Chapter 9 – The Finisher of our Faith

“Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2).

The Epistle to the Hebrews is the working out of three magnificent thoughts. First, Jesus Christ our great Apostle, coming from God to us. Second, Jesus Christ our great High Priest, going back from us to God. Third, Jesus Christ the Author and Finisher of our faith and the Captain of our salvation, taking us back with Him to God. It is the last of these thoughts that the writer is now expounding. He has already explained the nature and province of faith, and given us four groups of examples from the Old Testament, and now he brings the series to a lofty climax by introducing the Lord Jesus Christ as the crowning witness of faith both as an example of its power and as its Author and Finisher in the hearts and lives of His people.

I. CHRIST IS THE PATTERN OF OUR FAITH

The expression in this verse has been translated more literally in some versions “the Prince Leader,” or “Forerunner” of our faith. Christ was Himself a great believer. In the earliest glimpse which we have of the life of His boyhood we find Him studying the Word of God and asking questions as well as answering them. It was through the Scriptures of truth that He reached the profound conviction which enabled Him to say: “I must be about my Father’s business.”

Later the Holy Spirit brought to Him the more direct and personal witness of His divine Sonship when at His baptism in the Jordan the voice of the Father proclaimed: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” In His first temptation in the wilderness it was His faith that was directly assailed. “If thou be the Son of God,” said the tempter; as much as to say, “You, the Son of God, and in this deserted and desolate condition? It cannot be! It is some great delusion. You are mistaken.”

But Christ held steadfastly to His faith, and trusting in His Father’s care, rejected the tempter’s prescription and met him with the sword of the Spirit, “It is written.” All through His life we find Him expressing the most complete and constant dependence upon His Father for His life, strength, and even His very messages. “I can do nothing of myself,” He says. “The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father’s which sent me.” “He that sent me is with me, the Father hath not left me alone.” “As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.” This is the language of faith in its deepest essence, the very element of trust and dependence.

Then in the crisis hours of His life it was faith that sustained Him. In this very epistle we find the writer quoting from the Old Testament and applying to Him the language of trust and confidence in God, “And again, I will put my trust in him” (Heb. 2: 13, quoted from Ps. 18: 2).Again in Isaiah 50: 6-9, we have a fine exhibition of His faith in the hour of trial. “I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting. For the Lord God will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. He is near that justifieth me; who will contend with me? let us stand together: who is mine adversary? let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me; who is he that shall condemn me?” But the finest exhibition of our Savior’s faith in the hour of trial is in the 22nd Psalm, the inspired Psalm and portraiture of our Redeemer’s last sufferings. “My God, my God,”e cries, “why hast thou forsaken me? why art thou so far from helping me?” But still in that dark and dreadful hour when even His Father’s face was averted, He continued to trust. The very taunt of His enemies is “He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him.” And so He cries: “Thou art he that took me out of the womb: thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. . . . Be not far from me; for trouble is near.” And soon His cry of agony is changed to a song, “My praise shall be of thee in the great congregation: I will pay my vows before them that fear him.” “For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; neither hath he hid his face from him; but when he cried unto him, he heard.”

Again in His ministry the secret of His power was faith in God. When the disciples wondered at the withering of the fig tree He simply answered, “Have faith in [the faith of] God,” as much as to say, “This is the work of faith and if you will have the same faith which I have exercised, you, too, may accomplish the same works.” It was in this spirit of faith that He stood at Lazarus’ grave and cried, “Father, I thank thee that thou hast heard me. And I knew that thou hearest me always”; and then the grave was opened and the dead came forth obedient to the power of faith. It is delightful to think of our blessed Redeemer as fighting the good fight of faith just like us. For while He was the Son of God and is forevermore the equal of the Father, yet we never should forget that during His earthly life He voluntarily suspended the exercise of His independent rights and powers, and placed Himself in the same attitude of dependence upon God and trust in God as He requires of us, His disciples.

II. CHRIST THE AUTHOR OF OUR FAITH

Here the parallel between Him and all others ends. Abel and Abraham are patterns, but each had to live for himself and they cannot share with us their faith. But Christ, having traversed all the pathway of life and won the crown of victory, comes back to take us with Him up the ascent of faith till we reach the throne. There are three ways in which Christ is the Author of our faith.

1. By His words. He has given to us the precious promises which are the foundation of faith. How much His own personal words have contributed to the faith of His disciples! There is something in the utterances of the Lord Jesus which in their very manner and terms are peculiarly fitted to inspire confidence. Take that single promise, “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” How could language be more explicit, simple and encouraging to a timorous and troubled heart? There is no possibility of evading its sweet and reassuring force.

It wakens in us its own response and makes it so easy for us to come. Or take again the words: “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” It seems as if a fond and tender face were looking into ours and saying, “Won’t you trust Me?” and everything within us answers back, “Lord, I will believe in Thee.”

2. His work. Back of His gracious words is the finished work of redemption which has made them possible and guaranteed their fulfillment. The promise of forgiveness means infinitely more when we know that behind it is the precious blood that has atoned for our sins and opened the way for our acceptance with the Father. The promise of answered prayer has tenfold meaning when we realize that behind it is His own name in which we may come, and His intercession for us at the Father’s right hand, so that all His words are guaranteed to us by His glorious redeeming work. He has given us the standing and the rights of faith. He has clothed us with His own righteousness, and placed at our credit His infinite merits, and so faith has its firm foundation not only in the words, but also in the greater works which have guaranteed His exceeding great and precious promises.

3. But Christ is the Author of faith in a more direct sense, inasmuch as He inspires our faith and by the Holy Ghost puts in us the spirit of trust and confidence. For our faith is just as much the work of Christ as our holiness, our love, or any of the graces of Christian life. When He comes to abide within us He simply imparts to us His own nature and spirit, and puts into our heart the very same sentiments of trust toward His Father which He Himself ever cherished. There is nothing so delightful as this consciousness of the very life and heart of Christ within us, the trust that springs spontaneously within our breast, the prayer that prays itself, and the song that sings its joyous triumph even when all around is dark and strange. God help us to understand this deepest secret of the Lord and to be able to say in a literal sense, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”

III. CHRIST THE FINISHER OF OUR FAITH

There is nothing more touching in the life of the Master than the incident in which He tells Peter of the great temptation that is coming to Him. “Simon,” He says, “behold, Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”

The difference between Simon and Judas was not in the intensity of their sorrow, but in the fact that Simon’s faith failed not. At the last moment there was just one cord left that held him and brought Him back to His Lord, — his confidence in Christ. This was really one of Christ’s own heartstrings. It was the prayer that kept the faith of Peter. And so He keeps us. Again and again in the darkest hour of life all else had failed us, but the heart could still trust. Christ was keeping our faith.

But not only does He keep it, He educates it. He lets the trial come to strengthen it and establish it. He puts its into situations where we must have more faith or be overwhelmed, and He gives us the faith in the hour of need and leads us on from strength to strength and grace to grace. Just as the eagle teaches her young to fly by hurling them from their downy nest; and compelling them to strike out with their own feeble pinions and learn to soar upon the pathless air, so Christ puts us into impossible situations that He may prove to us that “all things are possible to him that believeth,” and that with God nothing is impossible. Sometimes in this process He even hides from us His face, as once the Father’s was hidden from Him, and teaches us to trust where we cannot trace, and walk with Him in the dark. Thus by various means He is preparing us for some future day when by faith we may perhaps be able like Him to create a world and prove the full meaning of His own mighty Word, “All things are possible to him that believeth.” Be not discouraged, tried and suffering child of God, “though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

IV. OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD THE AUTHOR AND FINISHER OF OUR FAITH

“Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus.”

1. Let us look to Him as our Example, and as He endured the cross, despising the shame for the joy set before Him, so let us look over every seeming trial, and in view of the glorious reversion by and by, let us rise above our trials and triumph over all their pain and shame.

2. Let us look to Him as the guarantee of our victory. He has overcome. He has sat down upon the right hand of the throne of God. His trials are over forever. His triumph has begun. And as surely as He has overcome, so shall we. Not for Himself did He enter in, but for us. He passed through the gates of suffering and death that He might record our names on yonder thrones and hold possession for us until we come. So let us look to the glorious end, and count nothing too dear if we may finish our course with joy and sit down with Him on His throne.

3. Let us keep looking to Him for help as we run the race, for He is there for the very purpose of helping us. His one business is to uphold and succor us and see us through. Every moment, every breath, we may be in communication with Him and drawing strength and help from above.

