the passage at all unless the Old Testament had been in his mind. The very first sentence is a reminiscence of <a href='B:290 50:9'>Isa 50:9</a>: "Behold, the Lord God helps me; who will declare me guilty?" Again, when Peter is talking about the banishing of fear, he is thinking of <a href='B:290 8:13'>Isa 8:13</a>, "But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your fear, and let him be your dread."<p/>There are three great conceptions in this passage.<p/>(i) Peter begins by insisting on a passionate love of goodness. A man may have more than one attitude to goodness. It may be to him a burden or a bore or something which he vaguely desires but the price of which he is not willing to pay in terms of effort. The word we have translated an ardent lover is zelotes (<a href='S:G2207'>G2207</a>) ; which is often translated Zealot. The Zealots were the fanatical patriots, who were pledged to liberate their native land by every possible means. They were prepared to take their lives in their hands, to sacrifice ease and comfort, home and loved ones, in their passionate love for their country. What Peter is saying is: "Love goodness with that passionate intensity with which the most fanatical patriot loves his country." Sir John Seeley said, "No heart is pure that is not passionate; no virtue safe which is not enthusiastic." It is only when a man falls in love with goodness that the wrong things lose their fascination and their power.<p/>(ii) Peter goes on to speak about the Christian attitude to suffering. It has been well pointed out that we are involved in two kinds of suffering. There is the suffering in which we are involved because of our humanity. Because we are men, there come physical suffering, death, sorrow, distress of mind and weariness and pain of body. But there is also the suffering in which we may be involved because of our Christianity. There may be unpopularity, persecution, sacrifice for principle and the deliberate choosing of the difficult way, the necessary discipline and toil of the Christian life. Yet the Christian life has a certain blessedness which runs through it all. What is the reason for it?<p/>(iii) Peter's answer is this. The Christian is the man to whom God and Jesus Christ are the supremacies in life; his relationship to God in Christ is life's greatest value. If a man's heart is set on earthly things, possessions, happiness, pleasure, ease and comfort, he is of all men most vulnerable. For, in the nature of things, he may lose these things at any moment. Such a man is desperately easily hurt. On the other hand, if he gives to Jesus Christ the unique place in his life, the most precious thing for him is his relationship to God and nothing can take that from him. Therefore, he is completely secure.<p/>So, then, even in suffering the Christian is still blessed. When the suffering is for Christ, he is demonstrating his loyalty to Christ and is sharing his sufferings. When the suffering is part of the human situation, it still cannot despoil him of the most precious things in life. No man escapes suffering, but for the Christian suffering cannot touch the things which matter most of all.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN ARGUMENT FOR CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:670 3:15'>1Pe 3:15</a> <b>b-16)</b><p/><i> 3:15b-16 Always be prepared to make your defence to anyone who calls you to account concerning the hope that is in you; but do so with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are abused, those who revile your good behaviour in Christ may be put to shame.<p/></i><p/>In a hostile and suspicious world it was inevitable that the Christian would be called upon to defend the faith he held and the hope by which he lived. Here Peter has certain things to say about this Christian defence.<p/>(i) It must be reasonable. It is a logos (<a href='S:G3056'>G3056</a>) that the Christian must give, and a logos (<a href='S:G3056'>G3056</a>) is a reasonable and intelligent statement of his position. A cultivated Greek believed that it was the mark of an intelligent man that he was able to give and to receive a logos (<a href='S:G3056'>G3056</a>) concerning his actions and belief. As Bigg puts it, he was expected "intelligently and temperately to discuss matters of conduct." To do so we must know what we believe; we must have thought it out; we must be able to state it intelligently and intelligibly. Our faith must be a first-hand discovery and not a second-hand story. It is one of the tragedies of the modern situation that there are so many Church members who, if they were asked what they believe, could not tell, and who, if they were asked why they believe it, would be equally helpless. The Christian must go through the mental and spiritual toil of thinking out his faith, so that he can tell what he believes and why.<p/>(ii) His defence must be given with gentleness. There are many people who state their beliefs with a kind of arrogant belligerence. Their attitude is that anyone who does not agree with them is either a fool or a knave and they seek to ram their beliefs down other people's throats. The case for Christianity must be presented with winsomeness and with love, and with that wise tolerance which realizes that it is not given to any man to possess the whole truth. "There are as many ways to the stars as there are men to climb them." Men may be wooed into the Christian faith when they cannot be bullied into it.<p/>(iii) His defence must be given with reverence. That is to say, any argument in which the Christian is involved must be carried on in a tone which God can hear with joy. No debates have been so acrimonious as theological debates; no differences have caused such bitterness as religious differences. In any presentation of the Christian case and in any argument for the Christian faith, the accent should be the accent of love.<p/>(iv) The only compelling argument is the argument of the Christian life. Let a man so act that his conscience is clear. Let him meet criticism with a life which is beyond reproach. Such conduct will silence slander and disarm criticism. "A saint," as someone has said, "is someone whose life makes it easier to believe in God."<p/><b>THE SAVING WORK OF CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:670 3:17-22'>1Pe 3:17-22</a> <b>;</b> <a href='B:670 4:1-6'>1Pe 4:1-6</a>)


text:
;4:1-6 For it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be the will of God, than to suffer for doing wrong. For Christ also died once and for all for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but he was raised to life in the Spirit, in which also he went and preached to the spirits who are in prison, the spirits who were once upon a time disobedient, in the time when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built, in which some few--that is, eight souls--were brought in safety through the water. And water now saves you, who were symbolically represented in Noah and his company, I mean the water of baptism; and baptism is not merely the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge to God of a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, because he went to heaven, after angels and authorities and power had been made subject to him.<p/>Since, then, Christ suffered in the flesh, you too must arm yourselves with the same conviction that he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, and as a result of this the aim of such a man now is to spend the time that remains to him of life in the flesh no longer in obedience to human passions, but in obedience to the will of God. For the time that is past is sufficient to have done what the Gentiles will to do, to have lived a life of licentiousness, lust, drunkenness, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatry. They think it strange when you do not rush to join them in the same flood of profligacy and they abuse you for not doing so. They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, so that, although they have already been judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the Spirit like God.<p/></i><p/>This is not only one of the most difficult passages in Peter's letter, it is one of the most difficult in the whole New Testament; and it is also the basis of one of the most difficult articles in the creed, "He descended into Hell." It is, therefore, better first of all to read it as a whole and then to study it in its various sections.<p/>The Example Of The Work Of Christ (<a href='B:670 3:17-18'>1Pe 3:17-18</a> a)


text:
a For, it is better to suffer for doing right, if that should be the will of God, than to suffer for doing wrong. For Christ also died once and for all for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.<p/></i><p/>Although this passage is one of the most difficult in the New Testament, it begins with something which anyone can understand. The point that Peter is making is that, even if the Christian is compelled to suffer unjustly for his faith, he is only walking the way that his Lord and Saviour has already walked. The suffering Christian must always remember that he has a suffering Lord. In the narrow compass of these two verses Peter has the greatest and the deepest things to say about the work of Christ.<p/>(i) He lays it down that the work of Christ was unique and never need be repeated. Christ died once and for all for sins. The New Testament says this same thing often. When Christ died, he died once and for all (<a href='B:520 6:10'>Rom 6:10</a>). The priestly sacrifices in the Temple have to be repeated daily but Christ made the perfect sacrifice once and for all when he offered himself up (<a href='B:650 7:27'>Heb 7:27</a>). Christ was once and for all offered to bear the sin of many (<a href='B:650 9:28'>Heb 9:28</a>). We are sanctified through the offering of the body of Christ once and for all (<a href='B:650 10:10'>Heb 10:10</a>). The New Testament is completely sure that on the Cross something happened which never needs to happen again and that in that happening sin is finally defeated. On the Cross God dealt with man's sin in a way which is adequate for all sin, for all men, for all time.<p/>(ii) He lays it down that that sacrifice was for sin. Christ died once and for all for sins. This again is frequently said in the New Testament. Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures (<a href='B:530 15:3'>1Co 15:3</a>). Christ gave himself for our sins (<a href='B:550 1:4'>Gal 1:4</a>). The function of the High Priest, and Jesus Christ is the perfect High Priest, is to offer sacrifice for sins (<a href='B:650 5:1'>Heb 5:1</a>; <a href='B:650 5:3'>Heb 5:3</a>). He is the expiation for our sins (<a href='B:690 2:2'>1Jn 2:2</a>).<p/>The Greek for for sins is either huper (<a href='S:G5228'>G5228</a>) or peri (<a href='S:G4012'>G4012</a>) hamartion (<a href='S:G266'>G266</a>). It so happens that in the Greek version of the Old Testament the regular phrase for a sin-offering is peri (<a href='S:G4012'>G4012</a>) hamartias (<a href='S:G266'>G266</a>) (Hamartias, <a href='S:G266'>G266</a>, is the singular of hamartion, <a href='S:G266'>G266</a>), as, for instance, in <a href='B:30 5:7'>Lev 5:7</a> and <a href='B:30 6:30'>Lev 6:30</a>. That is to say, Peter is laying it down that the death of Christ is the sacrifice which atones for the sin of men.<p/>We may put it this way. Sin is that which interrupts the relationship which should exist between God and men. The object of sacrifice is to restore that lost relationship. The death of Christ upon the Cross, however we explain it, avails to restore the lost relationship between God and man. As Charles Wesley put it in verse:<p/>No condemnation now I dread:<p/>Jesus, and all in him, is mine!<p/>Alive in him, my living Head,<p/>And clothed in righteousness divine,<p/>Bold I approach the eternal throne,<p/>And claim the crown, through Christ my own.<p/>It may be that we will never agree in our theories of what exactly happened on the Cross, for, indeed, as Charles Wesley said in that same hymn: "'Tis mystery all!" But on one thing we can agree--through what happened there we may enter into a new relationship with God.<p/>(iii) He lays it down that that sacrifice was vicarious. Christ died once and for all for sins, the just.for the unjust. That the just should suffer for the unjust is an extraordinary thing. At first sight it looks like injustice. As Edwin H. Robertson put it: "Only forgiveness without reason can match sin without excuse." The suffering of Christ was for us; and the mystery is that he who deserved no suffering bore that suffering for us who deserved to suffer. He sacrificed himself to restore our lost relationship with God.<p/>(iv) He lays it down that the work of Christ was to bring us to God. Christ died once and for all for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. The word for "to bring" is prosagein (<a href='S:G4317'>G4317</a>). It has two vivid backgrounds.<p/>(a) It has a Jewish background. It is used in the Old Testament of bringing to God those who are to be priests. It is God's instruction: "You shall bring Aaron and his sons to the door of the tent of meeting" (<a href='B:20 29:4'>Exo 29:4</a>). The point is this--as the Jews saw it, only the priests had the right of close access to God. In the Temple the layman might come so far; he could pass through the Court of the Gentiles, the Court of the Women, the Court of the Israelites--but there he must stop. Into the Court of the Priests, into the nearer presence of God, he could not go; and of the priests, only the High Priest could enter into the Holy of Holies. But Jesus Christ brings us to God; he opens the way for all men to his nearer presence.<p/>(b) It has a Greek background. In the New Testament the corresponding noun prosagoge (<a href='S:G4318'>G4318</a>) is three times used. Prosagein (<a href='S:G4317'>G4317</a>) means to bring in; prosagoge (<a href='S:G4318'>G4318</a>) means the right of access, the result of the bringing in. Through Christ we have access to grace (<a href='B:520 5:2'>Rom 5:2</a>). Through him we have access to God the Father (<a href='B:560 2:18'>Eph 2:18</a>). Through him we have boldness and access and confidence to come to God (<a href='B:560 3:12'>Eph 3:12</a>). In Greek this had a specialized meaning. At the court of kings there was an official called the prosagogeus, the introducer, the giver of access, and it was his function to decide who should be admitted to the king's presence and who should be kept out. He, as it were, held the keys of access. It is Jesus Christ, through what he did, who gives men access to God.<p/>(v) When we go beyond these two verses, further into the passage, we can add two more great truths to Peter's view of the work of Christ. In <a href='B:670 3:19'>1Pe 3:19</a> he says that Jesus preached to the spirits in prison; and in <a href='B:670 4:6'>1Pe 4:6</a> he says that the gospel was preached to them that are dead. As we shall go on to see, this most probably means that in the time between his death and his resurrection Jesus actually preached the gospel in the abode of the dead; that is to say, to those who in their lifetime had never had the opportunity to hear it. Here is a tremendous thought. It means that the work of Christ is infinite in its range. It means that no man who ever lived is outside the grace of God.<p/>(vi) Peter sees the work of Christ in terms of complete triumph. He says that after his resurrection Jesus went into heaven and is at the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers having been made subject to him (<a href='B:670 3:22'>1Pe 3:22</a>). The meaning is that there is nothing in earth and heaven outside the empire of Christ. To all men he brought the new relationship between man and God; in his death he even brought the good news to the dead; in his resurrection he conquered death; even the angelic and the demonic powers are subject to him; and he shares the very power and throne of God. Christ the sufferer has become Christ the victor; Christ the crucified has become Christ the crowned.<p/>(1) The Descent Into Hell (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> b-20;4:6)<p/><i> 3:18b-20 He was put to death in the flesh, but he was raised to life in the Spirit, in which also he went and preached to the spirits who are in prison, the spirits who were once upon a time disobedient in the time when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built.... For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, so that, although they have already been judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God.<p/></i><p/>We have already said that we are here face to face with one of the most difficult passages, not only in Peter's letter, but in the whole New Testament; and, if we are to grasp what it means, we must follow Peter's own advice and gird up the loins of our mind to study it.<p/>This passage has lodged in the creed in the phrase: "He descended into hell." We must first note that this phrase is very misleading. The idea of the New Testament is not that Jesus descended into hell but that he descended into Hades. <a href='B:510 2:27'>Act 2:27</a>, as all the newer translations correctly show, should be translated not: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, but, "Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades." The difference is this. Hell is the place of the punishment of the wicked; Hades was the place where all the dead went.<p/>The Jews had a very shadowy conception of life beyond the grave. They did not think in terms of heaven and of hell but of a shadowy world, where the spirits of men moved like grey ghosts in an everlasting twilight and where there was neither strength nor joy. Such was Hades, into which the spirits of all men went after death. Isaiah writes: "For Sheol cannot thank thee, death cannot praise thee; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for thy faithfulness" (<a href='B:290 38:18'>Isa 38:18</a>). The Psalmist wrote: "In death there is no remembrance of thee; in Sheol who can give thee praise?" (<a href='B:230 6:5'>Psa 6:5</a>). "What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise thee? Will it tell of thy faithfulness?" (<a href='B:230 30:9'>Psa 30:9</a>). "Dost thou work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise thee? Is thy steadfast love declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in Abaddon? Are thy wonders known in the darkness, or thy saving help in the land of forgetfulness?" (<a href='B:230 88:10-12'>Psa 88:10-12</a>). "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence" (<a href='B:230 115:17'>Psa 115:17</a>). "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going" (<a href='B:250 9:10'>Ecc 9:10</a>). The Jewish conception of the world after death was of this grey world of shadows and forgetfulness, in which men were separated from life and light and God.<p/>As time went on, there emerged the idea of stages and divisions in this shadowland. For some it was to last for ever; but for others it was a kind of prison-house in which they were held until the final judgment of God's wrath should blast them (<a href='B:290 24:21-22'>Isa 24:21-22</a>; <a href='B:680 2:4'>2Pe 2:4</a>; <a href='B:730 20:1-7'>Rev 20:1-7</a>). So, then, it must first of all be remembered that this whole matter is to be thought of, not in terms of hell, as we understand the word, but in terms of Christ's going to the dead in their shadowy world.<p/>(2) The Descent Into Hell (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> b-20;4:6 Continued)<p/>This doctrine of the descent into Hades, as we must now call it, is based on two phrases in our present passage. It says that Jesus went and preached to the spirits who are in prison (<a href='B:670 3:19'>1Pe 3:19</a>); and it speaks of the gospel being preached to the dead (<a href='B:670 4:6'>1Pe 4:6</a>). In regard to this doctrine there have always been differing attitudes amongst thinkers.<p/>(i) There are those who wish to eliminate it altogether. There is the attitude of elimination. Some wish to eliminate it altogether and attempt to do so along two lines.<p/>(a) Peter says that in the Spirit Christ preached to the spirits in prison, who were disobedient in the time when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built. It is argued that what this means is that it was in the time of Noah himself that Christ did this preaching; that in the Spirit long ages before this he made his appeal to the wicked men of Noah's day. This would completely do away with the idea of the descent into Hades. Many great scholars have accepted that view; but we do not think it is the view which comes naturally from Peter's words.<p/>(b) If we look at Moffatt's translation, we find something quite different. He translates: "In the flesh he (Christ) was put to death, but he came to life in the Spirit. It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the imprisoned spirits who had disobeyed at the time when God's patience held out during the construction of the ark in the days of Noah." How does Moffatt arrive at this translation?<p/>The name of Enoch does not appear in any Greek manuscript. But in the consideration of the text of any Greek author, scholars sometimes use a process called emendation. They think that there is something wrong with the text as it stands, that some scribe has perhaps copied it wrongly; and they, therefore, suggest that some word should be changed or added. In this passage Rendel Harris suggested that the word Enoch was missed out in the copying of Peter's writing and should be put back in.<p/>(Although it involves the use of Greek some readers may be<p/>interested to see how Rendel Harris arrived at this famous<p/>emendation. In the top line in italic print, we have set down<p/>the Greek of the passage in English lettering and beneath each<p/>Greek word its English translation:<p/>thanatotheis (<a href='S:G2289'>G2289</a>) men (<a href='S:G3303'>G3303</a>) sarki (<a href='S:G4561'>G4561</a>)<p/>having been put to death in the flesh<p/>zoopoietheis (<a href='S:G2227'>G2227</a>) de (<a href='S:G1161'>G1161</a>) pneumati (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>)<p/>having been raised to life in the Spirit<p/>en (<a href='S:G1722'>G1722</a>) ho (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) kai (<a href='S:G2532'>G2532</a>) tois (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>)<p/>in which also to the<p/>en (<a href='S:G1722'>G1722</a>) phulake (<a href='S:G5438'>G5438</a>) pneumasi (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>)<p/>in prison spirits<p/>poreutheis (<a href='S:G4198'>G4198</a>) ekeruxen (<a href='S:G2784'>G2784</a>)<p/>having gone he preached.<p/>(Men (<a href='S:G3303'>G3303</a>) and de (<a href='S:G1161'>G1161</a>) are what are called particles;<p/>they are not translated but merely mark the contrast between<p/>sarki, <a href='S:G4561'>G4561</a>, and pneumati, <a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>). It was Rendel Harris'<p/>suggestion that between kai (<a href='S:G2532'>G2532</a>) and tois (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) the<p/>word Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>) had dropped out. His explanation was that,<p/>since most manuscript copying was done to dictation, scribes were<p/>very liable to miss words which followed each other, if they<p/>sounded very similar. In this passage:<p/>en (<a href='S:G1722'>G1722</a>) ho (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) kai (<a href='S:G2532'>G2532</a>) and Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>)<p/>sound very much alike, and Rendel Harris thought it very likely<p/>that Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>) had been mistakenly omitted for that reason).<p/>What reason is there for bringing Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>) into this passage at all? He has always been a fascinating and mysterious person. "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him" (<a href='B:10 5:24'>Gen 5:24</a>). In between the Old and New Testaments many legends sprang up about Enoch and famous and important books were written under his name. One of the legends was that Enoch, though a man, acted as "God's envoy" to the angels who sinned by coming to earth and lustfully seducing mortal women (<a href='B:10 6:2'>Gen 6:2</a>). In the Book of Enoch it is said that he was sent down from heaven to announce to these angels their final doom (Enoch 12: 1) and that he proclaimed that for them, because of their sin, there was neither peace nor forgiveness ever (Enoch 12 and 13).<p/>So then, according to Jewish legend, Enoch did go to Hades and preach doom to the fallen angels. And Rendel Harris thought that this passage referred, not to Jesus, but to Enoch, and Moffatt so far agreed with him as to put Enoch into his translation. That is an extremely interesting and ingenious suggestion but without doubt it must be rejected. There is no evidence for it at all; and it is not natural to bring in Enoch, for the whole picture is of the work of Christ.<p/>(3) The Descent Into Hell (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> b-20;4:6 Continued)<p/>We have seen that the attempt at the elimination of this passage fails.<p/>(ii) The second attitude is limitation. This attitude--and it is that of some very great New Testament interpreters--believes that Peter is indeed saying that Jesus went to Hades and preached, but that he by no means preached to all the inhabitants of Hades. Different interpreters limit that preaching in different ways.<p/>(a) It is argued that Jesus preached in Hades only to the spirits of the men who were disobedient in the days of Noah. Those who hold this view often go on to argue that, since these sinners were desperately disobedient, so much so that God sent the flood and destroyed them (<a href='B:10 6:12-13'>Gen 6:12-13</a>), we may believe that no man is outside the mercy of God. They were the worst of all sinners and yet they were given another chance of repentance; therefore, the worst of men still have a chance in Christ.<p/>(b) It is argued that Jesus preached to the fallen angels, and preached, not salvation, but final and awful doom. We have already mentioned these angels. Their story is told in <a href='B:10 6:1-8'>Gen 6:1-8</a>. They were tempted by the beauty of mortal women; they came to earth, seduced them and begat children; and because of their action, it is inferred, the wickedness of man was great and his thoughts were always evil. <a href='B:680 2:4'>2Pe 2:4</a> speaks of these sinning angels as being imprisoned in hell, awaiting judgment. It was to them that Enoch did, in fact, preach; and there are those who think that what this passage means is not that Christ preached mercy and another chance; but that, in token of his complete triumph, he preached terrible doom to those angels who had sinned.<p/>(c) It is argued that Christ preached only to those who had been righteous and that he led them out of Hades into the paradise of God. We have seen how the Jews believed that all the dead went to Hades, the shadowy land of forgetfulness. The argument is that before Christ that was indeed so but he opened the gates of heaven to mankind; and, when he did so, he went to Hades and told the glad news to all the righteous men of all past generations and led them out to God. That is a magnificent picture. Those who hold this view often go on to say that, because of Christ, there is now no time spent in the shadows of Hades and the way to paradise is open as soon as this world closes on us.<p/>(4) The Descent Into Hell (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> b-20;4:6 Continued)<p/>(iii) There is the attitude that what Peter is saying is that Jesus Christ, between his death and resurrection, went to the world of the dead and preached the gospel there. Peter says that Jesus Christ was put to death in the flesh but raised to life in the Spirit, and that it was in the Spirit that he so preached. The meaning is that Jesus lived in a human body and was under all the limitations of time and space in the days of his flesh; and died with that body broken and bleeding upon the Cross. But when he rose again, he rose with a spiritual body, in which he was rid of the necessary weaknesses of humanity and liberated from the necessary limitations of time and space. It was in this spiritual condition of perfect freedom that the preaching to the dead took place.<p/>As it stands this doctrine is stated in categories which are outworn. It speaks of the descent into Hades and the very word descent suggests a three-storey universe in which heaven is localized above the sky and Hades beneath the earth. But, laying aside the physical categories of this doctrine, we can find in it truths which are eternally valid and precious, three in particular.<p/>(a) If Christ descended into Hades, then his death was no sham. It is not to be explained in terms of a swoon on the Cross, or anything like that. He really experienced death, and rose again. At its simplest, the doctrine of the descent into Hades lays down the complete identity of Christ with our human condition, even to the experience of death.<p/>(b) If Christ descended into Hades, it means that his triumph is universal. This, in fact, is a truth which is ingrained into the New Testament. It is Paul's dream that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth (Php_2:10). In the Revelation the song of praise comes from every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth (<a href='B:730 5:13'>Rev 5:13</a>). He who ascended into Heaven is he who first descended into the lower parts of the earth (<a href='B:560 4:9-10'>Eph 4:9-10</a>). The total submission of the universe to Christ is woven into the thought of the New Testament.<p/>(c) If Christ descended into Hades and preached there, there is no corner of the universe into which the message of grace has not come. There is in this passage the solution of one of the most haunting questions raised by the Christian faith--what is to happen to those who lived before Jesus Christ and to those to whom the gospel never came? There can be no salvation without repentance but how can repentance come to those who have never been confronted with the love and holiness of God? If there is no other name by which men may be saved, what is to happen to those who never heard it? This is the point that Justin Martyr fastened on long ago: "The Lord, the Holy God of Israel, remembered his dead, those sleeping in the earth, and came down to them to tell them the good news of salvation." The doctrine of the descent into Hades conserves the precious truth that no man who ever lived is left without a sight of Christ and without the offer of the salvation of God.<p/>Many in repeating the creed have found the phrase "He descended into hell" either meaningless or bewildering, and have tacitly agreed to set it on one side and forget it. It may well be that we ought to think of this as a picture painted in terms of poetry rather than a doctrine stated in terms of theology. But it contains these three great truths--that Jesus Christ not only tasted death but drained the cup of death, that the triumph of Christ is universal and that there is no corner of the universe into which the grace of God has not reached.<p/>The Baptism Of The Christian (<a href='B:670 3:18-22'>1Pe 3:18-22</a>)


