1 Peter 1:17

1Pe_1:17-21

If ye call on the Father.

What the name Father implies

1. This condemns them that live wickedly and in their sins, and yet call God Father. They might as well say anything. If one should fight against the king and say he were a good subject; or say he is a mans servant, and yet doth nothing that he is bidden.

2. But dost thou unfeignedly desire to fear God-

(1) In thy general calling as a Christian, to walk holily, righteously, and soberly? Fearest thou to offend God thyself, or to see Him dishonoured by others? Carest thou to please Him? Lovest thou to be in His presence? Dost thou conscionably hear His Word, and patiently bear His corrections?

(2) In thy special calling art thou careful to glorify God, as a parent, child, master, servant, etc., not only in ceasing to do evil, but in doing good, yea, and labouring to do it well? Thou mayest comfortably and with good leave call God Father, and make account of Him so to be, which is the greatest privilege in the world. (John Rogers.)

The judgment of the Father

In saying if ye call on the Father, the apostle did not mean for a moment to express any doubt; the if simply introduces a premise on which a conclusion is to be based, as when St. Paul wrote, If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above. There was no uncertainty as to whether the readers of the Epistle-Christianised Jews scattered abroad-were calling upon the Father, or more correctly, as to whether they were calling Him Father. That was just what they were doing, having learned to do so in their conversion to the Christian faith. They had always believed in a righteous, impartial Governor of the world-the God, namely, of Moses and the prophets, who was supremely the just One; and now, since their surrender to Jesus as their Master, and their acceptance of His Gospel, they had come to name this God, the Father. He whose throne was in the heavens, who hated iniquity and ruled with faultless justice, He was the Father. And if He be, says the apostle, pass, I pray you, the time of your earthly sojourning, in fear. A true word, a word spoken in utter sincerity, and representing what is fact, may yet prove very misleading-may convey or suggest something contrary to truth. If language be a vehicle of thought, it is far from being always an adequate or a safe vehicle. Now the word, Father, we might anticipate, would speak alike to all. The relation which it designates is common enough. Yet how differently the word may affect different individuals, what different pictures it may conjure up before them! As to what it shall express to any of us, much will depend upon the kind of domestic experience we have had, upon the kind of home with which we are most familiar, in which our childhood and youth were spent. Oh, the world of grand and sweet meaning for you, in the word Father! What a solemn, noble, gracious sound it has! But here is another, upon whose ear it falls with no sound of music, in whose mind it is associated with harsh and tyrannical exercise of authority. It brings to his recollection a testy, passionate, wrath-provoking man, whose ways were hard to bear; or a man, cold, stern, austere, whose presence chilled and rather discomforted, or one who, while protecting and ministering, was uncertain in judgment-now weakly lenient, now unreasonably and unwholesomely strict. And St. Peter would seem to have apprehended that it might be thus with his readers, that in calling the Divine Governor, Father, they might scarcely be alive to all which the name implied; for he proceeds to indicate to them how it behoved them to be moved and affected by the sense of Gods Fatherhood. Since you worship as the Father, Him, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every mans work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear. And it is very likely that this conclusion of his rather surprised and staggered them. In fear! they would exclaim, perhaps; should he not have written, on the contrary, in comfort and peace, in bright courage and hope? Yes, yes, most surely; but then, it should inspire you also with a great awe, and if it do not, the whole meaning of the word Father cannot have been grasped by you; for the true Father is not merely the gracious Protector, Succourer, Provider, but the constant, persistent, earnest, unsparing Educator, also, whose love deals closely and inexorably with each child of the family, in desire for his due training and his best development. Now, as may have been the case with the people whom St. Peter addressed, we perhaps, are possessed with too poor and low an idea of fatherliness, and, more or less blinded by that idea, need to be reminded of what he saw and sought to inculcate, namely, that the Fatherhood of the Almighty is a very solemn reality, and serves to render life very serious. There is, I think, a widespread tendency to repose in it as involving rather less demand upon us for moral care and earnestness, as allowing us to be rather less particular about the cultivation of righteousness, rather less anxious concerning our spiritual condition and quality. Let us not be troubled greatly, they say to themselves-let us not be troubled greatly if we are negligent and unfaithful, and do not amend or improve as we should; is not the Judge and Ruler the Father, and will He not therefore be gentle with us; may He not therefore, overlook much, and make things considerably pleasanter for us in the end than we deserve? Are there not those who reason thus from the thought of Gods Fatherhood? Yet did they consider and understand, the very thought in which they find relief, would rather set them trembling. For, see, what government is so close and penetrating as the government of a true father? Is there anything in existence to compare with it? How very much it takes cognisance of, to frown upon, and rebuke, which no other government notices! Parents will often punish severely, where the police would never interfere. The man whom the lad has to fear, when others show lenity, is his father, and because he is the father. A fathers rule, again, a true fathers rule, consists not merely in legislating and in punishing when laws are broken, but in studying to train toward obedience-to school and discipline, with the object of eliminating or checking what is wrong, and guiding and helping to the formation of right habits. He not only commands good conduct, and visits the opposite with his displeasure, but endeavours in every way, and by every means, to influence to goodness, and to educate the child on all sides, with whatever exercises and appliances may seem fitting, to the best of which he is capable. To this end, he watches over and pursues him. Do we not acknowledge, that to be at all careless about the training of our children, and their culture by us to better things, is to be unfatherly, and that the fondness which passes by a fault demanding correction, rather than draw forth tears and put to grief, is not true paternal love? If then there be a Divine Governor of mankind, all-holy and just, the principle and spirit of whose government is really paternal, is it not a profoundly serious thing for us men, in our state of confessed imperfection, with so much in us which as yet falls short of and is contrary to holiness? What hope can there be of rest or happiness, what hope of acquittal, for unrighteous souls, if God, the infinitely righteous, be the Father? Can He ever be content to tolerate them as they are, to leave them as they are, unvisited, unmeddled with? If He be indeed the Father, what chance can there be for one of us, of our not receiving according to our works? Do you not perceive the certainty, the inevitableness of due punishment upon the supposition of His Fatherhood? I think of the suffering that must yet be in store for such; for without suffering, how are these habits and sympathies of theirs to be worked out? and I know, methinks, that they will have to be worked out; that the great paternal love will not be able to refrain from them, or stay its hand until they are. (S. A. Tipple.)

Fatherly judgment and filial fear

Walk during the time of your sojourning here in fear. How does that comport with the preceding glowing exhortation to perfect hope? How does it fit in with the triumphant words in the earlier part of the chapter about joy unspeakable and full of glory? Does it not come like a douche of cold water on such thoughts? Peter thinks they can co-exist; and, more singular still, that the same object can excite both. Nay! there is no perfect hope which does not blend with it this fear; and joy itself lacks dignity and nobleness unless it is sobered and elevated by an infusion of it.

I. Here we have, first, a fatherly judgment. Mark the meaning and the limits of the fatherly and filial relation which is laid at the foundation of the exhortation of my text. If ye call on the Father-he is speaking distinctly and exclusively to Christian people. Much has been said in recent days, and said in many aspects nobly, and with good results upon the theological thinking of our generation, about the Fatherhood of God. But, we are never to forget that that one word covers in the Bible two entirely distinct thoughts. In one aspect, God is the Father of the spirits of all flesh by their derivation of life from Him. But in another to as many as believed on Him to them gave He power to become sons of God. And it is on the latter Fatherhood and sonship that the apostle builds the exhortation of my text. Well, then, further, the apostle here desires to guard us against another of the errors which are very common in this generation. The revolt against the sterner and graver side of Christian truth has largely found footing in a mistaken idea of the implications and bearing of that thought that God is our Father. That relationship has been thought to swallow up all others, and men have been unwilling to entertain the ideas of a righteous Governor, a supreme Law giver, a retributive Judge. And Peter brings the two ideas into juxtaposition, seeing no contradiction between them, but rather that the one necessarily involves the other. Is it not so in your own homes? Does your fatherhood swallow up your obligation to estimate the moral worth of your child, and to proportion your conduct accordingly? The judicial aspect is essential to the perfection of Fatherhood; and every family on earth mirrors the fact to those that have eyes to see. Mark, still further, the emphatic characteristics of this paternal judgment which are set forth in my text. It is without respect of persons. Peter is going back on his old experience in that unique word. Do you remember when it was that the scales fell from his eyes, and he said, I perceive that God is no respecter of persons? It was in the house of Cornelius in Caesarea. Note, further, that this paternal judgment which comes on the child because he is a child, is a present one. Who judgeth, not who wilt judge. Ah! day by day, moment by moment, deed by deed, we are coming under the judicial light of Gods eye, and the judicial force of His hand. The history of the world is the judgment of the world, so the lives of individual Christians do record and bear the results of a present judgment of the present Father. Then mark, still further, what the thing judged by this present impartial Fatherly judgment is According to his work. The text does not say works, but work-that is, each mans life considered as a living whole; the main drift and dominant purpose, rather than the isolated single acts, are taken into view. Now, from all this, there just comes the one point that I want to urge upon our hearts and consciences-viz., that Christian people are to expect, today and hereafter, the incidence of a Fathers judgment. The Jews came to Jesus Christ once and said, What shall we do that we might work the works of God? His answer made the same remarkable use of the singular instead of the plural to which I have drawn attention as occurring in this text-This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent. Yes! And if we, in any real sense, are doing that one work of God-viz., believing on Jesus Christ-our faith will be a productive mother of work which He will look upon and accept as an odour of a sweet smell, well-pleasing unto God. There is a paternal judgment; and the works which pass it are works done from the root and on the basis of faith in Jesus Christ.

II. We have here a sons fear. Now, fear is, I suppose, best explained as being the shrinking anticipation of evil. But, as the Old Testament has taught us, there is a higher and a lower form of that apprehension. In the higher it is sublimed into lowly reverence and awe, which fears nothing so much as being alienated from God. And that is the fear that my text would insist upon. The evil which a Christian man, the son of the Father, and the subject of His judgment, has most to apprehend-indeed, the only evil which he has really to apprehend-is that he may be tempted to do wrong. So this fear has in it no torment, but it has in it blessedness and purity and strength. It is perfectly compatible with all these other emotions of which the lower form of fear is the opposite; perfectly compatible with confidence, with hope, with joy-nay I rather, without this wholesome and restraining dread of incurring the displeasure of a loving Father, these exuberant and buoyant graces lose their chiefest security. The fear which my text enjoins is the armed guard, so to speak, that watches over these fair virgins of hope and joy and confidence that beautify the Christian life. If you wish your hope to be bright, fear; if you wish your joy to be solid, fear; if you want your confidence in God to be unshaken, cherish utter distrust of yourself, and fear. Fear only that you may depart from Him in whom our hope, and our joy, and our confidence, have their roots. That fear is the only guarantee for our security. The man that distrusts himself and knows his danger, and clings to his refuge is safe. This sons fear is the source of courage. The man whose whole apprehension of evil is dread of sin is bold as a lion in view of all other dangers.

III. Lastly, here is the homecoming, which will finish the fear. The time of your sojourning, says Peter. That thought runs through the letter. It is addressed to the strangers scattered abroad, and in the next chapter he exhorts Christian people, as strangers and pilgrims, to abstain from fleshly lusts. Here he puts a term to this dread-the time of your sojourning. Travellers in foreign lands have to light their fires at night to keep off the lions, and to set their guard to detect the stealthy approach of the foe, You and I, whilst we travel in this earthly pilgrimage, have to be on our guard, lest we should be betrayed. But we are going home. And when the child gets to the Fathers house it does not fear any more dangers, nor need bolts and bars, nor guards and sentries. Why did God give us this capacity of anticipating, and shrinking from, future evil? Was it only meant that its red light should be a danger signal in reference to fleeting worldly evils? Is there not a far worse possibility before us all? Let me press on you this one question: Have you ever, in all the wide range which your fears of a future have taken, extended it so far as to face this question, What will become of me when I come into contact with God the Judge and His righteous tribunal? You will come in contact with it. Let your fear travel so far, and let it lead you to the one Refuge. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

Judgeth according to every mans work.

God an impartial Judge

There is a verse in the Psalms which might not unfitly stand as a text for this whole Epistle of St. Peter. It is at the end of the 111th Psalm, in which David had been giving most high praise to God for His distinguishing mercy towards His own chosen people. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do thereafter: the praise of it endureth forever. As much as to say, that, great as the mercies are, which God has provided for His elect people, they are not such as ought for a moment to set us free from that godly fear, that religious and awful sense of Gods unspeakable presence, which is the beginning, the crown, of all spiritual wisdom. It must be joined indeed with love, but we must never expect to turn it entirely into such love as we feel towards those who are dear to us here among men. In a word, the love and fear of God will grow up together in a religious and thoughtful heart; as we come to know more of Him as the greatest and best of fathers. Such is the Psalmists account of the fear of God: and lest any person, having an eye to the infinite blessings of the gospel of Christ, made known to us but unknown to him, should imagine that this description of Gods fear is now as it were out of date, I wish all Christians would observe how earnestly the very same lesson is taught in the New Testament also. Our Lord forewarns us whom we shall fear; Him, namely, who is able to cast both body and soul into hell. And observe, He speaks thus, not to those who were still at a distance from Him, but to His own chosen apostles and followers, to those whom in the same discourse He calls His friends and His little flock. Surely this one text is enough to do away with all presumptuous notions of any persons ever becoming so good, or so high in Gods favour, as to do without the fear of God. It is true, St. John says, Perfect love casteth out fear, but what fear? surely not religious reverence of the ever-present Almighty Father. St. Peter was in some measure afraid, lest the Christians to whom he was writing should so dwell on favours received, be so entirely taken up with the comfortable promises of the gospel, as to forget the fear of God, and the plain duty of keeping the commandments. As if he had said, It is our privilege to call God, Our Father which art in heaven. Christ Himself in His own prayer has authorised the faithful to do it. Here the irreligious pride of some men might presently come in, and tempt them to imagine that God is partial to them; that He favours them above others, and therefore they may take liberties; He will not be so strict in requiring an account how they have kept His laws. But St. Peter teaches us just the contrary: even as the last of the prophets, Malachi, had taught before, looking forward by the Spirit to a time when men, having greater privileges than ever, would be in danger of abusing them more than ever. If I be a Father, where is Mine honour? How can you call the great God of heaven and earth by a name which brings Him so very near you, and not feel an awful kind of thrill, a sense of His presence in your very heart? More especially, when you add that which he takes notice of in the next place: that this our heavenly Father is one who without respect of persons judgeth according to every mans work. This was in a great degree a discovery of Gods nature and character made by the Gospel. Before the coming of our Lord and Saviour, neither Jew nor Gentile looked on the God of heaven as being impartial, and judging without respect of persons. As for the Gentiles, They thought wickedly, that God was even such an one as themselves. Again, even Gods own people, the Jews, were generally apt more or less to mistake the nature and meaning of the great favour which God Almighty had shown them for so many ages. They kept continually saying within themselves, We have Abraham to our Father; in such a manner as if they were sure of especial consideration to be had of them on that account merely; as if they might be looser in their conduct than other men. When, therefore, both Jew and Gentile were to be called into one great family in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, one of the things most necessary to be taught was, God is no respecter of persons, etc. This St. Peter had taught long ago to the Jews, when, by especial direction of the Holy Ghost, he had to convert and baptize Cornelius and his household; and now again he repeats the same instruction to the converted Gentiles themselves, lest they should abuse their own privileges, and fancy they were entitled to favour at the hands of the most holy God, merely for being on His side. Nor may we imagine that the apostle spoke to the men of those times only; the Christians of all times are in danger of the same kind of error: we are all too apt to indulge the childish imagination, that our own case has something particular in it: that God Almighty therefore, just and terrible as He is, will surely make exceptions in our favour. The reward, then, of those who shall receive Gods blessing at last will be strictly in proportion, not to their deservings, but to their sincerity and steadiness in working. They will be justified, as St. Paul says, by faith, without works of any law; yet, in another sense, they are justified by the works of the gospel law, not by faith only. God graciously accepts, not their bare nominal good meaning, but their good meaning proved by their works. And there is no respect of persons on this plan: because the faith meant is not a strong emotion; but it is the steady devotion of the heart to do the will of God our Saviour, and not our own will. Therefore, let us fear-for we have indeed great reason-lest, so much depending on our own works, those works be found at the last day to be nothing at all, or next to nothing. This consideration of itself is surely terrible enough; but there is one thing yet remaining, which makes it yet more alarming to the conscience: and it is that which St. Peter sets before us by his use of the word sojourning in this passage. Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. As much as to say, Pass your time in fear, not knowing how short it may be. The churchyards around us are fast filling; it may be our own turn next; and how far have we advanced, by the aid of Gods Spirit, in that difficult work of putting off the mind of this world, and putting on the mind of Christ? (Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times. )

Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.-

Fear of judgment to come, and of redemption accomplished

Before the word fear there are several reasons given for its exercise. We call God Father. He who applies such a name to God must fear if he thinks what this involves on his part. Especially when it is remembered that while He is a Father He is also a Judge strictly righteous and impartial. Succeeding it is another ground. We are redeemed. And our redemption has been effected by the most costly sacrifice-the blood of Christ. Those who believe that cannot but feel a peculiar obligation lying upon them. They must be Christs in heart and soul and action. And they cannot but fear lest they should belie such a marvellous consecration.

I. The sphere and operation of Christian fear. There are some to whom the importance attached to fear in this place and elsewhere seems in contradiction to the teaching of the Apostle John, who speaks of fear as being cast out by perfect love. But it is to be observed that it is perfect love to which this prerogative is assigned. But with imperfect love fear has an important sphere of action. It affords stimulus to imperfect love and pushes it on to perfection. Those whom the apostle exhorts to fear are the same whom he has exhorted to hope to the end. They are men to whom Christ is precious, who love Him and rejoice in Him with a joy unspeakable and full of glory. Fear existing along with such elements cannot even burden. It balances, sobers, solemnises, deepens, intensifies. But it is often urged that the actions which are stimulated by fear have no moral worth, that fear is but a form of selfishness, and that therefore no fruit produced by it, however well it may look to the eye, can be truly acceptable to God. This has a very specious look. It appears a particularly fine, exalted, spiritual doctrine. And it really is so in its main features. It is true; but it is only a half truth, and half truths are often the most dangerous of errors. What is the other half of the truth? Although fear in itself and by itself cannot produce truly good or spiritually right action, it yet performs a vital function in keeping the soul awake. Fear rings the alarm bell and rouses the conscience. It blows the trumpet of warning. It creates pause and opportunity for all better and nobler things to make themselves heard. It allows a man to become aware of the realities, and when he is once placed in contact with them the best things begin. Everything depends on being made earnest, sensitive, lifted into a sense of the eternal verities. The highest principles, righteousness and love, are often in the best of men forgetful and fickle. They are ensnared, oppressed, and bewildered many a time, and need the keen influence of fear to bring them to themselves again.

II. Fear in relation to the father that judgeth. Fear is obviously far from being the main feeling towards God as a Father. Confidence and love are especially the feelings called out by the Fatherhood of God. But God says, If I be a Father, where is My fear? God claims fear as a Father-reverence, no doubt, mainly-honour, awe in the realising of His infinitude; but something more than these, something else. For God as a Father judgeth. Did He not judge and condemn all sin He could be no true Father. Love must hate sin and show its hatred. Father is no weak, soft, indulgent word. It means love, and because it means love it means right, and undying opposition to evil, The Father judgeth without respect of persons. There is no other Father than the Father who judgeth. If I believe in a Father that judges, that will certainly rouse me up-it will waken my slumbering energies, it will cause me to look well to the state of my heart and life; but the word Father will always keep the thought of judgment from overwhelming me.