A little newsboy was complaining of his discouragements, and a Christian friend was trying to tell him how to bring them to Jesus. But the little fellow could not easily comprehend the mystery of prayer. Putting his finger on the boy’s forehead the gentleman said, “What do you do in there?” “I think,” said the little fellow, “Well, now,” said the other, “God can look down and see your thought. Suppose therefore that you just think a little wish or prayer every time you are in difficulty; God will look down and read it, and it will become a telegram to heaven and bring you an answer.” The next time the gentleman met his little friend he hardly knew him, he looked so bright. “Oh,” said he, as quickly as they met, “It’s all right since I began sending them sky telegrams. Everything is different, and I sell twice as many papers as I used to.” So let us keep looking unto Jesus, and when too tired or busy to formulate a prayer, let us think it, and the Holy Ghost will flash it to heaven.

4. Looking brings life. There is in the eye a strange power to bring the object into contact with us. Looking at the sun the sun comes into my brain. The photographic plate exposed to the camera receives the very impress of the object before it. Attached to a telescope a photographic plate will absorb in the course of a night the whole circle of the heavens exposed to view, and in the morning the finest stars will have written their impress on that sensitive surface. So also the microscope will reveal minute worlds the human eye never saw. This is the secret of the strange power of hypnotism which through a look lets one mind control another. So as we look at Christ yonder He becomes a living act in our consciousness and in our heart, and just as the dying Hebrew gazing on the brazen serpent felt life and power flowing through all his being, so looking unto Jesus we are healed, we are comforted, we are filled with His life and power, and we become partakers of His very nature and being.

5. But the expression means not only looking, but looking off, or looking away. It has an obverse and negative side.

(a) We are to look away from others, from their failures, yes, and even their attractions, if they distract us from Him.

(b) We are to look away from ourselves undiscouraged by our shortcomings, expecting nothing from self, and moment by moment looking away from our work and our best to Him.

(c) We are to look away from the world’s attractions and illusions to Him. He is the only power that can break the spell of earth’s enchantments. I have seen a child from whose careless hands no power could wrest the razor which it held without danger of its wounding itself to death, drop it instantly when some counter-attraction was held before it, and the little hands reached out for the beautiful picture, or the more attractive candy.

(d) Let us look away from our trials to Him. There is power in care and sorrow to mesmerize the soul until everything else is absorbed in one corroding sense of vexation and discouragement. We must look away from all this. Christ will not give you strength to carry your cares. You must drop them and look on the brighter side. There is always a bright side, and as happy Nancy said: “It is allus sunshine where Jesus is.” “You see, Massa,” she said to her troubled master, “when I sees the dark cloud coming and ‘pears like it were jes’ crushin’ down on me, I jes’ whisks ‘roun’ on the other side and I finds Jesus there, and then all is bright an’ cl’ar. The bright side is allus where Jesus is.” But the dark side has a strange fascination for some minds. Like the astronomer who had spent a day watching one of the sun spots, and when his friend called and remarked what a beautiful sunshiny day it had been, he looked up surprised and answered, “I thought it was rather dark today, but now you mention it, the sun does seem very bright.” The poor fellow had been watching a speck all day and it had eclipsed the sun. Let us look away from all this into the eternal light of His unchanging love and our sun will no more go down, but God will be our everlasting light and the days of our mourning shall be ended.

Finally, let us not only look, but run, for there is an intensely practical side of faith. Let us run while we look and let us look while we run. Let us take our inspirations and exaltations with us, and live them out in the quiet plod of daily duty, and become better workmen, better businessmen, better husbands, wives, and children because we are living in heaven while our feet are still treading the pathways of earth.

“I suppose John is your best weaver,” said a clergyman to the foreman of a factory, where one of his people was employed, a man who was always talking about his religion. “Well, no,” said the foreman, “John is a good fellow, but he has yet to learn that while it is all right to talk about religion in its place, yet in the workshop a man’s religion should come at his fingers and not at his mouth.”

So let our lips and lives express
The holy Gospel we profess;
So let our works and actions shine
To prove the doctrine all divine.

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 10 – The School of Faith

“Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12: 11).

The mystery of suffering is deeply interwoven with every thread and fiber of the web of nature and of life. Not a blossom breathing its sweet fragrance on the air of spring but came from a buried seed or a bursting bulb. Not a shining pearl but was evolved from the suffering of the life that gave it birth. Not a human life but came into being through travail and sore agony. The world’s oldest poem is a deep discussion of the mystery of suffering. The book of Job is the inspired drama which seeks to fathom the meaning of sorrow and affliction. Every heroic page in human history was gilded by some sacrifice or deed of daring or suffering. The glorious galaxy of Bible characters that have just been set forth in these verses as witnesses and types of faith were all evolved out of circumstances of severest trial, and reached their high achievements and splendid triumphs through such scenes and circumstances as these. They “had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonments: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; . . . they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” It was thus they reached the heights of victory and won the great rewards of faith. And He who marks the climax of this series, Christ Himself, the Author and Finisher of our faith, reaches His place at the “right hand of the throne of God” by enduring “the cross, despising the shame” and suffering the ” contradiction of sinners against himself.” It is suffering all the way through, but suffering transformed and glorified by victorious faith.

And so this chapter takes up the mystery of suffering and links it with the education of our faith. It is quite remarkable that immediately after the profound discussion which the apostle has just given of the subject of faith, the very first theme that he should introduce to us should be trial. And yet this is always God’s order; after faith trial, after trial more faith. God never leads us into the eleventh chapter of Hebrews without also bringing us into the twelfth. The writer once heard George Muller say, when asked by a friend how one could have more faith, “My beloved brother, by having more trial.”

I. THE NAME HERE GIVEN TO TRIAL

It is translated “chastening” in our revised version. Rotherham renders it “discipline,” but the original means “son training.” The training of a child; this is the beautiful phase of affliction which the Holy Spirit would impress upon every troubled heart. It is not judgment. It is not punishment. It is not even chastisement. Nay, it is not even the education of a school, but it is the education of a father or of a mother. There are some children who have had the great privilege of being educated by a loving mother, and it is a peculiar privilege where the mother has been fitted for her sacred task. There is a touch of tenderness in such a schooling that no conventional discipline can ever give. It is not as our schoolmaster, but as our loving Father; nay, as our very mother God, that the Holy Spirit teaches us and trains us for our future destiny. What a difference it makes when a trial comes, to see in it not the hand of an avenger, but the loving discipline of a father and the gentle admonition of a mother! God would not have us feel even the shadow of His anger. Judgment hardens the spirit and God never wants to break the spirit of His obedient child, but to win us by His love and transform us by His gentleness. Beloved, let us ever look upon our trials in the tender light of the Father’s love. It is not the token of His displeasure, but the very pledge of His jealous love, a love so inexorable that it will not let us miss His holiest and best.

II. THE PRESENT EFFECT OF TRIAL

Not now “joyous, but grievous.” We must not be disappointed if the blow is keenly felt and the trial is hard to endure. We must not wonder if the heart sinks in depression and every feeling and instinct is crushed for the time, and we must “count it all joy” when we cannot feel a throb of joy in our actual consciousness. It is true often that for the time “if need be, ye are in heaviness, through manifold temptations.” There came an hour when even the Lord himself had to say, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death.” It is not a sign of unbelief, rebellion or an unsanctified heart if the iron should enter the soul and the chastened spirit should cry like Him, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” It is hard to feel the blow of sharp disease and excruciating pain.

It is hard to see your loved ones suffer and be unable to relieve them. It is hard to see the grave close over our fondest treasures. It is hard to be scorched and blistered with the fiery heat of temptation and feel the very breath of hell upon our souls. It is hard to be wronged, misrepresented, betrayed by those who have trusted and benefitted, and like the Master, to meet the kiss of Judas and the denial of Peter. It is still harder to suffer the deep spiritual silences of God and find that even He has withdrawn the light of His countenance and the shining of His face. He knows how hard it is for He has felt the same, and He tenderly reminds us that He is not grieved with us when the fiery trial comes if it does seem strange, and is not joyous but grievous.

III. THE FRUIT OF TRIAL

“Nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” It is afterwards that it comes. Give it time to appear. The bleeding plant cut back by the gardener to a single bud might well seem to say, “How cruel! How harsh!” But wait a little until that single bud has burst into a rich hanging cluster and the purple grapes of autumn bear witness to the wisdom and the kindness of the gardener’s knife. The lawn might well cry out against the sharp scythe and the crushing mower, as they leave the little plants bleeding and crushed. But wait until the soft velvet of that lawn carpets the ground with a glory that no upholsterer could imitate, and then compare it with the dry and withered stalks on yonder common, where the same grass has been allowed to grow untrained and run to seed, and you will not question the wisdom or the beneficence of the process. The precious gold might well cry out against the crushing roller, and the consuming flame. But wait a little, until the rough and rugged lump of ore has become the shining jewel, or the glistening chain of burnished gold, and you need no one to explain the crucible and the fire.