text:
 For Christ also died once and for all for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but he was raised to life in the Spirit, in which also he went and preached to the spirits who are in prison, the spirits who were once upon a time disobedient in the time when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built, in which some few--that is, eight souls--were brought in safety through the water. And water now saves you, who were symbolically represented in Noah and his company, I mean the water of baptism; and baptism is not merely the removal of dirt from the body, but the pledge to God of a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is at the right hand of God, because he went to heaven, after angels and authorities and powers had been made subject to him.<p/></i><p/>Peter has been speaking about the wicked men who were disobedient and corrupt in the days of Noah; they were ultimately destroyed. But in the destruction by the flood eight people--Noah and his wife, his sons Shem, Ham and Japheth, and their wives--were brought to safety in the ark. Immediately the idea of being brought to safety through the water turns Peter's thoughts to Christian baptism, which is also a bringing to safety through the water. What Peter literally says is that baptism is an antitype of Noah and his people in the ark.<p/>This word introduces us to a special way of looking at the Old Testament. There are two closely connected words. There is tupos (<a href='S:G5179'>G5179</a>), type, which means a seal, and there is antitupos (<a href='S:G499'>G499</a>), antitype, which means the impression of the seal. Clearly, between the seal and its impression there is the closest possible correspondence. So there are people and events and customs in the Old Testament which are types, and which find their antitypes in the New Testament. The Old Testament event or person is like the seal; the New Testament event or person is like the impression; the two answer to each other. We might put it that the Old Testament event symbolically represents and foreshadows the New Testament event. The science of finding types and antitypes in the Old and the New Testaments is very highly developed. But to take very simple and obvious examples, the Passover Lamb and the scapegoat, who bore the sins of the people, are types of Jesus; and the work of the High Priest in making sacrifice for the sins of the people is a type of his saving work. Here Peter sees the bringing safely through the waters of Noah and his family as a type of baptism.<p/>In this passage Peter has three great things to say about baptism. It must be remembered that at this stage of the Church's history we are still dealing with adult baptism, the baptism of people who had come straight from heathenism into Christianity and who were taking upon themselves a new way of life.<p/>(i) Baptism is not merely a physical cleansing; it is a spiritual cleansing of the whole heart and soul and life. Its effect must be on a man's very soul and on his whole life.<p/>(ii) Peter calls baptism the pledge of a good conscience to God (<a href='B:670 3:21'>1Pe 3:21</a>). The word Peter uses for pledge is eperotema (<a href='S:G1906'>G1906</a>). In every business contract there was a definite question and answer which made the contract binding. The question was: "Do you accept the terms of this contract, and bind yourself to observe them?" And the answer, before witnesses was: "Yes." Without that question and answer the contract was not valid. The technical word for that question and answer clause is eperotema (<a href='S:G1906'>G1906</a>) in Greek, stipulatio in Latin.<p/>Peter is, in effect, saying that in baptism God said to the man coming direct from heathenism: "Do you accept the terms of my service? Do you accept its privileges and promises, and do you undertake its responsibilities and its demands?" And in the act of being baptized the man answered: "Yes."<p/>Some use the word sacrament. Sacrament is derived from the Latin sacramentum, which means a soldier's oath of loyalty on entering the army. Here we have basically the same picture. We cannot very well apply this question and answer in infant baptism, unless it be to the parents; but, as we have said, baptism in the very early church was of adult men and women coming spontaneously from heathenism into the Church. The modern parallel is entering upon full membership of the Church. When we enter upon Church membership, God asks us: "Do you accept the conditions of my service, with all privileges and all its responsibilities, with all its promises and all its demands?" and we answer; "Yes." It would be well if all were clearly to understand what they are doing when they take upon themselves membership of the Church.<p/>(iii) The whole idea and effectiveness of baptism is dependent on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is the grace of the Risen Lord which cleanses us; it is to the Risen, Living Lord that we pledge ourselves; it is to the Risen, Living Lord that we look for strength to keep the pledge that we have given. Once again, where infant baptism is the practice, we must take these great conceptions and apply them to the time when we enter upon full membership of the Church. 


text:
 Since then, Christ suffered in the flesh, you too must arm yourselves with the same conviction, that he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, and as a result of this the aim of such a man now is to spend the time that remains to him of life in obedience to the will of God. For the time that is past is sufficient to have done what the Gentiles will to do, to have lived a life of licentiousness, lust, drunkenness, revellings, carousings, and abominable idolatry. They think it strange when you do not rush to join them in the same flood of profligacy, and they abuse you for not doing so. They will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead.<p/></i><p/>The Christian is committed to abandon the ways of heathenism and to live as God would have him to do.<p/>Peter says, "He who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin." What exactly does he mean? There are three distinct possibilities.<p/>(i) There is a strong line in Jewish thought that suffering is in itself a great purifier. In the Apocalypse of Baruch the writer, speaking of the experiences of the people of Israel, says, "Then, therefore, were they chastened that they might be sanctified" (13: 10). In regard to the purification of the spirits of men Enoch says, "And in proportion as the burning of their body becomes severe, a corresponding change will take place in their spirit for ever and ever; for before the Lord of spirits there will be none to utter a lying word" (67: 9). The terrible sufferings of the time are described in 2 Maccabees, and the writer says, "I beseech those that read this book that they be not discouraged, terrified or shaken for these calamities, but that they judge these punishments not to be for destruction but for chastening of our nation. For it is a token of his great goodness, when evil-doers are not suffered to go on in their ways any long time, but forthwith punished. For not as with other nations, whom the Lord patiently forbeareth to punish, till the day of judgment arrive, and they be come to the fullness of their sins, so dealeth he with us, lest that, being come to the height of sin, afterwards he should take vengeance on us. And though he punish sinners with adversity, yet doth he never forsake his people" (2Ma_6:12-16). The idea is that suffering sanctifies and that not to be punished is the greatest punishment which God can lay upon a man. "Blessed is the man whom thou dost chasten, O Lord," said the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 94:12'>Psa 94:12</a>). "Happy is the man whom God reproves, said Eliphaz (<a href='B:220 5:17'>Job 5:17</a>). "For the Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives" (<a href='B:650 12:6'>Heb 12:6</a>).<p/>If this is the idea, it means that he who has been disciplined by suffering has been cured of sin. That is a great thought. It enables us, as Browning said, "to welcome each rebuff that turns earth's smoothness rough." It enables us to thank God for the experiences which hurt but save the soul. But great as this thought is, it is not strictly relevant here.<p/>(ii) Bigg thinks that Peter is speaking in terms of the experience which his people had of suffering for the Christian faith. He puts it this way: "He who has suffered in meekness and in fear, he who has endured all that persecution can do to him rather than join in wicked ways can be trusted to do right; temptation has manifestly no power over him." The idea is that if a man has come through persecution and not denied the name of Christ, he comes out on the other side with a character so tested and a faith so strengthened, that temptation cannot touch him any more.<p/>Again there is a great thought here, the thought that every trial and every temptation are meant to make us stronger and better. Every temptation resisted makes the next easier to resist; and every temptation conquered makes us better able to overcome the next attack. But again it is doubtful if this thought comes in very relevantly here.<p/>(iii) The third explanation is most probably the right one. Peter has just been talking about baptism. Now the great New Testament picture of baptism is in <a href='B:520 6:1-23'>Rom 6:1-23</a>. In that chapter Paul says that the experience of baptism is like being buried with Christ in death and raised with him to newness of life. We think that this is what Peter is thinking of here. He has spoken of baptism; and now he says, "He who in baptism has shared the sufferings and the death of Christ, is risen to such newness of life with him that sin has no more dominion over him" (<a href='B:520 6:14'>Rom 6:14</a>). Again we must remember that this is the baptism of the man who is voluntarily coming over from paganism into Christianity. In that act of baptism he is identified with Christ; he shares his sufferings and even his death; and he shares his risen life and power, and is, therefore, victor over sin.<p/>When that has happened, a man has said good-bye to his former way of life. The rule of pleasure, pride and passion is gone, and the rule of God has begun. This was by no means easy. A man's former associates would laugh at the new puritanism which had entered his life. But the Christian knows very well that the judgment of God will come, when the judgments of earth will be reversed and the pleasures that are eternal will compensate a thousandfold for the transitory pleasures which had to be abandoned in this life.<p/><b>THE ULTIMATE CHANCE</b> (<a href='B:670 4:6'>1Pe 4:6</a>)<p/><i> 4:6 For this is the reason why the gospel was preached to the dead, so that, although they have been judged in the flesh like men, they may live in the Spirit like God.<p/></i><p/>This very difficult passage ends with a very difficult verse. Once again we have the idea of the gospel being preached to the dead. At least three different meanings have been attached to dead. (i) It has been taken to mean those who are dead in sin, not those who are physically dead. (ii) It has been taken to mean those who died be re the Second Coming of Christ; but who heard the gospel before they died and so will not miss the glory. (iii) It has been taken to mean quite simply all the dead There can be little doubt that this third meaning is correct; Peter has just been talking about the descent of Christ to the place of the dead, and here he comes back to the idea of Christ preaching to the dead.<p/>No fully satisfactory meaning has ever been found for this verse; but we think that the best explanation is as follows. For mortal man, death is the penalty of sin. As Paul wrote: "Sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned" (<a href='B:520 5:12'>Rom 5:12</a>). Had there been no sin, there would have been no death; and, therefore, death in itself is a judgment. So Peter says, all men have already been judged when they die; in spite of that Christ descended to the world of the dead and preached the gospel there, giving them another chance to live in the Spirit of God.<p/>In some ways this is one of the most wonderful verses in the Bible, for, if our explanation is anywhere near the truth, it gives a breath-taking glimpse of a gospel of a second chance.<p/><b>(1) THE DESCENT INTO HELL</b> (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> <b>b-20;4:6)</b><p/><i> 4:6 He was put to death in the flesh, but he was raised to life in the Spirit, in which also he went and preached to the spirits who are in prison, the spirits who were once upon a time disobedient in the time when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being built.... For this is why the gospel was preached even to the dead, so that, although they have already been judged in the flesh like men, they might live in the spirit like God.<p/></i><p/>We have already said that we are here face to face with one of the most difficult passages, not only in Peter's letter, but in the whole New Testament; and, if we are to grasp what it means, we must follow Peter's own advice and gird up the loins of our mind to study it.<p/>This passage has lodged in the creed in the phrase: "He descended into hell." We must first note that this phrase is very misleading. The idea of the New Testament is not that Jesus descended into hell but that he descended into Hades. <a href='B:510 2:27'>Act 2:27</a>, as all the newer translations correctly show, should be translated not: "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, but, "Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades." The difference is this. Hell is the place of the punishment of the wicked; Hades was the place where all the dead went.<p/>The Jews had a very shadowy conception of life beyond the grave. They did not think in terms of heaven and of hell but of a shadowy world, where the spirits of men moved like grey ghosts in an everlasting twilight and where there was neither strength nor joy. Such was Hades, into which the spirits of all men went after death. Isaiah writes: "For Sheol cannot thank thee, death cannot praise thee; those who go down to the pit cannot hope for thy faithfulness" (<a href='B:290 38:18'>Isa 38:18</a>). The Psalmist wrote: "In death there is no remembrance of thee; in Sheol who can give thee praise?" (<a href='B:230 6:5'>Psa 6:5</a>). "What profit is there in my death if I go down to the pit? Will the dust praise thee? Will it tell of thy faithfulness?" (<a href='B:230 30:9'>Psa 30:9</a>). "Dost thou work wonders for the dead? Do the shades rise up to praise thee? Is thy steadfast love declared in the grave, or thy faithfulness in Abaddon? Are thy wonders known in the darkness, or thy saving help in the land of forgetfulness?" (<a href='B:230 88:10-12'>Psa 88:10-12</a>). "The dead do not praise the Lord, nor do any that go down into silence" (<a href='B:230 115:17'>Psa 115:17</a>). "Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going" (<a href='B:250 9:10'>Ecc 9:10</a>). The Jewish conception of the world after death was of this grey world of shadows and forgetfulness, in which men were separated from life and light and God.<p/>As time went on, there emerged the idea of stages and divisions in this shadowland. For some it was to last for ever; but for others it was a kind of prison-house in which they were held until the final judgment of God's wrath should blast them (<a href='B:290 24:21-22'>Isa 24:21-22</a>; <a href='B:680 2:4'>2Pe 2:4</a>; <a href='B:730 20:1-7'>Rev 20:1-7</a>). So, then, it must first of all be remembered that this whole matter is to be thought of, not in terms of hell, as we understand the word, but in terms of Christ's going to the dead in their shadowy world.<p/><b>(2) THE DESCENT INTO HELL</b> (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> <b>b-20;4:6 continued)</b><p/> This doctrine of the descent into Hades, as we must now call it, is based on two phrases in our present passage. It says that Jesus went and preached to the spirits who are in prison (<a href='B:670 3:19'>1Pe 3:19</a>); and it speaks of the gospel being preached to the dead (<a href='B:670 4:6'>1Pe 4:6</a>). In regard to this doctrine there have always been differing attitudes amongst thinkers.<p/>(i) There are those who wish to eliminate it altogether. There is the attitude of elimination. Some wish to eliminate it altogether and attempt to do so along two lines.<p/>(a) Peter says that in the Spirit Christ preached to the spirits in prison, who were disobedient in the time when the patience of God waited in the days of Noah, when the ark was being built. It is argued that what this means is that it was in the time of Noah himself that Christ did this preaching; that in the Spirit long ages before this he made his appeal to the wicked men of Noah's day. This would completely do away with the idea of the descent into Hades. Many great scholars have accepted that view; but we do not think it is the view which comes naturally from Peter's words.<p/>(b) If we look at Moffatt's translation, we find something quite different. He translates: "In the flesh he (Christ) was put to death, but he came to life in the Spirit. It was in the Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the imprisoned spirits who had disobeyed at the time when God's patience held out during the construction of the ark in the days of Noah." How does Moffatt arrive at this translation?<p/>The name of Enoch does not appear in any Greek manuscript. But in the consideration of the text of any Greek author, scholars sometimes use a process called emendation. They think that there is something wrong with the text as it stands, that some scribe has perhaps copied it wrongly; and they, therefore, suggest that some word should be changed or added. In this passage Rendel Harris suggested that the word Enoch was missed out in the copying of Peter's writing and should be put back in.<p/>(Although it involves the use of Greek some readers may be<p/>interested to see how Rendel Harris arrived at this famous<p/>emendation. In the top line in italic print, we have set down<p/>the Greek of the passage in English lettering and beneath each<p/>Greek word its English translation:<p/>thanatotheis (<a href='S:G2289'>G2289</a>) men (<a href='S:G3303'>G3303</a>) sarki (<a href='S:G4561'>G4561</a>)<p/>having been put to death in the flesh<p/>zoopoietheis (<a href='S:G2227'>G2227</a>) de (<a href='S:G1161'>G1161</a>) pneumati (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>)<p/>having been raised to life in the Spirit<p/>en (<a href='S:G1722'>G1722</a>) ho (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) kai (<a href='S:G2532'>G2532</a>) tois (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>)<p/>in which also to the<p/>en (<a href='S:G1722'>G1722</a>) phulake (<a href='S:G5438'>G5438</a>) pneumasi (<a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>)<p/>in prison spirits<p/>poreutheis (<a href='S:G4198'>G4198</a>) ekeruxen (<a href='S:G2784'>G2784</a>)<p/>having gone he preached.<p/>(Men (<a href='S:G3303'>G3303</a>) and de (<a href='S:G1161'>G1161</a>) are what are called particles;<p/>they are not translated but merely mark the contrast between<p/>sarki, <a href='S:G4561'>G4561</a>, and pneumati, <a href='S:G4151'>G4151</a>). It was Rendel Harris'<p/>suggestion that between kai (<a href='S:G2532'>G2532</a>) and tois (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) the<p/>word Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>) had dropped out. His explanation was that,<p/>since most manuscript copying was done to dictation, scribes were<p/>very liable to miss words which followed each other, if they<p/>sounded very similar. In this passage:<p/>en (<a href='S:G1722'>G1722</a>) ho (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) kai (<a href='S:G2532'>G2532</a>) and Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>)<p/>sound very much alike, and Rendel Harris thought it very likely<p/>that Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>) had been mistakenly omitted for that reason).<p/>What reason is there for bringing Enoch (<a href='S:G1802'>G1802</a>) into this passage at all? He has always been a fascinating and mysterious person. "And Enoch walked with God; and he was not; for God took him" (<a href='B:10 5:24'>Gen 5:24</a>). In between the Old and New Testaments many legends sprang up about Enoch and famous and important books were written under his name. One of the legends was that Enoch, though a man, acted as "God's envoy" to the angels who sinned by coming to earth and lustfully seducing mortal women (<a href='B:10 6:2'>Gen 6:2</a>). In the Book of Enoch it is said that he was sent down from heaven to announce to these angels their final doom (Enoch 12: 1) and that he proclaimed that for them, because of their sin, there was neither peace nor forgiveness ever (Enoch 12 and 13).<p/>So then, according to Jewish legend, Enoch did go to Hades and preach doom to the fallen angels. And Rendel Harris thought that this passage referred, not to Jesus, but to Enoch, and Moffatt so far agreed with him as to put Enoch into his translation. That is an extremely interesting and ingenious suggestion but without doubt it must be rejected. There is no evidence for it at all; and it is not natural to bring in Enoch, for the whole picture is of the work of Christ.<p/><b>(3) THE DESCENT INTO HELL</b> (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> <b>b-20;4:6 continued)</b><p/> We have seen that the attempt at the elimination of this passage fails.<p/>(ii) The second attitude is limitation. This attitude--and it is that of some very great New Testament interpreters--believes that Peter is indeed saying that Jesus went to Hades and preached, but that he by no means preached to all the inhabitants of Hades. Different interpreters limit that preaching in different ways.<p/>(a) It is argued that Jesus preached in Hades only to the spirits of the men who were disobedient in the days of Noah. Those who hold this view often go on to argue that, since these sinners were desperately disobedient, so much so that God sent the flood and destroyed them (<a href='B:10 6:12-13'>Gen 6:12-13</a>), we may believe that no man is outside the mercy of God. They were the worst of all sinners and yet they were given another chance of repentance; therefore, the worst of men still have a chance in Christ.<p/>(b) It is argued that Jesus preached to the fallen angels, and preached, not salvation, but final and awful doom. We have already mentioned these angels. Their story is told in <a href='B:10 6:1-8'>Gen 6:1-8</a>. They were tempted by the beauty of mortal women; they came to earth, seduced them and begat children; and because of their action, it is inferred, the wickedness of man was great and his thoughts were always evil. <a href='B:680 2:4'>2Pe 2:4</a> speaks of these sinning angels as being imprisoned in hell, awaiting judgment. It was to them that Enoch did, in fact, preach; and there are those who think that what this passage means is not that Christ preached mercy and another chance; but that, in token of his complete triumph, he preached terrible doom to those angels who had sinned.<p/>(c) It is argued that Christ preached only to those who had been righteous and that he led them out of Hades into the paradise of God. We have seen how the Jews believed that all the dead went to Hades, the shadowy land of forgetfulness. The argument is that before Christ that was indeed so but he opened the gates of heaven to mankind; and, when he did so, he went to Hades and told the glad news to all the righteous men of all past generations and led them out to God. That is a magnificent picture. Those who hold this view often go on to say that, because of Christ, there is now no time spent in the shadows of Hades and the way to paradise is open as soon as this world closes on us.<p/><b>(4) THE DESCENT INTO HELL</b> (<a href='B:670 3:18'>1Pe 3:18</a> <b>b-20;4:6 continued)</b><p/> (iii) There is the attitude that what Peter is saying is that Jesus Christ, between his death and resurrection, went to the world of the dead and preached the gospel there. Peter says that Jesus Christ was put to death in the flesh but raised to life in the Spirit, and that it was in the Spirit that he so preached. The meaning is that Jesus lived in a human body and was under all the limitations of time and space in the days of his flesh; and died with that body broken and bleeding upon the Cross. But when he rose again, he rose with a spiritual body, in which he was rid of the necessary weaknesses of humanity and liberated from the necessary limitations of time and space. It was in this spiritual condition of perfect freedom that the preaching to the dead took place.<p/>As it stands this doctrine is stated in categories which are outworn. It speaks of the descent into Hades and the very word descent suggests a three-storey universe in which heaven is localized above the sky and Hades beneath the earth. But, laying aside the physical categories of this doctrine, we can find in it truths which are eternally valid and precious, three in particular.<p/>(a) If Christ descended into Hades, then his death was no sham. It is not to be explained in terms of a swoon on the Cross, or anything like that. He really experienced death, and rose again. At its simplest, the doctrine of the descent into Hades lays down the complete identity of Christ with our human condition, even to the experience of death.<p/>(b) If Christ descended into Hades, it means that his triumph is universal. This, in fact, is a truth which is ingrained into the New Testament. It is Paul's dream that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and things under the earth (Php_2:10). In the Revelation the song of praise comes from every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth and under the earth (<a href='B:730 5:13'>Rev 5:13</a>). He who ascended into Heaven is he who first descended into the lower parts of the earth (<a href='B:560 4:9-10'>Eph 4:9-10</a>). The total submission of the universe to Christ is woven into the thought of the New Testament.<p/>(c) If Christ descended into Hades and preached there, there is no corner of the universe into which the message of grace has not come. There is in this passage the solution of one of the most haunting questions raised by the Christian faith--what is to happen to those who lived before Jesus Christ and to those to whom the gospel never came? There can be no salvation without repentance but how can repentance come to those who have never been confronted with the love and holiness of God? If there is no other name by which men may be saved, what is to happen to those who never heard it? This is the point that Justin Martyr fastened on long ago: "The Lord, the Holy God of Israel, remembered his dead, those sleeping in the earth, and came down to them to tell them the good news of salvation." The doctrine of the descent into Hades conserves the precious truth that no man who ever lived is left without a sight of Christ and without the offer of the salvation of God.<p/>Many in repeating the creed have found the phrase "He descended into hell" either meaningless or bewildering, and have tacitly agreed to set it on one side and forget it. It may well be that we ought to think of this as a picture painted in terms of poetry rather than a doctrine stated in terms of theology. But it contains these three great truths--that Jesus Christ not only tasted death but drained the cup of death, that the triumph of Christ is universal and that there is no corner of the universe into which the grace of God has not reached.<p/><b>THE APPROACHING END</b> (<a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a> <b>a)</b><p/><i> 4:7a The end of all things is near.<p/></i><p/>Here is a note which is struck consistently all through the New Testament. It is the summons of Paul that it is time to wake out of sleep, for the night is far spent and the day is at hand (<a href='B:520 13:12'>Rom 13:12</a>). "The Lord is at hand, he writes to the Philippians (Php_4:5). "The coming of the Lord is at hand, writes James (<a href='B:660 5:8'>Jas 5:8</a>). John says that the days in which his people are living are the last hour (<a href='B:690 2:18'>1Jn 2:18</a>). "The time is near, says the John of the Revelation, and he hears the Risen Christ testify: "Surely I am coming soon" (<a href='B:730 1:3'>Rev 1:3</a>; <a href='B:730 22:20'>Rev 22:20</a>).<p/>There are many for whom all such passages are problems, for, if they are taken literally, the New Testament writers were mistaken; nineteen hundred years have passed and the end is not yet come. There are four ways of looking at them.<p/>(i) We may hold that the New Testament writers were in fact mistaken. They looked for the return of Christ and the end of the world in their own day and generation; and these events did not take place. The curious thing is that the Christian Church allowed these words to stand although it would not have been difficult quietly to excise them from the New Testament documents. It was not until late in the second century that the New Testament began to be fixed in the form in which we have it today; and yet statements such as these became unquestioned parts of it. The clear conclusion is that the people of the early church still believed these words to be true.<p/>(ii) There is a strong line of New Testament thought which, in effect, holds that the end has come. The consummation of history was the coming of Jesus Christ. In him time was invaded by eternity. In him God entered into the human situation. In him the prophecies were all fulfilled. In him the end has come. Paul speaks of himself and his people as those on whom the ends of the ages have come (<a href='B:530 10:11'>1Co 10:11</a>). Peter in his first sermon speaks of Joel's prophecy of the outpouring of the Spirit and of all that should happen in the last days, and then says that at that very time men were actually living in those last days (<a href='B:510 2:16-21'>Act 2:16-21</a>).<p/>If we accept that, it means that in Jesus Christ the end of history has come. The battle has been won; there remain only skirmishes with the last remnants of opposition. It means that at this very moment we are living in the "end time, in what someone has called "the epilogue to history." That is a very common point of view; but the trouble is that it flies in the face of facts. Evil is as rampant as ever; the world is still far from having accepted Christ as King. It may be the "end time, but the dawn seems as far distant as ever it was.<p/>(iii) It may be that we have to interpret near in the light of history's being a process of almost unimaginable length. It has been put this way. Suppose all time to be represented by a column the height of Cleopatra's Needle with a single postage stamp on top, then the length of recorded history is represented by the thickness of the postage stamp and the unrecorded history which went before it by the height of the column. When we think of time in terms like that near becomes an entirely relative word. The Psalmist was literally right when he said that in God's sight a thousand years were just like a watch in the night (<a href='B:230 90:4'>Psa 90:4</a>). In that case near can cover centuries and still be correctly used. But it is quite certain that the Biblical writers did not take near in that sense, for they had no conception of history in terms like that.<p/>(iv) The simple fact is that behind this there is one inescapable and most personal truth. For everyone of us the time is near. The one thing which can be said of every man is that he will die. For every one of us the Lord is at hand. We cannot tell the day and the hour when we shall go to meet him; and, therefore, all life is lived in the shadow of eternity.<p/>"The end of all things is near, said Peter. The early thinkers may have been wrong if they thought that the end of the world was round the corner, but they have left us with the warning that for every one of us personally the end is near; and that warning is as valid today as ever it was.<p/><b>THE LIFE LIVED IN THE SHADOW OF ETERNITY</b> (<a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a> <b>b-8)</b><p/><i> 4:7b-8 Be, therefore, steady and sober in mind so that you will really be able to pray as you ought. Above all cherish for each other a love that is constant and intense, because love hides a multitude of sins.<p/></i><p/>When a man realizes the nearness of Jesus Christ, he is bound to commit himself to a certain kind of life. In view of that nearness Peter makes four demands.<p/>(i) He says that we must be steady in mind. We might render it: "Preserve your sanity." The verb Peter uses is sophronein (<a href='S:G4994'>G4994</a>) ; connected with that verb is the noun sophrosune (<a href='S:G4997'>G4997</a>), which the Greeks derived from the verb sozein (<a href='S:G4982'>G4982</a>), to keep safe, and the noun phronesis (<a href='S:G5428'>G5428</a>), the mind. Sophrosune (<a href='S:G4997'>G4997</a>) is the wisdom which characterizes a man who is preeminently sane; and sophronein (<a href='S:G4993'>G4993</a>) means to preserve one's sanity. The great characteristic of sanity is that it sees things in their proper proportions; it sees what things are important and what are not; it is not swept away by sudden and transitory enthusiasms; it is prone neither to unbalanced fanaticism nor to unrealizing indifference. It is only when we see the affairs of earth in the light of eternity that we see them in their proper proportions; it is when God is given his proper place that everything takes its proper place.<p/>(ii) He says that we must be sober in mind. We might render it: "Preserve your sobriety." The verb Peter uses is nephein (<a href='S:G3525'>G3525</a>) which originally meant to be sober in contradistinction to being drunk and then came to mean to act soberly and sensibly. This does not mean that the Christian is to be lost in a gloomy joylessness; but it does mean that his approach to life must not be frivolous and irresponsible. To take things seriously is to be aware of their real importance and to be ever mindful of their consequences in time and in eternity. It is to approach life, not as a jest, but as a serious matter for which we are answerable.<p/>(iii) He says that we must do this in order to pray as we ought. We might render it: "Preserve your prayer life." When a man's mind is unbalanced and his approach to life is frivolous and irresponsible, he cannot pray as he ought. We learn to pray only when we take life so wisely and so seriously that we begin to say in all things: "Thy will be done." The first necessity of prayer is the earnest desire to discover the will of God for ourselves.<p/>(iv) He says that we must cherish for each other a love that is constant and intense. We might render it: "Preserve your love." The word Peter uses to describe this love is ektenes (<a href='S:G1618'>G1618</a>) which has two meanings, both of which we have included in the translation. It means outstretching in the sense of consistent; our love must be the love that never fails. It also means stretching out as a runner stretches out. As C. E. B. Cranfield reminds us it describes a horse at full gallop and denotes "the taut muscle of strenuous and sustained effort, as of an athlete." Our love must be energetic. Here is a fundamental Christian truth. Christian love is not an easy, sentimental reaction. It demands everything a man has of mental and spiritual energy. It means loving the unlovely and the unlovable; it means loving in spite of insult and injury; it means loving when love is not returned. Bengel translates ektenes (<a href='S:G1618'>G1618</a>) by the Latin vehemens, vehement. Christian love is the love which never fails and into which every atom of man's strength is directed.<p/>The Christian, in the light of eternity, must preserve his sanity, preserve his sobriety, preserve his prayers and preserve his love.<p/><b>THE POWER OF LOVE</b> (<a href='B:670 4:7'>1Pe 4:7</a> <b>b-8 continued)</b><p/> "Love, says Peter, "hides a multitude of sins." There are three things which this saying may mean; and it is not necessary that we should choose between them, for they are all there.<p/>(i) It may mean that our love can overlook many sins. "Love covers all offences, says the writer of the Proverbs (<a href='B:240 10:12'>Pro 10:12</a>). If we love a person, it is easy to forgive. It is not that love is blind, but that it loves a person just as he is. Love makes patience easy. It is much easier to be patient with our own children than with the children of strangers. If we really love our fellow-men, we can accept their faults, and bear with their foolishness, and even endure their unkindness. Love indeed can cover a multitude of sins.<p/>(ii) It may mean that, if we love others, God will overlook a multitude of sins in us. In life we meet two kinds of people. We meet those who have no faults at which the finger may be pointed; they are moral, orthodox, and supremely respectable; but they are hard and austere and unable to understand why others make mistakes and fall into sin. We also meet those who have all kinds of faults; but they are kind and sympathetic and they seldom or never condemn. It is the second kind of person to whom the heart more readily warms; and in all reverence we may say that it is so with God. He will forgive much to the man who loves his fellow-men.<p/>(iii) It may mean that God's love covers the multitude of our sins. That is blessedly and profoundly true. It is the wonder of grace that, sinners as we are, God loves us; that is why he sent his Son.<p/><b>CHRISTIAN RESPONSIBILITY</b> (<a href='B:670 4:9-10'>1Pe 4:9-10</a>)