III. In order to have a true Christian fear we must place together judgment by works and redemption by the blood of Christ. The thought of judgment to come is essential to the depth and the reality of life. Without this everything is left in chaos. Conscience is not satisfied, nor is reason. But what reason and conscience demand cannot but awaken fear. This fear is deepened and yet transformed by the thought of redemption. Redemption seems at first wholly opposed to judgment by works, far more than even the Fatherhood of God does. For what does the Scripture mean by redemption through the blood of Christ? It means that the Son of God took our place and bore us on His heart in living and dying; it means that the sacrifice of Christ is that moral vindication of law and right, that tribute to the holiness of God which God accepts as sufficient amends and reparation. By faith man falls in with this Divine arrangement, identifies himself with it and is reconciled to God. And this faith that accepts and trusts and frees from condemnation, also works by love. Salvation by faith and judgment by works are therefore no contradiction. It is judgment by faith taken in its flower and fruit. But do we not see how fear awakes in the view of such a wonderful redemption? There is something akin to fear raised in the soul by the sight of sublimity. The wide expanse of the sky filled with sun shine or peopled with worlds raises an awe sublime, but often weighing heavily on the soul. Vast fervent love indeed banishes fear. It is the one thing that does this. And yet such a love as this-so holy, so mysterious, so resolute, so devoted-love coming from such a height, and going down into such depths, cannot but awaken a certain awe. We are overawed by the brilliancy of the light. We fear the Lord and His goodness. And then when a man thinks of being redeemed by such a sacrifice, when he tries to realise at what a cost redemption has been effected, does not a certain fear come over him lest he should prove miserably unworthy of it all? But let not this fear in view of redemption be deemed inconsistent with the joy and freedom which belong to the gospel. It is precisely the man who has that realising sense of redemption which makes him afraid of not proving worthy of it, who has also joy. These two, fear and joy, grow out of the same root of redemption. The more joy in Christ any man has, the more will he be afraid of not conforming sufficiently to Christ. (J. Leckie, D. D.)

God will be served in fear

If these words were not known for certain to be the words of Holy Scripture they would appear to many very severe, very unfit to win souls to God. What! it would be said, are people to fear always? all people, those who are farthest advanced in true religion and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost? What, then, is to become of the natural cheerfulness of youth; of the enjoyments inseparable from even health and spirits, kind relations and friends; what of the testimony of a good conscience? All this and more is said by different sorts of persons against those who, following Gods own method, would make them serious in the true scriptural way; by teaching them, and encouraging them in the true reverence. It may be of use to us if we consider what those tempers are which are most apt to make men impatient of being told to pass the time of their sojourning here in fear. There is a certain time of life in which we are almost all of us, more or less, partakers of this pagan error of disliking all that is really serious, all that would impress us thoroughly with the fear and dread of Almighty God. When youth and strength are high, before we have tasted of our Fathers severer discipline, we shrink from the sadder lessons of Scripture and the Church: we say to ourselves, Surely this world, so full of enjoyment, can never have been meant merely as a place for the exercise of hard and severe penitence. If, then, any young person happen now to be listening to me, let me beseech him to be aware of this danger: to watch in himself that spirit of confidence and gaiety which, under pretence of mere youthful cheerfulness, would lead him to make light of Gods most holy commandments. Let us only recollect ourselves, how it is with us at our prayers. Are we not too much inclined to say them over without seriously bringing before our minds the awful presence of Him to whom we pray? This too is one of the reasons why outward religion, the religion of the body, is of so very great consequence; viz., that it helps very much to keep and improve in our hearts the true and wholesome fear of God. Because in truth not only does nature teach us to express our feelings in such postures, but also these very bodies of ours, so fearfully and wonderfully made, are of purpose so framed as to have an influence in their turn on our souls. Soldiers, we know, in all armies, are made to march erect, and to be firm and straight in all their bodily movements; not merely for the appearance sake, but because the very attitude, in some unaccountable way, tends to make them bolder and firmer in mind; and in like manner there is no question, that kneeling and other humble gestures in devotion, practised not for forms sake, but in obedience to the Church, and in the fear of God, would cherish and improve that very fear in our hearts. Bishop Wilson has said, speaking of small instances of self-denial, Say not, It is a trifle, and not fit to offer in sacrifice to God. And the same may be said of small occasions of nourishing the remembrance of Him; of short prayers frequently through the day, of turning every event and accident of life, not openly, but as much as may be in secret, into an opportunity for devout prayer and recollection. (Plain Sermons by Contributors to Tracts for the Times.)

Godly fear

I. The fear here recommended is a holy self-suspicion and fear of offending God, which may not only consist with assured hope of salvation, and with faith, and love, and spiritual joy, but is their inseparable companion, as all Divine graces are linked together. And, as they dwell together, they grow or decrease together. The more a Christian believes, and loves, and rejoices in the love of God, the more unwilling surely he is to displease Him, and if in danger of displeasing Him, the more afraid is he of it; and, on the other side, this fear being the true principle of a wary and holy conversation, fleeing sin and the occasions of sin and temptations to it, is as a watch or guard that keeps out the enemies of the soul, and so preserves its inward peace, keeps the assurance of faith and hope unmolested, and that joy which they cause unimpaired, and the intercourse of love betwixt the soul and her beloved uninterrupted. Certainly a good man is sometimes driven to wonder at his own frailty and inconstancy. What strange differences will be betwixt him and himself! How high and how delightful at some times are his thoughts of God, and the glory of the life to come; and yet how easily at another time base temptations will bemire him, or, at the least, molest and vex him! And this keeps him in a continual fear, and that fear in continual vigilance and circumspection. When he looks up to God, and considers the truth of His promises, and the sufficiency of His grace and protection, and the almighty strength of His Redeemer, these things fill his soul with confidence and assurance; but when he turns his eye downward again upon himself, and finds so much remaining corruption within, and so many temptations and dangers and adversaries without, this forces him not only to fear, but to despair of himself; and it should do so, that his trust in God may be purer and more entire. This fear is not cowardice. It does not debase, but it elevates the mind; for it drowns all lower fears, and begets true fortitude to encounter all dangers, for the sake of a good conscience and the obeying of God. From this fear have sprung all the generous resolutions and patient sufferings of the saints and martyrs. Because they durst not sin against God, therefore they durst be imprisoned, and impoverished, and tortured, and die for Him.

II. The reason they have here to persuade to this fear is twofold.

1. Their relation to God us their Father and their Judge. But as He is the best Father, so consider that He is withal the greatest and most just Judge. There is here the sovereignty of this Judge, the universality of His judgment, and the equity of it. Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. You are encompassed with enemies and snares; how can you be secure in the midst of them? Perfect peace and security are reserved for you at home, and that is the end of your fear.

III. The term or continuance of this fear. It continues all the time of this sojourning life; it dies not before us: we and it shall expire together. Blessed is he that feareth always, says Solomon; in secret and in society, in his own house and in Gods. We must hear the Word with fear, and preach it with fear, afraid to miscarry in our intentions and manners. Serve the Lord with fear, yea, in times of inward comfort and joy, rejoice with trembling; not only when a man feels most his own weakness, but when he finds himself strongest. None are so high advanced in grace here below as to be out of need of this grace; but when their sojourning shall be done, and they are come home to their Fathers house above, then no more fearing. No entrance for dangers there, and therefore no fear. (Abp. Leighton.)

The right feelings of the heavenly pilgrim

I. The nature of tee Christians life.

1. His past condition. Whence has the pilgrim come? From the city of destruction.

2. His present state. He is a sojourner.

3. His future destination.

II. The manner in which the Christians life should be spent. In fear.

1. A fear of reverence. Contrast the Divine majesty with our meanness.

2. A fear of caution.

3. A fear of anxiety. It is better to err on the side of timidity than presumption. (Essex Remembrancer.)

The awe of the redeemed

I. Awe of the redeemed towards the redeeming God. If ye call on Him as Father. Not simply appeal to Him, but acknowledge His relationship to you, admit His claims on you.

II. Awe of the redeemed because of their recollection of the evil from which they have been redeemed.

1. A consciousness of being redeemed.

2. A consciousness of being redeemed from a habit of life that was evil.

3. A consciousness of being redeemed from an evil habit of life that was inherited.

III. Awe of the redeemed because of the cost by which they have been redeemed.

1. This cost in contrast with the wealth of this world.

2. This cost as revealed in Jesus Christ.

3. This cost as known to the infinite heart of the Eternal God.

4. This cost as approved by God.

5. This cost as incurred for mans sake.

IV. Awe of the redeemed because of the destiny to which they have been redeemed. Faith and hope in God. God the impregnable fortress, the enduring home. (U. R. Thomas.)

The Christians fear

I. First, I would remind you of the awful nature of that father on whom you profess to call.

1. Engaging, indeed, is the title under which your religion addresses you. But that God, that Father, to whom you must one day go, is a Being so pure that even the heavens are tainted in His sight.

2. It is not only your appearance before Him on that distant day that makes your sojourning on earth so fearful; for every hour of your existence here this incomprehensible and unseen Being is about your path. No retirement by night is so dark but His eye can penetrate it; no walk by day so intricate but He can follow it; no secret of the soul so hidden but He can see it.

II. To the nature of that heavenly Father, into whose inheritance we are invited, the text directs us to add the judgment to which we shall one day be summoned.

III. The third argument which the apostle uses for religious fear is drawn from the means adopted through the blood of Christ for the everlasting salvation of our souls.

IV. The nature of the world in which we dwell, and the weakness of the human heart. All the warnings that are given us, all the hopes that are held out to us, remind us of the danger of the state in which we dwell. The world, by professing to he Christian, is more dangerous; because it has lost the appearance of enmity, and has greater power over us by its failures. Look into your own heart, and, remembering yourself as a being designed for immortality, think on its wanderings, its coldness, its impurity, its inconstancy, and say if anything was ever so poor, so frail, so blind, so unprepared to meet its God! (G. Mathew, M. A.)

The reverence due to God

I. The nature of the fear which is here enjoined. Fear is a passion implanted in our nature to deter us from what is hurtful, and to guard us against danger. To lose the favour of the Almighty here, and be eternally deprived of His presence hereafter, are evils the most formidable to man. And while fear imprints these so deeply on the mind as to produce an anxious dread of incurring His displeasure, and a serious concern to gain His approbation, it becomes that religious regulating principle which is here enjoined. There is a natural fear of God impressed upon the minds of all. He has infused His fear into our minds, that, by this rational awe, He might deter us from those practices to which our corrupt nature too much inclines us, and, by the sword of justice, overrule our affections, too refractory to be otherwise reclaimed. It may be observed, farther, that the rational fear before us is equally remote from that excess of fear which gives rise to superstition, and that unwarranted defect of it from which profane levity proceeds. It is a sober cheerfulness, a manly seriousness, which become the servants of God. This demands no melancholy abstraction from the world; it condemns the indulgence of no innocent delight. But calm and temperate enjoyment is the utmost that is assigned to man. And hence religion wisely recommends a spirit cheerful but composed, equally remote from the humiliating depression of fear and the exulting levity of joy. The propriety of fear as a regulating principle, not only religion, but the nature of our present state, the business here assigned us, the instability of all things round, and the awful concerns of futurity, concur to establish and enforce.

II. In what manner it should influence our conduct in the pilgrimage of life. To engage us to depart from evil and to keep the commandments is the direct tendency of religious fear. Calling forth our vigilance and circumspection, it will admonish us of latent dangers, and lead us to a faithful discharge of every duty and a serious preparation for eternity. Its influence will be habitual and steady. In every state, and at all times, the serious impression will be felt, by producing in our lives a constant fear of God, a virtuous deportment in the world, and a holy reverence for ourselves. Let us first consider its influence on our religious duties. To form right notions of the Deity, cherish suitable affections, and express these by acts of religious worship and a holy life, form the chief parts of piety. But not to the more immediate acts of public and private devotion will this influence be confined; it will extend to every act of religious obedience, and to everything sacred. It will form the constant temper of the true Christian, and direct the habitual tenor of this life. Nor is this destructive to human enjoyment. The restraints it imposes are curbs on vice; but real pleasure they extend and improve. It is rational enjoyment which they prescribe, in place of momentary bliss.

III. Motives to engage all to live here in fear.

1. The nature of our present state and our future prospects calls upon us thus to fear. Can we rest in security where all is changing? Can we not be apprehensive where all things cause alarm? We stand on the brink of a precipice, from which the slightest breath may drive us headlong. Is this a place, is this a time, to swell in fancied security, riot in unlawful pleasure, and indulge in unbridled joy?

2. By living in fear we will escape unnumbered evils. From thoughtless inattention fatal dangers arise-fatal not only to our worldly prosperity, but to the far more important concerns of the soul.

3. It will promote the rational enjoyment of life. Always to tremble destroys felicity, but cautious fear improves and extends it. To the man that feareth always, no accident happens unexpected; no good gives immoderate joy, nor no evil unnecessary alarm.

4. It will demonstrate our attachment to Jesus, and lead to the fulfilment of the vows you solemnly came under at the table of your Lord.

5. It leads to happiness eternal. The time is at hand when fear shall no more disquiet. (D. Malcolm, LL. D.)

Fear of terror

There is a fear towards God that might be denominated the fear of terror. It is the affection of one who is afraid of Him. There is in it the alarm of selfishness. It is at all times connected with a view of ones own personal suffering; and the dire imagery of pain, and perhaps irreversible wretchedness, is perhaps that which chiefly gives dismay and disturbance to his soul. It carries in it no homage to the sacredness of the Divinity, yet is aggravated by a sense of that sacredness; because then God, regarded as a God of unappeasable jealousy, is deemed to be intolerant of all evil; and the guilt-stricken soul, in looking up to the holiness of the Lawgiver, looks forward to its own destruction in that everlasting hell where the transgressors of the law find their doom. Now it is obvious that, while haunted by a fear of this sort, there can be no free or willing or generous obedience. There might be a service of drudgery, but not a service of delight; such obedience as is extorted from a slave by the whip of his overseer, but not a free-will offering of love or of loyalty. It is reserved for the gospel of Jesus Christ to do away this terror from the heart of man, and yet to leave untarnished the holiness of God. It is the atonement that was made by Him which resolves this mystery, providing at once for the deliverance of the sinner and for the dignity of the Sovereign. But while this view of God in Christ extinguishes one fear-the fear of terror-it awakens another and an altogether distinct fear-the fear of reverence. God is no longer regarded as the enemy of the sinner; but in thy Cross of the Redeemer, where this enmity was slain, there is full demonstration of a moral nature that is in utter repugnancy to sin. Now that we have entered into reconciliation, we hear not the upbraidings of the Lawgiver for the despite which in former days we have done unto His will. But the office of the gospel is to regenerate as well as reconcile; and every disciple who embraces it is met with the saying, This is the will of God, even your sanctification. Such is the wide difference between these two affections; and, corresponding to this, there is a difference equally wide between the legal and the evangelical dispensations. Under the former economy, the alternative to do this and live is, that if you fail in doing this you will perish everlastingly. Now let this be the great stimulus to the performance of virtue, and then think of the spirit and of the inward character wherewith they are impregnated. It is, in fact, a character of the most intense selfishness. It is the fear of terror which goads him on to all his obedience, and compels him to act religiously. For such a religion as this it is not needed that he should have any capacity of moral principle. It is enough if he have the capacity of animal pain. He is driven along, not by the feelings of his spiritual, but by those of his sentient nature. Now it is not so with the economy of the gospel. The gate of heaven is thrown open at the outset to its disciples, and they are invited with confident step to walk towards it. God holds Himself forth not as a Judge who reckons, but as a Father who is reconciled to them. (T. Chalmers, D. D.)

Sojourners on earth

1. Our life is a sojourning on earth.

2. This sojourning hath a time.

3. This time must be passed.

4. This passage must be in fear.

5. This fear must be of a Father.

6. He is so a Father, that He is our Judge. (Bp. Hall.)

Not redeemed with corruptible things.-

Redemption

I. Consider, with grateful emotion, the merciful and important fact of mans redemption.

1. On all hands it is acknowledged that redemption implies the pardon of sin, but the dominion of sin must also be subdued.

2. Are you redeemed from a vain conversation, from a useless form of religion, from an unspiritual profession of faith in the gospel, from trifling and unprofitable behaviour, from the course of this world?

II. Consider the utter inadequacy of human means to have accomplished this great redemption.

III. The efficacious means whereby this great redemption has been accomplished. Learn-

1. The necessity of faith.

2. Beware of entertaining unscriptural views of redemption. (Essex Remembrancer.)

Christianity a redemptive power

I. It is a redemption from bad character.

1. Sin is a worthless life. A vain conversation.

2. It is a worthless life transmitted.

II. It is a redemption by a costly sacrifice.

1. By the sacrifice of a life.

2. By the sacrifice of a most perfect life.

III. It is a redemption ordained before all time.

1. Unsought.

2. Unmerited.

3. Absolutely free. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

The things of this world are insufficient to redeem from

Spiritual bondage:-The reasons hereof may be these:

1. God hath no need of any of these things, and they are His already (Psa_24:1; Psa_50:10).

2. Our soul is an immortal and incorruptible thing, a creature that hath a beginning, but never shall have end.

3. Sin is a transgression against an Infinite God, and so deserveth an infinite punishment.

4. Many times even for a trespass committed against men, these things will not be taken for a recompense.

5. These often, when God sends some bodily judgment, are unable to do men any pleasure, nor can at all pacify God.

6. These cannot redeem a mans bodily life and save it from death, nor can they prolong a mans life an hour beyond his appointed time; much less can they redeem his soul.

7. These cannot purchase wit, learning, eloquence for those that want them, much less sanctification and grace. (John Rogers.)

Vain conversation received by tradition.-

Children infected by parental traditions

I. Divers sorts of evils have broken into the life of man by the traditions of fathers, as-

1. Gross errors in opinion.

2. Divers superstitions in their life, as were the traditions of the Pharisees.

3. Children learn divers sins only, or chiefly from their parents.

II. If any ask why the traditions of parents should be so infectious.

1. Because they are cast into the natures of the children in the youngest years, and so are the more infectious because they were first seasoned with them.

2. Because of the affection children bear to their parents, and their opinion of their sufficiency.

3. Because they are continually conversant with them, and so see no other or no better precepts or examples.

III. The use may be for instruction, both to parents and children.

1. Parents should be humbled under the consideration of the misery they bring upon their children, both by propagation and tradition.

2. Children should also learn from hence

(1) Not to rest wholly upon the tradition of parents, anal to know it is not a sufficient rule to warrant their actions.

(2) What good is commended especially of the good fathers, those we should embrace, and the rather for their sakes.

3. Shall not this evidently confute their gross folly, that so much urge the traditions of the fathers?

4. Are men so zealous for the tradition of their fathers of the flesh; and shall not we be much more zealous for the traditions of God Himself delivered in His Word? His counsels are all perfect; there can be no defect in them; and further, no parents can afford us such acceptation, or reward for obedience. (N. Byfield.)

Vain conversation

The mind of man, the guide and source of his actions, while it is estranged from God, is nothing but a forge of vanities. St. Paul speaks this of the Gentiles, that they became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened, their great naturalists and philosophers not excepted. And thus the Lord complains by Isaiah of the extreme folly of His people (Isa_44:20), and by Jeremiah, that their hearts are lodges of vain thoughts (Jer_4:14), and these are the true cause of a vain conversation. The whole course of a mans life out of Christ is nothing but a continual trading in vanity, running a circle of toil and labour, and reaping no profit at all. Now, since all a mans endeavours aim at his satisfaction and contentment, that conversation which gives him nothing of that, but removes him further from it, is justly called vain conversation. Let the voluptuous person say upon his death bed what pleasure or profit doth then abide with him of all his former sinful delights. Let him tell if there remain anything of them all, but that which he would gladly not have to remain, the sting of an accusing conscience, which is as lasting as the delight of sin was short and vanishing. Let the covetous and ambitious declare freely, even those of them who have prospered most in their pursuits of riches and honour, what ease all their possessions or titles do then help them to, whether their pains are the less because their chests are full, or their houses stately, or a multitude of friends and servants waiting on them with hat and knee. And if all these things cannot ease the body, how much less can they quiet the mind! It is a lamentable thing to be deluded a whole lifetime with a false dream. Would it not grieve any labouring man to work hard all the day, and have no wages to look for at night? It is a greater loss to wear out our whole life, and in the evening of our days find nothing but anguish and vexation. Let us then think this, that so much of our life as is spent in the ways of sin is all lost, fruitless, and vain conversation. And as the apostle says here, you are redeemed from this conversation, this imports it to be a servile slavish condition, as the other word, vain, expresses it to be fruitless. And this is the madness of a sinner, that he fancies liberty in that which is the basest thraldom; as those poor frantic persons that are lying ragged and bound in chains imagine that they are kings, and that their irons are chains of gold, their rags robes, and their filthy lodge a palace. (Abp. Leighton.)

The precious blood of Christ.-

The precious blood of Christ

I. What preceded it. Blood of lambs, bulls, and goats, without number, and through all ages. Types most costly. Prophecies grand and minute.