So God is putting His children through the ordeal of trial with a hand of infinite wisdom and perfect love, and the very “trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire,” will be “found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”

It is called the “peaceable fruit of righteousness.” That is, it is both righteousness and peace. It corrects and directs our life into His perfect will. It shows us the weak places in our character and leads us to put on His righteousness and strength, and then it gives us the deeper peace and rest, the chastened tenderness, the mellow and subdued depth which you can always trace in those that have passed through God’s deepest testings, and learned all the lessons in the school of heavenly discipline. It is all so different from the callow, crude, and shallow profession of souls that have learned it by rote, but have not yet lived it in the school of sorrow, or had it burned into their inmost being in the very crucible of God. Such souls have entered into a rest which never can be moved. Sorrow has burned out all that is combustible and only that is left, which, like the pure gold, even trial cannot consume but only purify the more.

IV. THE PROCESS THROUGH WHICH ALL THIS IS ACCOMPLISHED

“Unto them that are exercised thereby.” Trial is not always a blessing. There are souls that suffer and are not sanctified, sweetened, and mellowed. There are trials that are wasted and thrown away. There are bitter tears that leave only desolation behind. There are lives that are scorched, soured, and crushed by their trials, and only driven farther from God and righteousness. Suffering in itself cannot sanctify; else Satan and his angels would long ago have been purified. Punishment is not a purifying process. Everything depends upon our attitude to the trial and our being exercised thereby. What does this mean?

1. “Despise not thou the chastening of the Lord.” We are not to think too lightly of it. We are not to regard it as a mere accident or incident, and plan for its removal by our own counsels or the advice of others. God means that we shall feel it. It has a message for us, and He wants us to understand it and take it deeply to heart and hear what God the Lord will say.

2. On the other hand, we must “not faint when . . . rebuked of him”; rather when we are “reproved” of Him. We must not take it too much to heart. We must not let it discourage us or break our spirit. We must never look on the dark side. We must never see God’s anger, but always His love. If we lose heart we shall be sure to miss the meaning of our trial, to fail to get our true lesson, and to fly from God instead of sweetly turning to Him in the hour of trial. It was thus that Israel lost their blessing. God was chastening them, but in the chastisement He was there to meet them and to help them, and His gentle message was, “In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.” But they would not. They fell into a panic. They said, “We will flee upon horses.” And they flew. But their pursuers flew faster, and God looked on and said, “Therefore will the Lord wait, that he may be gracious unto you.” In the time of trouble our greatest danger is that we will become alarmed and run away from God instead of running into His everlasting arms. Therefore remember, no matter what the nature of your trial, no matter though you may yourself be to blame for it, do not give up your trust, do not give way to fear, do not become discouraged, faint not.

3. “Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.” Remember how much more severely He suffered. Remember how triumphantly He maintained His courage and His joy, how He endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy set before Him; and remember that what He once accomplished in His lone conflict He can still enable you to accomplish through Him.

4. “Lift up the hands which hang down.” That is, take a firmer hold by the hand of faith. The time of trial is faith’s opportunity. As the old colored man once said, “When God tests me I always turn around and test Him.” Take more because you need more through His providence, and the trial that He has permitted. Tell Him that He has brought you into this hard place, and He must see you through. Stir up yourself “to take hold of his strength,” and you will find that He will never be displeased with the boldness of your faith and the largeness of your believing claim.

5. “And the feeble knees.” The knees may stand for prayer as the hands for faith, and if they do, it is needless to say that the time of trial is the time for prayer. It is God’s challenge to ask more from Him. “Call upon me,” He says, “in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee and thou shalt glorify me.” “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things.” Hard places are God’s very challenges to prayer. Or the knees may stand for courage, the courage that strengthens itself to stand firmly upon His promises and upon the ground that faith has claimed. The feeble knees represent perhaps the paralysis of fear, when the knees smite together and the frame trembles with alarm. This is the effect of sorrow on the natural heart. But faith can give courage and take away our fear, and enable us to triumph in the darkest hour and shout before the ramparts fall. It is not our courage. It is the courage of faith. And so we are exhorted to “add to our faith courage.” It is God’s courage, not ours. He will clothe us with it in the time of need.

6. “Make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.” This seems to mean that we are not to turn aside from the obstacles of faith, but to press on through and above them, and take strength from God to enable us to do so. The feeble and the lame would naturally be tempted to go round the mountain, and the enemy would say you are not able for this hill of difficulty and this rugged height of danger. But faith takes God to heal the lame, and then it marches forward boldly and victoriously through every obstacle, and keeps right on its way rejoicing. Of course, this may literally be applied to the healing of bodily disease. Many a time through physical infirmity it seems almost unavoidable that God’s servants should turn back from some task of difficulty and take the easy way of escape. But God will give us faith and strength to claim His healing power and go right on in the path of service and of duty, finding His grace sufficient from moment to moment, and His strength made perfect in our weakness.

But it also applies to difficulties of every sort, and inspires us with a faith that presses forward in the face of every discouragement and obstruction. So Israel, pressed on at the Red Sea, refusing to turn aside, and the floods divided and the way was opened for their escape and for the destruction of their foes. So Daniel pressed forward when he knew that his life was hanging in the balance and a little subterfuge might have saved him from the den of lions. But no, when he knew that the decree was passed, and that the spies were already skulking under his window and watching for him to fall into the snare, he went quietly home and, entering his house, he set his face steadfastly toward Jerusalem and prayed unto his God “as aforetime.” There is a sublime heroism in those two words, “as aforetime.” There was no advertising of his courage for the sake of showing it off. But he just went on as before in the consistent course of implicit faith and inexorable fidelity.

7. “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord.” This is the great end of all our trails, to lead us to be right with God and with our fellow men. In the hour of trial it is a great comfort to feel that our relationships with one another are right, and there is no unseemly strife or wrong. And above all else, trial comes to deepen our holiness and lead us to that sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord. The reference here seems to be to the Lord’s coming. Holiness is the preparation for that glorious meeting in the air, and without it we shall not see Him when He comes, nor can we hope to share the welcome of His glorious Bride. But He does not expect us to work up this holiness by our own exertions. He tells us that we are to be “partakers of his holiness.” Therefore trial comes to show us where our holiness is at fault that we may put on His righteousness and receive His grace and all-sufficiency. We shall be so glad some day when the supreme test comes that we have been already tried by fire and not left to go through the final conflict with armor unproved and weapons that may fail us in the crisis hour.

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 11 – The Goal of Faith

“For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness and darkness, and tempest,
“And the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more:
“(For they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart:
“And so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:)
“But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels,
“To the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect.
“And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel” (Heb. 12:18-24).

We have seen in our former studies in the epistle of Hebrews, the Captain of our salvation bringing many sons unto glory along the pathway of faith; and now in this sublime passage we have presented to us the final goal to which He is bringing them. The figure is a strong antithesis, presenting in striking contrast the difference between the Old Testament and the New. The whole epistle has been richly laden with Old Testament allusions and quotations. The writer has taken us back to Abel and Enoch, Noah and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Melchisedek and Joseph, Moses and Joshua, Gideon and Barak, Samuel and David, the Old Testament prophets, and the ancient High Priest. The Tabernacle in the Wilderness and its imposing ritual, and indeed all the ordinances and types of the ancient Scriptures, have been laid under contribution to unfold the richness of Jesus Christ in whom they are all fulfilled. Now he gathers up the substance of all these ancient types and figures in one magnificent contrast between the Law and the Gospel, the Old Testament and the New.

He had already told us in the close of the eleventh chapter that God had “provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” In the present passage he shows us by this striking antithesis how much better the thing that He has provided is, and how lofty and sublime are the immunities and privileges to which we have been introduced by the Gospel and the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I. HE TELLS US THAT WE ARE “NOT COME UNTO THE MOUNT THAT MIGHT BE TOUCHED, AND THAT BURNED WITH FIRE, NOR UNTO BLACKNESS, AND DARKNESS, AND TEMPEST”

All this is descriptive of the terrors of the ancient Law. This was the dispensation of judgment. We are not under it now. We have been delivered from it, and there is “now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” Not by the sanctions of fear and the threatenings of judgment, but by the gentle constraint of love are we held to our sacred obligations. Let us not get under the Law or back to bondage, but “stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free.” We are under the law of faith and not of works, and the law of faith is the law of love, and the reign of grace.

II. “WE ARE COME UNTO MOUNT SION”

Mount Sion is the antithesis of Mount Sinai. It is the mount of mercy as the other was of judgment. Therefore the ark of God was set up on Mount Sion and the symbol of God’s covenant and mercy was established there and it became significant of divine grace. The ark and the tabernacle were symbols of God’s mercy and types of Jesus Christ, who came to fulfill the Law and deliver us from its curse and condemnation, therefore Mount Sion stands for the grace of God in contrast with the terrors of Sinai. Let us ever remember this and dwell in the light of its mercy and so “keep ourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.”