text:
 Be hospitable to one another and never grudge it. As each has received a gift from God, so let all use such gifts in the service of one another, like good stewards of the grace of God.<p/></i><p/>Peter's mind is dominated in this section by the conviction that the end of all things is near. It is of the greatest interest and significance to note that he does not use that conviction to urge men to withdraw from the world and to enter on a kind of private campaign to save their own souls; he uses it to urge them to go into the world and serve their fellow-men. As Peter sees it, a man will be happy if the end finds him, not living as a hermit, but out in the world serving his fellow-men.<p/>(i) First, Peter urges upon his people the duty of hospitality. Without hospitality the early church could not have existed. The travelling missionaries who spread the good news of the gospel had to find somewhere to stay and there was no place for them to stay except in the homes of Christians. Such inns as there were were impossibly dear, impossibly filthy and notoriously immoral. Thus we find Peter lodging with one Simon a tanner (<a href='B:510 10:6'>Act 10:6</a>), and Paul and his company were to lodge with one Mnason of Cyprus, an early disciple (<a href='B:510 21:16'>Act 21:16</a>). Many a nameless one in the early church made Christian missionary work possible by opening the doors of his house and home.<p/>Not only did the missionaries need hospitality; the local churches also needed it. For two hundred years there was no such thing as a church building. The church was compelled to meet in the houses of those who had bigger rooms and were prepared to lend them for the services of the congregation. Thus we read of the church which was in the house of Aquila and Priscilla (<a href='B:520 16:5'>Rom 16:5</a>; <a href='B:530 16:19'>1Co 16:19</a>), and of the church which was in the house of Philemon (<a href='B:640 1:2'>Phm 1:2</a>). Without those who were prepared to open their homes, the early church could not have met for worship at all.<p/>It is little wonder that again and again in the New Testament the duty of hospitality is pressed upon the Christians. The Christian is to be given to hospitality (<a href='B:520 12:13'>Rom 12:13</a>). A bishop is to be given to hospitality (<a href='B:610 3:2'>1Ti 3:2</a>); the widows of the Church must have lodged strangers (<a href='B:610 5:10'>1Ti 5:10</a>). The Christian must not forget to entertain strangers and must remember that some who have done so have entertained angels unawares. (<a href='B:650 13:2'>Heb 13:2</a>). The bishop must be a lover of hospitality (<a href='B:630 1:8'>Tit 1:8</a>). And it is ever to be remembered that it was said to those on the right hand: "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me" while the condemnation of those on the left hand was: "I was a stranger, and you did not welcome me" (<a href='B:470 25:35'>Mat 25:35</a>; <a href='B:470 25:43'>Mat 25:43</a>).<p/>In the early days the Church depended on the hospitality of its members; and to this day no greater gift can be offered than the welcome of a Christian home to the stranger in a strange place.<p/>(ii) Such gifts as a man has he must place ungrudgingly at the service of the community. This again is a favourite New Testament idea which is expanded by Paul in <a href='B:520 12:3-8'>Rom 12:3-8</a> and <a href='B:530 12:1-31'>1Co 12:1-31</a>. The Church needs every gift that a man has. It may be a gift of speaking, of music, of the ability to visit people. It may be a craft or skill which can be used in the practical service of the Church. It may be a house which a man possesses or money which he has inherited. There is no gift which cannot be placed at the service of Christ.<p/>The Christian has to regard himself as a steward of God. In the ancient world the steward was very important. He might be a slave but his master's goods were in his hands. There were two main kinds of stewards, the dispensator, the dispenser, who was responsible for all the domestic arrangements of the household and laid in and divided out the household supplies; and the vilicus, the bailiff, who was in charge of his master's estates and acted as landlord to his master's tenants. The steward knew well that none of the things over which he had control belonged to him; they all belonged to his master. In everything he did he was answerable to his master and always it was his interests he must serve.<p/>The Christian must always be under the conviction that nothing he possesses of material goods or personal qualities is his own; it all belongs to God and he must ever use what he has in the interests of God to whom he is always answerable.<p/><b>THE SOURCE AND OBJECT OF ALL CHRISTIAN ENDEAVOR</b> (<a href='B:670 4:11'>1Pe 4:11</a>)<p/><i> 4:11 If anyone speaks, let him speak as one uttering sayings sent from God. If anyone renders any service, let him do so as one whose service comes from the strength which God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ to whom belong glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.<p/></i><p/>Peter is thinking of the two great activities of the Christian Church, preaching and practical service. The word he uses for sayings is logia (<a href='S:G3048'>G3048</a>). That is a word with a kind of divine background. The heathen used it for the oracles which came to them from their gods; the Christians used it for the words of scripture and the words of Christ. So Peter is saying, "If a man has the duty of preaching, let him preach not as one offering his own opinions or propagating his own prejudices, but as one with a message from God." It was said of one great preacher: "First he listened to God, and then he spoke to men." It was said of another that ever and again he paused, "as if listening for a voice." There lies the secret of preaching power.<p/>Peter goes on to say that if a Christian is engaged in practical service, he must render that service in the strength which God supplies. It is as if he said, "When you are engaged in Christian service, you must not do it as if you were conferring a personal favour or distributing bounty from your own store, but in the consciousness that what you give you first received from God." Such an attitude preserves the giver from pride and the gift from humiliation.<p/>The aim of everything is that God should be glorified. Preaching is not done to display the preacher but to bring men face to face with God. Service is rendered not to bring prestige to the giver but to turn men's thoughts to God. E. G. Selwyn reminds us that the motto of the great Benedictine Order of monks is four letters--I-O-G-D--which stand for the Latin words (ut) in omnibus glorificetur Deus (in order that in all things God may be glorified). A new grace and glory would enter the Church, if all church people ceased doing things for themselves and did them for God.<p/><b>THE INEVITABILITY OF PERSECUTION</b> (<a href='B:670 4:12-13'>1Pe 4:12-13</a>)


text:
 Beloved, do not regard the fiery ordeal through which you are passing and which has happened to you to test you, as something strange, as if some alien experience were happening to you, but rejoice in so far as you share the sufferings of Christ so that you may also rejoice with rapture when his glory shall be revealed.<p/></i><p/>In the nature of things persecution must have been a much more daunting experience for Gentiles than it was for Jews. The average Gentile had little experience of it; but the Jews have always been the most persecuted people upon earth. Peter was writing to Christians who were Gentiles and he had to try to help them by showing them persecution in its true terms. It is never easy to be a Christian. The Christian life brings its own loneliness, its own unpopularity, its own problems, its own sacrifices and its own persecutions. It is, therefore, well to have certain great principles in our minds.<p/>(i) It is Peter's view that persecution is inevitable. It is human nature to dislike and to regard with suspicion anyone who is different; the Christian is necessarily different from the man of the world. The particular impact of the Christian difference makes the matter more acute. To the world the Christian brings the standards of Jesus Christ. That is another way of saying that he inevitably is a kind of conscience to any society in which he moves; and many a man would gladly eliminate the troublesome twinges of conscience. The very goodness of Christianity can be an offence to a world in which goodness is regarded as a handicap.<p/>(ii) It is Peter's view that persecution is a test. It is a test in a double sense. A man's devotion to a principle can be measured by his willingness to suffer for it; therefore, any kind of persecution is a test of a man's faith. But it is equally true that it is only the real Christian who will be persecuted. The Christian who compromises with the world will not be persecuted. In a double sense persecution is the test of the reality of a man's faith.<p/>(iii) Now we come to the uplifting things. Persecution is a sharing in the sufferings of Jesus Christ. When a man has to suffer for his Christianity he is walking the way his Master walked and sharing the Cross his Master carried. This is a favourite New Testament thought. If we suffer with him, we will be glorified with him (<a href='B:520 8:17'>Rom 8:17</a>). It is Paul's desire to enter into the fellowship of the sufferings of Christ (Php_3:10). If we suffer with him, we shall reign with him (<a href='B:620 2:12'>2Ti 2:12</a>). If we remember that, anything we must suffer for the sake of Christ becomes a privilege and not a penalty.<p/>(iv) Persecution is the way to glory. The Cross is the way to the crown. Jesus Christ is no man's debtor and his joy and crown await the man who, through thick and thin, remains true to him.<p/><b>THE BLESSEDNESS OF SUFFERING FOR CHRIST</b> (<a href='B:670 4:14-16'>1Pe 4:14-16</a>)


text:
 If you are reproached for the name of Christ, you are blessed because the presence of the glory and the Spirit of God rest upon you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or a thief, or an evil-doer or a busybody. But if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him by this name bring glory to God.<p/></i><p/>Here Peter says the greatest thing of all. If a man suffers for Christ, the presence of the glory rests upon him. This is a very strange phrase. We think it can mean only one thing. The Jews had the conception of the Shekinah, the luminous glow of the very presence of God. This conception constantly recurs in the Old Testament. "In the morning, said Moses, "you shall see the glory of the Lord" (<a href='B:20 16:7'>Exo 16:7</a>). "The glory of the Lord settled upon Mount Sinai, and the cloud coverer it six days, when the law was being delivered to Moses (<a href='B:20 24:16'>Exo 24:16</a>). In the tabernacle God was to meet with Israel and it was to be sanctified with his glory (<a href='B:20 29:43'>Exo 29:43</a>). When the tabernacle was completed, "then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle" (<a href='B:20 40:34'>Exo 40:34</a>). When the ark of the covenant was brought into Solomon's temple, "a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord" (<a href='B:110 8:10-11'>1Ki 8:10-11</a>). Repeatedly this idea of the Shekinah, the luminous glory of God, occurs in the Old Testament.<p/>It is Peter's conviction that something of that glow of glory rests on the man who suffers for Christ. When Stephen was on trial for his life and it was certain that he would be condemned to death, to those who looked on him his face was as the face of an angel (<a href='B:510 6:15'>Act 6:15</a>).<p/>Peter goes on to point out that it is as a Christian that a man must suffer and not as an evil-doer. The evils which he singles out are all clear enough until we come to the last. A Christian, Peter says, is not to suffer as an allotriepiskopos (<a href='S:G244'>G244</a>). The trouble is that there is no other instance of this word in Greek and Peter may well have invented it. It can have three possible meanings, all of which would be relevant. It comes from two words, allotrios (<a href='S:G245'>G245</a>), belonging to another and episkopos (<a href='S:G1985'>G1985</a>), looking upon or looking into. Therefore, it literally means looking upon, or into, that which belongs to another.<p/>(i) To look on that which is someone else's might well be to cast covetous eyes upon it. That is how both the Latin Bible and Calvin take this word--to mean that the Christian must not be covetous.<p/>(ii) To look upon that which belongs to another might well mean to be too interested in other people's affairs and to be a meddling busybody. That is by far the most probable meaning. There are Christians who do an infinite deal of harm with misguided interference and criticism. This would mean that the Christian must never be an interfering busybody. That gives good sense and, we believe, the best sense.<p/>(iii) There is a third possibility. Allotrios (<a href='S:G245'>G245</a>) means that which belongs to someone else; that is to say, that which is foreign to oneself. Along that line allotriepiskopos (<a href='S:G244'>G244</a>) will mean looking upon that which is foreign to oneself. That would mean, of a Christian, entering upon undertakings which do not befit the Christian life. This would mean that a Christian must never interest himself in things which are alien to the life that a Christian should lead.<p/>While all three meanings are possible, we think that the third is the right one.<p/>It is Peter's injunction that, if a Christian has to suffer for Christ, he must do so in such a way that his suffering brings glory to God and to the name he bears. His life and conduct must be the best argument that he does not deserve the suffering which has come upon him and his attitude to it must commend the name he bears.<p/><b>ENTRUSTING ALL LIFE TO GOD</b> (<a href='B:670 4:17-19'>1Pe 4:17-19</a>)


text:
 For the time has come for judgment to begin from the household of God. And, if it begins from us, what will be the end of those who disobey the good news which comes from God? And, if the righteous man is scarcely saved, where will the impious man and the sinner appear? So, then, let those who suffer in accordance with the will of God, entrust their souls to him who is a Creator on whom you can rely, and continue to do right.<p/></i><p/>As Peter saw it, it was all the more necessary for the Christian to do right because judgment was about to begin.<p/>It was to begin with the household of God. Ezekiel hears the voice of God proclaiming judgment upon his people, "Begin at my sanctuary" (<a href='B:330 9:6'>Eze 9:6</a>). Where the privilege has been greatest, there the judgment will be sternest.<p/>If judgment is to fall upon the Church of God, what will be the fate of those who have been utterly disobedient to the invitation and command of God? Peter confirms his appeal with a quotation from <a href='B:240 11:31'>Pro 11:31</a>: "If the righteous is requited on earth, how much more the wicked and the sinner!"<p/>Finally, Peter exhorts his people to continue to do good and, whatever happens to them to entrust their lives to God, the Creator on whom they can rely. The word he uses for to entrust is paratithesthai (<a href='S:G3908'>G3908</a>), which is the technical word for depositing money with a trusted friend. In the ancient days there were no banks and few really safe places in which to deposit money. So, before a man went on a journey, he often left his money in the safe-keeping of a friend. Such a trust was regarded as one of the most sacred things in life. The friend was absolutely bound by all honour and all religion to return the money intact.<p/>Herodotus (6: 86) has a story about such a trust. A certain Milesian came to Sparta, for he had heard of the strict honour of the Spartans, and entrusted his money to a certain Glaucus. He said that in due time his sons would reclaim the money and would bring tokens which would establish their identity beyond doubt. The time passed and the sons came. Glaucus treacherously said that he had no recollection of any money being entrusted to him and said that he wished four months to think about it. The Milesians departed sad and sorry. Glaucus consulted the gods as to what he ought to do, and they warned him that he must return the money. He did so, but before long he died and all his family followed him, and in the time of Herodotus there was not a single member of his family left alive because the gods were angry that he had even contemplated breaking the trust reposed in him. Even to think of evading such a trust was a mortal sin.<p/>If a man entrusts himself to God, God will not fail him. If such a trust is sacred to men, how much more is it sacred to God? This is the very word used by Jesus, when he says "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit" (<a href='B:490 23:46'>Luk 23:46</a>). Jesus unhesitatingly entrusted his life to God, certain that he would not fail him--and so may we. The old advice is still good advice--trust in God and do the right. 