II. The prodigies which attended the shedding of this blood. On previous occasions, when sacrifices had been offered, there were tokens of Gods favourable notice-Abel, Noah, Abraham, Gideon, etc. But when was it heard that the sun was clothed as in sackcloth, that the rocks were rent, the earth shaken, etc.

III. Where it was presented (Heb_9:7; Heb_9:12). The very life laid down was taken up, and is lived on again in heaven in circumstances of the highest glory and honour.

IV. What it prevents. Condemnation, wrath, curse. This blood will ward off all harm from those who trust it. Will not suffer Satan or death to destroy any who are sheltered beneath it.

V. What it procures.

1. For man generally.

(1) All temporal blessings.

(2) The offer of salvation.

2. For believers-redemption, even the forgiveness of sins (Eph_1:7).

VI. What it produces. The blood of Christ is omnipotent. It prevails over guilt, fear and care. It casts down pride, casts out the reigning power of sin, and introduces happiness, holiness, humility, and hope.

VII. What it will perpetuate, and secure forever to all believers. Abidance before the throne of God, union with the redeemed of all ages, service in the heavenly temple, the absence of sorrow, death, and sin. (J. Cox.)

The precious blood of Christ

1. Worlds in which there is no evil and no danger of evil arising would not be supplied with means of prevention or of cure; but in our planet we have remedies for almost all the ills which flesh is heir to, and there are laws of compensation which show that the God of love does not impose want and destitution willingly. Here, then, where even the juice of the seawort is a cordial, and its ashes feed the spark of life, where the nightshade stops the painful vibration of the nerves, and brings sweet sleep upon eyelids which have become stiff in unseasonable wakefulness; here, where crowding insects cleanse and scavenge our earth and her firmament, and where everything has its use; here we have for the removal of sin the precious blood of Christ.

2. A ruler who never punishes his rebellious subjects, and who so pardons as to reproach his own government and laws, will spread evil by his so-called goodness, and will be cruel in his apparent kindness. The problem to be solved is, How can God be just, and yet the Saviour of the sinner? The solution of this problem is found in the precious blood of Christ.

3. Christ, according to the Scriptures, is the Word made flesh. The blood of Christ is the blood of the flesh in which God was manifest. All blood is precious-precious the blood of Abel, the blood of the persecuted prophets, etc., but there is no blood so precious as the blood of Christ.

4. Among the many things which we value, there is nothing which we so prize as the offerings of disinterested love: these surpass in interest, if not in value, the products of our labour and the blessings which we inherit as a birthright, or which reach us through the ordinary channels of Divine providence, and of our political and social institutions. Now greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. The blood of Christ is a double illustration of disinterested love: for while the Son gives Himself for us, the Father gives the Son to be the Saviour of the world.

5. How marvellous in their variety and character are the effects of the blood of Christ! It brings Jehovah forth from His secret place with the light of love in His countenance, it arrests the course of the law in its pursuit of the sinner, it magnifies the law, it restores access to God, it cleanses, justifies, and redeems unto God. Never was blood like this.

6. There are different standards by which we value precious things. Some things are valuable because of their utility, and other things because of their singularity and rarity and beauty, but how few things are beautiful and rare and useful! Precious stones are beautiful and rare, but their utility is small; and the precious metals are valuable as currency, but not comparable to iron or even to coal. When, however, rarity is combined with utility, and an important service is to be rendered by one being or by one thing, how precious that being or thing becomes! The one medicine, a specific for some dire disease, the one means of escape in the hour of peril, the forlorn hope of an army, the only son of a widowed mother, are examples. And in this position stands the blood of Christ. The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin, but the blood of Christ alone.

7. Alas! many of our precious things deteriorate. Time, that devours all things, mars and breaks our choicest treasures. Business fails, commerce is arrested, empires decline, the very Church of Christ becomes corrupt; but among the things which are incorruptible and undefiled is the precious blood of Christ.

8. Often have we heard men say, Lo I here is the panacea! and lo! there! But where is the remedy for all disease, and where the universal medicine? The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin. It removes the guilty smart from the conscience, and it relieves memory of its heaviest burden, and takes from imagination all its horrible creations. (S. Martin.)

Redeemed by blood

Probably it is the most momentous fact about us that we have been redeemed. It is much to have been created. It is much to be endowed with life in a world so full of marvellous possibilities as ours. It is much to have a soul, which can call up the past, or interrogate the present, or anticipate and prepare for the future. But it is more that we have been redeemed. Redeemed, as Israel from the bondage of Egypt; or as a slave, by his goel, from captivity to some rich creditor; or as the captive of some hideous vice emancipated from its thrall.

I. The cost of our redemption has been immense.

1. Negatively. Not with corruptible things, as silver and gold. A moneyed man, who has been accustomed to look on his wealth as the key to every treasure-chest, is sometimes startled to find how little it can really do. God could have given suns of gold, and stars of silver, constellations of bodies glowing with precious metals, but none of these would have been sufficient to free one soul from the curse or penalty of sin, or to change it into a loyal and loving subject of His reign. The Creator must give not things, but life-not His gifts, but Himself, ere He could redeem.

2. Positively. But with the precious blood of Christ. The blood is the life. Life is mans supreme possession, and his supreme gift. And, in addition, when blood is mentioned with the laying down of life, there is the further thought of intense suffering, of violence, etc. The blood of Jesus was precious, because of the dignity of His nature, and because of His perfect character. Without blemish, that is, without personal sin. Without spot, that is, not defiled by contact with sinners. And thus it was adequate for the work of cleansing away the terrible aggregate of sin.

II. The object of our redemption. From your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers. It is our ransom price, the purchase money of our entire being to be Christs. The purchaser of any slave regarded him as his chattel, his goods. His word and will were absolute law. Such are the rights which our glorious Master has over us. Who, then, of us can live as we have been wont, following after vanity, treading in the footsteps of our fore fathers, content to do as others before us? New claims have come in. Our Redeemer is Lord.

III. The characteristic of the redeemed. Who by Him do believe in God. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)

The precious blood of Christ

I. Estimate it in its adaptation to all the wants of man, and its answerableness to all the properties of God.

II. Estimate the preciousness of this blood by its intrinsic merit.

1. The first circumstance prominent in this description of our Saviours sacrifice, is that it is a direct oblation to God.

2. And this oblation of Himself to God contained an ample recognition of the authority of Gods law, and of His right to punish transgressors.

3. Another circumstance prominent in the description of the Saviours sacrifice is the intelligence and voluntariness of the victim.

4. Another circumstance-one which we believe was prefigured by the sacrifices under the law, and one which substantiates the sacrifice of Christ to have been a proper sacrifice-is that He was an unblemished victim.

III. Compute the value of this precious blood with reference to the personal value of the saviour.

IV. Consider the value attached to this blood by the father.

1. We might illustrate this by many tokens and testimonies of His complacency towards His Son, before His sufferings and death.

2. Consider as another illustration of the preciousness of Christs blood, either in life or death, to the Father, the personal compensation He awarded to Him for His sufferings.

V. And need I remind you of the immense good this blood is the means of procuring to mankind, to say nothing of the lower orders of the creation, as a further illustration of this subject.

VI. By way of application, let us see whether this blood be not precious to every rightly affected human heart. Mark its efficacy and power over every class of sinners, who are resting upon its sovereign influence through the power of the Holy Spirit. To you He is precious. (W. M. Bunting.)

The precious blood of Christ

The blood of Christ is precious-

I. When viewed in connection with the fathers purpose and the fathers love.

II. When viewed in connection with the person of Christ.

III. When viewed in its bearing upon man. (A. C. Price.)

The blood of Christ

I. Consider what light is shed upon the instance of Christ shedding his blood for us by the experience of the many illustrious saints and heroes in the noble army of martyrs, who in all lands and ages have laid down their lives foe the sake of their country, or on behalf of truth, of science, and religion. Would the blood in any single instance have had the slightest moral or meritorious value apart from the character of the person, apart from the fidelity, the endurance, the self-sacrifice of the person? True, there are senses in which we say, The blood of a living thing is the life thereof, senses in which we say, with the great Harvey, the blood is the fountain of life, the first to live, and the last to die, and the primary seat of the animal soul. But then, do we not always, in deeper senses, distinguish between the blood and the life; do we not feel always that the blood which can be seen is but the outward sign and symbol of the inward life which cannot be seen; do we not feel that though the blood is the seat, the centre, the channel of the life, the life itself is as superior to the blood as the mind is to the brain which is its centre, or the soul to the body which is its shell or form? Equally so, when we speak of a man shedding his blood on the altar of his country or his religion, we think not of the form or the sign, but of that which is beneath and within; the extent to which the sufferer manfully endured, the degree to which he spared not himself, the spirit in which for the truth, or the cause, or the monarch, or the land, or the Lord he loved, he willingly, resolutely gave the whole force of his moral nature, the whole wealth of his heart, his character, and his soul. In like manner we should think of the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanseth us from all sin, not as deriving its worth or its efficacy from anything that was outward or physical or material, not as being vested in the blood itself as blood. Should we not rather a thousand times say the preciousness of the blood of Christ was in the inward and personal, the spiritual and Divine life which dwelt and throbbed in that blood?

II. In the minds and hearts of the early Christians the blood of Christ was regarded as but a symbol of, or but another name for, the love of Christ. What is the blood of Christ? asked Livingstone of his own solitary soul in the last months of his African wanderings. It is Himself. It is the inherent and everlasting mercy of God made apparent to human eyes and ears. The everlasting love was disclosed by our Lords life and death. It showed that God forgives, because He loves to forgive. Does not St. Paul tell us that love is the highest virtue and grace of man? Does not St. John tell us that the very essence of the name and nature of God is love? Well, then, did the early Christians reason when they declared that the blood is but the symbol of that which is the most precious, perfect, and potent force in the whole universe-whether it be affirmed of either God or man-love, unspeakable, all blessed, eternal love. (J. T. Stannard.)

The precious blood of Christ

The precious blood of Christ is useful to Gods people in a thousand ways. After all, the real preciousness of a thing in the time of trial, must depend upon its usefulness. You have heard the story of the man in the desert, who stumbled, when near to die, upon a bag, and opened it, hoping that it might be the wallet of some passerby, and he found in it nothing but pearls! If they had been crusts of bread, how much more precious would they have been! This may not be according to political economy, but it is according to common sense.

I. The precious blood of Christ has a redeeming power. It redeems from the law. Our law is fulfilled, for Christ is the end of the law for righteousness.

II. The value of the blood lies much in its atoning efficacy. We are told in Leviticus, that it is the blood which maketh an atonement for the soul. God never forgave sin apart from blood under the law. Christ, therefore, came and was punished in the place and stead of all His people. There is none other plan by which sinners can be made at one with God, except by Jesus precious blood.

III. The precious blood of Jesus Christ has a cleansing power (1Jn_1:7).

IV. A fourth property of the blood of Christ is its preserving power. Did not God see the blood before you and I saw it, and was not that the reason why He spared our forfeited lives when, like barren fig trees, we brought forth no fruit for Him? When I see the blood I will pass over you.

V. The blood of Christ is precious because of its pleading prevalence (Heb_12:24). When I cannot pray as I would, how sweet to remember that the blood prays!

VI. Christs blood is precious because of its melting influence on the human heart. Come for repentance, if you cannot come repenting.

VII. The same blood that melts has a gracious power to pacify.

VIII. Its sanctifying influence (Heb_9:14).

IX. Its power to give entrance. I am persuaded some of us do not come near to God, because we forget the blood. If you try to have fellowship with God in your graces, your experiences, your believings, you will fail; but if you try to come near to God as you stand in Christ Jesus, you will have courage to come; and on the other hand, God will run to meet you when He sees you in the face of His anointed.

X. Its confirming power. The promises are yea and amen, for no other reason than this, because Christ Jesus died and rose again.

XI. Its invigorating power. My blood is drink indeed. Oh, whenever your spirit faints, this wine shall comfort you; when your griefs are many, drink and forget your misery. O precious blood, how many are thy uses! May I prove them all!

XII. The blood has an overcoming power. It is written in the Revelation, They overcame by the blood of the Lamb. How could they do otherwise? (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The atonement

I. It is precious, because the blood of Gods anointed.

II. It is precious, for it satisfied the justice of God when nothing else could.

III. It is precious, for it is pleaded before God for the pardon and the sanctification of souls.

IV. It is precious, as applied to the conscience by the holy spirit for justification.

V. It is precious blood, as applied to the soul for sanctification.

VI. It is precious, because by it we overcome sin and hell. VII. It is precious blood, because it will be the believers theme in heaven. Application:

1. Which is most precious to you, gold and silver, and the precious things of this world, or the precious blood of Christ?

2. Have you ever felt the preciousness of this blood?

3. Remember, there is no advantage to be gained from this precious blood without an application of it to your soul.

4. Remember, that its value and virtue is just what it always was.

5. Be sure never to trample this precious blood under your feet, for its consequences will be most tremendous (Heb_10:29-30). (Studies For The Pulpit.)

Soul redemption

These words lead us to look at soul redemption in three aspects-

I. As an accomplished fact. Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, etc.

II. As unattainable by worldly wealth. Not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold.

III. As effected only by Christ. But with the precious blood of Christ. (Homilist.)

Christs precious blood

Precious blood indeed! who can estimate its value! the more it is known the higher it rises in the estimation of those who are acquainted with it. And yet it is neglected and despised by the generality of mankind. Trifles light as air are preferred before it.

I. Why is it precious?

1. Consider whose blood it is. The blood of Christ, the blood of our elder Brother, of a Friend, of a Prophet, Priest, and King-the blood of our incarnate God (Act_20:28).

2. Regard it as the evidence of infinite love. For whom was it shed? The Messiah was cut off, but not for Himself. He was wounded for our transgressions (Isa_53:5). As the apostle argues (Rom_5:6-10).

3. Yet more precious will it appear if we notice the miseries from which it frees us-and the unspeakable blessings it has purchased for us. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace (Eph_1:7). The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin (1Jn_1:7; Rev_1:5-6). They who were sometimes far off are brought nigh by the blood of Christ (Eph_2:13). Having made peace through the blood of His Cross (Col_1:20). Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God (Rom_3:20-26; 1Jn_2:1-2; Heb_9:11-18). Can a man realise these blessings and live in the habitual enjoyment of them; and bear in mind the price paid to procure them, and not feel the preciousness of the blood of Christ?

4. It is precious as affording an all-prevailing plea in our petitions at the throne of grace-and an universal antidote to the temptations of Satan and unbelief.

5. The efficacy of this blood enhances its preciousness. Jesus by His one oblation of Himself once offered has made a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world. Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world (Joh_1:29). Who can comprehend the value of such a ransom!

6. The perpetuity of blessedness which it ensures. Whom it blesses it blesses forever. Jesus by His own offering hath perfected forever them that are sanctified (Heb_10:14).

II. To whom this blood is precious. Would to God that I could say it is so to all! but alas! this is not the case. Neither is it true of the many. The great majority count the blood of the covenant wherewith they are sanctified an unholy thing (Heb_10:29). And will you not commemorate the shedding of that blood? (R. Simpson, M. A.)

Choice things costly

Yonder ermine, flung so carelessly over the proud beautys shoulder, cost terrible battles with polar ice and hurricane. All choicest things are reckoned the dearest. So is it, too, in heavens inventories. The universe of God has never witnessed aught to be reckoned in comparison with the redemption of a guilty world. That mighty ransom no such contemptible things as silver and gold could procure. Only by one price could the church of God be redeemed from hell, and that the precious blood of the Lamb without blemish or spot, the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. (T. L. Cuyler, D. D.)

The cost of redemption

A little boy about ten years old was once bidden by his father to go and do some work in the field. He went as he was told, but took little pains about it, and made very slow progress in his task. By and by his father called him to him very kindly, and said, Willy, can you tell me how much you have cost me since you were born? The father waited a while, and then said that he reckoned he had cost him a hundred pounds. The lad opened his eyes and wondered at the expense he had been. He seemed to see the hundred sovereigns all glittering before him, and in his heart determined to repay his father by doing all he could to please him. The reproof sank deeper into his heart than a hundred stripes, When I read the story it occurred to me, What have I cost my Saviour? Then I remembered the words, Ye are not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. (G. Everard.)

Suitable return for Christs blood shedding

In an Italian hospital was a severely wounded soldier. A lady visitor spoke to him, dressed his wounds, smoothed his pillow, and made him all right for the day. When leaving she took a bouquet of flowers, and laid it beside his head. The soldier, with his pale face and eyes full of tears, looked up, and said: That is too much kindness. She was a lady with a true Italian heart, and looking back to the soldier, she quietly replied, No, not too much for one drop of Italian blood. Shall we not freely own that the consecration of all our powers of body and spirit is not too much to give in return for the shedding of our Emmanuels blood on our behalf?

Redemption costly

But why should so vast a price be required? Is man worth the cost? A man may be bought in parts of the world for the value of an ox. It was not man simply, but man in a certain relation, that had to be redeemed. See one who has been all his days a drunken, idle, worthless fellow. All appropriate to him the epithet worthless-worth nothing. But that man commits a crime for which he is sentenced to be hanged, or to be imprisoned for life. Go and try to buy him now. Redeem him and make him your servant. Let the richest man in Cambridge offer every shilling he possesses for that worthless man, and his offer would be wholly vain. Why? Because now there is not only the man to be considered, but the law. It needs a very great price to redeem one man from the curse of the law of England; but Christ came to redeem all men from the curse of the Divine law. (William Robinson.)

A lamb without blemish and without spot.-

Christs innocence

1. This sets out His love so much the more, that being innocent, would suffer for us wicked wretches.

2. This teaches us to imitate Him, and in all things to be innocent as He was.

3. In that Christ being so innocent, was yet willing to suffer and offer His blood, let Us imitate Him in this also; let us be patient in bearing troubles and persecution; we must suffer for His cause (though causelessly) cheerfully and willingly. We must also suffer patiently. (John Rogers.)

Without spot

As one flaw or vein in the marble fatally damages the sculptors work; as one speck in the lens of a microscope or telescope destroys its use and demands a recasting; as one leak would inevitably submerge the noblest vessel that ever rode file waters; so one leak in the Mighty Ark of Mercy would have been fatal to His qualifications as a ransom for the guilty. (J. R. Macduff, D. D.)

Foreordained before the foundation of the world.-

The ransom

I. The divine foreordination of the sacrifice.

1. Who verily was foreordained. The literal word here is foreknown. Before the world was God concentrated His thoughts upon His Son, not only in His personal, but also in His official capacity as the future Redeemer of mankind.

2. Who was verily foreordained before the foundation of the world. Before it in time. This affords a due to the occupation of the Divine Mind before the creative fiat first broke on the silence of immensity.

3. Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you. A correspondence therefore obtains between time and eternity, between the manifestation in history and the prearrangement in the unfathomable abysses of the Divine Mind. Foreordination implies a plan, a plan of the world and a plan of salvation. The idea of redemption, of the Son as a propitiation for sin, seems to be the first and most important thought of God. It was not an after thought, but the ruling thought, and around it all other thoughts were systematically arranged. Creation is to redemption what the scaffolding is to the temple; when the latter will be finished, the former will be consigned to the flames.

II. The preciousness of the sacrifice.

III. The efficiency of the sacrifice.

1. The efficiency of the sacrifice is to be seen in the fact that it satisfied Divine justice, for the text informs us that God raised Him up from the dead and gave Him glory. The exact bearing of the atonement on the Divine nature is a mystery we cannot fully explain. But whatever hindrances to our salvation there were, arising out of the essential and governmental righteousness of God, they were all removed by the death of the Cross.

2. The second proof of the efficiency, and therefore of the sufficiency, of the ransom is-that it actually delivers men from their vain conversation received by tradition from the fathers. Three interpretations have been given of this phrase, but whichever interpretation we take we find the sacrifice of Christ equally efficacious. One interpretation is, that Christs death has redeemed men from the oppressive sway of religious traditionalism. A second interpretation is, that by vain conversation received by tradition from the fathers we are to understand the combined power of habit and example in fashioning the course of mens lives. A further interpretation has been suggested, namely, that by vain conversation received by tradition from the fathers we are to understand original sin, the innate depravity communicated from generation to generation according to the law of heredity. And it must be conceded that this form of corruption is the most difficult of all to be rooted out of our nature. But, thanks be to God, the blood of Christ can wash out the dye; and we look confidently forward to the day when we shall have been actually redeemed from evil in every shape and form, when we shall be clean without and white within, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. (J. C. Jones, D. D.)