III. WE ARE COME UNTO “THE CITY OF THE LIVING GOD, THE HEAVENLY JERUSALEM”

The earthly Jerusalem was the center of God’s earthly people; the heavenly Jerusalem is the home of God’s spiritual people. It is a city which He is preparing out of spiritual realities, and of which His holy people are the materials and elements which He is building together, and which shall one day be seen descending from heaven as a vision of transcendent glory, more radiant than the rainbow, more precious than all the gems of earth. We are come to this city now. We are members of its glorious society. “Our citizenship is in heaven,” and our names are written in its civic records. Faith claims our high position even here,

And hope foredates the joyful day
When these old skies shall cease to sunder
The one dear love-linked family.

IV. WE ARE COME “TO AN INNUMERABLE COMPANY OF ANGELS”

These celestial beings are also inhabitants of the city of God and attendants upon the heirs of salvation. Already we are compassed about with them as ministering spirits, and although we see them not yet, doubtless their interposing love often rescues us from hidden dangers and snares. Undoubtedly they are the spectators of our earthly course, and are watching with intensest interest our conflicts and our victories. We are to them object lessons of the government of God and the wonders of redeeming love, and they are doubtless our protectors and guardians and often the unseen messengers of answered prayer and divine blessing. Let us realize the honor of our glorious associations and walk worthy of such high companionship.

V. WE ARE COME “TO THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND CHURCH OF THE FIRSTBORN, WHICH ARE WRITTEN IN HEAVEN”

Literally this means, “the first born ones.” This description includes the whole company of the redeemed, the great assembly of the saints of God from every age and clime. They are all called firstborn ones; that is, they share the inheritance of the firstborn, and they stand in exactly the same position as Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and the Elder Brother in the divine family. Our inheritance as God’s children is not that of a younger son, but is the same as the Elder Brother’s. Jesus, the firstborn, shares with us all His privileges, and reminds us that God is “his Father and our Father; his God and our God.” In what sense are we come to this general assembly and heavenly Church? Our names are written there. We are recognized already as if we also were there. We are counted one with the ransomed saints above.

One family we dwell in Him,
One Church above, beneath;
Though now divided by the stream,
The narrow stream of death.

One army of the living God
At His command we bow,
Part of the host have passed the flood,
And part are crossing now.

VI. WE ARE COME TO “GOD THE JUDGE OF ALL”

The idea of this reference seems to be that through the redemption of Jesus Christ we have been brought back to the Father, and have been restored to our original place as His children. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins,” we are told, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” We were “without God in the world”; we were strangers and enemies to God; we were far away from God; but Christ has brought us home, and now we are back in the Father’s house. He came from God to seek us and to bring us the message of His love. He went back to God as our High Priest to present His offering and sacrifice for our salvation, and now He has taken us back to God with Him, and so once more it is true that God is our home and our dwelling place, and we are restored to that place for which He interceded in His last prayer by Kidron’s brook, “That they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us.” Union with God in the blessed beatific fellowship of His eternal love; this is the goal of faith and the consummation of redemption.

VII. WE ARE COME “TO THE SPIRITS OF JUST MEN MADE PERFECT”

This is almost synonymous with the previous statement that we are come “to the general assembly and church of the firstborn.” But it seems to refer to the individual spirits of the glorified, rather than to the collective body of the whole general assembly and Church above. Perhaps it suggests the precious hope and consoling thought that we are standing in close fellowship with the glorified dead whom we have known and loved on earth. Is there not back of the lie of Spiritualism a truth somewhere, perhaps but dimly revealed, but not forbidden to our clinging, longing hearts, that those who have left us are not, perhaps, so far away as we sometimes deem? And although they cannot speak to us and we must not attempt by the arts of sorcery to open communications with the world beyond through them, yet through Him in whose presence they dwell, and to whom we may freely come in prayer, they have a very close connection with our earthly life. It may be that they are conversant with our struggles, joys, and triumphs. Perhaps they are permitted in some sense to minister to us still, and are undoubtedly allowed to keep alive the love that still binds our hearts together, and are waiting with joyful expectation for the time when we shall meet them again at His glorious coming. How much there may be hidden behind those gentle words of Christ, “If it were not so, I would have told you.”

VIII. WE ARE COME “TO JESUS THE MEDIATOR OF THE NEW COVENANT”

Perhaps this was inserted here to keep us from thinking for a moment that our beloved dead could in any sense be mediators between us and God. There is but one Mediator, and that is Jesus Christ. Through Him alone we have access to the eternal world, and through Him all our interests and relationships are maintained. We are come to Him, but in coming to Him He brings us to all that He represents on the heaven side. He brings us to the Father and to the family. He secures for us the help and strength we need from moment to moment. He keeps open to us all the resources of divine sufficiency. He presents our prayers before the throne and sends the answer from above. He represents us continually to the Father, and through Him we are accepted every moment even as He. And by and by, should His public advent be delayed, He will be the Mediator through whom our spirit will pass from the earthly to the eternal world and we be translated, in the arms of His love, into that heavenly city and society, for He says: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”

IX. WE ARE COME “TO THE BLOOD OF SPRINKLING, THAT SPEAKETH BETTER THINGS THAN THAT OF ABEL”

The blood of sprinkling refers to the constant provision of Christ’s Priesthood for our acceptance and full salvation. The blood shed was the figure of Christ’s life offered to atone for our sins, but the blood sprinkled refers to the constant application of Christ’s grace to our souls in sanctifying and keeping us from the power of sin. It speaketh better things than that of Abel inasmuch as Abel’s blood cried out for judgment against his murderer, but Christ’s blood cries out for pardon even for His murderers and enemies. Perhaps also the better things may refer to the fact that while Abel’s blood availed for justification, Christ’s blood avails for sanctification, cleansing us both from the guilt and power of sin.

X. “SEE THAT YE REFUSE NOT HIM THAT SPEAKETH”

On account of these high and glorious dignities and distinctions that belong to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and our standing in Him, there arises a corresponding responsibility on our part, much greater than even under the ancient Law. Therefore the apostle adds, “See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven.” Let us not imagine that because the spirit of the Gospel is more beneficient than that of the Law, our transgression against its grace and love will be suffered with impunity. The very gentleness of that grace will but aggravate our guilt and increase our punishment. He who can despise such mercy and trifle with such love can only look for the severest punishment. The God of the New Testament not less than the Old is a consuming fire. Only the fire seeks now to consume the sin rather than the sinner, but if the sinner refuses to part with the sin it must consume him too.

XI. “WHOSE VOICE THEN SHOOK THE EARTH”

But the goal of faith will not be fully reached until the coming of that more glorious day of which this passage speaks in the concluding verses when Christ shall come in all His glorious power. “Whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain.” That is to say, in a little while this dispensation is to reach its close in a grand upheaval and convulsion of both earth and heaven, and in a tragedy more tremendous than Mount Sinai ever saw. Then everything that is shakeable shall be shaken to pieces and disappear with the dissolving world. And so God is testing us now that He may shake out of us the things that are transient and temporal, and that we may be established in the things which cannot be shaken and which shall remain. This is the meaning of all the tests and trials of life. Christ the Author and Finisher of our faith is searching and proving our faith, and bringing to light every weakness and defect so that we may be established, and settled and prepared for the testing day. Whatever is subject to change, let it change and pass away. Let us not fear the fire. Let us not shrink from the sifting and shaking process. Let us be thankful that we have One who loves us with such inexorable love that He will not let us go into judgment unprepared, but is giving us armor proved and tried before that testing day. Let us welcome the ordeal and echo the prayer:

Burn on, O fire of God, burn on,
Till all my dross is burned away,
Burn up the dregs of self and sin,
Prepare me for the testing day.

XII. “WHEREFORE WE, RECEIVING A KINGDOM WHICH CANNOT BE MOVED, LET US HAVE GRACE, WHEREBY WE MAY SERVE GOD ACCEPTABLY WITH REVERENCE AND GODLY FEAR”

Let faith claim her kingdom in all its fullness and glory, and let her also claim the grace and power to be worthy of it. It is all grace from first to last, and the grace that prepared the kingdom can prepare us for it and keep us true to it until the final consummation. Glory be to God, and thanks and praise for the riches of grace and the possibilities of faith!