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 So, then, as your fellow-elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as a sharer in the glory which is going to be revealed, I urge the elders who are among you, shepherd the flock of God which is in your charge, not because you are coerced into doing so, but of your own free-will as God would have you to do, not to make a shameful profit out of it, but with enthusiasm, not as if you aimed to be petty tyrants over those allotted to your care, but as being under the obligation to be examples to the flock; and when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.<p/></i><p/>Few passages show more clearly the importance of the eldership in the early church. It is to the elders that Peter specially writes and he, who was the chief of the apostles, does not hesitate to call himself a fellow-elder. It will be worth our while to look at something of the background and history of the eldership, the most ancient and the most important office in the Church. (i) It has a Jewish background. The Jews traced the beginning of the eldership to the days when the children of Israel were journeying through the wilderness to the Promised Land. There came a time when Moses felt the burdens of leadership too heavy for him to bear alone, and to help him seventy elders were set apart and granted a share of the spirit of God (<a href='B:40 11:16-30'>Num 11:16-30</a>). Thereafter elders became a permanent feature of Jewish life. We find them as the friends of the prophets (<a href='B:120 6:32'>2Ki 6:32</a>); as the advisers of kings (<a href='B:110 20:8'>1Ki 20:8</a>; <a href='B:110 21:11'>1Ki 21:11</a>); as the colleagues of the princes in the administration of the affairs of the nation (<a href='B:150 10:8'>Ezr 10:8</a>). Every village and city had its elders; they met at the gate and dispensed justice to the people (<a href='B:50 25:7'>Deu 25:7</a>). The elders were the administrators of the synagogue; they did not preach, but they saw to the good government and order of the synagogue, and they exercised discipline over its members. The elders formed a large section of the Sanhedrin, the supreme court of the Jews, and they are regularly mentioned along with the Chief Priests and the rulers and the Scribes and the Pharisees (<a href='B:470 16:21'>Mat 16:21</a>; <a href='B:470 21:23'>Mat 21:23</a>; <a href='B:470 26:3'>Mat 26:3</a>; <a href='B:470 26:57'>Mat 26:57</a>; <a href='B:470 27:1'>Mat 27:1</a>; <a href='B:470 27:3'>Mat 27:3</a>; <a href='B:490 7:3'>Luk 7:3</a>; <a href='B:510 4:5'>Act 4:5</a>; <a href='B:510 6:12'>Act 6:12</a>; <a href='B:510 24:1'>Act 24:1</a>). In the vision of the Revelation in the heavenly places there are twenty-four elders around the throne. The elders were woven into the very structure of Judaism, both in its civil and its religious affairs. (ii) The eldership has a Greek background. Especially in Egyptian communities we find that elders are the leaders of the community and responsible for the conduct of public affairs, much as town councillors are today. We find a woman who had suffered an assault appealing to the elders for justice. When corn is being collected as tribute on the visit of a governor, we find that "the elders of the cultivators" are the officials concerned. We find them connected with the issuing of public edicts, the leasing of land for pasture, the ingathering of taxation. In Asia Minor, also, the members of councils were called elders. Even in the religious communities of the pagan world we find "elder priests" who were responsible for discipline. In the Socnopaeus temple we find the elder priests dealing with the case of a priest who is charged with allowing his hair to grow too long and with wearing woollen garments--an effeminacy and a luxury of which no priest should have been guilty. We can see that long before Christianity took it over "elder" was a title of honour both in the Jewish and in the Graeco-Roman world.<p/><b>THE CHRISTIAN ELDERSHIP</b> (<a href='B:670 5:1-4'>1Pe 5:1-4</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> When we turn to the Christian Church we find that the eldership is its basic office. It was Paul's custom to ordain elders in every community to which he preached and in every church which he founded. On the first missionary journey elders were ordained in every church (<a href='B:510 14:23'>Act 14:23</a>). Titus is left in Crete to ordain elders in every city (<a href='B:630 1:5'>Tit 1:5</a>). The elders had charge of the financial administration of the Church; it is to them that Paul and Barnabas delivered the money sent to relieve the poor of Jerusalem in the time of the famine (<a href='B:510 11:30'>Act 11:30</a>). The elders were the councillors and the administrators of the Church. We find them taking a leading part in the Council of Jerusalem at which it was decided to fling open the doors of the Church to the Gentiles. At that Council the elders and the apostles are spoken of together as the chief authorities of the Church (<a href='B:510 15:2'>Act 15:2</a>; <a href='B:510 16:4'>Act 16:4</a>). When Paul came on his last visit to Jerusalem, it was to the elders that he reported and they suggested the course of action he should follow (<a href='B:510 21:18-25'>Act 21:18-25</a>). One of the most moving passages in the New Testament is Paul's farewell to the elders of Ephesus. We find there that the elders, as he sees them, are the overseers of the flock of God and the defenders of the faith (<a href='B:510 20:28-29'>Act 20:28-29</a>). We learn from James that the elders had a healing function in the Church through prayers and anointing with oil (<a href='B:660 5:14'>Jas 5:14</a>). From the Pastoral Epistles we learn that they were rulers and teachers, and by that time paid officials (<a href='B:610 5:17'>1Ti 5:17</a>; the phrase double honour is better translated double pay). When a man enters the eldership, no small honour is conferred upon him, for he is entering on the oldest religious office in the world, whose history can be traced through Christianity and Judaism for four thousand years; and no small responsibility falls upon him, for he has been ordained a shepherd of the flock of God and a defender of the faith.<p/><b>THE PERILS AND PRIVILEGES OF THE ELDERSHIP</b> (<a href='B:670 5:1-4'>1Pe 5:1-4</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Peter sets down in a series of contrasts the perils and the privileges of the eldership; and everything he says is applicable, not only to the eldership, but also to all Christian service inside and outside the Church. The elder is to accept office, not under coercion, but willingly. This does not mean that a man is to grasp at office or to enter upon it without self-examining thought. Any Christian will have a certain reluctance to accept high office, because he knows only too well his unworthiness and inadequacy. There is a sense in which it is by compulsion that a man accepts office and enters upon Christian service. "Necessity," said Paul, "is laid upon me; Woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel" (<a href='B:530 9:16'>1Co 9:16</a>). "The love of Christ controls us, he said (<a href='B:540 5:14'>2Co 5:14</a>). But, on the other hand, there is a way of accepting office and of rendering service as if it was a grim and unpleasant duty. It is quite possible for a man to agree to a request in such an ungracious way that his whole action is spoiled. Peter does not say that a man should be conceitedly or irresponsibly eager for office; but that every Christian should be anxious to render such service as he can, although fully aware how unworthy he is to render it. The elder is to accept office, not to make a shameful profit out of it, but eagerly. The word for making a shameful profit is aischrokerdes (<a href='S:G146'>G146</a>). The noun from this is aischrokerdeia, and it was a characteristic which the Greek loathed. Theophrastus, the great Greek delineator of character, has a character sketch of this aischrokerdeia. Meanness--as it might be translated--is the desire for base gain. The mean man is he who never sets enough food before his guests and who gives himself a double portion when he is carving the joint. He waters the wine; he goes to the theatre only when he can get a free ticket. He never has enough money to pay the fare and always borrows from his fellow-passengers. When he is selling corn (American: grain), he uses a measure in which the bottom is pushed up, and even then he carefully levels the top. He counts the half radishes left over from dinner in case the servants eat any. Rather than give a wedding present, he will go away from home when a wedding is in the offing. Meanness is an ugly fault. It is quite clear that there were people in the early church who accused the preachers and missionaries of being in the job for what they could get out of it. Paul repeatedly declares that he coveted no man's goods and worked with his hands to meet his own needs so that he was burdensome to no man (<a href='B:510 20:33'>Act 20:33</a>; <a href='B:590 2:9'>1Th 2:9</a>; <a href='B:530 9:12'>1Co 9:12</a>; <a href='B:540 12:14'>2Co 12:14</a>). It is certain that the payment any early office-bearer received was pitifully small and the repeated warnings that the office-bearers must not be greedy for gain shows that there were those who coveted more (<a href='B:610 3:3'>1Ti 3:3</a>; <a href='B:610 3:8'>1Ti 3:8</a>; <a href='B:630 1:7'>Tit 1:7</a>; <a href='B:630 1:11'>Tit 1:11</a>). The point that Peter is making--and it is ever valid--is that no man dare accept office or render service for what he can get out of it. His desire must ever be to give and not to get. The elder is to accept office, not to be a petty tyrant, but to be the shepherd and the example of the flock. Human nature is such that for many people prestige and power are even more attractive than money. There are those who love authority, even if it be exercised in a narrow sphere. Milton's Satan thought it better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Shakespeare spoke about proud man, dressed in a little brief authority, playing such fantastic tricks before high heaven as would make the angels weep. The great characteristic of the shepherd is his selfless care and his sacrificial love for the sheep. Any man who enters on office with the desire for preeminence, has got his whole point of view upside down. Jesus said to his ambitious disciples, "You know that those who are supposed to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great men exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you; but whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all" (<a href='B:480 10:42-44'>Mar 10:42-44</a>).<p/><b>THE IDEAL OF THE ELDERSHIP</b> (<a href='B:670 5:1-4'>1Pe 5:1-4</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> One thing in this passage which defies translation and is yet one of the most precious and significant things in it is what we have translated "petty tyrants over those allotted to your care." The phrase which we have translated those allotted is curious in Greek; it is ton (<a href='S:G3588'>G3588</a>) kleron (<a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>), the genitive plural of kleros (<a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>) which is a word of extraordinary interest. (i) It begins by meaning a dice or a lot. It is so used in <a href='B:470 27:35'>Mat 27:35</a> which tells how the soldiers beneath the Cross were throwing dice (kleroi, <a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>) to see who should possess the seamless robe of Jesus. (ii) Second, it means an office gained or assigned by lot. It is the word used in <a href='B:510 1:26'>Act 1:26</a> which tells how the disciples cast lots to see who should inherit the office of Judas the traitor. (iii) It then comes to mean an inheritance allotted to someone, as used in <a href='B:580 1:12'>Col 1:12</a> for the inheritance of the saints. (iv) In classical Greek it very often means a public allotment or estate of land. These allotments were distributed by the civic authorities to the citizens; and very often the distribution was made by drawing lots for the various pieces of land available for distribution. Even if we were to go no further than this, it would mean that the office of the eldership and, indeed, any piece of service offered to us is never earned by any merit of our own but always allotted to us by God. It is never something that we have deserved but always something given to us by the grace of God. But we can go further than this. Kleros (<a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>) means something which is allotted to a man. In <a href='B:50 9:29'>Deu 9:29</a> we read that Israel is the heritage (kleros, <a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>) of God. That is to say, Israel is the people specially assigned to God by his own choice. Israel is the kleros (<a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>) of God; the congregation is the kleros (<a href='S:G2819'>G2819</a>) of the elder. Just as Israel is allotted to God, an elder's duties in the congregation are allotted to him. This must mean that the whole attitude of the elder to his people must be the same as the attitude of God to his people. Here we have another great thought. In <a href='B:670 5:2'>1Pe 5:2</a> there is a phrase in the best Greek manuscripts which is not in the King James or the Revised Standard Versions. We have translated it: "Shepherd the flock of God, which is in your charge, not because you are coerced into doing so, but of your own free-will as God would have you to do." As God would have you to do is in Greek kata (<a href='S:G2596'>G2596</a>) theon (<a href='S:G2316'>G2316</a>), and that could well mean quite simply like God. Peter says to the elders, "Shepherd your people like God." Just as Israel is God's special allotment, the people we have to serve in the Church or anywhere else are our special allotment; and our attitude to them must be the attitude of God. What an ideal! And what a condemnation! It is our task to show to people God's forbearance, his forgiveness, his seeking love, his illimitable service. God has allotted to us a task and we must do it as he himself would do it. That is the supreme ideal of service in the Christian Church.<p/><b>MEMORIES OF JESUS</b> (<a href='B:670 5:1-4'>1Pe 5:1-4</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> One of the lovely things about this passage is Peter's attitude throughout it. He begins by, as it were, taking his place beside those to whom he speaks. "Your fellow-elder" he calls himself. He does not separate himself from them but comes to share the Christian problems and the Christian experience with them. But in one thing he is different; he has memories of Jesus and these memories colour this whole passage. Even as he speaks, they are crowding into his mind. (i) He describes himself as a witness of the sufferings of Christ. At first sight we might be inclined to question that statement, for we are told that, after the arrest in the garden, "All the disciples forsook him and fled" (<a href='B:470 26:56'>Mat 26:56</a>). But, when we think a little further, we realise that it was given to Peter to see the suffering of Jesus in a more poignant way than was given to any other human being. He followed Jesus into the courtyard of the High Priest's house and there in a time of weakness he three times denied his Master. The trial came to an end and Jesus was taken away; and there comes what may well be the most tragic sentence in the New Testament: "And the Lord turned and looked at Peter...and Peter went out and wept bitterly" (<a href='B:490 22:61-62'>Luk 22:61-62</a>). In that look Peter saw the suffering of the heart of a leader whose follower had failed him in the hour of his bitterest need. Of a truth Peter was a witness of the suffering that comes to Christ when men deny him; and that is why he was so eager that his people might be staunch in loyalty and faithful in service. (ii) He describes himself as a sharer in the glory which is going to be revealed. That statement has a backward and a forward look. Peter had already had a glimpse of that glory on the Mount of Transfiguration. There the sleeping three had been awakened, and, as Luke puts it, "they kept awake and they saw his glory" (<a href='B:490 9:32'>Luk 9:32</a>). Peter had seen the glory. But he also knew that there was glory to come, for Jesus had promised to his disciples a share in the glory when the Son of Man should come to sit on his glorious throne (<a href='B:470 19:28'>Mat 19:28</a>). Peter remembered both the experience and the promise of glory. (iii) There can surely be no doubt that, when Peter speaks of shepherding the flock of God, he is remembering the task that Jesus had given to him when he had bidden him feed his sheep (<a href='B:500 21:15-17'>Joh 21:15-17</a>). The reward of love was the appointment as a shepherd; and Peter is remembering it. (iv) When Peter speaks of Jesus as the Chief Shepherd, many a memory must be in his mind. Jesus had likened himself to the shepherd who sought at the peril of his life for the sheep which was lost (<a href='B:470 18:12-14'>Mat 18:12-14</a>; <a href='B:490 15:4-7'>Luk 15:4-7</a>). He had sent out his disciples to gather in the lost sheep of the house of Israel (<a href='B:470 10:6'>Mat 10:6</a>). He was moved with pity for the crowds, for they were as sheep without a shepherd (<a href='B:470 9:36'>Mat 9:36</a>; <a href='B:480 6:34'>Mar 6:34</a>). Above all, Jesus had likened himself to the Good Shepherd who was ready to lay down his life for the sheep (<a href='B:500 10:1-18'>Joh 10:1-18</a>). The picture of Jesus as the Shepherd was a precious one, and the privilege of being a shepherd of the flock of Christ was for Peter the greatest privilege that a servant of Christ could enjoy.<p/><b>THE GARMENT OF HUMILITY</b> (<a href='B:670 5:5'>1Pe 5:5</a>)<p/><i> 5:5 In the same way, you younger people must be submissive to those who are older. In your relationships with one another you must clothe yourselves with the garment of humility, because God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.<p/></i><p/>Peter returns to the thought that the denial of self must be the mark of the Christian. He clinches his argument with a quotation from the Old Testament: "Toward the scorners God is scornful, but to the humble he shows favour" (<a href='B:240 3:34'>Pro 3:34</a>). Here again it may well be that the memories of Jesus are in Peter's heart and are colouring all his thought and language. He tells his people that they must clothe themselves with the garment of humility. The word he uses for to clothe oneself is very unusual; it is egkombousthai (<a href='S:G1463'>G1463</a>) which is derived from kombos which describes anything tied on with a knot. Connected with it is egkomboma, a garment tied on with a knot. It was commonly used for protective clothing; it was used for a pair of sleeves drawn over the sleeves of a robe and tied behind the neck. And it was used for a slave's apron. There was a time when Jesus had put upon himself just such an apron. At the Last Supper John says of him that he took a towel and girded himself, and took water and began to wash his disciples' feet (<a href='B:500 13:4-5'>Joh 13:4-5</a>). Jesus girded himself with the apron of humility; and so must his followers. It so happens that egkombousthai (<a href='S:G1463'>G1463</a>) is used of another kind of garment. It is also used of putting on a long, stole-like garment which was the sign of honour and preeminence. To complete the picture we must put both images together. Jesus once put on the slave's apron and undertook the humblest of all duties, washing his disciples' feet; so we must in all things put on the apron of humility in the service of Christ and of our fellow-men; but that very apron of humility will become the garment of honour for us, for it is he who is the servant of all who is greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.<p/><b>THE LAWS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (1)</b> (<a href='B:670 5:6-11'>1Pe 5:6-11</a>)


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 So, then, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that in his good time he may exalt you. Cast all your anxiety upon him because he cares for you. Be sober; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Stand up to him, staunch in the faith, knowing how to pay the same tax of suffering as your brethren in the world. And after you have experienced suffering for a little while, the God of every grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish. strengthen, settle you. To him be dominion for ever and ever. Amen.<p/></i><p/>Here Peter speaks in imperatives, laying down certain laws for the Christian life. (i) There is the law of humility before God. The Christian must humble himself under his mighty hand. The phrase the mighty hand of God is common in the Old Testament; and it is most often used in connection with the deliverance which God wrought for his people when he brought them out of Egypt. "With a strong hand, said Moses, "the Lord has brought you out of Egypt" (<a href='B:20 13:9'>Exo 13:9</a>). "Thou hast only begun to show thy servant thy greatness, and thy mighty hand" (<a href='B:50 3:24'>Deu 3:24</a>). God brought his people forth out of Egypt with a mighty hand (<a href='B:50 9:26'>Deu 9:26</a>). The idea is that God's mighty hand is on the destiny of his people, if they will humbly and faithfully accept his guidance. After all the varied experiences of life, Joseph could say to the brothers who had once sought to eliminate him: "As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good" (<a href='B:10 50:20'>Gen 50:20</a>). The Christian never resents the experiences of life and never rebels against them, because he knows that the mighty hand of God is on the tiller of his life and that he has a destiny for him. (ii) There is the law of Christian serenity in God. The Christian must cast all his anxiety upon God. "Cast your burden on the Lord, said the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 55:22'>Psa 55:22</a>). "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, said Jesus (<a href='B:470 6:25-34'>Mat 6:25-34</a>). The reason we can do this with confidence is that we can be certain that God cares for us. As Paul had it, we can be certain that he who gave us his only Son will with him give us all things (<a href='B:520 8:32'>Rom 8:32</a>). We can be certain that, since God cares for us, life is out not to break us but to make us; and, with that assurance, we can accept any experience which comes to us, knowing that in everything God works for good with those who love him (<a href='B:520 8:28'>Rom 8:28</a>). (iii) There is the law of Christian effort and of Christian vigilance. We must be sober and watchful. The fact that we cast everything upon God does not give us the right to sit back and to do nothing. Cromwell's advice to his troops was: "Trust in God, and keep your powder dry." Peter knew how hard this vigilance was, for he remembered how in Gethsemane he and his fellow-disciples slept when they should have been watching with Christ (<a href='B:470 26:38-46'>Mat 26:38-46</a>). The Christian is the man who trusts but at the same time puts all his effort and all his vigilance into the business of living for Christ. (iv) There is the law of Christian resistance. The devil is ever out to see whom he can ruin. Again Peter must have been remembering how the devil had overcome him and he had denied his Lord. A man's faith must be like a solid wall against which the attacks of the devil exhaust themselves in vain. The devil is like any bully and retreats when he is bravely resisted in the strength of Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE LAWS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE (2)</b> (<a href='B:670 5:6-11'>1Pe 5:6-11</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (v) Finally, Peter speaks of the law of Christian suffering. He says that, after the Christian has gone through suffering, God will restore, establish, strengthen and settle him. Every one of the words which Peter uses has behind it a vivid picture. Each tells us something about what suffering is designed by God to do for a man. (a) Through suffering God will restore a man. The word for restore is difficult in this case to translate. It is kartarizein (<a href='S:G2675'>G2675</a>), the word commonly used for setting a fracture, the word used in <a href='B:480 1:19'>Mar 1:19</a> for mending nets. It means to supply that which is missing, to mend that which is broken. So suffering, if accepted in humility and trust and love, can repair the weaknesses of a man's character and add the greatness which so far is not there. It is said that Sir Edward Elgar once listened to a young girl singing a solo from one of his own works. She had a voice of exceptional purity and clarity and range, and an almost perfect technique. When she had finished, Sir Edward said softly, "She will be really great when something happens to break her heart." Barrie tells how his mother lost her favourite son, and then says, "That is where my mother got her soft eyes, and that is why other mothers ran to her when they had lost a child." Suffering had done something for her that an easy way could never have done. Suffering is meant by God to add the grace notes to life. (b) Through suffering God will establish a man. The word is sterixein (<a href='S:G4741'>G4741</a>), which means to make as solid as granite. Suffering of body and sorrow of heart do one of two things to a man. They either make him collapse or they leave him with a solidity of character which he could never have gained anywhere else. If he meets them with continuing trust in Christ, he emerges like toughened steel that has been tempered in the fire. (c) Through suffering God will strengthen a man. The Greek is sthenoun (<a href='S:G4599'>G4599</a>), which means to fill with strength. Here is the same sense again. A life with no effort and no discipline almost inevitably becomes a flabby life. No one really knows what his faith means to him until it has been tried in the furnace of affliction. There is something doubly precious about a faith which has come victoriously through pain and sorrow and disappointment. The wind will extinguish a weak flame; but it will fan a strong flame into a still greater blaze. So it is with faith. (d) Through suffering God will settle a man. The Greek is themelioun (<a href='S:G2311'>G2311</a>), which means to lay the foundations. When we have to meet sorrow and suffering we are driven down to the very bedrock of faith. It is then that we discover what are the things which cannot be shaken. It is in time of trial that we discover the great truths on which real life is founded. Suffering is very far from doing these precious things for every man. It may well drive a man to bitterness and despair; and may well take away such faith as he has. But if it is accepted in the trusting certainty that a father's hand will never cause his child a needless tear, then out of suffering come things which the easy way may never bring.<p/><b>A FAITHFUL HENCHMAN OF THE APOSTLES</b> (<a href='B:670 5:12'>1Pe 5:12</a>)<p/><i> 5:12 I have written this brief letter to you through Silvanus, the faithful brother, as I reckon him to be, to encourage you and to testify that this is the true grace of God. Stand fast in it.<p/></i><p/>Peter bears witness that what he has written is indeed the grace of God, and he bids his people, amidst their difficulties, to stand fast in it. He says that he has written through Silvanus. The Greek phrase (dia, <a href='S:G1223'>G1223</a>, Silouanou, <a href='S:G4610'>G4610</a>) means that Silvanus was his agent in writing. Silvanus is the full form of the name Silas and he is almost certainly to be identified with the Silvanus of Paul's letters and the Silas of Acts. When we gather up the references to Silas or Silvanus, we find that he was one of the pillars of the early church. Along with Judas Barsabas, Silvanus was sent to Antioch with the epoch-making decision of the Council of Jerusalem that the doors of the Church were to be opened to the Gentiles; and in the account of that mission Silvanus and Judas are called leading men among the brethren (<a href='B:510 15:22'>Act 15:22</a>; <a href='B:510 15:27'>Act 15:27</a>). Not only did he simply bear the message, he commended it in powerful words, for Silvanus was also a prophet (<a href='B:510 15:32'>Act 15:32</a>). During the first missionary journey Mark left Paul and Barnabas and returned home from Pamphylia (<a href='B:510 13:13'>Act 13:13</a>); in preparing for the second missionary journey Paul refused to have Mark with him again; the result was that Barnabas took Mark as his companion and Paul took Silvanus (<a href='B:510 15:37-40'>Act 15:37-40</a>). From that time forward Silvanus was for long Paul's right-hand man. He was with Paul in Philippi, where he was arrested and imprisoned with him (<a href='B:510 16:19'>Act 16:19</a>; <a href='B:510 16:25'>Act 16:25</a>; <a href='B:510 16:29'>Act 16:29</a>). He rejoined Paul in Corinth and with him preached the gospel there (<a href='B:510 18:5'>Act 18:5</a>; <a href='B:540 1:19'>2Co 1:19</a>). So closely was he associated with Paul that in both the letters to the Thessalonians he is joined with Paul and Timothy as the senders of the letters(<a href='B:590 1:1'>1Th 1:1</a>; <a href='B:600 1:1'>2Th 1:1</a>). It is clear that Silvanus was a most notable man in the early church. As we saw in the introduction, it is most probable that Silvanus was far more than merely the scribe who wrote this letter for Peter and the bearer who delivered it. One of the difficulties of First Peter is the excellence of the Greek. It is Greek with such a classical tinge that it seems impossible that Peter the Galilaean fisherman should have written it for himself. Now Silvanus was not only a man of weight in the Church; he was also a Roman citizen (<a href='B:510 16:37'>Act 16:37</a>) and he would be much better educated than Peter was. Most probably he had a large share in the composition of this letter. We are told that in China, when a missionary wished to send a message to his people, he often wrote it in the best Chinese he could achieve, and then gave it to a Christian Chinese to correct and put into proper form; or, he might even just tell the Christian Chinese what he wished to say, leaving him to put it into literary form for his approval. That is most likely what Peter did. He either gave his letter to Silvanus to polish into excellent Greek or else he told Silvanus what he wished said and left him to say it, adding the last three verses as his personal greeting. Silvanus was one of those men the Church can never do without. He was content to take the second place and to serve almost in the background so long as God's work was done. It was enough for him that he was Paul's assistant, even if Paul for ever overshadowed him. It was enough for him to be Peter's penman, even if it meant only a bare mention of his name at the end of the letter. For all that, it is no little thing to go down in history as the faithful henchman on whom both Peter and Paul depended. The Church always has need of people like Silvanus and many who cannot be Peters or Pauls can still assist the Peters and Pauls to do their work.<p/><b>GREETINGS</b> (<a href='B:670 5:13'>1Pe 5:13</a>)<p/><i> 5:13 She who is at Babylon, and who has been chosen as you have been chosen, greets you, and so does Mark my son.<p/></i><p/>Although it sounds so simple, this is a troublesome verse. It presents us with certain questions difficult of solution. (i) From whom are these greetings sent? The King James Version has "the Church that is at Babylon elected together with you, saluteth you." But "the Church that is" is in italics, which means that there is no equivalent in the Greek which simply says "the one elected together with you at Babylon" and the phrase is feminine. There are two possibilities. (a) It is quite possible that the King James Version is correct. That is the way Moffatt takes it when he translates "your sister Church in Babylon." The phrase could well be explained as being based on the fact that the Church is the Bride of Christ and may be spoken of in this way. On the whole, the commonest view is that it is a Church which is meant. (b) But it does have to be remembered that there is actually no word for Church in the Greek, and this feminine phrase might equally well refer to some well-known Christian lady. If it does, by far the best suggestion is that the reference is to Peter's wife. We know that she did actually accompany him on his preaching journeys (<a href='B:530 9:5'>1Co 9:5</a>). Clement of Alexandria (Stromateis 7:11:63) tells us that she died a martyr, executed in Peter's own sight, while he encouraged her by saying, "Remember the Lord." She was clearly a well-known figure in the early church. We would not wish to speak dogmatically on this question. It is perhaps more likely that the reference is to a Church; but it is not impossible that Peter is associating his wife and fellow-evangelist in the greetings which he sends. (ii) From where was this letter written? The greetings are sent from Babylon. There are three possibilities. (a) There was a Babylon in Egypt, near Cairo. It had been founded by Babylonian refugees from Assyria and was called by the name of their ancestral city. But by this time it was almost exclusively a great military camp; and in any event the name of Peter is never connected with Egypt. This Babylon may be disregarded. (b) There was the Babylon in the east to which the Jews had been taken in captivity. Many had never come back and it was a centre of Jewish scholarship. The great commentary on the Jewish Law is called the Babylonian Talmud. So important were the Jews of Babylon that Josephus had issued a special edition of his histories for them. There is no doubt that there was a large and important colony of Jews there; and it would have been quite natural for Peter, the apostle of the Jews, to preach and to work there. But we do not find the name of Peter ever connected with Babylon and there is no trace of him having ever been there. Scholars so great as Calvin and Erasmus have taken Babylon to be this great eastern city but, on the whole, we think the probabilities are against it. (c) Regularly Rome was called Babylon, both by the Jews and by the Christians. That is undoubtedly the case in the Revelation where Babylon is the great harlot, drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs (<a href='B:730 17:1-18'>Rev 17:1-18</a>; <a href='B:730 18:1-24'>Rev 18:1-24</a>). The Godlessness, Just and luxury of ancient Babylon were, so to speak, reincarnated in Rome. Peter is definitely connected in tradition with Rome; and the likelihood is that it was from there that the letter was written. (iii) Who is the Mark, whom Peter calls his son, and from whom he sends greetings? If we take the elect lady to be Peter's wife. Mark might quite well be literally Peter's son. But it is much more likely that he is the Mark who wrote the gospel. Tradition has always closely connected Peter with Mark, and has handed down the story that he was intimately involved with Mark's gospel. Papias, who lived towards the end of the second century and was a great collector of early traditions, describes Mark's gospel in this way: "Mark, who was Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately though not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or done. For he was not a hearer of the Lord or a follower of his; he followed Peter, as I have said, at a later date, and Peter adapted his instructions to practical needs, without any attempt to give the Lord's words systematically. So that Mark was not wrong in writing down some things in this way from memory, for his one concern was neither to omit nor to falsify anything he had heard." According to Papias, Mark's gospel is nothing other than the preaching material of Peter. In similar vein Irenaeus says that after the death of Peter and Paul at Rome, "Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, also handed down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter." It is the consistent story of tradition that Mark, the evangelist, was indeed a son to Peter, and all the likelihood is that these greetings are from him. So, then, we may gather up the possibilities. "She who is at Babylon, and who has been chosen, as you have been chosen, may either be the Church or the wife of Peter, herself a martyr. Babylon may be the Babylon of the east but is more likely to be the great and wicked city of Rome. Mark might possibly be the actual son of Peter, about whom we know nothing else, but is more likely to be Mark, the writer of the gospel, who was to Peter as a son.<p/><b>AT PEACE WITH ONE ANOTHER</b> (<a href='B:670 5:14'>1Pe 5:14</a>)<p/><i> 5:14 Greet each other with a kiss of love. Peace be to you all that are in Christ.<p/></i><p/>The most interesting thing here is the injunction to give each other the kiss of love. This was for centuries an integral and precious part of Christian fellowship and worship; and its history and gradual elimination, is of the greatest interest. With the Jews it was the custom for a disciple to kiss his Rabbi on the cheek and to lay his hands upon his shoulder. That is what Judas did to Jesus (<a href='B:480 14:44'>Mar 14:44</a>). The kiss was the greeting of welcome and respect, and we can see how much Jesus valued it, for he was grieved when it was not given to him (<a href='B:490 7:45'>Luk 7:45</a>). Paul's letters frequently end with the injunction to salute each other with a holy kiss (<a href='B:520 16:16'>Rom 16:16</a>; <a href='B:530 16:20'>1Co 16:20</a>; <a href='B:540 13:12'>2Co 13:12</a>; <a href='B:590 5:26'>1Th 5:26</a>). In the early church the kiss became an essential part of Christian worship. "What prayer is complete, asks Tertullian, "from which the holy kiss is divorced? What kind of sacrifice is that from which men depart without the peace?" (Dex Oratione 18). The kiss, we see here, was called the peace. It was specially a part of the communion service. Augustine says that, when Christians were about to communicate, "they demonstrated their inward peace by the outward kiss" (De Amicitia 6). It was usually given after the catechumens had been dismissed, when only members of the Church were present, and after the prayer before the elements were brought in. Justin Martyr says, "When we have ceased from prayer, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president bread and a cup of wine" (1:65). The kiss was preceded by the prayer "for the gift of peace and of unfeigned love, undefiled by hypocrisy or deceit, and it was the sign that "our souls are mingled together, and have banished all remembrance of wrongs" (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 25:5:3). The kiss was the sign that all injuries were forgotten, all wrongs forgiven, and that those who sat at the Lord's Table were indeed one in the Lord. This was a lovely custom and yet it is clear that it was sadly open to abuse. It is equally clear from the warnings so often given that abuses did creep in. Athenagoras insists that the kiss must be given with the greatest care, for "if there be mixed with it the least defilement of thought, it excludes us from eternal life" (Legatio Christianis 32). Origen insists that the kiss of peace must be "holy, chaste and sincere, not like the kiss of Judas (Commentaria in Epistolam B. Pauli ad Romanos 10: 33). Clement of Alexandria condemns the shameless use of the kiss, which ought to be mystic, for with the kiss "certain persons make the churches resound, and thereby occasion foul suspicions and evil reports" (Paedagogus 3: 11). Tertullian speaks of the natural reluctance of the heathen husband to think that his wife should be so greeted in the Christian Church (Ad Uxorem 2: 4). In the Church of the west these inevitable problems gradually brought the end of this lovely custom. By the time of the Apostolic Constitutions in the fourth century, the kiss is confined to those of the same sex--the clergy are to salute the bishop, the men the men and the women the women. In this form the kiss of peace lasted in the Church of the west until the thirteenth century. Sometimes substitutes were introduced. In some places a little wooden or metal tablet, with a picture of the crucifixion on it, was used. It was kissed first by the priest, and then passed to the congregation, who each kissed it and handed it on, each man to his neighbour, in token of their mutual love for Christ and in Christ. In the oriental Churches the custom still obtains; it is not extinct in the Greek Church; the Armenian Church substituted a courteous bow. We may note certain other uses of the kiss in the early church. At baptism the person baptized was kissed, first by the baptizer and then by the whole congregation, as a sign of his welcome into the household and family of Christ. A newly ordained bishop was given "the kiss in the Lord." The marriage ceremony was ratified by a kiss, a natural action taken over from paganism. Those who were dying first kissed the Cross and were then kissed by all present. The dead were kissed before burial. To us the kiss of peace may seem very far away. It came from the day when the Church was a real family and fellowship, when Christians really did know and love one another. It is a tragedy that the modern Church, often with vast congregations who do not know each other and do not even wish to know each other, could not use the kiss of peace except as a formality. It was a lovely custom which was bound to cease when the reality of fellowship was lost within the Church. "Peace to all of you that are in Christ, says Peter; and so he leaves his people to the peace of God which is greater than all the troubles and distresses the world can bring.<p/>Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)<p/>FURTHER READING<p/>1 Peter F. W. Beare, The First Epistle of Peter (G) E. Best, 1 Peter (NCB; E) C. Bigg, St. Peter and St. Jude (ICC; G) C. E. B. Cranfield, 1 and 2 Peter and Jude (Tch; E) E. G. Selwyn, The First Epistle of St. Peter (MmC; G) Abbreviations ICC: International Critical Commentary MC: Moffatt Commentary MmC: Macmillan Commentary NCB: New Century Bible Tch: Torch Commentary E: English Text G: Greek Text<p/>Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)