The foreknown redemption

I. The purpose foreknown; but it is well rendered foreordained, for this knowing is decreeing, and there is little profit in distinguishing them. We say usually that where there is little wisdom there is much chance, and, amongst men, some are far more foresighted than others; yet the wisest and most provident men, wanting skill to design all things aright and power to act as they contrive, meet with many unexpected casualties and frequent disappointments in their undertakings. But with God, where both wisdom and power are infinite, there can be neither any chance nor resistance from without nor any imperfection at all in the contrivance of things within Himself that can give cause to add, or abate, or alter any thing in the frame of His purposes. The model of the whole world and of all the course of time was with Him one and the same from all eternity, and whatsoever is brought to pass is exactly answerable to that pattern. Before man had made himself miserable, yea, before either he or the world was made, this thought of boundless love was in the bosom of God, to send His Son forth from thence, to bring fallen man out of misery and restore him to happiness, and to do this, not only by taking on his nature, but the curse, to shift it off from us that were sunk under it, and to bear it Himself, and by bearing it to take it away.

II. The performance of this purpose. Was manifest in these last times for you. He was manifested by His incarnation, manifested in the flesh, and manifested by His marvellous works and doctrine, by His sufferings and death, resurrection and ascension, by the sending down of the Holy Ghost according to His promise, and by the preaching of the gospel.

III. The application of this manifestation. For you. The apostle represents these things to those he writes to particularly for their use. Therefore he applies it to them, but without prejudice to the believers who went before or of those who were to follow in after ages. He who is here said to be foreordained before the foundation of the world is therefore called A Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. And as the virtue of His death looks backward to all preceding ages, whose faith and sacrifices looked forward to it, so the same death is of force and perpetual value to the end of the world. (Abp. Leighton.)

For you, who by Him do believe in God.-

We cannot believe in God, but by the Sea

For-

1. The Father dwelleth in the light that none can attain unto. How, then, shall we come to Him of ourselves, we being so poor and weak, and He of so infinite majesty? As in the summer we cannot directly look upon the sun shining in his full strength, but may view it in a pail of water, so must we see the Father in the Son, who is the image of the Father and the ingraven form of His person.

2. God is infinitely just, and we extremely wicked; He a consuming fire, and we stubble. How, then, can we come to Him, believe in Him, or take comfort, but only in and by the Lord Jesus our Mediator? (John Rogers.)

That raised Him up from the dead.-

A risen and glorified Saviour the ground of hope and confidence

The apostle presents Christ under three grand aspects.

I. As raised from the dead by the power of God the father. The resurrection of Christ is a fundamental article of our religion.

1. The resurrection of Christ was necessary. The graves of earthly princes are the end of their glory, the termination of all their conquests; the grave of Christ becomes the scene of His divinest achievement.

2. The resurrection of Christ is established, as a fact, on the surest basis. Divine wisdom seems to have taken particular care to guard it against all reasonable grounds of suspicion and doubt.

3. The resurrection of Christ was the acknowledged work of a Divine power.

II. As glorified by the Father subsequently to His resurrection.

1. The resurrection imparted to Him the glory of a Divine nature in the conviction of mortals.

(1) This it effected by removing the disgrace which death attached to Him, in the professed character of a Divine deliverer, and attesting Him to be the Prince of Life.

(2) The resurrection gave Him this glory also by putting the stamp of the Divine approbation on all His assertions.

2. He was glorified with the investment of sovereign power in the nature in which He rose from the dead. This is what is called His mediatorial glory.

III. As the ground and occasion of a lively faith and hope in us towards God. That your faith and hope might be in God.

1. In His willingness to save sinners for His Sons sake.

2. Our faith and hope are in God, through Christ, in relation to the possession of a future and blessed state in reserve for believers after death.

3. Our faith and hope are in God, through Jesus Christ, in relation to the restoration of our bodies at the last day from the gloom and dishonour of the grave. (J. Leifchild.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Pe 1:17. And if ye call on the Father — With an expectation of being heard; or, as you desire or expect audience and acceptance at God’s hands; who, without respect of persons — Which can have no place with God; see note on Rom 2:11; judgeth according to every man’s work — According to the tenor of his life and conversation; pass the time of your sojourning — The short season of your abode on earth; in fear — In the reverential and awful fear of God, in an humble and loving fear of offending him, in a watchful fear of your spiritual enemies, and in a jealous fear of yourselves, lest a promise being left you of entering into his rest, you should, through lukewarmness, sloth, and indolence, or through levity, carelessness, and negligence, after all, come short of it. This fear is a proper companion and guard of hope. The word παροικια, here rendered sojourning, properly signifies the stay which travellers make in a place while finishing some business. The term, therefore, is applied with great propriety to the abode of the children of God in the present world, as it signifies that this earth is not their home, and that they are to remain in it only a short time. See on Heb 11:13.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

c. Exhortation to fear in view of the judgment, 1Pe_1:17-21.

17. If… Father—Better, since ye call on him as Father, being children, as they were, of him who is also their Judge.

Without respect—Impartially; regarding the work of every man, unerringly read by the all-seeing eye, and not his race, birth, colour, wealth, or social position. The apostle learned this doctrine, and announced it in his speech, at the house of Cornelius. Act_10:34-35.

Pass—The verb corresponds to conversation in 1Pe_1:15.

Sojourning—Away from home, as in a foreign land. The feeling that they were as exiles seems to have been fixed deep in the souls of the early Christians.

In fear—The proper complement of hope, 1Pe_1:13. Hope unguarded becomes careless and baseless; fear without hope is wretched and despairing. True fear, opposed to all carnal security, is reverential, and anxious that nothing shall be found wanting in the day of judgment. For, though a tenderly loving father, God is a sternly just judge.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

1Pe_1:17. The Father.—Better, “a Father.” God apprehended as Father through our apprehension of the Sonship of Christ. Plumptre reminds us that “the sequel shows this attribute of Fatherhood is not thought of as excluding the idea of judgment, but gives assurance that the judgment will be one of perfect equity.” Sojourning.—(See 1Pe_1:1). Fear.—Not dread, but seriousness and self-distrust. “This fear is not cowardice (nor superstition); it drowns all lower fears and begets true fortitude” (Leighton).

1Pe_1:19. Precious blood.—Order of the Greek is, “with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (even that) of Christ.”

1Pe_1:20. Fore-ordained.—Lit. “foreknown,” which, however, implies “fore-ordination.” Last times.—“At the end of the times.”

1Pe_1:21. Faith.—πίστις. Relates to things present which, though invisible, are realised by the eye of the mind. Hope.—ἔλπις. Relates to things in the distant future, which are objects of such loveliness that they fill the heart and engage the affections, as if they were near at hand (Webster and Wilkinson).

1Pe_1:22. Good MSS. omit the word “pure.”

1Pe_1:23. Born again.—Better, “having been begotten again.”

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—1Pe_1:17-25

The Fear of Son-like Sons.—The key-note of this passage is the sentence, “pass the time of your sojourning in fear.” There is a godly fear, and there is a slavish fear; the right fear of the child, and the wrong fear of the slave, or of the child in whom all right feeling is crushed. Such proper filial fear—

I. Is based on right thoughts of God.—The point of 1Pe_1:17 is brought out in the Revised Version. “And if ye call on Him as Father.” But that is precisely what our Lord taught His disciples to do. “When ye pray, say, Abba, Father.” A Christian is marked off from all the world by the thought he has of God, and the name in which he embodies his thought. He must, of course, seek to gain true and worthy thoughts of the Father, and they will always be such as the Lord Jesus Christ had, which led Him to address God as “Holy Father,” “Righteous Father.” It is thought that if men call God “Father,” they will think of him after the patterns of human fatherhood; but surely that is fully guarded against by associating the thought of God with the thought of fatherhood. What is added to our thought of God, by calling Him Father, is His personal interest in each one of us; His personal affection for each one; and His personal service to each one. There is no more reverent name than father, and no more reverent relation than father and son. The fear men have for a “thundering Jove,” or for an autocratic king, is ignoble when compared with that which they have for their fathers; and the fear of son-like sons of the Father-God is an altogether refined, gracious, inspiring, and ennobling feeling; it is the secret of the beautiful life.

II. Is based on right thoughts of redemption.—“Knowing that ye were redeemed, not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, … but with precious blood.” The expression, “from your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers,” makes precise application of the passage to the Jewish Christians, who had been brought over from formal Judaism into spiritual Christianity. The rest of the verses may be taken with a general application. They express the idea of redemption which will always nourish a true and worthy fear. Our redemption was a costly ransom: our liberty unto righteousness was obtained at a priceless price. In common life the cost of a thing puts a value on it, and we fear to lose it, or to damage it. And that is a right fear, the fear we should have for our spiritual life, because of the cost of its purchase. A cost only the more impressive that it is not weighted as silver and gold, but is spiritual value, life, even Divine life, figured for us as “precious blood.” “That blood, the life which it represented, poured out upon the cross, took its place among the things that were not corruptible.” The reference to the “lamb” is probably due to St. Peter’s thinking of John’s famous sentence, “Behold the Lamb of God.” Mason has a good note. “How Christ’s death freed them from their ‘vain conversation’ is not explained here; but we may give a twofold explanation. Historically, it did so, because, when they came to realise that their Messiah could only reach His glories through suffering, it gave them a new insight into the whole meaning of the system under which they had been brought up. It did also, however, doubtless, in a more mysterious way, such as we cannot imagine, procure in God’s sight their emancipation.” “The whiteness, the helplessness, the youth, the innocence, and the patience, of the lamb, make it a natural symbol of our Lord.”

III. Is based on right thoughts of present claims (1Pe_1:22).—“Seeing ye have purified your souls in your obedience to the truth unto unfeigned love of the brethren, love one another from the heart, fervently.” It is the constant teaching of the apostles that Christianity makes two claims on men; first, the claim to love God; then the claim to love one another. And just as heart-love to God will guarantee the right service of God, so heart-love for the brethren will ensure and preserve right relations with them, and the due fulfilment of all brotherly duties. St. John puts the connection between the love of God and the love of the brethren in a very strong and impressive sentence: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen. And this commandment have we from Him, that he who loveth God love his brother also.”

The present claim, then, is to “love the brethren,” and the claim involves every service that love can render to them. But the question may properly be asked, Is it possible to make ourselves love? The answer is twofold.

1. We can create an ideal which is lovable, and which we cannot help loving; and we can see that ideal in our brethren, when they are not lovable in themselves. Our ideal is Christ. We cannot help loving Him wherever we find Him.

2. Though we cannot make ourselves love, we can put ourselves in such relations as will help to inspire love. We often find that knowing persons in the intimacy of life, in common work, or common sorrow, brings round to us a love for them which we should not otherwise have felt. And the apostles are so anxious about keeping up the fellowship, because that is the secret of keeping up the love.

IV. Is based on right thoughts of fleeting time.—And the particular thought is, that all that belongs to the material, sensuous, earthly life is touched with this weakness—it is uncertain, transitory. Time stamps everything as frail. All time-conditioned things are below man, when man is seen to be a spiritual being. The regenerate man, begotten again of the incorruptible seed, is not time-conditioned, and nothing that he does is time-conditioned. Spiritual life belongs to the sphere of things permanent and abiding. By cherishing such thoughts as these we may dignify that new life with which we are quickened, and make altogether more important its culture, and its expression, in holy life and service, than the attainment of any earthly good, since on such attainment must always rest the frailty that belongs to the seen, the temporal, the transitory. Only the man who keeps in right relations with the spiritual and permanent can ever hope to be, or to keep, in right relations with the temporal and transitory.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

1Pe_1:21. Three Stages of Faith.—What is the point of this text? It sets forth who is the final object of faith. It is God. Herein the text may appear to differ from the usual run of texts in the gospels and epistles: e.g., “By faith which is in Me” (Christ). “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Can we find out the harmony of these apparently differing statements? This must certainly be the first and most absolute of truths: man’s glory and blessedness come of trusting God. Illustrate from Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, Davidic psalms, prophecies, etc. Such trust in God sets man right with God. Failing in such trust shows man to be wrong. Self-trust involves distrust of God. Still, it is the fact, that man has to be helped to trust by some agency—medium, mediator. Now, to St. Peter Christ seemed to be the highest, most efficient help to this faith in God. For the Jew, who has faith in God, Christ is the clearing, enlarging, and perfecting of faith. For the Gentile, Christ is the medium by which faith in God is reached. As Christianly-educated, we occupy in some degree the Jew-place. But, more truly, we follow on the line of the Gentile, and reach the full saving relation to God by three stages of faith.

I. First stage of faith.—Faith in Christ. See the prominent place of Christ in the New Testament; in preaching; in the early experience of Christians. And yet, when the gospels are carefully studied, we are impressed by the persistency with which Jesus always puts God the Father first. Observe how well fitted Christ was to win the trust of men. Notice His appeals

(1) to man’s understanding by His truth;

(2) to man’s reverence by His miracles;

(3) to man’s conscience by His appeals and by His life;

(4) to man’s affections by His Spirit;

(5) to man’s emotions by His cross. The whole man is swayed toward faith by the influence of Christ.

II. Second stage of faith.—God’s relation to Christ. There was more in Christ than even the apostles could at first see. The relation does not come out during our Lord’s life. Then God witnesses to Him. The relation comes to view in His resurrection, ascension, and glorification. Then He comes to be apprehended as God in Christ. Sometimes it is said that Christ raised Himself, usually it is said that God raised Him, from the dead. Resurrection, and Christ in heaven, bring God into prominence.

III. Third stage of faith.—In God. This is reached actually, as a result of Christian experience; but not always consciously. So, through Christ, the perfect restoration is effected, and man’s faith and hope are set on God. See in this faith in God

(1) our perfect communion with Old Testament saints,

(2) the true mediatorial work of Christ; He is bringing many sons unto the glory of this higher faith in God.

The Father’s Part in the Work of Redemption.

I. The part that the Father bore in the work of redemption.—

1. He ordained His Son to the mediatorial office.

2. He manifested Him to the world.

3. After suffering Him to be put to death, He raised Him up from the dead.

4. He exalted Him to heaven, and invested Him with all heaven’s glory.

II. The effect that the consideration of this is intended to produce upon us. It should—

(1) Confirm our faith;

(2) enliven our hope. Address

(1) those who are in unbelief;

(2) those who yield to doubts and fears.—C. Simeon, M.A.

The Agent and Cause of Faith.—The redeemed are also described here by their faith and hope, the cause of which is Jesus Christ. “You do by Him believe in God”—by Him as the author, encourager, support, and finisher, of your faith; your faith and hope may now be in God, as reconciled to you by Christ the Mediator. God in Christ is the ultimate object of a Christian’s faith, which is strongly supported by the resurrection of Christ, and the glory that did follow.—Matthew Henry.

The Final Object of Saving Faith.—Already we are getting our springtime remindings of resurrection. Nature has begun her teachings. At times we feel the pleasant sunshine and the warmth of the air. Already the drooping snowdrops, the pale primrose, and the brilliant yellow daffodil have begun to whisper to us that winter is gathering up her skirts, and preparing to hasten away. Nature keeps her own times, and even now the “time of the singing of birds is come,” and the “flowers appear on the earth.” At this time we naturally cherish resurrection thoughts, and dwell on His being raised from the dead who has “brought life and immortality to light by His gospel.” The resurrection, of which all else seems to be but the shadow, and the symbol, and the suggestion, is the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. But that should never be regarded as standing alone; it includes and involves our resurrection in Him, first from sin, and then from the grave. “Because He lives, we shall live also.” Three visions rise before us. We see Christ rising from the grave, “leading captivity captive, and receiving gifts for men.” We see the human soul rising from the death of sin unto the life of righteousness, in response to the awakening call of Him who “liveth for ever and ever.” And we see that day of days, for which all other days were made, when “all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth.” In the text the reference to the resurrection is necessary, but it is subordinate to the purpose of the apostle. It stands in relation to another point which is more directly occupying the writer’s attention. He is really meeting a question which was then anxiously asked; which has always been anxiously asked; and which is anxiously asked to-day. Who is the final object of our faith? The apostle at first surprises us—upsets our cherished ideas. He says, God is the final object of our faith. God who was in Christ. God as He who raised up Christ from the dead. “Who, by Him, do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, … that your faith and hope may be in God.” In this way of putting the truth, there is at least a seeming variation from many familiar passages in the Acts and in the Epistles. “The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” The eunuch said, “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.” The jailor at Philippi was required to “believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that he might be saved.” The apostle John declares, “He that hath the Son hath life.” It is perfectly certain that Peter could have had no intention of setting aside, or in any way dishonouring, Christ, when he put the truth in the particular way in which we find it presented in our text. How, then, can we set out the harmony of these two differing kinds of statement. Our faith is to be in Christ. And yet our faith is, through Christ, to be in God. This much is quite clear: the first, and the most absolutely universal of all truths is, that man’s blessedness comes, and can only come, out of trusting God. Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, all lived before the Mosaic period, and they believed God, and it was counted to them for righteousness. The foundation law of Mosaism is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart.” But love implies a foregoing faith, on which alone the love can rest. The psalms are full of expressions of trust, but they are all trustings in God. The prophets unite to bid us “Trust in the Lord for ever”; and they assure us that the “just by faith shall live.” But this is also evidently true; man has always needed to be helped to trust in God by some medium, or agency. Vision and promise helped Abraham to his trust. Moses was the medium or mediator who helped the people of Israel to their trust. That trust alone sets man the creature in right relations with God the Creator and Father. He requires it, and we ought to give it. This must be clearly seen to stand as the absolute first and universal truth: man’s salvation—man’s realisation of his fullest and best possibility—comes out of trusting God. To the mind of Peter, Jesus Christ seemed to be the highest, the most perfect, the most gracious help to saving faith in God. Jesus Christ was to him God’s own way of helping His people to the trust in Him which saves. Peter wrote his epistle for Gentile Christians, as distinguished from Jewish Christians. It was he who opened the door to the Gentiles in recognising the Christian faith and standing of Cornelius the centurion. His epistle is addressed to the “strangers scattered abroad,” and we may properly look for some precise adaptations of the Christian truths to their circumstances and points of view. For the Jew, who knows God, the one living God, the truth could be put in this form by the great, the Divine Teacher: “Ye believe in God; believe also in Me.” “This is life eternal, to know Thee the only true God.” For the Gentile, who only comes upon the right knowledge of God through the revelation which centres in the “Man Christ Jesus,” the truth can best be put in this form by the disciples of the great Teacher: “Who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead.” Gentiles must be set looking to Christ as the sole medium through which the right, the worthy knowledge of God can come. There is a sense in which, being Christianly educated, we occupy the place of the Jew. We come into personal relations with Christianity through a previous suitable apprehension of God; and yet we may more truly be said to follow along the line of the Gentile; for it is only through our Lord’s humanity that we can ever gain the right impression of His Divinity. It must be man first, then the God-man. The partaker of flesh and blood seen at last to be “God manifest in the flesh.” Personal religion of trustful love and devotion to Christ, leading us into saving and sanctifying relations with God—the One, the Triune God. More or less distinctly there can be traced three stages in the growth of Christian experience. There are three steps in Christian faith. By faith we come, in a regular advance, to apprehend three things.

1. Christ.

2. God’s relation to Christ.

3. God. Christian experience arrives at its perfection when God is “all in all.” On the Mount of Transfiguration, when the cloud had passed, the disciples saw “Jesus only.” On the Mount of Beatification, when all the cloud shadows of earth shall have passed, the disciples of Jesus will see “God only.” “Then shall the Son also Himself be subject unto Him that put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.”