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 12 – Let Us

In the study of the Epistle to the Hebrews our attention has been chiefly confined to the unfolding of the great doctrinal plan of the writer, the revelation of Jesus Christ, as our Apostle, our Great High Priest, and the Author and Finisher of our faith. But there is no portion of the New Testament more intensely practical and whose argument is more frequently broken up with brief and pungent interjections of exhortation and appeal addressed to the conscience and the heart. These are mostly expressed in a uniform phrase commencing with the two little words, “Let us.” There are no less than twelve of these appeals in the course of the epistle, and they constitute together a very complete series of practical homiletics and personal application. The number twelve is particularly appropriate to this great epistle, which is based on the connection between the Old and New Testaments, and it is scarcely necessary to say that twelve is the symbolical number of God’s covenant people suggested by the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

I. “LET US FEAR”

“Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it” (Heb. 4: 1).

The point of his appeal lies in the phrase “come short,” or still finer, “seem to come short.” In fact the very feature of the whole epistle consists not in emphasizing the more common qualities of the Christian character, but in bringing out the finer points of the life of faith and holiness. It is not faith that the writer emphasizes as much as the boldness of faith, the confidence of trust. So it is not salvation that is presented to us so much as the “great salvation,” the deeper fullness of Christ, the test of faith and the Land of Promise. Here we are exhorted not so much to fear lest we should lose our souls, as that we should miss something of God’s best and come short of the fullness of our inheritance, or even seem to come short of it. A single degree in the physical world constitutes the boiling or the freezing point, and one step less or more marks the line of demarcation between the life of failure and the life of victory. It is so sad to be almost there and yet to lose our victory and our crown. We may well fear the faintest seeming and symptom of it, and be on our guard lest we seem to come short of all that God has so abundantly provided at such cost, and so jealously guards from our indifference and neglect.

II. “LET US ENTER INTO HIS REST”

“Let us labor therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief” (Heb. 4: 11).

The word “labor” literally means, “let us make speed to enter into that rest.” Here again the point lies not so much in entering into that rest as in entering at once and making it the supreme business of life to enter in now. In the ancient story on which this appeal is based, we read that they were willing a little later to enter in, but they were too late. The opportunity had passed and the Lord would not allow them to renew it. For a whole night He waited while they parleyed and questioned, and then the irrevocable sentence went forth that sent them back to traverse the sands of the desert for forty years until all the unbelieving generation had passed away. And so we may come too late. There are souls along the path of life who reach the crisis hour of some great decision. Every leading of God’s providence has converged to that point, and at last the Holy Ghost, with solemn urgency, is pleading, “While it is said, Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts,” and, beloved, tomorrow will not do. Oh, if God is speaking through these lines to any undecided soul, make speed this moment to say, “Yes, Lord, forever yes.”

III. “LET US HOLD FAST”

“Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession” (Heb. 4: 14).

This may be perhaps better translated “our confession.” It is not so much our faith we are to hold as the confession of our faith. After we enter into His rest and receive any deeper blessing from the Lord there is always a time of testing, and the adversary will try his best to make us abandon our confidence and give up our high claim. Even God cannot fully bless us, and make real to us what we have taken by faith, until we have been proved and tried. After Jesus received the Holy Ghost He was led of the Spirit into the wilderness forty days to be tempted of the devil. Let us not count it strange concerning the fiery trial that tests our faith, and let us remember that the weapon is, “Whom resist steadfast in the faith.” But our faith must be exercised and established by our testimony. If we hide it in our heart, and are afraid to commit ourselves to it, it will die of strangulation. But if we boldly take our stand upon it and proclaim it in the face of the enemy, it will grow by the very conflict, and when we have proved true to our testimony God will make the reckoning real, and “bring forth thy righteousness as the light, and thy judgment as the noonday.”

IV. LET US COME FOR TIMELY AID

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4: 16). Our struggle is not in our own strength. In our conflict we are not left to our own resources. Our Great High Priest has gone to the headquarters of the universe for the one business of succoring and sustaining us, and now the way is open, the throne of grace is accessible, and there is mercy for the sinful, grace for the helpless, and instant succor for the moment of need. We cannot only come, but come again and yet again, and keep coming for continual supply. We never can exhaust either His grace or its resources. We never can find Him too busily engaged to hear our cry and send us help. We need not wait for the long-deferred response, but before we call He will answer, and while we are yet speaking He will hear. It is grace for timely aid. He is a very present help in time of trouble. Thus let us come, and come boldly, and take His fullness to meet His highest claims upon us.

V. “LET US GO ON”

“Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection” (Heb. 6: 1). Having entered in, become established and found the source of all-sufficient grace, let us now advance, let us make progress, let us grow in grace, let us not be easily satisfied with present attainments, for, unless we go on we shall surely go back. It is not safe to lose an inch of ground. “We are not of them who draw back unto perdition.” The faintest drawing back may land us in perdition. There is no portion of the Holy Scriptures so filled with impressive warnings against backsliding as this. In two of its leading chapters, the sixth and tenth, we are told of the peril of the soul that falls away, and the only remedy against falling away is to go forward. Are we going on? And are we going unto perfection? Is our goal the very highest? Are we aiming at nothing less than the highest possibilities of a life of faith and service for God? Nothing less is safe, and nothing less is worthy of our high calling and our exceeding great and precious promises.

VI. LET US DRAW NIGH

“Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh; And having an high priest over the house of God; Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water” (Heb. 10: 19-22).

This marks a still deeper nearness. Having gone on in our Christian progress, God calls us along the way at various times to still deeper fellowship and closer intimacy. There are depths and heights in the Christian life, and new stages of Christian experiences through which the Captain of our salvation loves to lead His obedient followers. Just as in the structure of the crust of this world we often find the different geological periods marked by successive strata, and these in turn separated by great masses of conglomerate rock, showing that there was for a time a regular deposit of stratified matter, and then a great upheaval and a new layer of rock, so God marks our experience by successive blessings; but there is beyond this more and more for all who will enter in. The nearness described in this passage is accomplished through the Redeemer’s crucified flesh, and, of course it follows, our crucifixion with Him. As we pass through new and deeper surrenders we pass into closer fellowship with Him. As we die deeper deaths we rise to higher planes of resurrection life. But let us remember that it is neither through our dying or our efforts at rising, but through the new and living way of Jesus Himself, that we must enter in. It is by our first entering into His death, and then receiving His life to dwell within us, that we pass in where He already dwells, and our life is hid with Christ in God through Him our Living Way.

VII. “LET US HOLD FAST”

“Let us hold fast the profession of our faith without wavering; (for he is faithful that promised)” (Heb. 10: 23).

This is the second time that this language is employed and this appeal made. After deeper experience in the life of God it is necessary for us to have a new establishing, and therefore God again tests us, and settles us in the closer place into which we have entered, before He sends us forth once more to service and testimony. This time we are not only to hold fast, but we are to hold fast without wavering. We have reached a deeper, stronger place and henceforth we become “steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord.”

VIII. LET US HELP OTHERS TO ENTER IN

“Let us consider one another to provoke unto love and good works: Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is; but exhorting one another: and so much the more, as ye see the day approaching” (Heb. 10: 24, 25).

Every new experience is a preparation for a higher ministry. We can only give to others the Christ that we ourselves know. After coming closer to God we shall always find some hungry heart waiting for our message and ready for our assistance. Let us go out of ourselves as soon as we can, and find our blessings in blessing one another. There is special reference in the following verse to the approaching day of the Lord’s coming, and the ministry referred to has doubtless reference to the gathering out and preparation of the Bride to meet her Lord. This, indeed, seems to be the great work which the Holy Spirit has for the disciples of Christ today, not so much the conversion of sinners, although that is not to be forgotten, but the purifying and preparing of the Lord’s own people to meet Him in the air. We shall find as we endeavor to give our blessing to others that it grows in the exercise, even as the traveler who found that he had saved himself from death by the warmth that came into his freezing limbs while he rubbed and chafed the limbs of a fellow-traveler, who was dying in the snow. So let us “consider one another to provoke unto love and good works.”

IX. LET US RUN THE RACE

“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us” (Heb. 12: 1).

We are not spectators in a great amphitheater. We are competitors for a prize. For us the contest is immensely practical and solemnly real. The life of faith is a life of holy activity and yet of patient endurance. So let us run “that we may obtain.”

X. LET US RECEIVE

“Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear” (Heb. 12 : 28).

This verse comes at the close of the splendid contrast which the writer has drawn between the Law and the Gospel. There all was darkness. Here all is light. There terror was the strong but insufficient sanction. Here love is the mighty and all constraining motive. While more is demanded than under the ancient law, yet grace gives what it demands and the exhortation to us is not to try harder or do or suffer more, but to receive and take from Him the grace, the divine supply through which we shall be able to render the service demanded, and rise to the height of the kingdom into which we have been introduced.God is not calling upon us for more strenuous endeavors, or more severe sacrifices, but for simpler faith, for larger confidence, for the spirit that takes more that it may give it back in better service and larger love. So let us receive that we may give, and say like the Psalmist of old, “Of thine own, O Lord, have we given thee.”