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<b>THE MAN WHO OPENED DOORS</b> (<a href='B:680 1:1'>2Pe 1:1</a>)<p/><i> 1:1 Symeon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, writes this letter to those to whom there has been allotted a faith equal in honour and privilege with our own, through the impartial justice of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ.<p/></i><p/>The letter opens with a very subtle and beautiful allusion for those who have eyes to see it and knowledge enough of the New Testament to grasp it. Peter writes to "those to whom there has been allotted a faith equal in honour and privilege with our own" and he calls himself Symeon Peter. Who were these people? There can really be only one answer to that. They must once have been Gentiles in contradistinction to the Jews who were uniquely the chosen people of God. Those who had once been no people are now the chosen people of God (<a href='B:670 2:10'>1Pe 2:10</a>); those who were once aliens and strangers to the commonwealth of Israel, and who were once far off, have been brought nigh (<a href='B:560 2:11-13'>Eph 2:11-13</a>).<p/>Peter puts this very vividly, using a word which would at once strike an answering chord in the minds of those who heard it. Their faith is equal in honour and privilege. The Greek is isotimos (<a href='S:G2472'>G2472</a>) ; isos (<a href='S:G2470'>G2470</a>) means "equal" and time (<a href='S:G5092'>G5092</a>) means "honour." This word was particularly used in connection with foreigners who were given equal citizenship in a city with the natives. Josephus, for instance, says that in Antioch the Jews were made isotimoi (<a href='S:G2472'>G2472</a>), equal in honour and privilege, with the Macedonians and the Greeks who lived there. So Peter addresses his letter to those who had once been despised Gentiles but who had been given equal rights of citizenship with the Jews and even with the apostles themselves in the kingdom of God.<p/>Two things have to be noted about this great privilege which had been extended to the Gentiles. (a) It had been allotted to them. That is to say, they had not earned it; it had fallen to them through no merit of their own, as some prize falls to a man by lot. In other words, their new citizenship was all of grace. (b) It came to them through the impartial justice of their God and Saviour Jesus Christ. It came to them because with God there is no "most favoured nation clause"; his grace and favour go out impartially to every nation upon earth.<p/>What has this to do with the name Symeon, by which Peter is here called? In the New Testament, he is most often called Peter; he is fairly often called Simon, which was, indeed, his original name before Jesus gave him the name of Cephas or Peter (<a href='B:500 1:41-42'>Joh 1:41-42</a>); but only once in the rest of the New Testament is he called Simeon. It is in the story of that Council of Jerusalem in <a href='B:510 15:1-41'>Act 15:1-41</a> which decided that the door of the Church should be opened wide to the Gentiles. There James says, "Symeon has related how God first visited the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for his name" (<a href='B:510 15:14'>Act 15:14</a>). In this letter which begins with greetings to the Gentiles who have been granted by the grace of God privileges of equal citizenship in the kingdom with the Jews and with the apostles Peter is called by the name of Symeon; and the only other time he is called by that name is when he is the principal instrument whereby that privilege is granted.<p/>Symeon has in it the memory that Peter is the man who opened doors. He opened the doors to Cornelius, the Gentile centurion (<a href='B:510 10:1-48'>Act 10:1-48</a>); his great authority was thrown on the side of the open door at the Council of Jerusalem (<a href='B:510 15:1-41'>Act 15:1-41</a>).<p/><b>THE GLORIOUS SERVITUDE</b> (<a href='B:680 1:1'>2Pe 1:1</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Peter calls himself the servant of Jesus Christ. The word is doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) which really means slave. Strange as it may seem, here is a title, apparently one of humiliation, which the greatest of men took as a title of greatest honour. Moses the great leader and lawgiver was the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God (<a href='B:50 34:5'>Deu 34:5</a>; <a href='B:230 105:26'>Psa 105:26</a>; <a href='B:460 4:4'>Mal 4:4</a>). Joshua the great commander was the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God (<a href='B:60 24:29'>Jos 24:29</a>). David the greatest of the kings was the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God (<a href='B:100 3:18'>2Sa 3:18</a>; <a href='B:230 78:70'>Psa 78:70</a>). In the New Testament Paul is the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of Jesus Christ (<a href='B:520 1:1'>Rom 1:1</a>; Php_1:1 ; <a href='B:630 1:1'>Tit 1:1</a>), a title which James (<a href='B:660 1:1'>Jas 1:1</a>), and Jude (Jd 1) both proudly claim. In the Old Testament the prophets are the douloi (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God (<a href='B:370 3:7'>Amo 3:7</a>; <a href='B:290 20:3'>Isa 20:3</a>). And in the New Testament the Christian man frequently is Christ's doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) (<a href='B:510 2:18'>Act 2:18</a>; <a href='B:530 7:22'>1Co 7:22</a>; <a href='B:560 6:6'>Eph 6:6</a>; <a href='B:580 4:12'>Col 4:12</a>; <a href='B:620 2:24'>2Ti 2:24</a>). There is deep meaning here.<p/>(i) To call the Christian the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God means that he is inalienably possessed by God. In the ancient world a master possessed his slaves in the same sense as he possessed his tools. A servant can change his master; but a slave cannot. The Christian inalienably belongs to God.<p/>(ii) To call the Christian the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God means that he is unqualifiedly at the disposal of God. In the ancient world the master could do what he liked with his slave; he had even the power of life and death over him. The Christian has no rights of his own, for all his rights are surrendered to God.<p/>(iii) To call the Christian the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God means that he owes an unquestioning obedience to God. A master's command was a slave's only law in ancient times. In any situation the Christian has but one question to ask: "Lord, what will you have me do?" The command of God is his only law.<p/>(iv) To call the Christian the doulos (<a href='S:G1401'>G1401</a>) of God means that he must be constantly in the service of God. In the ancient world the slave had literally no time of his own, no holidays, no leisure. All his time belonged to his master. The Christian cannot, either deliberately or unconsciously, compartmentalize life into the time and activities which belong to God, and the time and activities in which he does what he likes. The Christian is necessarily the man every moment of whose time is spent in the service of God.<p/>We note one further point. Peter speaks of the impartial justice of our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. The King James Version translates, "the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ," as if this referred to two persons, God and Jesus; but, as Moffatt and the Revised Standard Version both show, in the Greek there is only one person involved and the phrase is correctly rendered our God and Saviour Jesus Christ. Its great interest is that it does what the New Testament very, very seldom does. It calls Jesus God. The only real parallel to this is the adoring cry of Thomas: "My Lord and my God." (<a href='B:500 20:28'>Joh 20:28</a>). This is not a matter to argue about; it is not even a matter of theology; for Peter and Thomas to call Jesus God was not a matter of theology but an outrush of adoration. It was simply that they felt human terms could not contain this person they knew as Lord.<p/><b>THE ALL-IMPORTANT KNOWLEDGE</b> (<a href='B:680 1:2'>2Pe 1:2</a>)<p/><i> 1:2 May grace and peace be multiplied to you by the knowledge of God, and of Jesus, our Lord.<p/></i><p/>Peter puts this in an unusual way. Grace and peace are to come from knowledge, the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Is he turning Christian experience into something dependent on knowledge? Or is there some other meaning here? First, let us look at the word which he uses for knowledge (epignosis, <a href='S:G1922'>G1922</a>). It can be interpreted in two directions.<p/>(a) It can mean increasing knowledge. Gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>), the normal Greek word for knowledge, is here preceded by the preposition epi (<a href='S:G1909'>G1909</a>) which means towards, in the direction of. Epignosis (<a href='S:G1922'>G1922</a>) then could be interpreted as knowledge which is always moving further in the direction of that which it seeks to know. Grace and peace are multiplied to the Christian as he comes to know Jesus Christ better and better. As it has been put: "The more Christians realize the meaning of Jesus Christ, the more they realize the meaning of grace and the experience of peace."<p/>(b) Epignosis (<a href='S:G1922'>G1922</a>) has a second meaning. Often in Greek it means full knowledge. Plutarch, for instance, uses it of the scientific knowledge of music as opposed to the knowledge of the mere amateur. So it may be that the implication here is that knowledge of Jesus Christ is what we might call "the master-science of life." The other sciences may bring new skill, new knowledge, new abilities, but the master-science, the knowledge of Jesus Christ, alone brings the grace men need and the peace for which their hearts crave.<p/>There is still more. Peter has a way of using words which were commonly on the lips of the pagans of his day and charging them with a new meaning. Knowledge was a much used word in pagan religious thought in the days when this letter was written. To take but one example, the Greeks defined sophia (<a href='S:G4678'>G4678</a>), wisdom, as knowledge of things both human and divine. The Greek seekers after God sought that knowledge in two main ways.<p/>(a) They sought it by philosophic speculation. They sought to reach God by the sheer power of human thought. There are obvious troubles there. For one thing, God is infinite; the mind of man is finite; and the finite can never grasp the infinite. Long ago Zophar had asked: "Can you (by searching) find out the deep things of God?" (<a href='B:220 11:7'>Job 11:7</a>). If God is ever to be known, he must be known, not because man's mind discovers him but because he chooses to reveal himself. For another thing, if religion is based on philosophic speculation, at its highest it can be the preserve of only the few, for it is not given to every man to be a philosopher. Whatever Peter meant by knowledge, he did not mean that.<p/>(b) They sought it by mystical experience of the divine, until they could say, "I am thou, and thou art I." This was the way of the Mystery Religions. They were all passion plays; the dramatically acted story of some God who suffered and died and rose again. The initiate was carefully prepared by instruction in the inner meaning of the story, by long fasting and continence, and by the deliberate building up of psychological tension. The play was then played out with a magnificent liturgy, sensuous music, carefully calculated lighting and the burning of incense. The aim was that, as the initiate watched, he should so enter into this experience that he became actually one with the suffering, dying, rising, and eternally triumphant God. Again there are troubles here. For one thing, not every one is capable of mystical experience. For another thing, any such experience is necessarily transient; it may leave an effect, but it cannot be a continual experience. Mystical experience is the privilege of the few.<p/>(c) If this knowledge of Jesus Christ does not come by philosophic speculation or by mystical experience, what is it and how does it come? In the New Testament knowledge is characteristically personal knowledge. Paul does not say, "I know what I have believed"; he says, "I know whom I have believed" (<a href='B:620 1:12'>2Ti 1:12</a>). Christian knowledge of Christ is personal acquaintance with him; it is knowing him as a person and entering day by day into a more intimate relationship with him.<p/>When Peter speaks of grace and peace coming through the knowledge of God and of Jesus Christ, he is not intellectualizing religion; he is saying that Christianity means an ever-deepening personal relationship with Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE GREATNESS OF JESUS CHRIST FOR MEN</b> (<a href='B:680 1:3-7'>2Pe 1:3-7</a>)


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 Since his divine power has bestowed upon us all things that are necessary for true life and true religion, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, and since through these gifts there have been bestowed upon us precious and very great promises, that through them we might escape the world's corruption caused by lust and become sharers in the divine nature--since still this is so, bend all your energy to the task of equipping your faith with courage, your courage with knowledge, your knowledge with self-control, your self-control with steadfastness, your steadfastness with piety, your piety with brotherly affection, your brotherly affection with Christian love.<p/></i><p/>In <a href='B:680 1:3-4'>2Pe 1:3-4</a> there is a tremendous and comprehensive picture of Jesus Christ.<p/>(i) He is the Christ of power. In him there is the divine power which cannot be ultimately defeated or frustrated. In this world one of the tragedies of life is that love is so often frustrated because it cannot give what it wants to give, cannot do what it wants to do and must so often stand helpless while the loved one meets disaster. But always Christ's love is backed by his power and is, therefore, a victorious love.<p/>(ii) He is the Christ of generosity. He bestows on us all things necessary for true life and true religion. The word Peter uses for religion is eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>), the characteristic meaning of which is practical religion. Peter is saying that Jesus Christ tells us what life is and then enables us to live it as it ought to be lived. He gives us a religion which is not withdrawal from life but triumphant involvement in it.<p/>(iii) He is the Christ of the precious and great promises. That does not so much mean that he brings us the great and precious promises as that in him these promises come true. Paul put the same thing in a different way when he said that all the promises of God are Yes and Amen in Christ (<a href='B:540 1:20'>2Co 1:20</a>). That is to say Christ says, "Yes. So let it be, to these promises; he confirms and guarantees them. It has been put this way--once we know Jesus Christ, every time we meet a promise in Scripture which begins with the word "Whosoever, we can immediately say to ourselves, "That means me."<p/>(iv) He is the Christ by whom we escape the world's corruption. Peter had to meet the antinomians, the people who used the grace of God as an excuse for sin. They declared that grace was wide enough to cover every sin; therefore, sin does not matter any more, the grace of Christ will win forgiveness for it. For any man to speak like that is simply to show that he wants to sin. But Jesus Christ is the person who can help us overcome the fascination of the world's lust and cleanse us by his presence and his power. So long as we live in this world sin will never completely lose its fascination for us; but in the presence of Christ we have our defence against that fascination.<p/>(v) He is the Christ who makes us sharers in the divine nature. Here again Peter is using an expression which the pagan thinkers well knew. They spoke much about sharing in the divine nature. But there was this difference--they believed that man had a share in the divine nature by virtue of being man. All men had to do was to live in accordance with the divine nature already in them. The trouble about that is that life flatly contradicts it. On every side we see bitterness, hatred, lust, crime; on every side we see moral failure, helplessness and frustration. Christianity says that men are capable of becoming sharers in the divine nature. It realistically faces man's actuality but at the same time sets no limit to his potentiality. "I am come, said Jesus, "that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (<a href='B:500 10:10'>Joh 10:10</a>). As one of the great early fathers said, "He became what we are to make us what he is." Man has it in him to share the nature of God--but only in Jesus Christ can that potentiality be realized.<p/><b>EQUIPMENT FOR THE WAY</b> (<a href='B:680 1:3-7'>2Pe 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Peter says that we must bend all our energies to equip ourselves with a series of great qualities. The word he uses for to equip is epichoregein (<a href='S:G2023'>G2023</a>) which he uses again in <a href='B:680 1:11'>2Pe 1:11</a> when he speaks of us being richly gifted with the right of entry into the eternal kingdom.<p/>This is one of the many Greek words which have a pictorial background. The verb epichoregein (<a href='S:G2023'>G2023</a>) comes from the noun choregos (<a href='S:G5524'>G5524</a>), which literally means "the leader of a chorus." Perhaps the greatest gift that Greece, and especially Athens, gave to the world was the great works of men like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, which are still among its most cherished possessions. All these plays needed large choruses and were, therefore, very expensive to produce. In the great days of Athens there were public-spirited citizens who voluntarily took on the duty, at their own expense, of collecting, maintaining, training and equipping such choruses. It was at the great religious festivals that these plays were produced. For instance, at the city Dionysia there were produced three tragedies, five comedies and five dithyrambs. Men had to be round to provide the choruses for them all, a duty which could cost as much as 3,000 drachmae. The men who undertook these duties out of their own pocket and out of love for their city were called choregoi, and choregein (<a href='S:G5524'>G5524</a>) was the verb used for undertaking such a duty. The word has a certain lavishness in it. It never means to equip in any cheese-paring and miserly way; it means lavishly to pour out everything that is necessary for a noble performance. Epichoregein (<a href='S:G2023'>G2023</a>) went out into a larger world and it grew to mean not only to equip a chorus but to be responsible for any kind of equipment. It can mean to equip an army with all necessary provisions; it can mean to equip the soul with all the necessary virtues for life. But always at the back of it there is this idea of a lavish generosity in the equipment.<p/>So Peter urges his people to equip their lives with every virtue; and that equipment must not be simply a necessary minimum, but lavish and generous. The very word is an incitement to be content with nothing less than the loveliest and the most splendid life.<p/>But there is something else at the back of this. In <a href='B:680 1:5-6'>2Pe 1:5-6</a> Peter goes on that we must, as the Revised Standard Version has it, add virtue to virtue, until the whole culminates in Christian love. Behind this is a Stoic idea. The Stoics insisted that in life there must continuously be what they called prokope (<a href='S:G4297'>G4297</a>), moral progress. Prokope can be used for the advance of an army towards its objective. In the Christian life there must be steady moral advance. Moffatt quotes a saying that, "the Christian life must not be an initial spasm followed by a chronic inertia." It is very apt to be just that; a moment of enthusiasm, when the wonder of Christianity is realized, and then a failure to work out the Christian life in continuous progress.<p/>That brings us to still another basic idea here. Peter bids his people bend every energy to do this. That is to say, in the Christian life the supreme effort of man must cooperate with the grace of God. As Paul has it: "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work his good pleasure" (Php_2:12-13). It is true that everything is of faith; but a faith which does not issue in life is not faith at all, as Paul would heartily have agreed. Faith is not only commitment to the promises of Christ; it is also commitment to his demands.<p/>Bigg well points out that Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, says that there are three theories of the source of happiness. (i) It is something which can come by training, by learning and by the formation of right habits. (ii) It is a matter of divine allotment, the gift or God. (iii) It is all a matter of chance.<p/>The truth is that, as the Christian sees it, happiness depends both on God's gift and on our effort. We do not earn salvation but at the same time we have to bend every energy towards the Christian objective of a lovely life. Bengel, in commenting on this passage, asks us to compare the Parable of the Ten Virgins, five of whom were wise and five of whom were foolish. He writes: "The flame is that which is imparted to us by God and from God without our own labour; but the oil is that which a man must pour into life by his own study and his own faithful effort, so that the flame may be fed and increased."<p/>Faith does not exempt a man from works; the generosity of God does not absolve a man from effort. Life is at its noblest and its best when our effort cooperates with God's grace to produce the necessary loveliness.<p/><b>(1) THE LADDER OF VIRTUES</b> (<a href='B:680 1:3-7'>2Pe 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> Let us then look at the list of virtues which have to be added one to another. it is worth noting that in the ancient world such lists were common. It was a world in which books were not nearly so cheap and so readily available as they are today. Instruction, therefore, had for the most part to be carried in the pupil's head; and easily memorized lists were one of the commonest ways of inculcating instruction. One ingenious way of teaching the child the names of the virtues was by means of a game played with counters which could be won or lost, each of which bore the name of one of the virtues. Lists of virtues were common in the early Christian writings. Paul gives us the fruit of the Spirit--love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (<a href='B:550 5:22-23'>Gal 5:22-23</a>). In the Pastoral Epistles the man of God is bidden to follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, gentleness (<a href='B:610 6:11'>1Ti 6:11</a>). In The Shepherd of Hermas (Visions 3:8:1-7), faith, self-control, simplicity, innocence and reverence, understanding and love are daughters one of another. In the Epistle of Barnabas (2) fear and endurance are the helpers of faith; patience and self-control are our allies; and when these are present a man can develop and possess wisdom, prudence, understanding and knowledge. Let us look one by one at the stages in the list which this letter gives us.<p/>(i) It begins with faith (pistis, <a href='S:G4102'>G4102</a>) ; everything goes back to that. For Peter faith is the conviction that what Jesus Christ says is true and that we can commit ourselves to his promises and launch ourselves on his demands. It is the unquestioning certainty that the way to happiness and peace and strength on earth and in heaven is to accept him at his word.<p/>(ii) To faith must be added what the Revised Standard Version calls virtue and we have called courage. The word is arete (<a href='S:G703'>G703</a>) ; it is very rare in the New Testament but it is the supreme Greek word for virtue in every sense of the term. It means excellence. It has two special directions in which its meaning moves. (a) Arete (<a href='S:G703'>G703</a>) is what we might call operative, or efficient excellence. To take two examples of its usage from widely differing spheres--it can be used of land which is fertile; and it can be used of the mighty deeds of the gods. Arete (<a href='S:G703'>G703</a>) is that virtue which makes a man a good citizen and friend; it is that virtue which makes him an expert in the technique of living well. (b) Arete (<a href='S:G703'>G703</a>) often means courage. Plutarch says that God is a hope of arete (<a href='S:G703'>G703</a>), not an excuse for cowardice. In 2 Maccabees we read of how Eleazar died rather than be false to the laws of God and his fathers; and the story ends by saying that he left his death for an example of noble courage (arete, <a href='S:G703'>G703</a>) and a memorial of virtue, not only to young men, but also to all the nation (2Ma_6:31).<p/>In this passage it is not necessary to choose between these two meanings; they are both there. Faith must issue, not in the retirement of the cloister and the cell, but in a life effective in the service of God and man; and it must issue in the courage always to show whose it is and whom it serves.<p/>(iii) To courage must be added knowledge. The word is gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>). In ethical Greek language there are two words which have a similar meaning with a very significant difference. Sophia (<a href='S:G4678'>G4678</a>) is wisdom, in the sense of "knowledge of things both human and divine, and of their causes." It is knowledge of first causes and of deep and ultimate things. Gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>) is practical knowledge; it is the ability to apply to particular situations the ultimate knowledge which sophia (<a href='S:G4678'>G4678</a>) gives. Gnosis (<a href='S:G1108'>G1108</a>) is that knowledge which enables a man to decide rightly and to act honourably and efficiently in the day to day circumstances of life. So, then, to faith must be added courage and effectiveness; to courage and effectiveness must be added the practical wisdom to deal with life.<p/><b>(2) THE LADDER OF VIRTUES</b> (<a href='B:680 1:3-7'>2Pe 1:3-7</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> (iv) To this practical knowledge must be added self-control, or self-mastery. The word is egkrateia (<a href='S:G1466'>G1466</a>), and it means literally the ability, to take a grip of oneself. This is a virtue of which the great Greeks spoke and wrote and thought much. In regard to a man and his passions Aristotle distinguishes four states in life. There is sophrosune (<a href='S:G4997'>G4997</a>), in which passion has been entirely subjugated to reason; we might call it perfect temperance. There is akolasia, which is the precise opposite; it is the state in which reason is entirely subjugated to passion--we might call it unbridled lust. In between these two states there is akrasia (<a href='S:G192'>G192</a>), in which reason fights but passion prevails; we might call it incontinence. There is egkrateia (<a href='S:G1466'>G1466</a>), in which reason fights against passion and prevails; we call it self-control, or self-mastery.<p/>Egkrateia (<a href='S:G1466'>G1466</a>) is one of the great Christian virtues; and the place it holds is an example of the realism of the Christian ethic. That ethic does not contemplate a situation in which a man is emasculated of all passion; it envisages a situation in which his passions remain, but are under perfect control and so become his servants, not his tyrants.<p/>(v) To this self-control must be added steadfastness. The word is hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>). Chrysostom called hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>) "The Queen of the Virtues." In the King James Version it is usually translated patience; but patience is too passive a word. Hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>), has always a background or courage. Cicero defines patientia, its Latin equivalent, as: "The voluntary and daily suffering of hard and difficult things, for the sake of honour and usefulness." Didymus of Alexandria writes on the temper of Job: "It is not that the righteous man must be without feeling, although he must patiently bear the things which afflict him; but it is true virtue when a man deeply feels the things he toils against, but nevertheless despises sorrows for the sake of God." Hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>) does not simply accept and endure; there is always a forward look in it. It is said of Jesus, by the writer to the Hebrews, that for the joy that was set before him, he endured the Cross, despising the shame (<a href='B:650 12:2'>Heb 12:2</a>). That is hupomone (<a href='S:G5281'>G5281</a>), Christian steadfastness. It is the courageous acceptance of everything that life can do to us and the transmuting of even the worst event into another step on the upward way.<p/>(vi) To this steadfastness must be added piety. The word is eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) and is quite untranslatable. Even piety is inadequate, carrying as it does a suggestion sometimes of something not altogether attractive. The great characteristic of eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) is that it looks in two directions. The man who has eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) always correctly worships God and gives him his due; but he always correctly serves his fellow-men and gives them their due. The man who is eusebes (<a href='S:G2152'>G2152</a>) (the corresponding adjective) is in a right relationship both with God and his fellow-men. Eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) is piety but in its most practical aspect.<p/>We may best see the meaning of this word by looking at the man whom the Greeks held to be its finest example. That man was Socrates whom Xenophon describes as follows: "He was so pious and devoutly religious that he would take no step apart from the will of heaven; so just and upright that he never did even a trifling injury to any living soul; so self-controlled, so temperate, that he never at any time chose the sweeter instead of the better; so sensible, so wise, and so prudent that in distinguishing the better from the worse he never erred" (Xenophon: Memorabilia 1:5:8--11).<p/>In Latin the word is pietas; and Warde Fowler describes the Roman idea of the man who possesses that quality: "He is superior to the enticements of individual passion and of selfish ease; (pietas is) a sense of duty which never left a man, of duty first to the gods, then to father and to family, to son and to daughter, to his people and to his nation."<p/>Eusebeia (<a href='S:G2150'>G2150</a>) is the nearest Greek word for religion; and, when we begin to define it, we see the intensely practical character of the Christian religion. When a man becomes a Christian, he acknowledges a double duty, to God and to his fellow-men.<p/>(vii) To this piety must be added brotherly affection. The word is philadelphia (<a href='S:G5360'>G5360</a>), which literally means love of the brethren. The point is this--there is a kind of religious devotion which separates a man from his fellow-men. The claims of his fellow-men become an intrusion on his prayers, his study of God's word and his meditation. The ordinary demands of human relationships become a nuisance. Epictetus, the great Stoic philosopher, never married. Half-jestingly he said that he was doing far more for the world by being an unfettered philosopher than if he had produced "two or three dirty-nosed children." "How can he who has to teach mankind run to get something in which to heat the water to give the baby his bath?" What Peter is saying is that there is something wrong with the religion which finds the claims of personal relationships a nuisance.<p/>(viii) The ladder of Christian virtue must end in Christian love. Not even affection for the brethren is enough; the Christian must end with a love which is as wide as that love of God which causes his sun to rise on the just and on the unjust, and sends his rain on the evil and the good. The Christian must show to all men the love which God has shown to him.<p/><b>ON THE WAY</b> (<a href='B:680 1:8-11'>2Pe 1:8-11</a>)