I. The first stage of faith is faith in Jesus Christ.—You cannot want me either to show, or to prove, or to vindicate the fact that the Lord Jesus has the most prominent place in the New Testament, in preaching, in teaching, in thinking, in writing, or in early religious experience. If there is anything self-evident, that is. Fully, heartily, rejoicingly acknowledging that fact, there is, nevertheless, something very remarkable that comes into view when we come to study it carefully. Christ always puts the Father before Himself. He never proposes to absorb the faith and love of His disciples. He receives them only that thus He might help the disciples into the love and trust of the Father. He says, “My Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.” “My Father is greater than I.” “Your heavenly Father knoweth what things ye have need of.” “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by Me.” “I do always the things that please Him.” At first Christ is presented to the seeking soul, and He fills all his vision. And we could dwell long and lovingly on the ways in which Jesus Christ is fitted for winning the love and trust of men. He appeals to man’s understanding by the truths which He reveals and teaches—momentous truths concerning God and man, and sin, and salvation, and righteousness, and the future. He appeals to the reverence of men by the miracles, which declare that in Him is the great power of God. He appeals to men’s consciences by presenting the standard of the perfect human life. He appeals to men’s affections by His Divine tenderness, and pitying gentleness, and love. He sways the deepest emotions of men by the persuasions of His cross. Jesus Christ, in His human manifestation, in His earthly life of sympathy and of suffering, has a strange power on us. He seems at first to fill the whole foreground, and sways our whole manhood toward faith. Peter speaks the truth for us when He speaks of Jesus Christ in this way. “Whom, having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

II. The second stage of faith is faith in God’s relation to Christ.—Once setting our heart on Christ, our faith wants to know better Him on whom it rests. Evidently there are more and deeper things in Jesus Christ than the soul can see in its first apprehensions of Him; than even the apostles could find out while they were with their Master in the limited fellowship of the flesh. Many of their fuller and deeper apprehensions come out to view in their epistles, which are precisely this: soul-readings of the mystery of Christ, in the illumination of the Holy Ghost. Only to one point of this can our attention now be given. In Christian life there is a strong, masterful instinct, which makes us linger, with chief interest and concern, about the records of our Lord’s resurrection. It is not peculiar to us in these days. The evangelists did; the apostles did. Paul writes, “It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen again.” “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.” Now, what is it comes to view when we let the apostles guide us into the mysteries of the resurrection? This: God was in the closest relation to the Redeemer’s work. Sometimes it is indicated that Christ raised Himself, by His own inherent power; but usually it is intimated, as in our text, that God raised Him. The salvation was God’s, but it was wrought out by Christ, and in Him. The suggestions of resurrection and ascension are full of God, and they open to us the larger, richer meanings of familiar texts, such as these: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them.” “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” In the second stage faith embraces both God and Christ, as working together in the accomplishment of human salvation.

III. The third stage of faith is faith in God, which swallows up, absorbs, the faith in Jesus.—But this stage of faith is usually reached unconsciously. Many an advanced, experienced Christian stands high up on this level to-day, but does not know it, and would be half frightened if any one were to tell him that it was so with him. When I was a youth, and in the early periods of religious experience, I used to attend regularly the prayer-meetings, and found them specially helpful. I remember being struck with something which has given a key-note to the Christian thinking of my whole life. I observed that the young Christians prayed to Jesus, and the old Christians prayed to God. And I knew they both meant the same thing. In the young Christians’ prayers God was hardly mentioned. In the old Christians’ prayers Jesus was hardly mentioned. There is the sign of the growth of the Christian knowledge and experience. We begin, and we see Jesus, and God is in Jesus. We grow, and more and more we see God, until at last we see God only, and Jesus is in God. It remains still true that all the forms of thought are taken from Christ. The Christ-help to right thought, and view, and feeling, never passes away; but really the soul’s resting has come to be in God. And thus, in the most spiritual fashion, Christ’s work of restoration is fully accomplished for the individual. We apprehend God in Christ, we trust God, and so Christ is the means by which all Christ’s brothers are brought to His own son-like obedience to God, and trust in Him. Our faith and hope at last are fully set on God, and the law of life is fulfilled—God is become “all in all.” There are things suggested by this setting of truth, on which I invite you to dwell, meditatively, in the quiet hours of this day.

1. See the perfectness of our communion with all the Old Testament saints. A fellowship, not in the means by which they and we are helped to God, but a fellowship in the end. For, whether by angel-manifestation, symbolical ceremony, prophetic declaration, or the human life and teachings of the Son of God, we are all moving to one goal; for us all there is but one soul-rest—it is the rest that comes from the full trust, which carries our whole selves, and lays them on the everlasting arms of God. Enoch lay there. Abraham lay there. Moses lay there. Jesus Himself lay there. The whole round world is bound about with this golden chain of trust in God. One way or another, this way and every way, the souls of men are being caught, turned, helped to trust in God.

2. Dwell lovingly on the preciousness of that particular agency by which we have been thus caught, and drawn into our full trusting in God. I only heard Mr. Spurgeon preach a few times, but on one occasion he seemed to me to surpass himself, and thrilled us all with the holy passion of his utterance, childlike as the sermon was in its simplicity. He had taken as his text the words, “This is my beloved; this is my friend.” And the sermon was just a series of boastings and gloryings over Jesus, each section closing with the appeal, “ ‘This is my Beloved,’ will you make Him yours?” I should like to have my time open still, so that I might thus boast over Jesus my Saviour before you now. He is “worthy of more glory than Moses.” Poets did but sing out the deepest feeling of all loving souls, when they called Him—

“Thou highest, sweetest, fairest One

That eyes have seen, or angels known.”

3. But shall we be content to stay with the human manifestation of Christ, with His life and with His death? Or shall we be willing to let Him lead us on to the holier mysteries of His resurrection, and show us that, trusting Him, we are really trusting God, who “raised Him from the dead.” Are you willingly staying down on the low-levels of spiritual apprehension? or are you climbing the heights where the air is pure and clear, and the soul can see the eternal realities, and even the Christ-garment of God has fallen off Him, and the sky is pure blue from rim to rim—not one cloud sails across to throw a shadow, and you think, you feel, you know, that Christ has “delivered up the kingdom to the Father”? You see God only, and God is all in all. It is heaven all about you on those heights of spiritual experience. At last, helped by Christ—so sweetly helped by Christ—you have come to this, and this has gained the forever stamp—

“Your faith and hope are in God.”

1Pe_1:22. Fervent Love of the Brethren.—Selfishness, or the exaggerated love of self, was the source and seal of the fall of man. Love of God in Christ, through the power of the Spirit; and love of mankind, but most of all, love of those with whom God’s children shall dwell through all eternity—this is peculiarly and pre-eminently the work of the Holy Spirit. St. Peter is admonishing the brethren to abide in Christian kindness and affection; and he bids them consider the very purpose that God has wrought.

I. The work accomplished.—“Seeing ye have purified your souls.” The grand point is having the heart good. The heart is impure. What vain thoughts, evil inclinations, presumptuous actions, vain fancies, are continually gushing forth, as from a deep stream! To be pure in heart is to be pure in life. Man is not a passive subject, but an active agent. There must be co-operation, on our part, with the influence of the mighty Spirit of God, otherwise there can be no purifying of the soul.

II. The instrument of its accomplishment.—“Ye obey the truth.” It is a law of almost universal obtaining that, as we can do nothing without God, so, generally He will do nothing without us. He acts on the heart in order to achieve what He would have done; and so, in all the business of life, we have certain means to employ; and if we neglect them, or try to substitute our own, we have our toil in vain. The Divinely constituted means to the purifying of men’s souls is the truth. When men are disposed to find fault with God’s Word, and to discover imperfections in it, His people should honour it, cling to it, maintain it, exalt it, cherish it. To be immortal, great, and good, let a man study God’s Word. The grand point is to look beyond the instrument to the omnipotent power of the Holy Spirit.

III. One special result of this work.—“Unfeigned love of the brethren.” It is not merely love and charity to all men, but specially and specifically love of those united to us in a new birth, in new relationship to God, many members in one body. This yearning affection is one of the most blessed signs that a man has purified his soul, by obeying the truth.

IV. The beautiful exhortation.—“See that ye love one another with a pure heart, fervently.” Do not mistake the injunction. We must not confound the precious jewel with the metal in which the jewel is placed, “Fervently.” With a pure, unselfish love, with no sinister motive. “Without dissimulation.” There must be no appearance, no pretence, but the reality. “Fervent,” not cold. How fervent in heaven, where all tin and dross are purged away, the soul will be, swallowed up in the love of God!

1. If you desire to be holy and happy, set about it in the name of the Lord Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, and in obedience.—You may judge materially how far the work is progressing, if you feel a glowing love to the Father for Jesus’ sake, and desire as you have opportunity to do good unto all men.”

2. We must not attempt to do this in our own strength and resolution.—Philanthropy, intellectual culture, moral training, are beautiful, but there must be the power of the Spirit of God.

3. You must cultivate that spirit always and ever.—Canon Hugh Stowell, M.A.

1Pe_1:24-25. The Transitory and the Permanent.—This passage is brought before our minds every early summer time, by the sight and smell of the fields. The “fashion of this world passeth away.” “The Word of the Lord endureth for ever.” Away from changing, passing, transitory earth we may look upward to God, saying, “He liveth; and blessed be my Rock.” St. Peter evidently had in mind the poetical passage in the fortieth chapter of Isaiah. The figure of the grass is sufficiently impressive to us who see the swathes lying in the path of the mower; but it is more effective in the East, where the sudden blasts of scorching wind burn up the vegetation in an hour, and change freshness and flowers for barrenness and death. The Word of God endures for ever. It cannot be likened to anything on which rests the earthly stamp. It is not even like the giant trees, which grow on while the grass and the flowers of a hundred summers flourish and fade beneath them; for at last even the trees fail to respond to the wakening spring-breath, and the great trunks and branches crumble down to dust, and pass away. It is not even like the mighty hills, which, towering high above us, seem to have their foundations in the very centre of the earth. They also are weathering down, and shall one day change and pass. It is not even like the vast firmament, which keeps, through summer and through winter, its broad expanse of blue, though clouds all blackness, or clouds silver-tinged, sweep in ever-varying shapes across it; for at last “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise.” The Word of God is His revelation—His entire revelation. Not the Bible only, but every testimony that He is pleased to make to men of His will. Every utterance of God is permanent; it endures up to the very uttermost limit of necessity for it.

I. The transient character of all earthly things.—Everything has a body and a soul; a form that can be apprehended by our senses, that we may see and touch, and a mysterious and invisible substance, which is its real self, and of which the form is only the expression. George Macdonald’s saying may be applied to things as well as to persons. “We are accustomed to say that we are bodies, and have souls; whereas we should rather say, we are souls and have bodies.” Within everything there is a soul that abides—that is its real self—however its form may change. The grass of each springtime falls before the mower, but the spirit of the grass abides through all the generations. The million flowers of gay and pleasant summer-time fade and drop away, but the work of the flowers, in the toned and scented air, and in the pleasure they give, abides long after they have passed.

“The lily dies not, when both flower and leaf

Fade, and are strewed upon the chill, sad ground;

Gone down for shelter to its mother-earth,

’Twill rise, re-bloom, and shed its fragrance round.”

All nature seems to echo the message of the grass. The winter snow falls lightly, and lies in its white purity—mystic, wonderful—over all the land. But so soon it soils, and browns, and sinks, and passes all away! The spring flowers that come, responsive to the low sunshine and the gentle wind, are so fragile, they stay with us only such a little while, and then they pass away! The summer blossoms multiply, and stand thick over the ground, and they seem so strong in their rich, deep colours; yet they, too, wither and droop, and pass away. The autumn fruits cluster on the branches, and grow big in their ripening, but they, too, are plucked in due season, and pass away. The gay dress of varied leafage is soon stripped off by the wild winds and passes away. Down every channel of the hillside is borne the crumblings wasted from the “everlasting hills” that really are passing away. The hard trap rocks that hold in the wintry sea are yet worn down with its ceaseless chafing, and are passing away. And man!—does he differ from the things in the midst of which he is set? Nay, what a little thing is human life, even at the longest! We can scarcely reach to do anything great, or to get within sight of a life’s great purpose, before the call comes, bidding us away. It is not only true of us, it is true of our work. All the glory—all the goodliness—of man’s genius and enterprise and effort—it is all “as the flower of the field.” Man’s strength, and wisdom, and riches, and learning, and honour, and beauty, and science, and art—all are subject to change and decay. The moth and rust eat into them, and the thief steals them away. This is—

1. Impressively seen in the changes of our Church life. In a few years a congregation entirely passes away.

2. It is true of the very forms and modes in which one man strives to help and bless another. Some men’s ways of presenting God’s truth to us do help us more than the ways of others. But even our spiritual helpers do not stay with us long.

II. The permanent character of all Divine things.—Especially of all Divine revelations and declarations, for these are properly gathered into the term, the “Word of God.” Everything that speaks to our souls of God is a revelation to us. It may be a touch of nature. It may be only a pure white flower. It may be the pale gold and green of a late sunset. It may be the snowy crest of an Alpine mountain, lying still and pure against the summer’s deep blue sky. It may be the weird mist of the gloaming, creeping over the landscape. It may be the glimpse down some woodland vale of the “many twinkling sea.” It may be the solemn shadows of the secluded mountain tarn. It may be the great thunder-noise of God, echoing through the valleys. It may be the voice of some fellow man, translating into human words for us the great thoughts of God. Howsoever the Word of God may come into our souls, it is true for ever. All things that our souls hear, and feel, and know, are Divine, and permanent, and eternal things. When the very soul of nature speaks to our souls, its message is Divine and eternal. Have you forgotten when you first heard the voice of the flowers? They lived, and spoke to you of God. Have you forgotten the quiet lying on the country hill-side, when lost strength was slowly returning, and in the stillness, the very music of the earth seemed to be heard, creation hymning its chorus, “Praise God, praise God!” When God speaks to us by Divine providence, the message is permanent; our souls get it, and keep it for ever. The spiritual influences of our life-experiences are eternal. That revelation of redemption—if it is really made to our souls—is a permanent revelation. Everything that pleads in us for duty is eternal, because all such things bear on character, and character endures; its flower never withers nor falls; God puts upon it the immortal stamp, and crowns it with the eternal righteousness. Every voice that brings truth home to the soul is permanent. Every uplifting of the mystery of being that gives us a glimpse of reality, and a new hold on God, is permanent. All God’s comfortings abide with us. The troubles pass, but the “everlasting arms” stay underneath us. God’s comforts suit the moment, but they last for ever. And when God kindles hope, it is hope that cannot disappoint, that will never make ashamed. In the “Life of Dr. Horace Bushnell,” it is stated that the following words of his were found dimly pencilled on a stray sheet of paper. Referring to the time of his infancy, when he “came out in this rough battle with winds, winters, and wickedness,” he says, “My God, and my good mother, both heard the cry, and went to the task of strengthening me and comforting me together, and were able ere long to get a smile upon my face.… Long years ago she vanished; but God stays by me still, embraces me in my gray hairs as tenderly and carefully as she did in my infancy, and gives to me, as my joy, and the principal glory of my life, that He lets me know Him, and helps me with real confidence to call Him my Father.” It is true, but we need not trouble over it—“the fashion of this world passeth away.” It is true, and we will join in saying it with an exceeding great joy—“The Word of our God shall stand for ever.”

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1

1Pe_1:19. The Precious Blood.—One evening two soldiers were placed as sentries at the opposite ends of a sallyport or long passage, leading from the rock of Gibraltar to the Spanish territory. One of them, from the reading of the sacred Scriptures, was rejoicing in God his Saviour; while the other, from the same cause, was in a state of deep mental anxiety, being under strong convictions of sin, and earnestly seeking deliverance from the load of guilt that was pressing upon his conscience. On the evening alluded to, one of the officers, who had been out dining, was returning to the garrison at a late hour, and coming up to the sentry on the outside of the sallyport, and who was the soldier recently converted, he asked, as usual, for the watchword. The man, absorbed in meditation on the glorious things that had recently been unfolded to him, and filled with devout gratitude and love, on being roused from his midnight reverie, replied to the officer’s challenge with the words, “The precious blood of Christ.” He soon, however, recovered his self-possession, and gave the correct watch-word. But his comrade, who was anxiously seeking the Lord, and who was stationed as sentry at the other or inner end of the sallyport, a passage specially adapted for the conveyance of sound, heard the words, “the precious blood of Christ” mysteriously borne upon the breeze at the solemn hour of midnight. The words came home to his heart as a voice from heaven; the lord of guilt was removed, and the precious blood of Christ spoke peace to the soul of the sin-burdened soldier. He was afterwards, with others of his regiment, drafted for service in India, and proceeded to the island of Ceylon, where a long career of usefulness opened up before him, and where he became the honoured instrument, in the hands of the Lord, for the completion of a great and important work. Soon after arriving in Ceylon, his discharge was procured from his regiment, that he might fill the office of master of the principal school in Colombo, for which he was well qualified by a good education in early life. He soon acquired an intimate knowledge of the Cingalese language, and as a translation of the Bible into that tongue was lying in an unfinished state, owing to the death of the individual who commenced the work, he set himself to the task, and completed the Cingalese version of the Scriptures, which was afterwards printed by the British and Foreign Bible Society in four quarto volumes.

CHAPTER 2

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

1 Peter

FATHER AND JUDGE

1Pe 1:17.

‘If ye call on Him as Father,’ when ye pray, say, ‘Our Father which art in heaven.’ One can scarcely help supposing that the Apostle is here, as in several other places in his letter, alluding to words that are stamped ineffaceably upon his memory, because they had dropped from Christ’s lips. At all events, whether there is here a distinct allusion to what we call the Lord’s Prayer or no, it is here recognised as the universal characteristic of Christian people that their prayers are addressed to God in the character of Father. So that we may say that there is no Christianity which does not recognise and rejoice in appealing to the paternal relationship.

But, then, I suppose in Peter’s days, as in our days, there were people that so fell in love with one aspect of the Divine nature that they had no eyes for any other; and who so magnified the thought of the Father that they forgot the thought of the Judge. That error has been committed over and over again in all ages, so that the Church as a whole, one may say, has gone swaying from one extreme to the other, and has rent these two conceptions widely apart, and sometimes has been foolish enough to pit them against each other instead of doing as Peter does here, braiding them together as both conspiring to one result, the production in the Christian heart of a wholesome awe. If ye call on Him as Father ‘who, without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning in fear.’

So then, look at this twofold aspect of God’s character.

Both these conceptions ought to be present, flamingly and vividly, burning there before him, to every Christian man. ‘Ye call Him Father,’ but the Father is the Judge. True, the Judge is Father, but Peter reminds us that whatever blessed truths may be hived in that great Name of Father, to be drawn thence by devout meditation and filial love, there is not included in it the thought of weak-minded indulgence to His children, in any of their sins, nor any unlikelihood of inflicting penal consequences on a rebellious child. ‘Father’ does not exclude ‘Judge,’ ‘and without respect of persons He judgeth.’

‘Without respect of persons’--the word is a somewhat unusual New Testament one, but it has special appropriateness and emphasis on Peter’s lips. Do you remember who it was that said, and on what occasion he said it: ‘Now I perceive that God is no respecter of persons’? It was Peter when he had learned the lesson on the housetop at Joppa, looking out over the Mediterranean, and had it enforced by Cornelius’ message. The great thought that had blazed upon him as a new discovery on that never-be-forgotten occasion, comes before him again, and this unfamiliar word comes with it, and he says, ‘without respect of persons He judges.’ Mountains are elevated, valleys are depressed and sunken, but I fancy that the difference between the top of Mount Everest and the gorge through which the Jordan runs would scarcely be perceptible if you were standing on the sun. Thus, ‘without respect of persons,’ great men and little, rich men and poor, educated men and illiterate, people that perch themselves on their little stools and think themselves high above their fellows: they are all on one dead level in the eye of the Judge. And this question is as to the quality of the work and not as to the dignity of the doer. ‘Without respect of persons’ implies universality as well as impartiality. If a Christian man has been ever so near God, and then goes away from Him, he is judged notwithstanding his past nearness. And if a poor soul, all crusted over with his sins and leprous with the foulness of long-standing iniquity, comes to God and asks for pardon, he is judged according to his penitence, ‘without respect of persons.’ That great hand holds an even balance. And though the strictness of the judicial process may have its solemn and its awful aspect, it has also its blessed and its comforting one.

Now, do not run away with the notion that the Apostle is speaking here of that great White Throne and the future judgment that for many of us lies, inoperative on our creeds, on the other side of the great cleft of death. That is a solemn thought, but it is not Peter’s thought here. If any of you can refer to the original, you will see that even more strongly than in our English version, though quite sufficiently strongly there, the conception is brought out of a continuous Divine judgment running along, all through a man’s life, side by side with his work. The judgment here meant is not all clotted together, as it were, in that final act of judgment, leaving the previous life without it, but it runs all through the ages, all through each man’s days. I beseech you to ponder that thought, that at each moment of each of our lives an estimate of the moral character of each of our deeds is present to the Divine mind.