XI. “LET US GO FORTH”

“Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. For here have we no continuing city, but we seek one to come” (Heb. 13: 12-14).

Here we enter upon the sufferings of Christ. We are not only to share His grace but His cross, and bear His reproach, but we are to bear it gladly because this world is not our place of recompense, but the city that is to come. Therefore we are to be willing to be misunderstood, not only by the secular world but even by the religious world. The camp outside of which He had to go was the camp of religious professors and leaders of His day. Christ was cast out by what was accounted the best society in His time. Need we wonder if in following Him in the life of faith and holiness, we, too, should be misunderstood by the public opinion of the large majority even of the people of God? We are not encouraging a spirit of rashness and criticism, but no thoughtful observer can deny that today there is a great mass of lukewarm and merely professing Christians, and inside this multitude there is a little flock of humble followers of the lowly Jesus, who are learning what it is to go forth unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach. Let us not deserve criticism by open wrong, but let us not fear reproach if it comes for the name of Jesus. Let us be content to be unpopular and stand with the minority for the fullness of Christ, the power of the Holy Spirit, the separated life, and the religion of service and sacrifice.

XII. LET US PRAISE AND SERVE

“By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Heb. 13: 15, 16).

Two things are here required of the soul that has entered into the fullness of Christ and passed within the veil. First, we are to come forth with shining faces, rejoicing and praising; and secondly we are to go forth and bless the world. The sacrifice of praise is a life of thanksgiving. Our first duty is to God, and that is the habit of continual worship, praise, and thanksgiving. It is more than service, more than testimony, more than any work we can do for our fellow man. It is the sweet ointment of Mary poured upon His head and His feet, while service is busy-handed Martha ministering in loving activity. He asks both, but the love and the praise have the higher place. Let us not, however, forget the other. There are two ways of doing, one by our own personal efforts, the other by the gifts of our money, supporting those who work as our substitutes. This is included in the meaning of the word “communicate.” It means to give of our substance for the support of the Gospel and the sending forth of laborers, and even to give until it becomes a real sacrifice, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. Beloved, let us not forget these holy ministries. It is all vain to talk of our deeper experiences, if our outward services and sacrifices do not express them. Money today is the measure of value, and tells how much we care for things and how highly we estimate them. What we give and what we sacrifice for the cause of Christ is the true test of how much we love.

The writer remembers a very rich man who on his death-bed longed to live to serve God, but although reminded of it, utterly failed to leave a penny to support a substitute to work for him when he was gone, but held on to every dollar to the last, and then left it to relatives to whom it became not a blessing but a curse. How much happier had he laid up his treasure in heaven.

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 13 – Concluding Messages

“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
“Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (Hebrews 13: 20, 21).

We have now reached the close of the doctrinal portion of this great epistle, and the last chapter is occupied with a number of practical applications, and a final benediction and doxology, followed by a few parting salutations.

I. PRACTICAL APPLICATION (Heb. 13: 1-19)

1. Love (verses 1-4).

The great theme of this epistle has been faith, but faith ever works by love. And so four kinds of love are here enjoined:

(a) Love to the brethren. “Let brotherly love continue.”

(b) Love to the stranger. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.”

(c) Love to the suffering, a love that leads us to make common cause with them, and take upon us in practical sympathy their very burdens and bonds. “Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.”

(d) Domestic love and personal purity in the relationships of the home (v. 4).

2. Contentment and freedom from the restless and inordinate desire for earthly things. “Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have” (v. 5).

It will be noticed here that this virtue is founded upon faith and springs from a spirit of confidence in God’s protecting and providing care, for it is added, “For he hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee.” But our faith must be very positive, and meet God’s promise with full confession and perfect confidence. Therefore it is added, “So that we may boldly say, the Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me.” There is a beautiful correspondence here between what He has said and what we should say. Faith should take up and echo back the Word of God, and only as it does this will the promise be made good, and the reckoning become real.

3. Constancy. “Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein” (v. 9). The Hebrew Christians were in great danger, like the disciples of Galatia, of being disturbed by false teachers, especially those that sought to persuade them to go back to the law, and give up their simple faith for a religion of ceremonialism. The apostle seems to connect this exhortation with the two preceding verses, seven and eight, the one reminding them of the example of their teachers; the other recalling to them the unchangeable character of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is one of the most beautiful verses in the whole Bible, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever,” and while it stands in splendid isolation in this chapter, apparently disconnected from the context, there can scarcely be a question that there was a latent connection in the mind of the writer between the unchangeableness of Jesus and our stability as Christians. This is the only way for us to hold fast our constancy, by having in us as the source and strength of our life the heart of the unchangeable Christ. If Jesus Christ is in us in every thought and feeling, word and action, we, too, shall be the same yesterday, and today and forever, and all our moods and tenses will be resolved into one blessed present tense of immovable peace and victorious joy.

4. The fellowship of Christ’s sufferings. “Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach.” (v. 13.) We have already referred to this verse in the former chapter, and it is only necessary here to notice that it is connected with the blessed hope of the coming kingdom and the city which God is preparing for His separated and suffering people. In the assurance of that blessed hope, it should not be hard to give up the earthly camp, and the prizes of human ambition and success.

5. Service. “By him therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips giving thanks to his name. But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (verses 15, 16). Here, as we have seen in the last chapter, there is a double service, thanksgiving to God and blessing to our fellow men, both by our personal acts and our liberal gifts.

6. Submission to one another in the Lord, especially to our spiritual teachers and leaders. “Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy, and not with grief: for that is unprofitable for you” (v. 17).

7. Mutual prayer, especially for the Christian ministry. “Pray for us: for we trust we have a good conscience, in all things willing to live honestly. But I beseech you the rather to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner” (verses 18, 19). This is the highest of all service, — our ministry at the throne of grace. This is a blessed work from which nothing need ever debar us, and if we are hindered from personal activity we can pour out the strength of our lives through those for whom we pray. So let us love, so let us be content, so let us stand steadfast, so let us enter into the fellowship of His sufferings, so let us serve, submit ourselves and pray for one another in the blessed household of faith and family of God.

II. PARTING BENEDICTION

But now the full heart of the writer turns from didactic speech and personal exhortation, and pours out one burning prayer and benediction, in which he gathers up the deepest teachings of this whole blessed epistle. “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, Make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen” (verses 20, 21).

1. The God of peace. This beautiful expression sums up in a single phrase the spiritual results of the great redeeming work with which the Epistle to the Hebrews has been occupied. We have already seen that the first great thought was the coming of Jesus Christ from God to bring us the message of His will. The next was the going back of Jesus Christ to God as our Great High Priest. But the consummation of the writer’s thought was the bringing of us back to God in full reconciliation and perfect fellowship, as the Author and Finisher of our faith. This is the idea expressed by the “God of peace.” Jesus Christ has brought us back to God, and now He steps back from the foreground of the picture, and leaves us in the Father’s house, and in direct relations with God Himself. There is no cloud between us and the eternal Father. He is to us the very God of peace.

2. “The great shepherd of the sheep.” But while we recognize our reconciliation to the Father, not for a moment can we forget the blessed Mediator through whom it has been accomplished and is still maintained. Here a new figure is introduced, although it is used to express an old fact. It is the figure of the shepherd, and back of it there rises the vision of the lost and wandering sheep, of the long and loving search, of the midnight, the wilderness, and the terrible cost, the glad home-bringing, and the peace and safety of the heavenly fold. But while this is a new figure in the Epistle to the Hebrews, it is not a new figure in the Old Testament from which this beautiful epistle is so largely drawn. Indeed, it is the oldest, sweetest, and most frequent image under which the grace of God has been portrayed, from Abel down to Christ Himself. And so it adds a delightful touch of tenderness and completeness to the whole epistle, to represent our Lord Jesus, in the last picture of His person and work, under the figure of the Great Shepherd of the sheep.

3. The everlasting covenant. This expresses the security of our salvation and the solid and permanent foundation on which our relationship to God through the work of Jesus Christ has been established. It is the result of an arrangement as stable as the throne of God. Every condition of justice and equity has been met. Every possible cause of failure has been anticipated, and the interests of Christ’s redeemed people are guaranteed by an everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son, in which all the conditions have been fully met, and all the contracts and promises ratified so completely that, as the Psalmist expresses it, it is “In all things well ordered and sure.” This is one of the most helpful truths brought out in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that we are saved not through the work of the Law, but through a new covenant in which Christ has met and fulfilled all the conditions and bequeathed to us all the promises. As the writer expressed it in a former passage, “That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast” (Heb. 6: 18, 19).