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 For, if these things exist and increase within you, they will make you not ineffective and not unfruitful in your progress towards the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For whoever does not possess these things is blind, short-sighted, and has lapsed into forgetfulness that the sins of his old way of life have been cleansed away, So, brothers, be the more eager to confirm your calling and your choice. For, if you do practise these virtues, you will never slip, for you will be richly gifted with the right of entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.<p/></i><p/>Peter strongly urges his people to keep climbing up this ladder of virtues which he has set before them. The more we know of any subject the more we are fit to know. It is always true that "to him that hath it shall be given." Progress is the way to more progress. Moffatt says of ourselves and Jesus Christ: "We learn him as we live with him and for him." As the hymn has it:<p/>May every heart confess thy name,<p/>And ever thee adore,<p/>And, seeking thee, itself inflame<p/>To seek thee more and more.<p/>To keep climbing up the ladder of the virtues is to come ever nearer to knowing Jesus Christ; and the further we climb, the further we are able to climb.<p/>On the other hand, if we refuse to make the effort of the upward climb, certain things happen. (a) We grow blind; we are left without the guiding light that the knowledge of Jesus Christ brings. As Peter sees it, to walk without Christ is to walk in the dark and not to be able to see the way. (b) We grow what Peter calls muopazon (<a href='S:G3467'>G3467</a>). This word can have either of two meanings. It can mean short-sighted. It is easy to become short-sighted in life, to see things only as they appear at the moment and to be unable to take the long view of things, to have our eyes so fixed upon earth that we never think of the things beyond. It can also mean blinking, shutting the eyes. Again, it is easy in life to shut our eyes to what we do not wish to see, and to walk, as it were, in blinkers. To walk without Christ is to be in danger of taking the short-sighted or the blinkered view of life.<p/>Further, to fail to climb the ladder of virtue is to forget that the sins of the old way of life have been cleansed away. Peter is thinking of baptism. At that time baptism was adult baptism; it was a deliberate act of decision to leave the old way and to enter upon the new. The man who, after baptism, does not begin upon the upward climb has forgotten, or never realized, the meaning of the experience through which he has passed. For many of us the parallel to baptism in this sense is entry into the membership of the Christian Church. To make our commitment and then to remain exactly the same, is to fail to understand what church membership means, for our entry into it should be the beginning of a climb upon the upward way.<p/>In view of all this, Peter urges his people to make every effort to confirm their calling by God. Here is a most significant demand. In one way all is of God; it is God's call which gives us entry into the fellowship of his people; without his grace and his mercy we could do nothing and could expect nothing. But that does not absolve us from every possible effort.<p/>Let us take an analogy, which, although not perfect, may help us to understand. Suppose a man who is wealthy and kind picks out a poor lad, who would never otherwise have had the chance, and offers him the privilege of a university education. The benefactor is giving the lad something which he could never have achieved for himself; but the lad cannot make use of that privilege unless he is prepared to work, and the harder he works the more he will enter into the privilege offered to him. The gracious free offer and the personal hard work have to combine before the privilege becomes fully effective.<p/>It is so with us and God. God has called us in his free mercy and his unmerited grace; but at the same time we have to bend every effort to toil upwards and onwards on the way.<p/>If we follow this upward way, Peter says, we shall in the end be richly gifted with the right of entry into his eternal kingdom; and we shall not slip upon the way. By this Peter does not mean that we will never sin. The picture in his mind is of a march and he means that we will never fall out upon the march and be left behind. If we set out upon this upward and onward way, the effort will be great but God's help will also be great; and in spite of all the toil, he will enable us to keep going until we reach our journey's end.<p/><b>THE PASTOR'S CARE</b> (<a href='B:680 1:12-15'>2Pe 1:12-15</a>)


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 It is for this reason that I intend constantly to remind you of these things, although you already know them, and although you are already firmly established in the truth which you possess. I think it is right, so long as I am in this tent, to rouse you by reminding you, for I know that the time to put off my tent is coming soon, as indeed our Lord Jesus Christ has told me. Yes, and I will make it my endeavour to see to it that after my departure you will constantly remember these things.<p/></i><p/>Here speaks the pastor's care. In this passage Peter shows us two things about preaching and teaching. First, preaching is very often reminding a man of what he already knows. It is the bringing back to his memory that truth which he has forgotten, or at which he refuses to look, or whose meaning he has not fully appreciated. Second, Peter is going to go on to uncompromising rebuke and warning, but he begins with something very like a compliment. He says that his people already possess the truth and are firmly established in it. Always a preacher, a teacher or a parent will achieve more by encouragement than by scolding. We do more to reform people and to keep them safe by, as it were, putting them on their honour than by flaying them with invective. Peter was wise enough to know that the first essential to make men listen is to show that we believe in them.<p/>Peter looks forward to his early death. He talks of his body as his tent, as Paul does (<a href='B:540 5:4'>2Co 5:4</a>). This was a favourite picture with the early Christian writers. The Epistle to Diognetus says, "The immortal soul dwells in a mortal tent." The picture comes from the journeyings of the patriarchs in the Old Testament. They had no abiding residence but lived in tents because they were on the way to the Promised Land. The Christian knows well that his life in this world is not a permanent residence but a journey towards the world beyond. We get the same idea in <a href='B:680 1:15'>2Pe 1:15</a>. There Peter speaks of his approaching death as his exodos, his departure. Exodos is, of course, the word which is used for the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, and their setting out to the Promised Land. Peter sees death, not as the end but as the going out into the Promised Land of God.<p/>Peter says that Jesus Christ has told him that for him the end will soon be coming. This may be a reference to the prophecy in <a href='B:500 21:18-19'>Joh 21:18-19</a>, when Jesus foretells that there will come a day when Peter also will be stretched out upon a cross. That time is about to come.<p/>Peter says that he will take steps to see that what he has got to say to them will be held before their memory even when he is gone from this earth. That may well be a reference to the Gospel according to St. Mark. The consistent tradition is that it is the preaching material of Peter. lrenaeus says that, after the death of Peter and Paul, Mark, who had been his disciple and interpreter, handed on in writing the things which it had been Peter's custom to preach. Papias, who lived towards the end of the second century and collected many traditions about the early days of the Church, hands down the same tradition about Mark's gospel: "Mark, who was Peter's interpreter, wrote down accurately, though not in order, all that he recollected of what Christ had said or done. For he was not a bearer of the Lord, or a follower of his; he followed Peter, as I have said, at a later date and Peter adapted his instruction to practical needs, without any attempt to give the Lord's words systematically. So that Mark was not wrong in writing down some things in this way from memory, for his one concern was neither to omit nor to falsify anything that he had heard." It may well be that the reference here means that Peter's teaching was made still available to his people in Mark's Gospel after his death.<p/>In any event, the pastor's aim was to bring to his people God's truth while he was still alive and to take steps to keep it in their memories after he was dead. He wrote, not to preserve his own name, but the name of Jesus Christ.<p/><b>THE MESSAGE AND THE RIGHT TO GIVE IT</b> (<a href='B:680 1:16-18'>2Pe 1:16-18</a>)


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 For it was not cleverly invented fables that we followed when we made known to you the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ; it was because we were made eye-witnesses of his majesty. This happened to us on that occasion when he received honour and glory from God the Father, when this voice was borne to him by the majestic glory--"This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased." It was this voice that we heard, borne from heaven, when we were with him in the sacred mountain.<p/></i><p/>Peter comes to the message which it was his great aim to bring to his people, concerning "the power and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." As we shall see quite clearly as we go on, the great aim of this letter is to recall men to certainty in regard to the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. The heretics whom Peter is attacking no longer believed in it; it was so long delayed that people had begun to think it would never happen at all.<p/>Such, then, was Peter's message. Having stated it, he goes on to speak of his right to state it; and does something which is, at least at first sight, surprising. His right to speak is that he was with, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration and that there he saw the glory and the honour which were given to him and heard the voice of God speak to him. That is to say, Peter uses the transfiguration story, not as a foretaste of the Resurrection of Jesus, as it is commonly regarded, but as a foretaste of the triumphant glory of the Second Coming. The transfiguration story is told in <a href='B:470 17:1-8'>Mat 17:1-8</a>; <a href='B:480 9:2-8'>Mar 9:2-8</a>; <a href='B:490 9:28-36'>Luk 9:28-36</a>. Was Peter right in seeing in it a foretaste of the Second Coming rather than a prefiguring of the Resurrection?<p/>There is one particularly significant thing about the transfiguration story. In all three gospels, it immediately follows the prophecy of Jesus which said that there were some standing there who would not pass from the world until they had seen the Son of Man coming in his kingdom (Matt 16:29; <a href='B:480 9:1'>Mar 9:1</a>; <a href='B:490 9:27'>Luk 9:27</a>). That would certainly seem to indicate that the transfiguration and the Second Coming were in some way linked together.<p/>Whatever we may say, this much is certain, that Peter's great aim in this letter is to recall his people to a living belief in tile Second Coming of Christ and he bases his right to do so on what he saw on the Mount of Transfiguration.<p/>In <a href='B:680 1:16'>2Pe 1:16</a> there is a very interesting word. Peter says, "We were made eye-witnesses of his majesty." The word he uses for eye-witness is epoptes (<a href='S:G2030'>G2030</a>). In the Greek usage of Peter's day this was a technical word. We have already spoken about the Mystery Religions. They were all of the nature of passion plays, in which the story of a god who lived, suffered, died, and rose again was played out. It was only after a long course of instruction and preparation that the worshipper was finally allowed to be present at the passion play, and to be offered the experience of becoming one with the dying and rising God. When he reached this stage, he was an initiate and the technical word to describe him was epoptes (<a href='S:G2030'>G2030</a>) ; he was a privileged eye-witness of the experiences of God. So Peter says that the Christian is an eye-witness of the sufferings of Christ. With the eye of faith he sees the Cross; in the experience of faith he dies with Christ to sin and rises to righteousness. His faith has made him one with Jesus Christ in his death and in his risen life and power.<p/><b>THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS</b> (<a href='B:680 1:19-21'>2Pe 1:19-21</a>)


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 So this mikes the word of the prophets still more certain for us; and you will do well to pay attention to it, as it shines like a lamp in a dingy place, until the day dawns and the Morning Star rises within your hearts. For you must first and foremost realize that no prophecy in Scripture permits of private interpretation; for no prophecy was ever borne to us by the will of man, but men spoke from God, when they were carried away by the Holy Spirit.<p/></i><p/>This is a particularly difficult passage, because in both halves of it the Greek can mean quite different things. We look at these different possibilities and in each case we take the less probable first.<p/>(i) The first sentence can well mean: "In prophecy we have an even surer guarantee, that is, of the Second Coming." If Peter did say this, he means that the words of the prophets are an even surer guarantee of the reality of the Second Coming than his own experience on the Mount of Transfiguration.<p/>However unlikely it may seem, it is by no means impossible that he did say just that. When he was writing there was a tremendous interest in the words of prophecy whose fulfilment in Christianity was seen to prove its truth. We get case after case of people converted in the days of the early church by reading the Old Testament books and seeing their prophecies fulfilled in Jesus. It would be quite in line with that to declare that the strongest argument for the Second Coming is that the prophets foretold it.<p/>(ii) But we think that the second possibility is to be preferred: "What we saw on the Mount of Transfiguration makes it even more certain that what is foretold in the prophets about the Second Coming must be true."<p/>However we take it, the meaning is that the glory of Jesus on the mountain top and the visions of the prophets combine to make it certain that the Second Coming is a living reality which all men must expect and for which all men must prepare.<p/>There is also a double possibility about the second part of this passage. "No prophecy of the Scripture, as the Revised Standard Version has it, "is a matter of one's own interpretation."<p/>(i) Many of the early scholars took this to mean: "When any of the prophets interpreted any situation in history or told how history was going to unfold itself, they were not expressing a private opinion of their own; they were passing on a revelation which God had given them." This is a perfectly possible meaning. In the Old Testament the mark of a false prophet was that he was speaking of himself, as it were, privately, and not saying what God had told him to say. Jeremiah condemns the false prophets: "They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord" (<a href='B:300 23:16'>Jer 23:16</a>). Ezekiel says, "Woe to the foolish prophets who follow their own spirit, and have seen nothing" (<a href='B:330 13:3'>Eze 13:3</a>). Hippolytus describes the way in which the words of the true prophets came: "They did not speak of their own power, nor did they proclaim what they themselves wished, but first they were given right wisdom by the word, and were then instructed by visions."<p/>On this view the passage means that, when the prophets spoke, it was no private opinion they were giving; it was a revelation from God and, therefore, their words must be carefully heeded.<p/>(ii) The second way to take this passage is as referring to our interpretation of the prophets. A situation was confronting Peter in which the heretics and the evil men were interpreting the prophets to suit themselves. On this view, which we support, Peter is saying: "No man can go to Scripture and interpret it as it suits himself."<p/>This is of first-rate practical importance. Peter is saying that no man has the right to interpret Scripture, to use his own word, privately. How then must it be interpreted? To answer that question we must ask another. How did the prophets receive their message? They received it from the Spirit. It was sometimes even said that the Spirit of God used the prophets as a writer uses a pen or as a musician uses a musical instrument. In any event the Spirit gave the prophet his message. The obvious conclusion is that it is only through the help of that same Spirit that the prophetic message can be understood. As Paul had already said, spiritual things are spiritually discerned (<a href='B:530 2:14-15'>1Co 2:14-15</a>). As the Jews viewed the Holy Spirit, he has two functions--he brings God's truth to men and he enables men to understand that truth when it is brought. So, then, Scripture is not to be interpreted by private cleverness or private prejudice; it is to be interpreted by the help of the Holy Spirit by whom it was first given.<p/>Practically that means two things.<p/>(a) Throughout all the ages the Spirit has been working in devoted scholars who under the guidance of God have opened the Scriptures to men. If, then, we wish to interpret Scripture, we must never arrogantly insist that our own interpretation must be correct; we must humbly go to the works of the scholars to learn what they have to teach us because of what the Spirit taught them.<p/>(b) There is more than that. The one place in which the Spirit specially resides and is specially operative is the Church; and, therefore, Scripture must be interpreted in the light of the teaching, the belief and the tradition of the Church. God is our Father in the faith, but the Church is our mother in the faith. If a man finds that his interpretation of Scripture is at variance with the teaching of the Church, he must humbly examine himself and ask whether his guide has not been his own private wishes rather than the Holy Spirit.<p/>It is Peter's insistence that Scripture does not consist of any man's private opinions but is the revelation of God to men through his Spirit; and that, therefore, its interpretation must not depend on any man's private opinions but must ever be guided by that same Spirit who is still specially operative within the Church. 


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<b>FALSE PROPHETS</b> (<a href='B:680 2:1'>2Pe 2:1</a>)<p/><i> 2:1 There were times when false prophets arose among the people, even as amongst you too there will be false teachers, men who will insidiously introduce destructive heresies and deny the Lord who bought them; and by so doing they will bring swift destruction on themselves.<p/></i><p/>That there should arise false prophets within the Church was something only to be expected, for in every generation false prophets had been responsible for leading God's people astray and for bringing disaster on the nation. It is worth while looking at the false prophets in the Old Testament story for their characteristics were recurring in the time of Peter and are still recurring today.<p/>(i) The false prophets were more interested in gaining popularity than in telling the truth. Their policy was to tell people what they wanted to hear. The false prophets said, "Peace, peace, when there is no peace" (<a href='B:300 6:14'>Jer 6:14</a>). They saw visions of peace, when the Lord God was saying that there was no peace (<a href='B:330 13:16'>Eze 13:16</a>). In the days of Jehosaphat, Zedekiah, the false prophet, donned his horns of iron and said that Israel would push the Syrians out of the way as he pushed with these horns; Micaiah the true prophet foretold disaster if Jehosaphat went to war. Of course, Zedekiah was popular and his message was accepted; but Jehosaphat went forth to war with the Syrians and perished tragically (<a href='B:110 22:1-53'>1Ki 22:1-53</a>). In the days of Jeremiah, Hananiah prophesied the swift end of the power of Babylon, while Jeremiah prophesied the servitude of the nation to her; and again the prophet who told people what they wished to hear was the popular one (<a href='B:300 28:1-17'>Jer 28:1-17</a>). Diogenes, the great cynic philosopher, spoke of the false teachers of his day whose method was to follow wherever the applause of the crowd led. One of the first characteristics of the false prophet is that he tells men what they want to hear and not the truth they need to hear.<p/>(ii) The false prophets were interested in personal gain. As Micah said, "Its priests teach for hire, and its prophets divine for money" (<a href='B:400 3:11'>Mic 3:11</a>). They teach for filthy lucre's sake (<a href='B:630 1:11'>Tit 1:11</a>), and they identify godliness and gain, making their religion a money-making thing (<a href='B:610 6:5'>1Ti 6:5</a>). We can see these exploiters at work in the early church. In The Didache, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which is what might be called the first service-order book, it is laid down that a prophet who asks for money or for a table to be spread in front of him, is a false prophet. "Traffickers in Christ," the Didache (compare <a href='S:G1322'>G1322</a>) calls such men (The Didache 11). The false prophet is a covetous creature who regards men as dupes to be exploited for his own ends.<p/>(iii) The false prophets were dissolute in their personal life. Isaiah writes: "The priest and the prophet reel with strong drink; they are confused with wine" (<a href='B:290 28:7'>Isa 28:7</a>). Jeremiah says, "In the prophets of Jerusalem I have seen a horrible thing; they commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of evil-doers.... They lead my people astray by their lies and their recklessness" (<a href='B:300 23:14'>Jer 23:14</a>; <a href='B:300 23:32'>Jer 23:32</a>). The false prophet in himself is a seduction to evil rather than an attraction to good.<p/>(iv) The false prophet was above all a man who led other men further away from God instead of closer to him. The prophet who invites the people: "Let us go after other gods, must be mercilessly destroyed (<a href='B:50 13:1-5'>Deu 13:1-5</a>; <a href='B:50 18:20'>Deu 18:20</a>). The false prophet takes men in the wrong direction.<p/>These were the characteristics of the false prophets in the ancient days and in Peter's time; and they are their characteristics still.<p/><b>THE SINS OF THE FALSE PROPHETS AND THEIR END</b> (<a href='B:680 2:1'>2Pe 2:1</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> In this verse Peter has certain things to say about these false prophets and their actions.<p/>(i) They insidiously introduce destructive heresies. The Greek for heresy is hairesis (<a href='S:G139'>G139</a>). It comes from the verb haireisthai (compare <a href='S:G140'>G140</a>), which means to choose; and originally it was a perfectly honourable word. It simply meant a line of belief and action which a man had chosen for himself. In the New Testament we read of the hairesis (<a href='S:G139'>G139</a>) of the Sadducees, the Pharisees, and the Nazarenes (<a href='B:510 5:17'>Act 5:17</a>; <a href='B:510 15:5'>Act 15:5</a>; <a href='B:510 24:5'>Act 24:5</a>). It was perfectly possible to speak of the hairesis (<a href='S:G139'>G139</a>) of Plato and to mean nothing more than those who were Platonist in their thought. It was perfectly possible to speak of a group of doctors who practised a certain method of treatment as a hairesis (<a href='S:G139'>G139</a>). But very soon in the Christian Church hairesis (<a href='S:G139'>G139</a>) changed its complexion. In Paul's thought heresies and schisms go together as things to be condemned (<a href='B:530 11:18-19'>1Co 11:18-19</a>); haireseis (<a href='S:G139'>G139</a>) (the plural form of the word) are part of the works of the flesh; a man that is a heretic is to be warned and even given a second chance, and then rejected (<a href='B:630 3:10'>Tit 3:10</a>).<p/>Why the change? The point is that before the coming of Jesus, who is the way, the truth, and the life, there was no such thing as definite, God-given truth. A man was presented with a number of alternatives any one of which he was perfectly free to choose to believe. But with the coming of Jesus, God's truth came to men and they had either to accept or to reject it. A heretic then became a man who believed what he wished to believe instead of accepting the truth of God which he ought to believe.<p/>What was happening in the case of Peter's people was that certain self-styled prophets were insidiously persuading men to believe the things they wished to be true rather than the things which God had revealed to be true. They did not set themselves up as opponents of Christianity. Far from it. They set themselves up as the finest fruits of Christian thinking; and so it was gradually and subtly that people were being lured away from God's truth to other men's private opinions, which is what heresy is.<p/>(ii) These men denied the Lord who had bought them. This idea of Christ buying men for himself is one which runs through the whole New Testament. It comes from his own word that he had come to give his life a ransom for many (<a href='B:480 10:45'>Mar 10:45</a>). The idea was that men were slaves to sin and Jesus purchased them at the cost of his life for himself, and, therefore, for freedom. "You were bought with a price, says Paul (<a href='B:530 7:23'>1Co 7:23</a>). "Christ redeemed us (bought us out) from the curse of the law" (<a href='B:550 3:13'>Gal 3:13</a>). In the new song in the Revelation the hosts of heaven tell how Jesus Christ bought them with his blood out of every kindred and tongue and people and nation (<a href='B:730 5:9'>Rev 5:9</a>). This clearly means two things. It means that the Christian by right of purchase belongs absolutely to Christ; and it means that a life which cost so much cannot be squandered on sin or on cheap things.<p/>The heretics in Peter's letter were denying the Lord who bought them. That could mean that they were saying that they did not know Christ; and it could mean that they were denying his authority. But it is not as simple as that; one might say that it is not as honest as that. We have seen that these men claimed to be Christians; more, they claimed to be the wisest and the most advanced of Christians. Let us take a human analogy. Suppose a man says that he loves his wife and yet is consistently unfaithful to her. By his acts of infidelity he denies, gives the lie to his words of love. Suppose a man protests eternal friendship to someone, and yet is consistently disloyal to him. His actions deny, give the lie to, his protestations of friendship. What these evil men, who were troubling Peter's people, were doing, was to say that they loved and served Christ, while the things they taught and did were a complete denial of him.<p/>(iii) The end of these evil men was destruction. They were insidiously introducing destructive heresies, but these heresies would in the end destroy themselves. There is no more certain way to ultimate condemnation than to teach another to sin.<p/><b>THE WORK OF FALSEHOOD</b> (<a href='B:680 2:2-3'>2Pe 2:2-3</a>)