‘Of course we believe that,’ you say. ‘That is commonplace; not worth talking about.’ Ah! but because we believe it, as of course, we slip out of thinking about it and letting it affect our lives. And what I desire to do for you, dear friends, and for myself, is just to put emphasis on the one half of that little word ‘judgeth’ and ask you to take its three last letters and lay them on your minds. Do we feel that, moment by moment, these little spurs of bad temper, these little gusts of worldliness, that tiny, evanescent sting of pride and devildom which has passed across or been fixed in our minds, are all present to God, and that He has judged them already, in the double sense that He has appraised their value and estimated their bearing upon our characters, and that He has set in motion some of the consequences which we shall have to reap?

Oh! one sometimes wishes that people did not so much believe in a future judgment, in so far as it obscures to them the solemn thought of a present and a continuous one. ‘Verily, there is a God that judgeth in the earth,’ and, of course, all these provisional decisions, which are like the documents that in Scotch law are said to ‘precognosce the case,’ are all laid away in the archives of heaven, and will be produced, docketed and in order, at the last for each of us. Christian people sometimes abuse the doctrine of justification by faith as if it meant that Christians at the last were not to be judged. But they are, and there is such a thing as ‘salvation yet so as by fire,’ and such a thing as salvation in fulness. Do not let filial confidence drive out legitimate fear.

He ‘judges according to every man’s work.’ I do not think it is extravagant attention to niceties to ask you to notice that the Apostle does not say ‘works,’ but ‘work’; as if all the separate actions were gathered into a great whole, as indeed they are, because they are all the products of one mind and character. The trend and drift, so to speak, of our life, rather than its isolated actions and the underlying motives, in their solemn totality and unity, these are the materials of this Divine judgment.

Now, let me say a word about the disposition which the Apostle enjoins upon us in the view of these facts.

The Judge is the Father, the Father is the Judge. The one statement proclaims the merciful, compassionate, paternal judgment, the other the judicial Fatherhood. And what comes from the combination of these two ideas, which thus modify and illuminate one another? ‘Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.’ What a descent that sounds from the earlier verses of the letter: ‘In whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, even the salvation of your souls.’ Down from those heights of ‘joy unspeakable,’ and ‘already glorified,’ the apostle drops plump into this dungeon: ‘Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.’ Of course, I need not remind you that the ‘fear’ here is not the ‘fear which hath torment’; in fact, I do not think that it is a fear that refers to God at all. It is not a sentiment or emotion of which God is the object. It is not the reverent awe which often appears in Scripture as ‘the fear of God,’ which is a kind of shorthand expression for all modes of devout sentiment and emotion; but it is a fear, knowing our own weakness and the strong temptations that are round us, of falling into sin. That is the one thing to be afraid of in this world. If a man rightly understood what he is here for, then the only thing that he would be terrified for would be that he should miss the purpose of his being here and lose his hold of God thereby. There is nothing else worth being afraid of, but that is worth being afraid of. It is not slavish dread, nor is it cowardice, but the well-grounded emotion of men that know themselves too well to be confident and know the world too well to be daring and presumptuous.

Don’t you think that Peter had had a pretty rough experience in his life that had taught him the wisdom of such an exhortation? And does it not strike you as very beautiful that it should come, of all people in the world, from his lips? The man that had said, ‘Though all should forsake Thee, yet will not I.’ ‘Why cannot I follow Thee now?’ ‘Bid me come to Thee on the water.’ ‘This be far from Thee, Lord, it shall not be unto Thee’--the man that had whipped out his sword in the garden, in a spasm of foolish affection, now, in his quiet old age, when he has learnt the lesson of failures and follies and sins and repentance, says in effect: ‘Remember me, and do not you be presumptuous.’ ‘Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.’ ‘If I had known myself a little better, and been a little more afraid of myself, I should not have made such a fool of myself or such shipwreck of my faithfulness.’

Dear friends, no mature Christian is so advanced as that he does not need this reminder, and no Christian novice is so feeble as that, keeping obedient to this precept, he will not be victorious over all his evils. The strongest needs to fear; the weakest, fearing, is safe. For such fearfulness is indispensable to safety. It is all very well to go along with sail extended and a careless look-out. But if, for instance, a captain keeps such when he is making the mouth of the Red Sea where there are a narrow channel and jagged rocks and a strong current, if he has not every man at his quarters and everything ready to let go and stop in a moment, he will be sure to be on the reefs before he has tried the experiment often. And the only safety for any of us is ever to be on the watch, and to dread our own weakness. ‘Blessed is the man that feareth always.’

Such carefulness over conduct and heart is fully compatible with all the blessed emotions to which it seems at first antagonistic. There is no discord between the phrase that I have quoted about ‘joy unspeakable and full of glory,’ and this temper, but rather the two help one another. And such blended confidence and fear are the parents of courage. The man that is afraid that he will do wrong and so hurt himself and grieve his Saviour, is the man that will never be afraid of anything else. Martyrs have gone to the stake ‘fearing not them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do,’ because they were so afraid to sin against God that they were not afraid to die rather than to do it. And that is the temper that you and I should have. Let that one fear, like Moses’ rod, swallow up all the other serpents and make our hearts impervious to any other dread.

‘Pass the time of your sojourning.’ You do not live in your own country, you are in an alien land. You are passing through it. Troops on the march in an enemy’s country, unless they are led by an idiot, will send out clouds of scouts in front and on the wings to give timeous warning of any attempted assault. If we cheerily and carelessly go through this world as if we were marching in a land where there were no foes, there is nothing before us but defeat at the last. Only let us remember that sleepless watchfulness is needed only in this time of sojourning, and that when we get to our own country there is no need for such patrols and advance guards and rearguards and men on the flank as were essential when we were on the march. People that grow exotic plants here in England keep them in glass houses. But when they are taken to their native soil the glass would be an impertinence. As long as we are here we have to wear our armour, but when we get yonder the armour can safely be put off and the white robes that had to be tucked up under it lest they should be soiled by the muddy ways can be let down, for they will gather no pollution from the golden streets. The gates of that city do not need to be shut, day nor night. For when sin has ceased and our liability to yield to temptation has been exchanged for fixed adhesion to the Lord Himself, then, and not till then, is it safe to put aside the armour of godly fear and to walk, unguarded and unarmed, in the land of perpetual peace.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1:17 Christians’ citizenship is in heaven (1:1; see Phil 3:20); they live in this world as “temporary residents” who are uncomfortable with its values and who long for their true home.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

1Pe 1:17. Ἐπικαλεῖσθε, ye call upon) and are called by His name.—ἀπροσωπολήπτως, without respect of persons) whether any one is a Hebrew or a Greek.—ἀπροσωπολήπτως—ἐν φόβῳ) Comp. 2Ch 19:7.—ἔργον, work) The singular. The work of one man is one, whether it be good or evil.—ἐν φόβῳ, in fear) Fear is joined to hope, each flowing from the same source. Fear prevents us from falling away from hope.—παροικίας, of sojourning) He calls them strangers, because they are in the world, ch. 1Pe 2:11; not however without an allusion to the διασπορὰ, the dispersion, in Asia, 1Pe 1:1.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Pe_1:17. From here to the end of the verse the preceding exhortation is continued; the connection is shown by the copula καί.

καὶ εἰ πατέρα ἐπικαλεῖσθε] corresponding to the ὡς τέκνα ὑπακοῆς, 1Pe_1:14. εἰ is here: particula non conditionalis, sed assertiva, non dubitantis, sed rem notam praesupponentis (Calvin). The form of the sentence is, however, hypothetical; the sense is: if you act thus and thus, as ye are indeed now doing. By this form the language is made more impressive than it would have been by a simple causative particle.

ἐπικαλεῖσθαι] as medium, means to call upon (for the meaning to name, as Wiesinger, de Wette, Brückner take it, is supported in the classics only by a doubtful passage in Dio Cass. lxxvii. 7). πατέρα is the accusative of more precise definition (thus Hofmann also); Luther: since ye call on Him the (i.e. as, ὡς) Father. The sense is: if ye look on Him as Father who, etc., and ye acknowledge yourselves as His children.[87] It is to be noticed that the ἐπικαλεῖσθε corresponds to the καλέσαντα, v. 15; God has called believers,and they answer with the call to Him, in which they name Him Father. This mutual relationship lays the Christians under obligations to be holy as He is holy.[88]

τὸν ἀπροσωπολήπτως κρίνοντα τὸ ἑκάστου ἔργον] a circumlocution for God full of significance, instead of the simple ΤῸΝ ΘΕΌΝ, corresponding to the ἍΓΙΟΝ, 1Pe_1:15.

ἈΠΡΟΣΩΠΟΛΉΠΤΩς, a ἍΠ. ΛΕΓ., formed on the noun ΠΡΟΣΩΠΟΛΉΠΤΗς (Act_10:34), which is composed of ΠΡΌΣΩΠΟΝ and ΛΑΜΒΆΝΕΙΝ; see Meyer on Gal_2:6.

The present ΚΡΊΝΟΝΤΑ indicates that impartial judgment is a characteristic function of God. The apostle mentions ΤῸ ἜΡΓΟΝ as that according to which the judgment of God is determined; in this connection the plural is generally found (Rom_2:6); by the singular the whole conduct of man (outwardly and inwardly) is conceived as a work of his life.

ἙΚΆΣΤΟΥ] not without emphasis. It implies that the Christian alsoa son of God though he bewill, like all others, be judged according to his work; it is arbitrary to limit the application of the general term ἙΚΆΣΤΟΥ to Christians only (Schott); there is no thought here of the distinction between Jew and Gentile (Bengel).

The term judge, as applied to God, stands in a peculiar contrast to πατέρα. The Christian, while conscious of the love of God shed abroad in his heart (Rom_5:5), must still never forget that God judges the evil, that His love is an holy love, and that sonship involves obligation of obedience towards a just God.

ἐν φόβῳ τὸν … ἀναστράφητε] corresponding to the ἍΓΙΟΙ ἘΝ ΠΆΣῌ ἈΝΑΣΤΡΟΦῇ ΓΕΝΉΘΗΤΕ, 1Pe_1:15; the feeling which harmonizes with the thought of the impartial judge is the ΦΌΒΟς; thus Peter places ΦΌΒΟς first by way of emphasis. ΦΌΒΟς is here, indeed, not the slavish fear which cannot co-exist with love (see 1Jn_4:18); no more is it the reverence which an inferior feels for a superior (Grotius, Bolten, etc.); but it is the holy awe of a judge who condemns the evil; the opposite of thoughtless security. Calvin: timor securitati opponitur; cf. chap. 1Pe_2:17; 2Co_7:1; Php_2:12.[89]

τὸν τῆς παροικίας ὑμῶν χρόνον] specifies the duration of the walk ἐν φόβῳ; παροικία: the sojourn in a foreign country; in its strict sense, Act_13:17 (Ezr_8:34, LXX.); here applied to the earthly life of the Christian, inasmuch as their κληρονομία is in heaven, 1Pe_1:1. This expression serves to give point to the exhortation expressed, hinting as it does at the possibility of coming short of the home; cf. chap. 1Pe_2:11.

[87] It is possible, and as Gerhard and Weiss (p. 172) think probable, that Peter here alludes to the Lords Prayer.

[88] Schott rightly remarks that ἐπικαλεῖσθαι is based on the same common relationship as in the preceding verses; but here it is not considered as established by God, but as realized in practice by the readers, i.e. as subjectively known and acknowledged by them.

[89] Weiss (p. 170) thinks that the passage, Rom_8:15, proves Pauls fundamental views of Christian life to have been different from those of Peter; this opinion, however, is sufficiently contradicted by Weiss himself, who admits that in 2Co_7:1, Paul mentions the fear of God as a peculiar mark of the Christians life, and that he often speaks of a fear of Christ.Schott insists, in the first place, that φόβος be understood absolutely (without special reference to God as the judge) as the consciousness of liability to err, but afterwards more precisely defines the expression as that fear which is anxious that nothing should happen which might cause God, as the righteous judge, to refuse the inheritance to him who hopes to attain it.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

1Pe 1:17 , cf. Rom 2:10 f., εἰ πατέρα ἐπικαλεῖσθε , if ye invoke as Father : reminiscence of Jer 3:19 , εἰ πατέρα ἐπικαλεῖσθέ με (so Q [147] perhaps after 1 Peter, for εἶπα πατέρα καλέσετέ με ) cf. Psa 89:27 , αὐτὸς ἐπικαλέσεται με Πατήρ μου εἶ σύ . There may be a reference to the use of the Lord’s Prayer ( surname the Judge Father ); but the context of Jer. l.c. corresponds closely to the thought here: “All the nations shall be gathered … to Jerusalem, neither shall they walk any more after the stubbornness of their evil heart. In those day.… Judah and Israel shall come together out of the land of captivity … and I said ‘My father ye shall call me’.” ἀπροσωπολήμπτως summarises St. Peter’s inference from experience at Caesarea (Act 10:34 ) καταλαμβάνομαι ὅτι οὔκ ἐστιν προσωπολήμπτης ὁ θεός . Adjective and adverb are formed from λαμβάνειν πρόσωπον of LXX = נשא פוי receive ( lift up ) the face of, i.e., be favourable and later partial, to . The degeneration of the phrase was due to the natural contrast between the face and the heart of a man, which was stamped on the Greek equivalent by the use of πρόσωπον for mask of the actor or hypocrite . κρίνοντα . If the tense be pressed, compare the saying of Jesus recorded in Joh 12:31 , νῦν κρίσις ἐστιν τοῦ κόσμου τούτου . Rom 2:16 is referred to the last Judgment by διὰ χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ . But the present participle may be timeless as in ὁ καλῶν , ὁ βαπτίζων , etc. κατὰ τὸ ἑκάστου ἔργον , a commonplace Jewish and Christian, cf. Ps. 12:12 (cited Rom 2:6 ), σὺ ἀποδώσεις ἑκάστῳ κατὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτοῦ (Hebrew has the work ). R. Aqiba used to say … The world is judged by grace and everything is according to the work ( Pirqe Aboth. , iii. 24). For collective singular lifework , cf. also 1Co 3:13-15 , etc. ἐν φόβῳ , Fear is not entirely a technical term in N.T. Christians needed the warning to fear God (so Luk 12:5 ; 2Co 5:10 ), although love might be proper to the perfect Gnostic or Pharisee 1Jn 4:18 . The natural and acquired senses exist side by side, as appears in the use of ἄφοβος . Compare ἄφοβος οὐ δύναται δικαιωθῆναι ( Sir 1:22 ) with ἐν τούτῳ ἄφοβός εἰμι (Psa 27:2 , Symmachus) = in Him I am confident . τὸν τῆς παροικίας χρονον , during your earthly pilgrimage , which corresponds to the sojourn of Israel in Egypt (Act 13:17 ). If God is their Father, heaven must be their home (1Pe 1:4 ); their life on earth is therefore a sojourn (see on 1Pe 1:1 ). St. Paul has his own use of the metaphor (Eph 2:19 ). Gentile Christians are no longer strangers and sojourners, but fellow-citizens of the saints.

[147]. An eighth century version of Codex Vaticanus

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

As before he distinguished true faith and hope from false, so doth he now obedience, setting the quick and sharp sight of God, against an outward mask, and earnest reverence against vain severity.

If you will be called the sons of that Father.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

if ye call on--that is, "seeing that ye call on," for all the regenerate pray as children of God, "Our Father who art in heaven" (Mat 6:9; Luk 11:2).

the Father--rather, "Call upon as Father Him who without acceptance of persons (Act 10:34; Rom 2:11; Jam 2:1, not accepting the Jew above the Gentile, Ch2 19:7; Luk 20:21; properly said of a judge not biassed in judgment by respect of persons) judgeth," &c. The Father judgeth by His Son, His Representative, exercising His delegated authority (Joh 5:22). This marks the harmonious and complete unity of the Trinity.

work--Each man's work is one complete whole, whether good or bad. The particular works of each are manifestations of the general character of his lifework, whether it was of faith and love whereby alone we can please God and escape condemnation.

pass--Greek, "conduct yourselves during."

sojourning--The outward state of the Jews in their dispersion is an emblem of the sojourner-like state of all believers in this world, away from our true Fatherland.

fear--reverential, not slavish. He who is your Father, is also your Judge--a thought which may well inspire reverential fear. THEOPHYLACT observes, A double fear is mentioned in Scripture: (1) elementary, causing one to become serious; (2) perfective: the latter is here the motive by which Peter urges them as sons of God to be obedient. Fear is not here opposed to assurance, but to carnal security: fear producing vigilant caution lest we offend God and backslide. "Fear and hope flow from the same fountain: fear prevents us from falling away from hope" [BENGEL]. Though love has no fear IN it, yet in our present state of imperfect love, it needs to have fear going ALONG WITH It as a subordinate principle. This fear drowns all other fears. The believer fears God, and so has none else to fear. Not to fear God is the greatest baseness and folly. The martyrs' more than mere human courage flowed from this.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 17. And if ye call on the Father] Seeing ye invoke the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and your Father through Christ, and profess to be obedient children, and sojourners here below for a short time only, see that ye maintain a godly reverence for this Father, walking in all his testimonies blameless.

Who without respect of persons] God is said to be no respecter of persons for this reason among many others, that, being infinitely righteous, he must be infinitely impartial. He cannot prefer one to another, because he has nothing to hope or fear from any of his creatures. All partialities among men spring from one or other of these two principles, hope or fear; God can feel neither of them, and therefore God can be no respecter of persons. He approves or disapproves of men according to their moral character. He pities all, and provides salvation for all, but he loves those who resemble him in his holiness; and he loves them in proportion to that resemblance, i.e. the more of his image he sees in any, the more he loves him; and e contra. And every man's work will be the evidence of his conformity or nonconformity to God, and according to this evidence will God judge him. Here, then, is no respect of persons; God's judgment will be according to a man's work, and a man's work or conduct will be according to the moral state of his mind. No favouritism can prevail in the day of judgment; nothing will pass there but holiness of heart and life. A righteousness imputed, and not possessed and practised, will not avail where God judgeth according to every man's work. It would be well if those sinners and spurious believers who fancy themselves safe and complete in the righteousness of Christ, while impure and unholy in themselves, would think of this testimony of the apostle.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

17 And if ye call on the Father They are said here to call on God the Father, who professed themselves to be his children, as Moses says, that the name of Jacob was called on Ephraim and Manasseh, that they might be counted his children. (Genesis 48:16.) According to this meaning also, we say in French reclamer But he had a regard to what he had said before, “as obedient children.” And from the character of the Father himself, he shews what sort of obedience ought to be rendered. He judges, he says, without looking on the person, that is, no outward mask is of any account with him, as the case is with men, but he sees the heart, (1 Samuel 16:7;) and his eyes look on faithfulness. (Jeremiah 5:3.) This also is what Paul means when he says that God’s judgment is according to truth, (Romans 2:2;) for he there inveighs against hypocrites, who think that they deceive God by a vain pretense. The meaning is, that we by no means discharge our duty towards God, when we obey him only in appearance; for he is not a mortal man, whom the outward appearance pleases, but he reads what we are inwardly in our hearts. He not only prescribes laws for our feet and hands, but he also requires what is just and right as to the mind and spirit.

By saying, According to every man’s work, he does not refer to merit or to reward; for Peter does not speak here of the merits of works, nor of the cause of salvation, but he only reminds us, that there will be no looking to the person before the tribunal of God, but that what will be regarded will be the real sincerity of the heart. In this place faith also is included in the work. It hence appears evident how foolish and puerile is the inference that is drawn, — “God is such that he judges every one of us by the integrity of his conscience, not by the outward appearance; then we obtain salvation by works.”

The fear that is mentioned, stands opposed to heedless security, such as is wont to creep in, when there is a hope of deceiving with impunity. For, as God’s eyes are such that they penetrate into the hidden recesses of the heart, we ought to walk with him carefully and not negligently. He calls the present life a sojourning, not in the sense in which he called the Jews to whom he was writing sojourners, at the beginning of the Epistle, but because all the godly are in this world pilgrims. (Hebrews 11:13,38.)

John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.

(17) And if.—The “if” casts no doubt, but, on the contrary, serves to bring out the necessary logical connection between invoking the Father—and such a Father—and fear. (See Note on 1Th_4:14.)

Ye call on the Father.—We might paraphrase by “if you use the Lord’s Prayer.” (Refer again to 1Pe_1:3; 1Pe_1:14.) The word seems not only to mean “if you appeal to the Father,” but “if you appeal to the Father by the title of Father.” (Comp. Rom_8:15; Gal_4:6.)