4. The Precious Blood. “Through the blood of the everlasting covenant.” This covenant has been ratified by blood, and the blood runs as a crimson thread all through this evangelistic epistle. It is perhaps the most prominent thought in the central portion of the letter. There is no ambiguity about the teaching of this portion of the Scriptures respecting the cross of Christ. It is the blood that purchases our redemption. It is the blood that puts away our sin. It is the blood that seals and ratifies the covenant. It is the blood that sanctifies and keeps us. It is the blood that opens the way into the holiest of all. It is the blood that pleads for us, and claims the answer to our prayers. Over every page of this beautiful book we might well write the caption, “The Precious Blood of Christ.”

5. The practical outworking of this great redemption. “Make you perfect in every good work to do his will.” It is not a mere treatise on systematic theology; it is not a mere intellectual diversion; but it leads to the very highest standard of holy living. His will becomes our rule of action, perfect conformity to it our goal of attainment, and every good work our mode of reaching this lofty standard and heavenly aim. The life of faith, if genuine and sincere, will always lead to the life of holy activity and practical righteousness. But here it is more than an ordinary standard of righteousness. It is nothing less than the highest perfection that the apostle asks for his readers. Just as the faith required in this epistle is the highest confidence, so the holiness presented as our ideal is entire conformity to the will of God “in every good work.” This would be impossible for us, but it is not impossible when we remember the crowning thought of the whole epistle, that Jesus Himself is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and this truth is not forgotten in the closing benediction, for in the very next clause he reminds us of:

6. The divine inworking which is to bring about the practical outworking. This high and holy standard is not to be reached by our most strenuous exertions, but by God’s “working in you that which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ.” It is union with Christ, abiding in Christ, the heart and life of Christ within us, the realization of that fine expression which we find in Colossians 1: 29: “Whereunto I also labor, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily,” and which we find yet again in Philippians 2: 12, 13: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”

7. The Doxology. And so the benediction ends in a sublime doxology: “To whom be glory forever and ever, Amen.” Instead of being crushed with discouragement, and paralyzed with a sense of the impossibility of our task, we are lifted up to sublime confidence and praise by the delightful fact that it is not our working, but His, and duty is transformed into delight and the heart can only sing:

Once it was my working, His it hence shall be,
Once I tried to use Him, Now He uses me.

Well may we say of such a Savior and such a salvation, “to him be glory forever and ever. Amen.”

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 1 – Words of Comfort for Tried Ones

Chapter 1 — WORDS OF COMFORT FOR TRIED ONES

“Wherein you greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 1:6,7.)

Peter was to be the special target of Satan’s assaults just because Christ had chosen him for so high a ministry. But even his very trials were his best preparation for that ministry, and the Master here intimates that when through the discipline of temptation he shall have himself become transformed, it will be his special calling to comfort and confirm his tried and tempted brethren.

How marvelously has he been transformed since that dark night of the betrayal! One has only to read his tender and lovely messages in his two epistles to see how truly he had taken up his Master’s cross, and how deeply he had learned the lesson of his humiliating fall. One has only to read further his messages of consolation to the tried and tempted to see how faithfully he has fulfilled his commission, “Strengthen your brethren.” The First Epistle of Peter is the best commentary on this text, and we can find no more comforting and helpful message for those who are passing through fiery trials than these letters of hope and comfort.

Peter is indeed the apostle of hope, as Paul is the apostle of faith, and John the messenger of love. The keynote of his first epistle is this word, trial, which reappears in every chapter and forms the pivot of almost all his messages of comfort and encouragement. We have but to read the following passages to find that this one thought is sustained through the entire epistle: “Though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations: That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.”(1 Peter 1: 6, 7.) “For this is worthy of thanks, if a man for conscience toward God endures grief, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when you are buffeted for your faults, you shall take it patiently? but if, when you do well, and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For even hereunto were you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow his steps.”(1 Peter 2: 19-21.) “But and if you suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are you: and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled; But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asks you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear: Having a good conscience; that, whereas, they speak evil of you, as of evildoers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. For it is better, if the will of God be so, that you suffer for well doing, than for evil doing.”(2 Peter 3: 14-17.) “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy. If you are reproached for the name of Christ, happy are you; for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you: on their part He is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men’s matters. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him not be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf.” (1 Peter 4: 12-16.) “Whom resist steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world. But the God of all grace, who has called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.” (1 Peter 5: 9, 10.)

Let us gather out of these passages Peter’s special messages of consolation to the tried and troubled.

1. He begins by giving them the vision of hope and heaven before he says a single word about trial. He tells them of the inheritance that is incorruptible, undefiled, unfading, and reserved in heaven for them, before he draws the dark picture of persecution and suffering. When the sea captain sees the sailor boy growing white as he climbs the mast, he always shouts to him, “Look up!” and his nerves grow cool and his fears are assuaged. So the Lord on that dark night, when He was bidding His disciples not to let their hearts be troubled, told them of the Father’s house of many mansions and the place prepared. Let us begin every trial with the thought of heaven and the hope of His coming and the joy set before us, and we, too, shall be enabled to endure the cross, despising the shame, and often sing:

“When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies,
I’ll bid farewell to every fear,
And wipe my weeping eyes.
“Let cares like a wild deluge come,
And storms of sorrow fall,
May I but safely reach my home,
My God, my heaven, my all.”

2. It is only for “a season.” Compared with that long and happy eternity, the longest trial is short indeed. Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. Remember, suffering child of God, it will be over soon, and faith and hope can hear the whisper in an undertone, “It is but a little while.”

3. There is a “need be” for every trial. It does not come by chance. There is a divine purpose in it all. It is necessary for your spiritual education, and some day you will thank God that He loved you well enough to let you learn to “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.”

“You are in heaviness,” he says, “through manifold temptations,” and there is a “need be” even for this. How true it is that trouble never comes alone! When the adversary gets your body under, he loves to strike your soul and inject the fiery darts of discouragement and doubt. And you must not wonder if sometimes the trial strikes into the very depths of your being, and you even lose your joy and spring, and fall into heaviness of spirit. This is the hardest of all temptations. “A wounded spirit who can bear?” We are so apt to conclude at such a time that the Holy Spirit has left us or we should not be so depressed. Beloved, this is not so. There was a time when the Master “began to be sorrowful and very heavy.” There was a time when Paul had to say, “We had no rest in our spirit; without were fightings, within were fears.” Do not wonder, therefore, if your heart may sink sometimes in deep and long depression. There may be a “need be” even for this. Perhaps the Lord is crucifying you to your natural exuberance of spirit and teaching you to take your joy by faith from the Holy Ghost, and so find an everlasting joy which the world can neither give nor take away.

4. Your trial is “more precious than gold which perishes, though it be tried with fire.” That is to say, the trial, not the faith, is precious. We really possess nothing but that which has become part of our being. Outward conditions and circumstances will all pass away, but the experience that God burns into us will be part of our life forevermore. Therefore trial is precious because it makes Christ real to us and fixes the spiritual character which the Holy Ghost imparts. Remember, suffering one, that your trial is very precious to Him. He is watching it with anxious and ceaseless solicitude. He will not suffer it to go too far or last too long, but the very moment that the end has been accomplished, He will withdraw the vessel from the flames and give you rest from your sorrow.

5. It will redound to “praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” “Praise,” for we shall thank Him for His faithful love in not excusing us from the hardest and highest classes in the school of experience. “Honor,” for it will entitle us to rank in the school among the veterans and to wear our battle scars as marks of highest honor amid the overcomers yonder. And “glory,” for in no other way can we earn the rewards of heaven and the glory which is superadded to the grace except by sacrifice and suffering. Salvation is a gift of grace, all grace, and we have nothing to pay or do to win it. But glory is gained by giving up our will, by taking up the cross, by letting go our rights, by standing in the hard place now, as we share the sufferings of Christ, and “when his glory shall be revealed we shall be glad also with exceeding joy.”

6. “This is worthy of thanks, if a man for conscience toward God endures grief, suffering wrongfully.” Literally this means God will say, “I thank you.” This passage is addressed especially to the slaves at Rome, not ordinary servants, but actually bondslaves, the property of their masters, and compelled to do and endure the most trying things at their will. The apostle comforts them in their trial by telling them that some day God Himself will stoop from the throne to thank them before the universe for their patient and faithful sufferings for His sake. What a proud day that was for Admiral Dewey when the nation thanked him for his great exploit! What a supreme honor it was when Lord Roberts knelt at the feet of his queen to receive her acknowledgments for his victorious campaign! But, oh, what a day it will be when some lowly servant maid shall be taken from the kitchen and seated by the side of the King of glory, while He shall tell the world how she suffered for His sake, and perhaps accomplished a higher ministry in her lowly place than the tongue of eloquence or the gifts of fortune of those who had much higher opportunities.