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 And many will follow the way of their blatant immoralities and through them the true way will be brought into disrepute. In their evil ambition they will exploit you with cunningly forged arguments. Their sentence was settled long ago, and now it is not inactive, and their destruction is not asleep.<p/></i><p/>In this short passage we see four things about the false teachers and their teaching.<p/>(i) We see the cause of false teaching. It is evil ambition. The word is pleonexia (<a href='S:G4124'>G4124</a>) ; pleon (<a href='S:G4119'>G4119</a>) means more and -exia comes from the verb echein (<a href='S:G2192'>G2192</a>), which means to have. Pleonexia (<a href='S:G4124'>G4124</a>) is the desire to possess more but it acquires a certain flavour. It is by no means always a sin to desire to possess more; there are many cases in which that is a perfectly honourable desire, as in the case of virtue, or knowledge, or skill. But pleonexia (<a href='S:G4124'>G4124</a>) comes to mean the desire to possess that which a man has no right to desire, still less to take. So it can mean covetous desire for money and for other people's goods; lustful desire for someone's person; unholy ambition for prestige and power. False teaching comes from the desire to put its own ideas in the place of the truth of Jesus Christ; the false teacher is guilty of nothing less than of usurping the place of Christ.<p/>(ii) We see the method of false teaching. It is the use of cunningly forged arguments. Falsehood is easily resisted when it is presented as falsehood; it is when it is disguised as truth that it becomes menacing. There is only one touchstone. Any teacher's teaching must be tested by the words and presence of Jesus Christ himself.<p/>(iii) We see the affect of the false teaching. It was twofold. It encouraged men to take the way of blatant immorality. The word is aselgeia (<a href='S:G766'>G766</a>) which describes the attitude of the man who is lost to shame and cares for the judgment of neither man nor God. We must remember what was at the back of this false teaching. It was perverting the grace of God into a justification for sin. The false teachers were telling men that grace was inexhaustible and that, therefore, they were free to sin as they liked for grace would forgive.<p/>This false teaching had a second effect. It brought Christianity into disrepute. In the early days, just as now, every Christian was a good or bad advertisement for Christianity and the Christian Church. It is Paul's accusation to the Jews that through them the name of God has been brought into disrepute (<a href='B:520 2:24'>Rom 2:24</a>). In the Pastoral Epistles the younger women are urged to behave with such modesty and chastity that the Church will never be brought into disrepute (<a href='B:630 2:5'>Tit 2:5</a>). Any teaching which produces a person who repels men from Christianity instead of attracting them to it is false teaching, and the work of those who are enemies of Christ.<p/>(iv) We see the ultimate end of false teaching and that is destruction. Sentence was passed on the false prophets long ago; the Old Testament pronounced their doom (<a href='B:50 13:1-5'>Deu 13:1-5</a>). It might look as if that sentence had become inoperative or was slumbering, but it was still valid, and the day would come when the false teachers would pay the terrible price of their falsehood. No man who leads another astray will ever escape his own judgment.<p/><b>THE FATE OF THE WICKED AND THE RESCUE OF THE RIGHTEOUS</b> (<a href='B:680 2:4-11'>2Pe 2:4-11</a>)


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 If God did not spare even angels who had sinned, but condemned them to the lowest hell and committed them to the pits of darkness, where they remain kept for judgment; if he did not spare the ancient world, but preserved in safety Noah, the preacher of righteousness, with seven others, when he despatched the flood on a world of impious men; if he reduced the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to ashes, when he sentenced them to destruction and so gave an example of what would happen to those who would one day act with impiety, but rescued righteous Lot, who was distressed by the blatantly immoral conduct of lawless men, for, to such a man, righteous in his looking and in his hearing, it was torture for his righteous soul to live his daily life amidst such people and amidst such lawless deeds--if all this is so, you can be sure that the Lord knows how to rescue truly religious men from trial and how to preserve the unrighteous under punishment, until the day of judgment comes, especially those whose lives are dominated by the polluting lusts of the flesh and who despise the celestial powers. Audacious, self-willed men they are. they do not shrink from speaking evil of the angelic glories, whereas angels who are greater in strength and power do not bring an accusation of evil against them in the presence of the Lord.<p/></i><p/>Here is a passage which for us combines undoubted power and equally undoubted obscurity. The white heat of its rhetorical intensity glows through it to this day; but it moves in allusions which would be terrifyingly effective to those who heard it for the first time, but which have become unfamiliar to us today. It cites three notorious examples of sin and its destruction; and in two of the cases it shows how, when sin was obliterated, righteousness was rescued and preserved by the mercy and the grace of God. Let us look at these examples one by one.<p/>(1) The Sin Of The Angels<p/>Before we retell the story which lies behind this in Jewish legend, there are two separate words at which we must look.<p/>Peter says that God condemned the sinning angels to the lowest depths of hell. Literally the Greek says that God condemned the angels to Tartarus (tartaroun, <a href='S:G5020'>G5020</a>). Tartarus was not a Hebrew conception but Greek. In Greek mythology Tartarus was the lowest hell; it was as far beneath Hades as the heaven is high above the earth. In particular it was the place into which there had been cast the Titans who had rebelled against Zeus, the Father of gods and men.<p/>The second word is that which speaks of the pits of darkness. Here there is a doubt. There are two Greek words, both rather uncommon, which are confused in this passage. One is siros or seiros which originally meant a great earthenware jar for the storing of grain. Then it came to mean the great underground pits in which grain was stored and which served as granaries. Siros has come into English via Provencal in the form of silo, which still describes the towers in which grain is stored. Still later the word went on to mean a pit in which a wolf or other wild animal was trapped. If we think that this is the word which Peter uses, and according to the best manuscripts it is, it will mean that the wicked angels were cast into great subterranean pits and kept there in darkness and in punishment. This well suits the idea of a Tartarus beneath the lowest depths of Hades.<p/>But there is a very similar word seira (<a href='S:G4577'>G4577</a>), which means a chain. This is the word which the King James Version translates when it speaks of chains of darkness (<a href='B:680 2:4'>2Pe 2:4</a>). The Greek manuscripts of Second Peter vary between seiroi (<a href='S:G4577'>G4577</a>), pits, and seirai (<a href='S:G4577'>G4577</a>), chains. But the better manuscripts have seiroi (<a href='S:G4577'>G4577</a>), and pits o darkness makes better sense than chains of darkness; so we may take seiros (<a href='S:G4577'>G4577</a>) as right, and assume that here the King James Version is in error.<p/>The story of the fall of the angels is one which rooted itself deeply in Hebrew thought and which underwent much development as the years went on. The original story is in <a href='B:10 6:1-5'>Gen 6:1-5</a>. There the angels are called the sons of God, as they commonly are in the Old Testament. In Job, the sons of God come to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan comes amongst them (<a href='B:220 1:6'>Job 1:6</a>; compare <a href='B:220 2:1'>Job 2:1</a>; <a href='B:220 38:7'>Job 38:7</a>). The Psalmist speaks of the sons of gods (<a href='B:230 89:6'>Psa 89:6</a>). These angels came to earth and seduced mortal women. The result of this lustful union was the race of giants; and through them wickedness came upon the earth. Clearly this is an old, old story belonging to the childhood of the race.<p/>This story was much developed in the Book of Enoch, and it is from it that Peter is drawing his allusions, for in his day that was a book which everyone would know. In Enoch the angels are called The Watchers. Their leader in rebellion was Semjaza or Azazel. At his instigation they descended to Mount Hermon in the days of Jared, the father of Enoch. They took mortal wives and instructed them in magic and in arts which gave them power. They produced the race of the giants, and the giants produced the nephilim (<a href='S:H5303'>H5303</a>), the giants who inhabited the land of Canaan and of whom the people were afraid (<a href='B:40 13:33'>Num 13:33</a>).<p/>These giants became cannibals and were guilty of every kind of lust and crime, and especially of insolent arrogance to God and man. The apocryphal literature has many references to them and their pride. Wisdom (Wis_14:6) tells how the proud giants perished. Ecclesiasticus (Sir_16:7) tells how the ancient giants fell away in the strength of their foolishness. They had no wisdom and they perished in their folly (Bar_3:26-28). Josephus says that they were arrogant and contemptuous of all that was good and trusted in their own strength (Antiquities 1:3:1). Job says that God charged his angels with folly (<a href='B:220 4:18'>Job 4:18</a>).<p/>This old story makes a strange and fleeting appearance in the letters of Paul. In <a href='B:530 11:10'>1Co 11:10</a> Paul says that women must have their hair covered in the Church because of the angels. Behind that strange saying lies the old belief that it was the loveliness of the long hair of the women of the olden times which moved the angels to desire, and Paul wishes to see that the angels are not tempted again.<p/>In the end even men complained of the sorrow and misery brought into the world by these giants through the sin of the angels. The result was that God sent out his archangels. Raphael bound Azazel hand and foot and shut him up in darkness; Gabriel slew the giants; and the Watchers, the sinning angels, were shut up in the abysses of darkness under the mountains for seventy generations and then confined for ever in everlasting fire. Here is the story which is in Peter's mind; and which his readers well knew. The angels had sinned and God had sent his destruction, and they were shut up for ever in the pits of darkness and the depths of hell. That is what happens to rebellious sin.<p/>The story does not stop there; and it reappears in another of its forms in this passage of Second Peter. In <a href='B:680 2:10'>2Pe 2:10</a> Peter speaks of those who live lives dominated by the polluting lusts of the flesh and who despise the celestial powers. The word is kuriotes (<a href='S:G2963'>G2963</a>), which is the name of one of the ranks of angels. They speak evil of the angelic glories. The word is doxai (<a href='S:G1391'>G1391</a>), which also is a word for one of the ranks of angels. They slander the angels and bring them into disrepute.<p/>Here is where the second turn of the story comes in. Obviously this story of the angels is very primitive and, as time went on, it became rather an awkward and embarrassing story because of its ascription of lust to angels. So in later Jewish and Christian thought two lines of thought developed. First, it was denied that the story involved angels at all. The sons of God were said to be good men who were the descendants of Seth, and the daughters of men were said to be evil women who were the daughters of Cain and corrupted the good men. There is no scriptural evidence for this distinction and this way of escape. Second, the whole story was allegorised. It was claimed, for instance by Philo, that it was never meant to be taken literally and described the fall of the human soul under the attack of the seductions of lustful pleasures. Augustine declared that no man could take this story literally and talk of the angels like that. Cyril of Alexandria said that it could not be taken literally, for did not Jesus say that in the after-life men would be like angels and there would be no marrying or giving in marriage (<a href='B:470 22:30'>Mat 22:30</a>)? Chrysostom said that, if the story was taken literally, it was nothing short of blasphemy. And Cyril went on to say that the story was nothing other than an incentive to sin, if it was taken as literally true.<p/>It is clear that men began to see that this was indeed a dangerous story. Here we get our clue as to what Peter means when he speaks of men who despise the celestial powers and bring the angelic glories into disrepute by speaking slanderously of them. The men whom Peter was opposing were turning their religion into an excuse for blatant immorality. Cyril of Alexandria makes it clear that in his day the story could be used as an incentive to sin. Most probably what was happening was that the wicked men of Peter's time were citing the example of the angels as a justification for their own sin. They were saying, "If angels came from heaven and took mortal women, why should not we?" They were making the conduct of the angels an excuse for their own sin.<p/>We have to go still further with this passage. In <a href='B:680 2:11'>2Pe 2:11</a> it finishes very obscurely. It says that angels who are greater in strength and in power do not bring a slanderous charge against them in the presence of God. Once again Peter is speaking allusively, in a way that would be clear enough to the people of his day but which is obscure to us. His reference may be to either of two stories.<p/>(a) He may be referring to the story to which Jude refers in Jd 9 ; that the archangel Michael was entrusted with the burying of the body of Moses. Satan claimed the body on the grounds that all matter belonged to him and that once Moses had murdered an Egyptian. Michael did not bring a railing charge against Satan; all he said was: "The Lord rebuke you." The point is that even an angel so great as Michael would not bring an evil charge against an angel so dark as Satan. He left the matter to God. If Michael refrained from slandering an evil angel, how can men bring slanderous charges against the angels of God?<p/>(b) He may be referring to a further development of the Enoch story. Enoch tells that when the conduct of the giants on earth became intolerable, men made their complaint to the archangels Michael, Uriel, Gabriel and Raphael. The archangels took this complaint to God; but they did not rail against the evil angels who were responsible for it all; they simply took the story to God, for him to deal with (Enoch 9).<p/>As far as we can see today, the situation behind Peter's allusions is that the wicked men who were the slaves of lust claimed that the angels were their examples and their justification and so slandered them; Peter reminds them that not even archangels dared slander other angels and demands how men can dare to do so.<p/>This is a strange and difficult passage; but the meaning is clear. Even angels, when they sinned, were punished. How much more shall men be punished? Angels could not rebel against God and escape the consequences. How shall men escape? And men need not seek to put the blame on others, not even on angels; nothing but their own rebelliousness is responsible for their sin.<p/>(2) The Men Of The Flood And The Rescue Of Noah<p/>The second illustration of the destruction of wickedness which Peter chooses may be said to lead on from the first. The sin introduced into the world by the sinning angels led to that intolerable sin which ended in the destruction by the deluge (<a href='B:10 6:5'>Gen 6:5</a>). In the midst of this destruction God did not forget those who had clung to him, Noah was saved together with seven others, his wife, his sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet, and their wives. In Jewish tradition Noah acquired a very special place. Not only was he regarded as the one man who had been saved; but also as the preacher who had done his best to turn men from the evil of their ways. Josephus says, "Many angels of God lay with women and begat sons, who were violent and who despised all good, on account of their reliance on their own strength.... But Noah displeased and distressed at their behaviour, tried to induce them to alter their dispositions and conduct for the better" (Antiquities 1:3:1).<p/>Attention in this passage is concentrated not so much on the people who were destroyed as on the man who was saved. Noah is offered as the type of man who, amidst the destruction of the wicked, receives the salvation of God. His outstanding qualities were two.<p/>(i) In the midst of a sinning generation he remained faithful to God. Later Paul was to urge his people to be not conformed to the world but transformed from it (<a href='B:520 12:2'>Rom 12:2</a>). It may well be said that often the most dangerous sin of all is conformity. To be the same as others is always easy; to be different is always difficult. But from the days of Noah until now he who would be the servant of God must be prepared to be different from the world.<p/>(ii) The later legends pick out another characteristic of Noah. He was the preacher of righteousness. The word for preacher used here is kerux (<a href='S:G2783'>G2783</a>), which literally means a herald. Epictetus called the philosopher the kerux (<a href='S:G2783'>G2783</a>) of the gods. The preacher is the man who brings to men an announcement from God. Here is something of very considerable significance. The good man is concerned not only with the saving of his own soul but just as much with the saving of the souls of others. He does not, in order to preserve his own purity live apart from men. He is concerned to bring God's message to them. A man ought never to keep to himself the grace which he has received. It is always his duty to bring light to those who sit in darkness, guidance to the wanderer and warning to those who are going astray.<p/>(3) The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah And The Rescue Of Lot<p/>The third example is the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and the rescue of Lot.<p/>The terrible and dramatic story is told in <a href='B:10 18:1-33'>Gen 18:1-33</a>; <a href='B:10 19:1-38'>Gen 19:1-38</a>. It begins with Abraham's plea that God should not destroy the righteous with the guilty and his request that, if even ten just men are found in these cities, they may be spared (<a href='B:10 18:16-33'>Gen 18:16-33</a>). Then follows one of the grimmest tales in the Old Testament.<p/>The angelic visitors came to Lot and he persuaded them to stay with him; but his house was surrounded by the men of Sodom demanding that these strangers might be brought out for them to use for their unnatural lust (<a href='B:10 19:1-11'>Gen 19:1-11</a>). By that terrible deed--at once the abuse of hospitality, the insulting of angels and the raging of unnatural lust--the doom of the cities was sealed. As the destruction of heaven came upon them Lot and his family were saved, except his wife, who lingered and looked back and turned into a pillar of salt (<a href='B:10 19:12-26'>Gen 19:12-26</a>). "So it was that, when God destroyed the cities of the valley, God remembered Abraham, and sent Lot out of the midst of the overthrow, when he overthrew the cities in which Lot dwelt" (<a href='B:10 19:29'>Gen 19:29</a>). Here again is the story of the destruction of sin and the rescue of righteousness. As in Noah, we see in Lot the characteristics of the righteous man.<p/>(i) Lot lived in the midst of evil, and the very sight of it was a constant distress to him. Moffatt reminds us of the saying of Newman: "Our great security against sin lies in being shocked at it." Here is something very significant. It often happens that, when evils first emerge, people are shocked at them; but, as time goes on, they cease to be shocked at them and accept them as a matter of course. There are many things at which we ought to be shocked. In our own generation there are the problems of prostitution and promiscuity, drunkenness and drugs, the extraordinary gambling fever which has the country in its grip, the breakdown of the marriage bond, violence, vandalism and crime, death upon the roads, still-existing slum conditions and many others. In many cases the tragedy is that these things have ceased to shock and are accepted in a matter-of-fact style as part of the normal order of things. For the good of the world and of our own souls, we must keep alive the sensitiveness which is shocked by sin.<p/>(ii) Lot lived in the midst of evil, and yet he escaped its taint. Amidst the sin of Sodom he remained true to God. If a man will remember it, he has in the grace of God an antiseptic which will preserve him from the infection of sin. No man need be the slave of the environment in which he happens to find himself.<p/>(iii) When the worst came to the worst, Lot was willing to make a clean break with his environment. He was prepared, however much he did not want to do so, to leave it for ever. It was because his wife was not prepared to make the clean break that she perished. There is a strange verse in the Old Testament story. It says that, when Lot lingered, the angelic messengers took hold of his hand (<a href='B:10 19:16'>Gen 19:16</a>). There are times when the influence of heaven tries to force us out of some evil situation. It may come to any man to have to make the choice between security and the new start; and there are times when a man can save his soul only by breaking clean away from his present situation and beginning all over again. It was in doing just this that Lot found his salvation; and it was in failing to do just this that his wife lost hers.<p/><b>THE PICTURE OF THE EVIL MAN</b> (<a href='B:680 2:4-11'>2Pe 2:4-11</a> <b>continued)</b><p/> <a href='B:680 2:9-11'>2Pe 2:9-11</a> give us a picture of the evil man. Peter with a few swift, vivid strokes of the pen paints the outstanding characteristics of him who may properly be called the bad man.<p/>(i) He is the desire-dominated man. His life is dominated by the lusts of the flesh. Such a man is guilty of two sins.<p/>(a) Every man has two sides to his nature. He has a physical side; he has instincts, passions and impulses which he shares with the animal creation. These instincts are good--if they are kept in their proper place. They are even necessary for the preservation of individual life and the continuation of the race. The word temperament literally means a mixture. The picture behind it is that human nature consists of a large variety of ingredients all mixed together. It is clear that the efficacy of any mixture depends on each ingredient being there in its proper proportion. Wherever there is either excess or defect the mixture is not what it ought to be. Man has a physical nature and also a spiritual nature; and manhood depends on a correct mixture of the two. The desire-dominated man has allowed his animal nature to usurp a place it should not have; he has allowed the ingredients to get out of proportion and the recipe for manhood has gone wrong.<p/>(b) There is a reason for this loss of proportion--selfishness. The root evil of the lust-dominated life is that it proceeds on the assumption that nothing matters but the gratification of its own desires and the expression of its own feelings. It has ceased to have any respect or care for others. Selfishness and desire go hand in hand.<p/>The bad man is he who has allowed one side of his nature a far greater place than it ought to have and who has done so because he is essentially selfish.<p/>(ii) He is the audacious man. The Greek is tolmetes (<a href='S:G5113'>G5113</a>), from the verb tolman (<a href='S:G5111'>G5111</a>), to dare. There are two kinds of daring. There is the daring which is a noble thing, the mark of true courage. There is the daring which is an evil thing, the shameless performance of things which are an affront to decency and right. As the character in Shakespeare had it: "I dare do all becomes a man. Who dares do more is none." The bad man is he who has the audacity to defy the will of God as it is known to him.<p/>(iii) He is the self-willed man. Self-willed is not really an adequate translation. The Greek is authades (<a href='S:G829'>G829</a>), derived from autos (<a href='S:G846'>G846</a>), self, and hadon, pleasing, and used of a man who had no idea of anything other than pleasing himself. In it there is always the element of obstinacy. If a man is authades (<a href='S:G829'>G829</a>), no logic, nor common sense, nor appeal, nor sense of decency will keep him from doing what he wants to do. As R. C. Trench says, "Thus obstinately maintaining his own opinion, or asserting his own rights, he is reckless of the rights, opinions and interests of others." The man who is authades (<a href='S:G829'>G829</a>) is stubbornly and arrogantly and even brutally determined on his own way. The bad man is he who has no regard for either human appeal or divine guidance.<p/>(iv) He is the man who is contemptuous of the angels. We have already seen how this goes back to allusions in Hebrew tradition which are obscure to us. But it has a wider meaning. The bad man insists on living in one world. To him the spiritual world does not exist and he never hears the voices from beyond. He is of the earth earthy. He has forgotten that there is a heaven and is blind and deaf when the sights and sounds of heaven break through to him.<p/><b>DELUDING SELF AND DELUDING OTHERS</b> (<a href='B:680 2:12-14'>2Pe 2:12-14</a>)