Who without respect of persons judgeth.—This “judgeth,” or decideth, refers not only to the great judgment of the last day, but is used in reference to the word “if ye call upon the Father.” That word has a forensic sense (in which it is used in Act_25:11) of lodging an appeal, and every time we lodge our appeal to the Father on the ground of His Fatherhood, He decides the case, but decides it without favour—makes no allowance to our wrong doing on the ground of being His regenerate children, and certainly none on the ground of being of the Hebrew race. That this last notion finds place here we may see from St. Peter’s words in Act_10:34-35. He decides “according to every man’s work”—i.e., upon the individual merits of the case before Him. The man’s “work” (not “works”) embraces all his conduct in the lump, as a single performance, which is either good on the whole or bad on the whole.

Pass the time . . . in fear.—The word for “pass” really is the same as the “conversation” of 1Pe_1:15, and is intended to take our thought back to it: “As obedient children, be holy in every part of your conduct; and if you wish for favour from the Father, see that that conduct is characterised by fear.” “This fear,” says Archbishop Leighton, “is not cowardice (nor superstition, we may add); it drowns all lower fears, and begets true fortitude; the righteous dare do anything but offend God. Moses was bold and fearless in dealing with a proud and wicked king, but when God appeared he said (as the Apostle informs us), ‘I exceedingly fear and quake.’“ This extract well contrasts with the meaning which some would apparently thrust into the word “fear,” as though it meant that the position of the Christians, as “aliens” in the midst of a hostile world, required a timid attitude towards man. The “fear” of the Father may be seen in the first two clauses of the Lord’s Prayer itself.

Your sojourning.—See on 1Pe_1:1, “strangers.” Because the word is metaphorical here and in 1Pe_2:11, is no reason why the similar word should be so there, in quite a different context. The expression here sets a limit for the discipline of fear, and at the same time suggests a reason for it—children though they are, they are not yet entered on their “inheritance” (1Pe_1:4), and have to secure it.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17. And if ye call on the Father …] Better, as the Greek noun has no article, if ye call upon a Father, i.e. if you worship not an arbitrary Judge, but one of whom Fatherhood is the essential character. The sequel shews that this attribute of Fatherhood is not thought of as excluding the idea of judgment, but gives assurance that the judgment will be one of perfect equity.

who without respect of persons] We note the prominence of this thought, derived originally from the impression by our Lord’s words and acts (Mat_22:16), as presenting a coincidence (1) with the Apostle’s own words in Act_10:34; and (2) as in other instances, with the teaching of St James (Jas_2:1-4).

pass the time of your sojourning here in fear] The verb for “pass” is that from which is derived the noun for “conversation” or “conduct.” The connexion of thought may be indicated, in the English as in the Greek, by rendering conduct yourselves during the time of your sojourning. The latter word connects itself with the “strangers” of 1Pe_1:1, and yet more with the “strangers and sojourners” of ch. 1Pe_2:11. The “fear” which is urged upon them, is not the terror of slaves, but the reverential awe of sons, even the true fear of the Lord which is “the beginning of wisdom.” (Psa_111:10; Pro_1:7.) Comp. also Luk_12:4-5.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And if ye call on the Father,.... Of Christ, and of all the saints; or "seeing" ye do. This is a fresh argument, engaging to holiness of life and conversation. Invocation of God includes the whole worship of him, the performance of every outward duty, and the exercise of every inward grace, particularly it designs prayer; and whoever are concerned in one, or the other, God will be sanctified by all them that draw nigh unto him: or the phrase may here intend an asserting God to be their Father, under the influence of the spirit of adoption; and all such that do claim so near a relation to God ought to honour and obey him, and to be followers of him: whoever call God their Father, and themselves his children, ought to be careful that they do not blaspheme, or cause to be blasphemed, that worthy name by which they are called:

who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man's work. This is another reason why men should be holy, taken from the general judgment; for this God that is a Father, is also a judge. There is a judgment after death, which is sure and certain, and reaches to all persons and things; and though the Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son, yet he will judge everyone by that man Christ, whom he has ordained to be the Judge of quick and dead: before his judgment seat all must stand, where they will be impartially, and without respect of persons, tried; no account will be had of what nation and place they are, whether Jews or Gentiles, or of this, or the other country, unless to aggravate or lessen their condemnation; for it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, for Sodom and Gomorrah, than for such who have been favoured with a Gospel revelation, and believe it not; nor from what parents they have descended, for the soul that sins, that shall die; nor of what age and sex they are, small and great shall stand before him; nor of what state and condition, rich or poor, high or low, bond or free; or of what religious sect and denomination, or whether they have conformed to some external things or not; no regard will be had to any outward appearance or profession. The Judge will not judge according to the sight of the eyes, and outward view of things; for he looks on the heart, and knows the secret springs of all actions; and according thereunto will he judge and pass the sentence; and therefore what manner of persons ought men to be, in all holy conversation and godliness? Hence it follows,

pass the time of your sojourning here in fear; the people of God in this world are "sojourners", as all their fathers were; they are not natives of the place in, which they are; though they are in the world, they are not of it; they were natives of it by their first birth, but by their second they are born again from above, and so, belong to another place; they are of another country, even an heavenly one; are citizens of another city, a city which, has foundations, whose builder and maker is God, their citizenship is in heaven; and there is their Father's house, which is not made with hands, and is eternal; and there lies their estate, their inheritance; and though they dwell here below, neither their settlement nor their satisfaction are here; they reckon themselves not at home while they are on earth, and are strangers in it, to the men of the world, and they to them; with whom they have not, or at least ought not to have, any fellowship. It is indeed but for a "time", that they are sojourners, not an eternity; which time is fixed, and is very short, and will be quickly gone; it is but a little while, and Christ wilt come and take them home to his Father's house, where they shall be for ever with him; for it is only here on earth that they are pilgrims and strangers: and while they are so they should spend their time "in fear"; not of men nor of devils, nor of death and judgment, hell and eternal damnation; for such a fear is not consistent with the love of God shed abroad in the heart, and is the effect of the law, and not encouraged by the Gospel; is in natural men, yea, in devils themselves; but in the fear of God, and which springs from the grace of God, and is increased by it; is consistent with the strongest acts of faith, and with the greatest expressions of spiritual joy; is opposite to pride and self-confidence, and includes the whole worship of God, external and internal, and a religious conversation, in humility and lowliness of mind.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

17 And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:

Ver. 17. Of your sojourning] παροικια inchoatns, commoratio. Having your commoration on earth, but your conversation in heaven. Fugiamus ad caelestem patriam, &c., could a heathen say.

In fear] Those that fear, of all others, are most likely to hold out, Jer 32:40. It is a reverential, filial fear of God, as of a father, that is here required; causing us, 1. to have high and honourable conceptions of God in our hearts; "Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and let him be your dread, and fear ye him." 2. Making all honourable mention of him with our mouths, whether we speak to him, or of him, Ecc 5:1; Deu 28:58. Presume not in a sudden unmannerliness to blurt out the dreadful name of God; much less to blaspheme it, and bore it through with hideous oaths and imprecations. To speak evil of one’s father was death by Plato’s law as well as by God’s law; and Suidas testifieth of the same Plato and other heathens, that when they would swear by their Jupiter, out of the mere dread and reverence of his name, they for bear to mention him; breaking off their oath with a Μα τον, as those that only dared to owe the rest to their thoughts. 3. Walking before him in our whole course with a holy bashful ness, being evermore in the sense of his presence and light of his countenance, in the "fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost," as those ancient Christians, Act 9:31.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And if ye call on the Father - That is, if you are true Christians, or truly pious - piety being represented in the Scriptures as calling on God, or as the worship of God. Compare Act 9:11; Gen 4:26; 1Ki 18:24; Psa 116:17; 2Ki 5:11; 1Ch 16:8; Joe 2:32; Rom 10:13; Zep 3:9; 1Co 1:2; Act 2:21. The word “Father” here is used evidently not to denote the Father in contradistinction to the Son, but as referring to God as the Father of the universe. See 1Pe 1:14 - “As obedient children.” God is often spoken of as the Father of the intelligent beings whom he has made. Christians worship Him as a Father - as one having all the feelings of a kind and tender parent toward them. Compare Psa 103:13, following.

Who without respect of persons - Impartiality. One who is not influenced in His treatment of people by a regard to rank, wealth, beauty, or any external distinction. See the Act 10:34 note, and Rom 2:11 note.

Judgeth according to every man’s work - He judges each one according to his character; or to what he has done, Rev 22:12. See the notes at 2Co 5:10. The meaning is: “You worship a God who will judge every person according to his real character, and you should therefore lead such lives as he can approve.”

Pass the time of your sojourning - “Of your temporary residence on earth. This is not your permanent home, but you are strangers and sojourners.” See the notes at Heb 11:13.

In fear - See the Phi 2:12 note; Heb 12:28 note. With true reverence or veneration for God and His law. Religion is often represented as the reverent fear of God, Deu 6:2, Deu 6:13, Deu 6:24; Pro 1:7; Pro 3:13; Pro 14:26-27, et saepe al.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

And if; this particle is used here, and frequently elsewhere, not as a note of doubting, but by way of assertion, and supposition of a thing known.

Ye call on the Father; either this is to be meant of invocation, their calling on God in prayer; and then the sense is: If you be servants and worshippers of the Father; prayer being many times put for the whole worship of God, Isa 43:22; Act 9:11; or, of their calling God, Father, as Mat 6:9; and then the sense is: If you would be counted God’s children, Jam 2:7.

Who, without respect of persons; and so will no more excuse you that are Jews, and descended from Abraham, than those that are born of Gentile parents, Job 34:19; Act 10:34; Eph 6:9.

Judgeth; and so is not a Father only, but a Judge, and that a most righteous one.

According to every man’s work; i.e. works, the singular number put for the plural, as Jam 1:25; see Rom 2:6; Job 34:11.

Pass the time of your sojourning here; the word signifies the temporary abode of a man in a place where he was not born, or doth not ordinarily reside; such being the condition of believers in the world, that they are sojourners, not citizens of it; they are travelling through it to their Father’s house and heavenly country, Heb 11:9,10,13,16. They are here exhorted to a suitable carriage, expressed in the next words.

In fear; which is due to him as a Father and a Judge. It may imply the greatest reverence, and the deepest humility, Phi 2:12; 1Co 2:3; 1Pe 3:2,15.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

And if ye call on the Father. "If" does not imply doubt; it introduces a hypothesis which, being taken for granted, involves a duty. Apparently there is here a reference to the Lord"s Prayer, as in 2Ti_4:18. You call on God as your Father; then pass your time in fear. Mal_1:6, "If I be a Father, where is mine honor?" He called you first; now ye call on him. The translation of the Revised Version is more exact than the Authorized Version, "If ye call on him as Father." Who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man"s work. The adverb ajproswpolhptwv, rendered "without respect of persons," occurs nowhere else in the New Testament; but the thought is familiar. St. Peter himself had said, when he was sent to receive Cornelius into the Church, "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons". (Act_10:34) The disciples of the Pharisees had said the same of our (Mat_22:16; comp. also Rom_2:11; Gal_2:6; Jam_2:1-4) The Lord said, (Joh_5:22) "The Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son." But the Father is "Fens judicii," as Didymus says (quoted by Alford), "judicante Filio, Pater est qu; judicat," for the Son judges as his Delegate; as it was through the Son that the Father made the worlds. He judges according to every man"s work, regarding, not distinctions of rank, or wealth, or nationality, but only the character of the work. Observe that the word "work" (e]rgon) is in the singular number, as praxin infhte, Mat_16:27. God judges according to every man"s work as a whole, according to the whole scope and meaning of his life as issuing from the one governing principle, whether faith or selfishness. So Bengel, "Unius hominis unum est opus, bouum malumve." Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear. The verb here, ajnastra corresponds with the noun ajnastrofh ("conversation") of ver. 15; both might be rendered (as Dean Plumptre suggests) by "conduct" (noun or verb) all your conduct" in ver. 15; and here, "conduct yourselves." The word "sojourning" reminds us of ver. 1 of this chapter and of 1Pe_2:11, in which last place we have the corresponding Greek word. We are sojourners here, life is short; but the character of that short life determines our eternal condition; therefore live in fear. St. John says, "Perfect love casteth out fear;" but there is no contradiction, as some have said, between the two holy apostles; for the fear which cannot coexist with perfect love (it may in various measures coexist with imperfect love is slavish fear, selfish fear of death and punishment. The fear which St. Peter and St. Paul (Php_2:12) commend is holy fear the fear of a son for a loving father, the fear of displeasing God before whom we walk, God who gave his blessed Son to die for us, God who will judge us at the last. This fear is not cowardice. Our Lord said, (Luk_12:4) "Be not afraid of them that kill the body. Fear him," etc. They who fear God need fear nothing else but God.

The Father and Judge.

The injunction here and the reason for it are equally strange. Both seem opposed no less to the confidence, hope, and joy which have been glowing in the former part of this chapter than to the general tone of the New Testament. "Live in habitual fear, for God is a strict Judge," strikes a note which at first hearing sounds a discord. Is not Christianity the religion of perfect love which casts out fear? Is not its very promise that he who believes shall not come into judgment? Is not its central revelation that of a Father who hath not dealt with us according to our sins, nor rewarded us according to our transgressions? Yes; God be thanked that it is! We cannot too earnestly assert that, nor too jealously guard these truths from all tampering or weakening. But these solemn words are none the less true.

I THE TWOFOLD REVELATION OF GOD AS FATHER AND JUDGE. If we adopt the translation, "call on him as Father," we shall catch here an echo of the Lord"s Prayer, and recognize a testimony to its early and general use, independent and confirmatory of the Gospels. We need not dwell upon the thought that God is our Father. There is little fear of its being lost sight of in the Christian teaching of this day. But there is much danger of its being so held as to obscure the other relation here associated with it. Men have often been so penetrated with the conviction that God is Judge as to forget that he is Father. The danger now is that they should be so occupied with the thought that he is Father as to forget that he is Judge. What do we mean by "judgment"? We mean, first, an accurate knowledge and estimate of the moral quality of an action; next, a solemn approval or condemnation; and next, the pronouncing of sentence which entails punishment or reward. Now, can it be that he who loves righteousness and hates evil should ever fail to discern, to estimate, to condemn, and to chastise evil, whoever does it? The eternal necessity of his own great holiness, and not less of his own almighty love, binds him to this. Our text distinctly speaks of a present judgment. It is God who judgeth, not who will judge; and that judgment is of each man"s work as a whole, not of his works, but of his work. There is a perpetual present judgment going on. God has an estimate of each man"s course, solemnly approves or disapproves, and shapes his dealings with each accordingly. The very fact of this Fatherhood, so far from being inconsistent with this continual judgment, makes it the more certain. He is not so indifferent to his children as to let their deeds pass unnoticed, and, if need be, unchastised. We have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence." They would have deserved little of it while we were children, and would have almost deserved our malediction when we became men, if they had not. Our Father in heaven knows and loves us better than they. Therefore he judges from a loftier point of view. Standing higher, he looks deeper, and corrects for a nobler purpose we should be partakers of his holiness." To the Christian God"s judgments are a sign of his love. So we should rejoice in and long for them. Do we wish to be separated from our sin, to be drawn nearer to him? Then let us be glad that "the Lord will judge his people," and while in penitent consciousness of our sins we pray with the psalmist, "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord!" let us also cry with him, "Judge me, O Lord; try my reins and my heart!" Abundance of Scripture teaching insists on the fact that there is a future judgment for Christians as for others. "We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ." True, "in the course of justice none of us should see salvation." But though we are saved, not according to works of righteousness which we have done, it is also true that our place in heaven, though not our entrance into heaven, is determined by the law of recompense, and that, in a very real sense, "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." A saved man"s whole position will be affected by his past. His place will be in proportion to his Christian character, though not deserved nor won by it. Let us ponder, then, the solemn words, almost the last which come to us from the enthroned Christ, "Behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.

II THE FEAR WHICH CONSEQUENTLY IS AN ELEMENT IN THE CHILD"S LOVE. Perfect love casts out the fear which has torment, but it deepens a fear which is blessed. By fear we oftenest mean an apprehension of and a shrinking from dangers or evils, or a painful recoil from a person who may inflict them. Such fear is wholly inconsistent with the filial relation and the child"s heart. But the fear of God, which the Old Testament so exalts, and which is here enjoined as a necessary part of Christian experience, is not dread. It has no trembling apprehension of evil disturbing its serenity. To fear God is not to be afraid of God. It is full of reverential awe and joy, and, so far from being inconsistent with love, is impossible without it, increases it and is increased by it. It is a reverent, awe-stricken prostration before the majesty of holy love. Its opposite is irreverence. It is, further, a lowly consciousness of the heinousness of sin, and consequently a dread of offending that Divine holiness. He who thus fears, fears to sin more than anything else, and fears God so much that he fears nothing besides. The opposite of that is presumptuous self-confidence, like Peter"s own earlier disposition, which led him into so many painful and humbling situations. "A wise man feareth and departeth from evil." The fear enjoined here is, primarily, then, a reverential regard to the holy Father who is our Judge, and, secondarily and consequently, a quick sensitiveness of conscience, which knows our own weakness, and, above all else, dreads falling into sin. Such sensitive scrupulousness may seem to be over-anxiety, but it is wisdom; and, though it brings some pains, it is blessedness. This is no world for unwary walking. There are too many enemies seeking admission to the citadel for it to be safe to dispense with rigid watchfulness at the gates. Our Father is our Judge, therefore let us fear to sin, and fear our own weakness. Our Judge is our Father, therefore let us not be afraid of him, but court his pure eyes and perfect judgment. Such fear which has in it no torment, and is the ally of love, is not the ultimate form of our emotions towards God. It is appropriate only to "the time of our sojourning here." The Christian soul in this world is as a foreigner in a strange land. Its true affinities are in heaven; and its present surroundings are ever seeking to make it "forget the imperial palace" which is its home. So constant vigilance is needed. But when we reach our own land we can dwell safely, having neither locks nor bars. The walls may be pulled down, and flower-gardens laid out where they stood. Here and now is the place for loins girt and lamps burning. There and then we can walk with flowing robes, for no stain will come on them from the golden pavements, and need not carefully tend a flickering light, for eternal day is there. A.M.

Christian fear.

Fear is an emotion which is much misunderstood and misrepresented. It is sometimes denounced as something radically and necessarily bad. But this is not the case; all depends upon what is feared, for this determines whether the emotion is justifiable and capable of tending to some good result.

I THE CHARACTER OF CHRISTIAN FEAR.

1. It is quite different from the fear of the unbelieving and irreligious. Such persons fear to lose their worldly possessions, and to lose life itself. They may have a certain fear of God, for even the devils believe and tremble.

2. It is inculcated in Scripture.]Not only does the Old Testament bid us "serve the Lord with fear," "fear God, and keep his commandments;" the New Testament records Christ"s admonition, "Fear him who is able to destroy," and the apostolic injunction to "perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord," and, "Be not high-minded, but fear.

3. The grounds for the Christian"s fear are evident. He fears less he should yield to temptation, lest he should be defeated by his spiritual adversary. He fears God, not with the abject terror of the slave, but with the reverence and awe due to the All-holy, the infinitely Just.

4. Fear is not the all-absorbing emotion in the Christian"s breast. Its presence is not incompatible with love and hope and a measure of joy. Fear mingles as an element in Christian experience.

II THE MOTIVES TO CHRISTIAN FEAR.

1. Our state as one of sojourning and pilgrimage. We are not yet at home;" we are in the wilderness. The season of desert-wandering is appointed by Divine wisdom; yet it is a probation not to be avoided. How can we do other than fear, when we think of our weakness, and of.he might of our foe? Indeed, had we not the assurance of our Captain"s spiritual presence and aid, fear might well become the predominant emotion in our mental life.

2. The anticipation of judgment will not suffer fear to be quelled. Is our "work" fit for the Master"s inspection? However our fellow-men may regard us, we know that we must appear before him who is no respecter of persons," and who wilt estimate us and our service with justice and impartiality. That we may not fear then it is well for us to fear not.

3. The recognition of God"s Fatherhood gives the true character to the Christian s fear. This is a paradox. Men would say, "If God be a Father, and not merely a Judge, then he need not be feared." This is not the apostle"s view. On the contrary, the holy fear which becomes us is made gracious and purifying by our knowledge that a Father"s eye is upon us, that a Father"s heart ceases not to cherish us. J.R.T.