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 But these, like brute beasts, knowing no law but their instincts, born only for capture and corruption, speak evil of the things about which they know nothing; they will be destroyed with their own corruption, and, like a man who is cheated, they will even lose the reward at which their iniquity aimed. They regard daylight debauchery as pleasure. They are spots and blots, revelling in their dissipations, carousing in their cliques amongst you. They have eyes full of adultery, eyes which can never gaze their fill on sin. They entrap souls which are not firmly founded in the faith. They have a heart which is trained in unbridled ambition for the things they have no right to have. They are accursed.<p/></i><p/>Peter launches out into a long passage of magnificent invective. Through it glows the fiery heat of flaming moral indignation.<p/>The evil men are like brute beasts, slaves of their animal instincts. But a beast is born only for capture and death, says Peter; it has no other destiny. Even so, there is something self-destroying in fleshly pleasure. To make such pleasure the be-all and the end-all of life is a suicidal policy and in the end even the pleasure is lost. The point Peter is making is this, and it is eternally valid--if a man dedicates himself to these fleshly pleasures, in the end he so ruins himself in bodily health and in spiritual and mental character, that he cannot enjoy even them. The glutton destroys his appetite in the end, the drunkard his health, the sensualist his body, the self-indulgent his character and peace of mind.<p/>These men regard daylight debauchery, dissipated revelling, abandoned carousing as pleasure. They are blots on the Christian fellowship; they are like the blemishes on an animal, which make it unfit to be offered to God. Once again we must note that what Peter is saying is not only religious truth but also sound common sense. The pleasures of the body are demonstrably subject to the law of diminishing returns. In themselves they lose their thrill, so that as time goes on it takes more and more of them to satisfy. The luxury must become ever more luxurious; the wine must flow ever more freely; everything must be done to make the thrill sharper and more intense. Further, a man becomes less and less able to enjoy these pleasures. He has given himself to a life that has no future and to pleasure which ends in pain.<p/>Peter goes on. In <a href='B:680 2:14'>2Pe 2:14</a> he uses an extraordinary phrase which, strictly, will not translate into English at all. We have translated it: "They have eyes full of adultery." The Greek literally is: "They have eyes which are full of an adulteress." Most probably the meaning is they see a possible adulteress in every woman, wondering how she can be persuaded to gratify their lusts. "The hand and the eye, said the Jewish teachers, "are the brokers of sin." As Jesus said, such people look in order to lust (<a href='B:470 5:28'>Mat 5:28</a>). They have come to such a stage that they cannot look on anyone without lust's calculation.<p/>As Peter speaks of this, there is a terrible deliberateness about it. They have hearts trained in unbridled ambition for the things they have no right to have. We have taken a whole phrase to translate the one word pleonexia (<a href='S:G4124'>G4124</a>) which means the desire to have more of the things which a man has no right even to desire, let alone have. The picture is a terrible one. The word used for trained is used for an athlete exercising himself for the games. These people have actually trained their minds to concentrate on nothing but the forbidden desire. They have deliberately fought with conscience until they have destroyed it; they have deliberately struggled with their finer feelings until they have strangled them.<p/>There remains in this passage one further charge. It would be bad if these people deluded only themselves; it is worse that they delude others. They entrap souls not firmly founded in the faith. The word used for to entrap is deleazein (<a href='S:G1185'>G1185</a>), which means to catch with a bait. A man becomes really bad when he sets out to make others as bad as himself. The hymn has it:<p/>All the mischief we have wrought,<p/>All forbidden things we've sought,<p/>All the sin to others taught:<p/>Forgive, O Lord, for Jesus' sake.<p/>Every man must bear the responsibility for his own sins, but to add to that the responsibility for the sins of others is to carry an intolerable burden.<p/><b>ON THE WRONG ROAD</b> (<a href='B:680 2:15-16'>2Pe 2:15-16</a>)


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 They have left the straight road and have gone awandering, and have followed the road of Balaam, the son of Beor, who loved the profit which unrighteousness brings and who was convicted of his lawlessness. A dumb ass spoke with a man's voice and checked the prophet's folly.<p/></i><p/>Peter likens the evil men of his time to the prophet Balaam. In the popular Jewish mind Balaam had come to stand as the type of all false prophets. His story is told in <a href='B:40 22:1-41'>Num 22:1-41</a>; <a href='B:40 23:1-30'>Num 23:1-30</a>; <a href='B:40 24:1-25'>Num 24:1-25</a>. Balak, King of Moab, was alarmed at the steady and apparently irresistible advance of the Israelites. In an attempt to check it he sent for Balaam to come and curse the Israelites for him, offering him great rewards. To the end of the day Balaam refused to curse the Israelites, but his covetous heart longed after the rich rewards which Balak was offering. At Balak's renewed request Balaam played with fire enough to agree to meet him. On the way his ass stopped, because it saw the angel of the Lord standing in its path, and rebuked Balaam.<p/>It is true that Balaam did not succumb to Balak's bribes, but if ever a man wanted to accept a bribe, that man was he. In <a href='B:40 25:1-18'>Num 25:1-18</a> there follows another story. It tells how the Israelites were seduced into the worship of Baal and into lustful alliances with Moabite women. Jewish belief was that Balaam was responsible for leading the children of Israel astray; and when the Israelites entered into possession of the land, "Balaam the son of Beor they slew with the sword" (<a href='B:40 31:8'>Num 31:8</a>). In view of all this Balaam became increasingly the type of the false prophet. He had two characteristics which were repeated in the evil men of Peter's day.<p/>(i) Balaam was covetous. As the Numbers story unfolds we can see his fingers itching to get at the gold of Balak. True, he did not take it; but the desire was there. The evil men of Peter's day were covetous; out for what they could get and ready to exploit their membership of the Church for gain.<p/>(ii) Balaam taught Israel to sin. He led the people out of the straight and into the crooked way. He persuaded them to forget their promises to God. The evil men of Peter's day were seducing Christians from the Christian way and causing them to break the pledges of loyalty they had given to Jesus Christ.<p/>The man who loves gain and who lures others to evil for ever stands condemned.<p/><b>THE PERILS OF RELAPSE</b> (<a href='B:680 2:17-22'>2Pe 2:17-22</a>)


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 These people are waterless springs, mists driven by a squall of wind; and the gloom of darkness is reserved for them. With talk at once arrogant and futile, they ensnare by appeals to shameless, sensual passions those who are only just escaping from the company of those who live in error. promising them freedom, while they themselves are the slaves of moral corruption; for a man is in a state of slavery to that which has reduced him to helplessness.<p/>If they have escaped the pollution of the world by the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and if they allow themselves again to become involved in these things and to be reduced to moral helplessness by them, the last state is for them worse than the first. It would be better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than to have known it and then to turn back from the holy commandment which was handed down to them. In them the truth of the proverb is plain to see: "A dog returns to his own vomit" and "The sow which has been washed returns to rolling in the mud."<p/></i><p/>Peter is still rolling out his tremendous denunciation of the evil men.<p/>They flatter only to deceive. They are like wells with no water and like mists blown past by a squall of wind. Think of a traveller in the desert being told that ahead lies a spring where he can quench his thirst and then arriving at that spring to find it dried up and useless. Think of the husbandman praying for rain for his parched crops and then seeing the cloud that promised rain blown uselessly by. As Bigg has it: "A teacher without knowledge is like a well without water." These men are like Milton's shepherds whose "hungry sheep look up and are not fed." They promise a gospel and in the end have nothing to offer the thirsty soul.<p/>Their teaching is a combination of arrogance and futility. Christian liberty always carries danger. Paul tells his people that they have indeed been called to liberty but that they must not use it for an occasion to the flesh (<a href='B:550 5:13'>Gal 5:13</a>). Peter tells his people that indeed they are free but they must not use their freedom as a cloak of maliciousness (<a href='B:670 2:16'>1Pe 2:16</a>). These false teachers offered freedom, but it was freedom to sin as much as a man liked. They appealed not to the best but to the worst in a man. Peter is quite clear that they did this because they were slaves to their own lusts. Seneca said, "To be enslaved to oneself is the heaviest of all servitudes." Persius spoke to the lustful debauchees of his day of "the masters that grow up within that sickly breast of yours." These teachers were offering liberty when they themselves were slaves, and the liberty they were offering was the liberty to become slaves of lust. Their message was arrogant because it was the contradiction of the message of Christ; it was futile because he who followed it would find himself a slave. Here again in the background is the fundamental heresy which makes grace a justification for sin instead of a power and a summons to nobility.<p/>If they have once known the real way of Christ and have relapsed into this, their case is even worse. They are like the man in the parable whose last state was worse than his first (<a href='B:470 12:45'>Mat 12:45</a>; <a href='B:490 11:26'>Luk 11:26</a>). If a man has never known the right way, he cannot be condemned for not following it. But, if he has known it and then deliberately taken the other way, he sins against the light; and it were better for him that he had never known the truth, for his knowledge of the truth has become his condemnation. A man should never forget the responsibility which knowledge brings.<p/>Peter ends with contempt. These evil men are like dogs who return to their vomit (<a href='B:240 26:11'>Pro 26:11</a>) or like a sow which has been scrubbed and then goes back to rolling in the mud. They have seen Christ but are so morally degraded by their own choice that they prefer to wallow in the depths of sin rather than to climb the heights of virtue. It is a dreadful warning that a man can make himself such that in the end the tentacles of sin are inextricably around him and virtue for him has lost its beauty. 


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 Beloved, this is now the second letter that I have written to you, and my object in both of them is to rouse by reminder your pure mind to remember the words spoken by the prophets in former times, and the commandment of the Lord and Saviour which was brought to you by your apostles.<p/></i><p/>In this passage we see clearly displayed the principles of preaching which Peter observed.<p/>(i) He believed in the value of repetition. He knows that it is necessary for a thing to be said over and over again if it is to penetrate the mind. When Paul was writing to the Philippians, he said that to repeat the same thing over and over again was not a weariness to him, and for them it was the only safe way (Php_3:1). It is by continued repetition that the rudiments of knowledge are settled in the mind of the child. There is something of significance here. It may well be that often we are too desirous of novelty, too eager to say new things, when what is needed is a repetition of the eternal truths which men so quickly forget and whose significance they so often refuse to see. There are certain foods of which a man does not get tired, necessary for his daily sustenance they are set before him every day. We speak about a man's daily bread And there are certain great Christian truths which have to be repeated again and again and which must never be pushed into the background in the desire for novelty.<p/>(ii) He believed in the need for reminder. Again and again the New Testament makes it clear that preaching and teaching are so often not the introducing of new truth but the reminding of a man of what he already knows. Moffatt quotes a saying of Dr. Johnson: "It is not sufficiently considered that men more frequently require to be reminded than informed." The Greeks spoke of "time which wipes all things out," as if the human mind were a slate and time a sponge which passes across it with a certain erasing quality. We are so often in the position of men whose need is not so much to be taught as to be reminded of what we already know.<p/>(iii) He believed in the value of a compliment. It is his intention to rouse their pure mind. The word he uses for pure is eilikrines (<a href='S:G1506'>G1506</a>), which may have either of two meanings. It may mean that which is sifted until there is no admixture of chaff left; or it may mean that which is so flawless that it may be held up to the light of the sun. Plato uses this same phrase--eilikrines (<a href='S:G1506'>G1506</a>) dianoia (<a href='S:G1271'>G1271</a>) --in the sense of pure reason, reason which is unaffected by the seductive influence of the senses. By using this phrase Peter appeals to his people as having minds uncontaminated by heresy. It is as if he said to them: "You really are fine people--if you would only remember it." The approach of the preacher should so often be that his hearers are not wretched creatures who deserve to be damned but splendid creatures who must be saved. They are not so much like rubbish fit to be burned as like jewels to be rescued from the mud into which they have fallen. Donald Hankey tells of "the beloved captain" whose men would follow him anywhere. He looked at them and they looked at him, and they were filled with the determination to be what he believed them to be. We always get further with people when we believe in them than when we despise them.<p/>(iv) He believed in the unity of Scripture. As he saw it there was a pattern in Scripture; and the Bible was a book centred in Christ. The Old Testament foretells Christ; the gospels tell of Jesus the Christ; and the apostles bring the message of that Christ to men.<p/><b>THE DENIAL OF THE SECOND COMING</b> (<a href='B:680 3:3-4'>2Pe 3:3-4</a>)


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 To begin with, you are well aware that in the last days there will come mockers with their mocking, guiding their steps by the law of their own lusts and saying, "What has happened to the promise of his Coming? For, since the day when our fathers fell asleep, everything remains the same as it was from the foundation of the world."<p/></i><p/>The characteristic of the heretics which worried Peter most of all was their denial of the Second Coming of Jesus. Literally, their question was: "Where is the promise of his Coming?" That was a form of Hebrew expression which implied that the thing asked about did not exist at all. "Where is the God of justice?" asked the evil men of Malachi's day (<a href='B:460 2:17'>Mal 2:17</a>). "Where is your God?" the heathen demanded of the Psalmist (<a href='B:230 42:3'>Psa 42:3</a>; <a href='B:230 79:10'>Psa 79:10</a>). "Where is the word of the Lord?" his enemies asked Jeremiah (<a href='B:300 17:15'>Jer 17:15</a>). In every case the implication of the question is that the thing or the person asked about does not exist. The heretics of Peter's day were denying that Jesus Christ would ever come again. It will be best here at the beginning to summarize their argument and Peter's answer to it.<p/>The argument of Peter's opponents was twofold (<a href='B:680 3:4'>2Pe 3:4</a>). "What has happened, they demanded, "to the promise of the Second Coming?" Their first argument was that the promise had been so long delayed that it was safe to take it that it would never be fulfilled. Their second assertion was that their fathers had died and the world was going on precisely as it always did. Their argument was that this was characteristically a stable universe and convulsive upheavals like the Second Coming did not happen in such a universe.<p/>Peter's response is also twofold. He deals with the second argument first (<a href='B:680 3:5-7'>2Pe 3:5-7</a>). His argument is that, in fact, this is not a stable universe, that once it was destroyed by water in the time of the Flood and that a second destruction, this time by fire, is on the way.<p/>The second part of his reply is in <a href='B:680 3:8-9'>2Pe 3:8-9</a>. His opponents speak of a delay so long that they can safely assume that the Second Coming is not going to happen at all. Peter's is a double answer. (a) We must see time as God sees it. With him a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day. "God does not pay every Friday night." (b) In any event God's apparent slowness to act is not dilatoriness. It is, in fact, mercy. He holds his hand in order to give sinning men another chance to repent and find salvation.<p/>Peter goes on to his conclusion (<a href='B:680 3:10'>2Pe 3:10</a>). The Second Coming is on the way and it will come with a sudden terror and destruction which will dissolve the universe in melting heat.<p/>Finally comes his practical demand in face of all this. If we are living in a universe on which Jesus Christ is going to descend and which is hastening towards the destruction of the wicked, surely it behaves us to live in holiness so that we may be spared when the terrible day does come. The Second Coming is used as a tremendous motive for moral amendment so that a man may prepare himself to meet his God.<p/>Such, then, is the general scheme of this chapter and now we look at it section by section.<p/><b>DESTRUCTION BY FLOOD</b> (<a href='B:680 3:5-6'>2Pe 3:5-6</a>)


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 What they wilfully fail to see is that long ago the heavens were created and the earth was composed out of water and through water; and through these waters the ancient world perished, when it was overwhelmed in a deluge of water.<p/></i><p/>Peter's first argument is that the world is not eternally stable. The point he is making is that the ancient world was destroyed by water, just as the present world is going to be destroyed by fire. The detail of this passage is, however, difficult.<p/>He says that the earth was composed out of water and through water. According to the Genesis story in the beginning there was a kind of watery chaos. "The Spirit of God moved over the face of the waters.... God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters" (<a href='B:10 1:2'>Gen 1:2</a>; <a href='B:10 1:6'>Gen 1:6</a>). Out of this watery chaos the world was formed. Further, it is through water that the world is sustained, because life is sustained by the rain which comes down from the skies. What Peter means is that the world was created out of water and is sustained by water; and it was through this same element that the ancient world was destroyed.<p/>Further to clarify this passage we have to note that the flood legend developed. As so often in Second Peter and Jude the picture behind this comes not directly from the Old Testament but from the Book of Enoch. In Enoch 83: 3-5 Enoch has a vision: "I saw in a vision how the heaven collapsed and fell to the earth, and, where it fell to the earth, I saw how the earth was swallowed up in a great abyss." In the later stories the flood involved not only the obliteration of sinners but the total destruction of heaven and earth. So the warning which Peter is giving may be put like this: "You say that as things are, so they have ever been and so they ever will be. You build your hopes on the idea that this is an unchanging universe. You are wrong, for the ancient world was formed out of water and was sustained by water, and it perished in the flood."<p/>We may say that this is only an old legend more than half-buried in the antiquities of the past. But we cannot say that a passage like this has no significance for us. When we strip away the old Jewish legend and its later development, we are still left with this permanent truth that the man who will read history with open eyes can see within it the moral law at work and God's dealings with men. Froude, the great historian, said that history is a voice sounding across the centuries that in the end it is always ill with the wicked and well with the good. When Oliver Cromwell was arranging his son Richard's education, he said, "I would have him know a little history." In fact, the lesson of history is that there is a moral order in the universe and that he who defies it does so at his peril.<p/><b>DESTRUCTION BY FIRE</b> (<a href='B:680 3:7'>2Pe 3:7</a>)<p/><i> 3:7 But by the same word the present heavens and earth are treasured up for fire, reserved for the day of judgment and the destruction of impious men.<p/></i><p/>It is Peter's conviction that, as the ancient world was destroyed by water, the present world will be destroyed by fire. He says that that is stated "by the same word." What he means is that the Old Testament tells of the flood in the past and warns of the destruction by fire in the future. There are many passages in the prophets which he would take quite literally and which must have been in his mind. Joel foresaw a time when God would show blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke (<a href='B:360 2:30'>Joe 2:30</a>). The Psalmist has a picture in which, when God comes, a devouring fire shall precede him (<a href='B:230 50:3'>Psa 50:3</a>). Isaiah speaks of a flame of devouring fire (<a href='B:290 29:6'>Isa 29:6</a>; <a href='B:290 30:30'>Isa 30:30</a>). The Lord will come with fire; by fire and by his sword will the Lord plead with all flesh (<a href='B:290 66:15-16'>Isa 66:15-16</a>). Nahum has it that the hills melt and the earth is burned at his presence; his fury is poured out like fire (<a href='B:410 1:5-6'>Nah 1:5-6</a>). In the picture of Malachi the day of the Lord shall burn as an oven (<a href='B:460 4:1'>Mal 4:1</a>). If the old pictures are taken literally, Peter has plenty of material for his prophecy.<p/>The Stoics also had a doctrine of the destruction of the world by fire; but it was a grim thing. They held that the universe completed a cycle; that it was consumed in flames; and that everything then started all over again, exactly as it was. They had the strange idea that at the end of the cycle the planets were in exactly the same position as when the world began. "This produces the conflagration and destruction of everything which exists, says Chrysippus. He goes on: "Then again the universe is restored anew in a precisely similar arrangement as before...Socrates and Plato and each individual man will live again, with the same friends and fellow-citizens. They will go through the same experiences and the same activities. Every city and village and field will be restored, just as it was. And this restoration of the universe takes place, not once, but over and over again--indeed to all eternity without end.... For there will never be any new thing other than that which has been before, but everything is repeated down to the minutest detail." History as an eternal tread-mill, the unceasing recurrence of the sins, the sorrows and the mistakes of men--that is one of the grimmest views of history that the mind of man has ever conceived.<p/>It must always be remembered that, as the Jewish prophets saw it, and as Peter saw it, this world will be destroyed with the conflagration of God but the result will not be obliteration and the grim repetition of what has been before; the result will be a new heaven and a new earth. For the biblical view of the world there is something beyond destruction; there is the new creation of God. The worst that the prophet can conceive is not the death agony of the old world so much as the birth pangs of the new.<p/><b>THE MERCY OF GOD'S DELAY</b> (<a href='B:680 3:8-9'>2Pe 3:8-9</a>)


text:
 Beloved, you must not shut your eyes to this one fact that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day. It is not that God is dilatory in fulfilling his promise, as some people reckon dilatoriness; but it is that for your sakes he patiently withholds his hand, because he does not wish any to perish, but wishes all to take the way to repentance.<p/></i><p/>There are in this passage three great truths on which to nourish the mind and rest the heart.<p/>(i) Time is not the same to God as it is to man. As the Psalmist had it: "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, or as a watch in the night" (<a href='B:230 90:4'>Psa 90:4</a>). When we think of the world's hundreds of thousands of years of existence, it is easy to feel dwarfed into insignificance; when we think of the slowness of human progress, it is easy to become discouraged into pessimism. There is comfort in the thought of a God who has all eternity to work in. It is only against the background of eternity that things appear in their true proportions and assume their real value.<p/>(ii) We can also see from this passage that time is always to be regarded as an opportunity. As Peter saw it, the years God gave the world were a further opportunity for men to repent and turn to him. Every day which comes to us is a gift of mercy. It is an opportunity to develop ourselves; to render some service to our fellow-men; to take one step nearer to God.<p/>(iii) Finally, there is another echo of a truth which so often lies in the background of New Testament thought. God, says Peter, does not wish any to perish. God, says Paul, has shut them all up together in unbelief, that he might have mercy on all (<a href='B:520 11:32'>Rom 11:32</a>). Timothy in a tremendous phrase speaks of God who will have all men to be saved (<a href='B:610 2:4'>1Ti 2:4</a>). Ezekiel hears God ask: "Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, and not rather that he should return from his way and live?" (<a href='B:330 18:23'>Eze 18:23</a>).<p/>Ever and again there shines in Scripture the glint of the larger hope. We are not forbidden to believe that somehow and some time the God who loves the world will bring the whole world to himself.<p/><b>THE DREADFUL DAY</b> (<a href='B:680 3:10'>2Pe 3:10</a>)<p/><i> 3:10 But when it does come, the Day of the Lord will come as a thief and in it the heavens will pass away with a crackling roar; the stars will blaze and melt; and the earth and all its works will disappear.<p/></i><p/>It inevitably happens that a man has to speak and think in the terms which he knows. That is what Peter is doing here. He is speaking of the New Testament doctrine of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ, but he is describing it in terms of the Old Testament doctrine of the Day of the Lord.<p/>The Day of the Lord is a conception which runs all through the prophetic books of the Old Testament. The Jews saw time in terms of two ages--this present age, which is wholly bad and past remedy; and the age to come, which is the golden age of God. How was the one to turn into the other? The change could not come about by human effort or by a process of development, for the world was on the way to destruction. As the Jews saw it, there was only one way in which the change could happen; it must be by the direct intervention of God. The time of that intervention they called the Day of the Lord. It was to come without warning. It was to be a time when the universe was shaken to its foundations. It was to be a time when the judgment and obliteration of sinners would come to pass and, therefore, it would be a time of terror. "Behold the Day of the Lord comes, cruel with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation and to destroy its sinners from it" (<a href='B:290 13:9'>Isa 13:9</a>). "The Day of the Lord is coming, it is near, a day of darkness and of gloom, a day of clouds and of thick darkness" (<a href='B:360 2:1-2'>Joe 2:1-2</a>). "A day of wrath is that day, a day of distress and anguish, a day of ruin and devastation, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness" (<a href='B:430 1:14-18'>Zep 1:14-18</a>). "The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes" (<a href='B:360 2:30-31'>Joe 2:30-31</a>). "The stars of the heaven and their constellations shall not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising and the moon will not shed its light.... Therefore I will make the heavens tremble, and the earth will be shaken out of its place, at the wrath of the Lord of hosts in the day of his fierce anger" (<a href='B:290 13:10-13'>Isa 13:10-13</a>).<p/>What Peter and many of the New Testament writers did was to identify the Old Testament pictures of the Day of the Lord with the New Testament conception of the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. Peter's picture here of the Second Coming of Jesus is drawn in terms of the Old Testament picture of the Day of the Lord.<p/>He uses one very vivid phrase. He says that the heavens will pass away with a crackling roar (roizedon, <a href='S:G4500'>G4500</a>). That word is used for the whirring of a bird's wings in the air, for the sound a spear makes as it hurtles through the air, for the crackling of the flames of a forest fire.<p/>We need not take these pictures with crude literalism. It is enough to note that Peter sees the Second Coming as a time of terror for those who are the enemies of Christ.<p/>One thing has to be held in the memory. The whole conception of the Second Coming is full of difficulty. But this is sure--there comes a day when God breaks into every life, for there comes a day when we must die; and for that day we must be prepared. We may say what we will about the Coming of Christ as a future event; we may feel it is a doctrine we have to lay on one side; but we cannot escape from the certainty of the entry of God into our own experience.<p/><b>THE MORAL DYNAMIC</b> (<a href='B:680 3:11-14'>2Pe 3:11-14</a>)