Vers. 17-21.

The holiness in which salvation consists a reason for Christian fear.

The order of thought in the first twenty-one verses may be summed up in salvation (vers. 3-12), holiness (vers. 12-16), fear (vers. 17-21). This last paragraph contains one long reason why those who have salvation through Christ should live in fear. It is remarkable that the demand for fear should follow what has been already said. The apostle has spoken strongly of the certainty of their redemption to whom he writes; he calls them "elect according to," etc.; he blesses God that they have an inheritance reserved for them, and that they are kept for it; he says that loving Christ they have now the salvation of their souls; he adds that the revelation of this salvation, being given through the Holy Ghost, is infallibly true; but after all that, he bids them pass the time of their sojourning here in fear an emphatic contradiction of the idea that the doctrines of grace foster a spirit of carelessness. Fear is the natural result of God"s free salvation.

I THE FACT OF REDEMPTION NECESSITATES HOLINESS. The seventeenth verse is based on the eighteenth and following verses.

1. Redemption is from the vain manner of life received from our fathers. "Conversation;" equivalent to" manner of life." Christ died to deliver us from the sinful manner of life received from our fathers. From hell; yes, that is clear. "The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all; He bore our sins in his own body on the tree;" "There is therefore now no condemnation," etc. But that is not the end for which he died, only a means to an end. Holiness in us was the purpose of the atonement, so much so that if we can imagine one getting no further than the canceling of his sins, we should have to say that Christ died for him in vain (see 2Co_5:15; Gal_1:4; Eph_1:4 Eph_5:25-27; Tit_2:14) Redemption by Christ is from the life of the natural man: "If any man be in Christ Jesus, it is a new creation.

2. Redemption is only effected at unspeakable cost. "Not with corruptible," etc. An emphatic testimony that redemption is through our Lord"s death not through his life, or example, or holiness, or mediation, but, as Scripture invariably says with unwavering consistency, by his blood." God himself bore the penalty of human guilt that he might righteously extend his mercy to the guilty. Nor can we imagine any method which so glorifies his grace and reveals himself. Think of the worth of our Lord"s offering. The universe were as nothing compared with the Son of God. What unfathomable meaning is in the words, "the precious blood of Christ"! Now, this stupendous price was paid for nothing less than that we might be holy. In that we see how imperative, how indispensable, holiness is.

3. Redemption is to faith and hope in God. (Vers. 20, 21.) Characteristic of Peter to emphasize the foreordination of Christ. It occurs here naturally when we see that it is a point in perhaps all his recorded sermons. What a redemption this is which is based on God"s eternal purpose! and what a hope which goes back through all time, and finds its foundation in the everlasting thought of God! But the point is that Christ was appointed to this work by the Father, manifested by the Father, raised up by the Father, given glory by the Father Redemption is the working out by the Father of his own plan, quite contrary to the idea that Calvary was to appease him. The text says that God did all this that we might be believers in him, not stop short at Jesus, but go on to rest in the Father. Alienated man drawn to act in faith and hope. Then as the stream flows from the fountain, so by the constraint of conscious obligation and loving petition, consecration to God will flow from this faith and hope, and thus, if redemption is to faith and hope, it necessitates holiness.

II THIS NECESSITY CALLS THE PROFESSING CHRISTIAN TO FEAR. (Ver. 17.) The more Christian life we have, the more we find that fear is one of its characteristics. Not that which hath torment, and repels; but that which is the opposite of carelessness, presumption, self-confidence, disobedience.

1. For a filial spirit toward God leads to the fear of his disfavor. Perfect love produces fear fear of distressing him we love. The word "father" tells of tender relationship, mutual happiness, reciprocated affection; that either would shrink from paining the other; and that any barrier coming between them is unbearable. He on whom we call as Father must have holiness. Then we cannot help going through life with this element of fear; he who does not fear does not love.

2. Then, a remembrance of his impartiality leads to a fear of his judgments. "The Father, who without respect of persons judgeth," etc. The kind Father is also the impartial Judge, and he will judge us by our works. We are saved by faith; we are judged by holiness; we are redeemed to holiness. Then if we are amongst the redeemed, we are holy. What should we like to be tested by experiences, profession, creed, charity, opinions of others? God will judge us impartially by our works. "Show me thy faith by thy works." Is not that something to make us fear?

3. A consideration of the brevity of life leads to the fear of losing eternal blessing. "Pass the time of your sojourning here in fear." We are here but for a short time; the perfected blessings of redemption are yonder, and what they are no tongue can tell. But redemption is holiness, and therefore apart from holiness we have no right to anticipate these. Without holiness there is no redemption, that is, no heaven. Is not this calculated to create fear, to destroy spiritual indifference, carelessness about conformity to Christ, lightheartedness respecting inconsistency? Does it not compel us to examine heart and life with anxiety, and press forward to better things with something of the feeling of the racer lest he lose the prize?

III THIS FEAR IS CONSISTENT WITH JOY UNSPEAKABLE AND FULL OF GLORY. This must be remembered to avoid misapprehension. The fear the apostle urges is not that which clouds life, but that which harmonizes with the joy he has spoken of. Yes; this fear contributes to the joy.

1. It leads to a correct knowledge of our Christian position. Making us search to the foundations of our hope, it enables us to say, "I know.

2. It compels us to a simpler dependence on the Savior. For looking for holiness as an evidence of redemption, we discover how little we have, and are compelled to fall back on Christ the more entirely than which what is more blessed? Blessed fear, which makes us know better how perfect a Savior Jesus is!

3. It glorifies even our trials as a means of keeping us holy. For if holiness be essential, we can welcome that as a friend which tends to deepen it, and makes us thank God for our very sorrows. C.N.

Vers. 17-21.

The awe of the redeemed.

The one injunction of this passage is, "Pass your time in fear time of your sojourning." Peter had already addressed them as sojourners as to country; now he addresses them as sojourners in this world altogether. "In fear" does not mean in dread or in terror; that meaning is contradicted by the whole tenor of this Epistle, and by the very name of God in this verse, "Father." "Fear" is synonymous with "piety" in Old Testament language, and might be rendered "reverence," or better still by the less frequently used, but fine Saxon word "awe." You are in the midst of great things, of stupendous realities; cherish awe. This is not to be a passing paroxysm, but an abiding, settled habit of soul. Notice

I THE AWE OF THE REDEEMED TOWARDS THE REDEEMING GOD. "If ye call on him as Father;" the call being, not simply an appeal, but a claim of kindred, an acknowledgment of close, tender, and withal solemnly responsible relationship. The relationship is:

1. To the supremely impartial Father. (Ver. 17.)

2. To the supremely omniscient Judge. (Ver. 17.) The twofold thought is gathered up in Christ"s cry, "O righteous Father!

II THE AWE OF THE REDEEMED IN RECOLLECTION OF THE EVIL FROM WHICH THEY HAVE BEEN DELIVERED. Out of what have they been bought and brought?

1. Course of conduct. "Conversation;" not only the circle of behaviour, but center of motive.

2. A course of conduct that was evil. "Vain." Frivolous, empty, unworthy.

3. A course of conduct that was inherited. "Handed down." The legacy of evil is with some unchastity, with some insobriety, with all sin. We are the sons of a slave race, and tendency and imitation continue us in bondage.

III THE AWE OF THE REDEEMED BECAUSE OF THE COST AT WHICH THEY HAVE BEES EMANCIPATED. Not silver and gold, that may redeem from the brigands, that may be the ransom of the Crusader king. But see the cost:

1. As revealed in Christ Jesus. "But with precious blood." The pouring forth of a priceless life. "As of a lamb," etc. And that priceless life the life of a Spotless One. That mystic blood detaches us from the dominion of sin.

2. As felt by the heart of the infinite God. Foreknown." Raised by God, who with unspeakable care felt that part of himself was there.

IV THE AWE OF THE REDEEMED BECAUSE OF THE BLESSEDNESS TO WHICH THEY ARE DESTINED. Faith and hope. Faith now in the invisible; hope of perpetual glory in the Eternal. U.R.T.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Who judgeth according to every man's work - According to the tenor of his life and conversation. Pass the time of your sojourning - Your short abode on earth. In humble, loving fear - The proper companion and guard of hope.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The reason for the holiness of Christians:

v. 17. And if ye call on the Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every man’s work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear,

v. 18. forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers,

v. 19. but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot;

v. 20. who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you,

v. 21. who by Him do believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory, that your faith and hope might be in God.

That is a characteristic of the Christians: they invoke God as their Father, they bring all their requests to His attention because He is their Father for the sake of Christ. But of this Father and God it is and remains true, at the same time: If you invoke the Father, who without favor or partiality judges according to the work of each. In God there is no respect of persons; He renders judgment in an altogether impartial way, He will not be influenced in His judgment by the fact that anyone bore the name of Christian. The works of every individual, as the fruits of the condition of the heart, will be the standard according to which God will decide on the last day, Rom 2:6. In the works of a man it is shown whether faith and the sonship of God is a mere pretense, or whether it is true and genuine. This being true, it follows: In fear pass the time of your life here. The apostle does not speak, of course, of the fear of a slave, but of the holy reverence before the righteousness of the Judge of all men, which should urge the Christians to show all diligence in good works out of a pure heart. This must be kept in mind for the entire time of our sojourning here on earth. Day after day, year after year, the Christians should be mindful of the word, I am the almighty God; walk before Me and be thou perfect, and work out their own salvation, accordingly, with fear and trembling, Php 2:12.

The apostle now names the basic motive for a life of sanctification: Knowing that not with corruptible things, with silver or gold, you were ransomed out of your vain conduct transmitted to you by tradition, but with the precious blood of Christ, as a lamb unblemished and unstained. Here is a reminder of the great, decisive fact of salvation, which is the strongest individual influence in the life of the Christians. Ever since the fall of Adam one generation of men after the other conducted itself, led its life, in the vain, sinful manner which was bound to flow from inherited sin. The entire life of all unbelievers, of all men by nature, is a life of shameful, terrible slavery in the power of sin, all the thoughts, words, and deeds of such people being vain, useless, so far as spiritual life is concerned. From this slavery the believers are redeemed because they have accepted the fact of the payment of the ransom through the blood of Christ. It was indeed no small matter, the price of ransom did not consist in corruptible things, such as gold or silver, no matter how highly these may be valued by the children of this world. It was the precious, the holy, innocent blood of Christ, which was placed into the balances in paying for the guilt of the world, in ransoming all men from the slavery of sin and of the devil. The immense, immeasurable value of this ransom was due to the fact that the Lamb which was slain on Calvary’s altar was not a sacrificial lamb of the Old Testament, whose offering had no atoning value in itself, but it was Christ, the Lamb of God, truly without a single blemish and spot, Heb 7:26, holy, sinless, undefiled, separate from sinners. Truly, the wonderful assurance contained in these words cannot be proclaimed and repeated too often, since it is the one fact which opens to all men the doors of everlasting happiness.

How seriously God was concerned about the salvation of mankind is brought out in the next words: Who, indeed, was destined before the foundation of the world, but manifested at the end of the times for your sakes. As the sacrificial Lamb, whose blood should serve for a ransom, as the Savior of the world, Christ was destined by God from eternity. Our salvation, the redemption through the blood of Christ, was not brought about by chance, is not due to some sudden caprice of God, but is based upon a counsel of love which was resolved upon by God before the beginning of time, before the foundations of this earth were laid, Joh 17:24; Eph 1:4; Act 2:23. And now the Son of God, the Savior of the world, was in these last times, at the beginning of the last world period, in the fullness of time, manifested. He who, as the eternal Son of God, had existed from eternity and had taken part in the counsel of God for the salvation of mankind, was made man for our sakes, in order to earn the redemption for us, in order to pay the price, or ransom, which was required in this unusual case. This fact, that the blood of Christ, with its incomparable, priceless value, was paid as the price of our ransom from the power of sin and of Satan, that is the comfort of the Christians at all times, a comfort with which they may calmly defy the accusations of the devil and the terrors of the Judgment, and boldly look forward to the enjoyment of everlasting bliss before the throne of the Lamb.

The apostle not only applies the salvation of Christ to his readers in the words "for your sakes," but also explains how this application takes place: Who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, in order that your faith and your hope be directed toward God. Faith is not the result of a man’s own effort, of his own reason and sense. Through Christ, through His manifestation in the flesh, through His blood, through His redemption we have been placed into the right relation toward God, we have become believers, we have become sure of our sonship. Our faith thus rests in God, who, by raising Christ from the dead, has testified to the sufficiency of the ransom which was paid for our sins. Thus we rest our confidence in the reconciled Father, who has accepted and is accepting the intercessory prayer of Christ, our Advocate. Therefore our hope and our faith are directed toward God; we have the certain conviction that God will make us partakers of the glory of Christ.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

If ye call on the Father; that is, If ye call God your Father, and call upon him by worshipping and owning of him, who without any respect of persons, or any regard had to nations, Jew or Gentile, judgeth of every man now, and will judge every man according to his works hereafter, see that you pass the time of your pilgrimage and sojourning in this world in holy and obedient fear.

Learn, 1. That such as call God Father ought to walk in obedience before him as his sons; If ye call on the Father.

Learn, 2. That he whom we call Father, is and will be our Judge, not a short-sighted, but a sharp-sighted, Judge, impartial in judgment, judging all persons according to their works, judging all works as they really are, and not as they outwardly appear to be.

Learn, 3. That Christians here in this world are but strangers, and their life upon earth a pilgrimage, which they are daily passing.

Learn, 4. That the whole time of a Christian’s pilgrimage ought to be passed in a holy, cautious, reverential and obedient fear of God: pass the time of your sojourning here in fear.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17–21. If ye call on the Father. In prayer and worship. All call upon him who pray. Who without respect of persons. He judges us and all men according to the deeds, not station or race. Hence, those who seek his blessings and promises should show a reverential fear. That is the first reason given for being “holy.” Of your sojourning. The whole life is a period of sojourning on the earth.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

17. εἰ πατέρα ἐπικαλεῖσθε. If ye invoke as Father. ἐπικαλεῖσθαι in the middle does not mean merely to call a person by a certain name or title, but to invoke or appeal to for aid. It is the word used by St Paul, Act 25:11, “I appeal unto Caesar,” and of St Stephen appealing and saying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” Act 7:59. Here there is very probably an allusion to the invocation of God as “Our Father” in the Lord’s prayer. But the words may also be borrowed from Jer 3:19, where some MSS. of the LXX. read εἰ πατέρα καλεῖσθέ (or ἐπικαλεῖσθέ) με, though the best text is εἶπα Πατέρα καλέσετέ με.

The sense of sonship which allows us to invoke God as “Our Father” “in the words which Christ Himself hath taught us” does not warrant any presumption on our part. We must not forget that God is also “the Judge of all the earth.”

ἀπροσωπολήμπτως. The adverb occurs nowhere else in the Greek Bible, but the adjective is used by the Fathers, and the substantive προσωπολήμπτης occurs in St Peter’s speech to Cornelius, Act 10:34, and προσωπολημψία in Rom 2:11 with reference to God. It is not a classical word, but is based upon the Hebrew פנִי נשׂא, to receive the face of, so to favour a person, either in a good sense to receive favourably or in a bad sense of undue favour, partiality. As applied to God in the N.T., it is generally used with reference to His dealings with Jews and Gentiles, that both are treated alike by Him. But, on the other hand, equality of favour implies impartiality of judgment for all. The children of the new covenant will not be treated with undue leniency if their works prove them to be unworthy of God’s favour any more than were the children of the old covenant, as they were warned by Moses, Deu 10:17.

κρίνοντα. The present participle may be a reminder that God’s judgment is not merely future but continually exercised, or it may be merely a descriptive participle.

κατὰ τὸ ἑκάστου ἔργον (cf. Rom 2:6 ff.). Every man, whether he be Jew, Gentile or heathen, is judged according to the sum of his personal actions in thought, word and deed.

ἐν φόβῳ. The thought of God as “Our Father” can give us hope and love, but the reminder that He is also our Judge should inspire us with reverent fear. Not the shrinking fear of the slave (Rom 8:15), for that is “cast out” by perfect love (1Jn 4:18), not the fear of the coward (1Pe 3:14), but the fear of being untrue to God, which makes a man bold in the face of all other dangers (Mat 10:28 ||).

παροικίας. In one sense these Asiatic Christians were sojourners among a heathen population with whom they were brought into constant intercourse (ἀναστράφητε). In another sense all Christians are men whose true “citizenship is in heaven” (Php 3:20). This world is not their home, but only the place of their temporary sojourn.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

17.] Further exhortation, in consideration of our close relation of children to God our Judge, to reverence and godly fear. And if (“Si non dubitantis est, sed supponentis rem notam. Est enim omnium renatorum communis oratio, Pater noster qui es in cœlis.” Estius. The εἰ introduces an hypothesis with an understood background of fact: If, (as is the case) &c.) ye call upon as father (πατέρα, not, as E. V. “the Father,” but used predicatively and prefixed for emphasis) Him who judgeth impartially (see Act 10:34: Jas 2:1 reff. The pres. part. gives the attribute or office: “Him, who is the Judge,” see ref. So that there is not even an apparent inconsistency with the declaration that the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son, Joh 5:22: for this last fact of itself implies that the Father is the Judge, the ‘fons judicii:’ as Didymus says here, “judicante Filio Pater est qui jndicat”) according to the work of each man (ἔργον: “Unius hominis unum est opus, bonum malumve.” Bengel. Cf. Jas 1:4: Gal 6:4. ἑκάστου, be he Jew or Gentile, high or low, rich or poor: thus by setting God’s just judgment above all alike, His Majesty, as inculcating godly fear, is enhanced), behave (see on ἀναστροφή above) during the time of your sojourning (on παροικέω, see note, Heb 11:9. The Christian, who calls God his Father, is in exile, tarrying in a strange country, while here on earth) in fear (ἐνφόβῳ stands first as emphatic. How, it is asked, is this, seeing that “there is no fear in love: for perfect love casteth out fear: because fear hath torment” (1Jn 4:18)? Œc. answers, that the fear here recommended is not the φόβος καταρκτικός, leading to repentance, but the φόβος τελειωτικός, which accompanies the Christian through his whole course. And Leighton beautifully says, “This fear is not cowardice: it doth not debase, but elevates the mind: for it drowns all lower fears, and begets true fortitude and courage to encounter all dangers for the sake of a good conscience and the obeying of God. The righteous is as bold as a lion, Pro 28:1. He dares do any thing, but offend God: and to dare to do that, is the greatest folly, and weakness, and baseness, in the world. From this fear have sprung all the generous resolutions, and patient sufferings of the saints and martyrs of God: because they durst not sin against Him, therefore they durst be imprisoned, and impoverished and tortured and die for Him. Thus the prophet sets carnal and godly fear as opposite, and the one expelling the other, Isa 8:12, Isa 8:13. And our Saviour, Luk 12:4, ‘Fear not them which kill the body, but fear Him’ &c. Fear not, but fear: and therefore fear, that you may not fear”),

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

If ye call on the Father - judgeth. More correctly, Rev., If ye call on him as Father; the point being that God is to be invoked, not only as Father, but as Judge.

Without respect of persons [απροσωπολημπτως] . Here only. Peter, however, uses proswpolhmpthv, a respecter of persons, Act 10:34, which whole passage should be compared with this. Paul and James also use the kindred word swpolhmyia, respect of persons. See Rom 2:11; Jas 2:1. James has the verb proswpolhmptew, to have respect of persons. The constituents of the compound word, proswpon, the countenance, and lambanw, to receive, are found in Gal 2:6; and the word is the Old - Testament formula to accept or to raise the face of another; opposed to making the countenance fall (Job 29:24; Gen 4:5). Hence, to receive kindly, or look favorably upon one (Gen 19:21; Gen 32:20, etc.). In the Old Testament it is, as Bishop Lightfoot observes, "a neutral expression involving no subsidiary notion of partiality, and is much oftener found in a good than in a bad sense. When it becomes an independent Greek phrase, however, the bad sense attaches to it, owing to the secondary meaning of proswpon, a mask; so that proswpon lambanein signifies to regard the external circumstances of a man, his rank, wealth, etc., as opposed to his real, intrinsic character." Sojourning [παροικιας] . Compare sojourners, ver. 1.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.