7. Be comforted by the consciousness that you are suffering innocently. “If, when you do well, and suffer for it, you take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” And yet some people are always going about telling how wrongfully they have been accused, how cruelly they have been misrepresented, how unjustly they have suffered. One would think that they were ashamed of that which the apostle considers the highest glory. The fact that you are innocent ought to take all the sting out of your trial and make you rejoice that you are counted worthy to be silent in the hour of misrepresentation, to let God vindicate you, and to “commit the keeping of our souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.”

8. Remember that it is your business to suffer for Christ “for even hereunto were you called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow his steps.” What would you think of a soldier complaining because he had been fired at? It is a soldier’s business to be fired at. And so it is your calling to suffer for Jesus’ sake. If you do not like it you should retire from the business of being a Christian. But if you intend to be true to your calling, you must not shrink from trial for Jesus’ sake, nor be as eager to get out of the trial as to glorify Him in it. The apostles recognized their persecutions and summonses before courts and magistrates as just so many pulpits to preach the Gospel and they were not half as anxious to escape from their enemies as to have every situation turn to them for a testimony.

Your humble station, your menial task may afford the very opportunity necessary for some special service which another could not do. An ancient legend tells us that one day a lad in Galilee was about to go out with his morning basket of buns and fish to sell for their scanty living. “Mother,” he cried, “is the bread all ready?” And the mother answered impatiently, “Oh, I am so tired of this everlasting drudgery. Will it never end?” But at last the little basket was filled, and the lad had sold all but five of the loaves and two of the fishes, and just then, boylike, he began to follow the crowd that was streaming over the hills. Before he realized how far he had gone, he was out in the wilderness, close up to the great Teacher and one of His disciples whom he had come to know, good Andrew, whom he had doubtless met on his village rounds. They were looking for bread for that great multitude of perhaps twenty thousand people, counting the women and children, and they had nothing but this lad’s little basket. But as he told his wondering mother how the Prophet had taken his loaves and fishes and blessed them, and given them out to the multitude in pieces until every one had eaten enough, and there were still left twelve baskets, she listened with strange interest, and her tears fell fast, and she said, “Did He really take my loaves and use them? Then never again will I be weary or discouraged of baking bread, so long as I know that I am making it for Him.” Some day, dear one, you shall find that it was indeed for Him, and that instead of being a servant for some earthly and stingy taskmaster, you were ministering to Jesus and winning a crown of glory that shall never fade away.

9. Trial affords us a fine opportunity to witness for Christ by our example. Nothing speaks for Him so emphatically as a patient, gentle spirit bearing in silent meekness the abuse and wrong which others may heap upon us, and often we shall find that when we are right with people God makes them right with us.

A good woman in Stockholm had started a nursery for friendless and helpless children, but one of the little inmates was a constant trial to her. His body was diseased, his temper was intolerable. He seemed to have no gratitude or appreciation for any kindness shown him, but was always cross and discontented, while in addition his face was covered with sores, his form distorted and repulsive, and everything about him utterly forbidding. At last one day she had been telling the Lord that her burden was too hard to bear. Just then came to her a vision of her Lord, and she seemed to see Him bending over her with a look of great love and saying to her, “My dear child, I have loved and borne with you for more than half a century. Cannot you for My sake love and bear with this wretched child?” Her soul was thrilled with such a sense of His love that the very joy awoke her, and there before her eyes was the miserable child. But her heart was so filled with the Savior’s love that she seemed to love everything else for His sake, and bending down she gently kissed the child. All at once her own spirit seemed to have passed into him, and the little one looked up with a smile that she had never seen before and threw his arms around her neck and began to caress her. From that time the disposition of the child was changed. The Savior’s love had touched her heart and she had just passed it on to the little heart to whom she was in the place of God, and she had her reward in the beautiful transformation she saw from that time in her little charge. From that day forward the little one was completely changed, and became gentle, affectionate and even beautiful, and that which had been to her an insupportable burden became an unceasing joy. So our gentleness and sweetness will speak to others and awaken in them the response which our words can never call forth; while on the other hand our petulance and temper will often mar in a single moment the efforts of our lips and lives for many years to bring some soul to Christ.

“So let our lips and lives express
The holy Gospel we profess.”

10. It will comfort and sustain us in trial to remember that we are partakers of the sufferings of Christ. Remember when any cross confronts you that it is His cross, that it is not yours, but His, and that it is just part of the load that He has left behind for you to bear for Him. The question is, Will you or He carry it? The apostle speaks of “filling up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ for his body, the Church.” The Lord Jesus has left behind something for us to bear, something of His sufferings. Will we take it up and carry it for Him, or shall we leave Him to bear the burden alone? Has He not borne enough already, and shall we not consider it a privilege and a joy to be partakers with Him of the burden that some day is to bring so great a blessing and reward? Doubtless you have heard the ancient legend which has been immortalized in the Polish romance, Qua Vadis. It tells us that when the fearful persecution of Nero arose against the Christians at Rome, to which this epistle undoubtedly refers when it speaks of the fiery trial, or more literally, “The trial of burning which is to try you,” when Christians were soaked in oil, set on fire, and tied to stakes in the Roman squares to light the streets by night — that Peter himself, with a little band of fugitive Christians, was leaving Rome late one night, when he met his Master with a sorrowful face walking back to the city and about to enter the gate through which he had just escaped. “Where do You go?” he asked. And the Lord answered, “I am going to Rome to be crucified again because My servant Peter has fled from the cross.” And Peter fell at his Master’s feet and cried, “No, Lord, I will go back again, and gladly die for You.”And so with head downward he let them nail him to the cross, counting it too high a privilege even to suffer with as much honor as his dying Lord.

Beloved, who shall bear the cross that meets you in your life? Your Lord or you? God help you to rejoice in your sufferings for Him and fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ for His body, the Church.

11. “The spirit of glory and of God will rest upon you” in the hour of trial. When Israel of old came through the depths of the sea then the cloud moved and came through the camp, baptizing them in its folds and making them to realize that God comes nearest to the heart, and often fills it with wonder and praise, when the “peace of God which passes all understanding guards our heart and mind.” We look back upon such seasons as the sunlit memories of life and often say of them, “You have known my soul in adversities.” Let us claim the promise and “glory in tribulation also,” and when God puts us most severely to the test let us put Him most fully to the test also, and we shall find that “as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds by Christ.”

12. Trial borne for Christ will bring us a great reward, for “if we are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; . . . when his glory shall be revealed, [we] may be glad also with exceeding joy.” Man loves to keep the memorials of heroic deeds, but, oh, how much more will God treasure up on high the monuments of His people’s victories! And some day we shall find our tears transformed to jewels in the crown that we shall lay at Jesus’ feet.

In one of the anniversary meetings of the British societies, a wealthy and distinguished layman told this incident in the life of his mother and father, both widely known throughout the Christian world for their splendid gifts to the cause of Christ. He said that when his father came to London, he was a poor lad with his fortune yet to be made. But in passing a certain house one morning, he was attracted by a girl who was washing the stone steps, and with a very bright, happy face, was singing snatches of religious hymns. From morning to morning the lad continued to come that way and often saw the fair vision of this happy face. One day he made bold to ask her to direct him to some Christian church as he was a stranger in the city. Naturally she directed him to her own, and they gradually got better acquainted until that friendship ripened into love and marriage. But he never forgot the vision of his first acquaintance with her and the beautiful spectacle of that humble girl so happy in her life of toil. When his great fortune was made and the time came to build a splendid mansion, he bought the house where she used to work as a servant, and took the stone steps bodily from its front and put them in his new mansion, that he might have a permanent memorial of the beautiful young life that had won him by its patient dignity and sweetness. And so we shall doubtless find yonder in our heavenly home, such memorials of sacrifice and service; perhaps some old broom or washtub preserved, as the relics of the saints are kept today on earth, but bearing some blessed memorial of the Master’s grace and the disciple’s victory.

13. Remember in your darkest hour of trial that you are not alone, for He tells you that “the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world.”

Finally, the issue of your trials. “But the God of all grace, who has called us unto his eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after you have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you.” So, beloved, may we let Him establish, strengthen, and settle us, and thus bring us to His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, to whom be glory both now and forever, Amen.

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 2 – He is Precious

“Unto you therefore which believe he is precious” (1 Peter 2: 7.)

The last question the Master asked His disciple, Peter, was, “Simon, son of Jonas, do you love me?” And his beautiful letters leave us in no doubt as to the answer. It is summed up in our emphatic text, “He is precious.”

But Peter tells us a great deal about Christ, and he tells it very completely. His picture of the Master leaves no lineament out, and it dwells most fully on the cruel thorns that marred His face, and the sufferings which Peter himself had once refused to hear about.

I. CHRIST’S SUFFERINGS

This is his first picture of the Lord. There was a time when Christ began to say unto His disciples that the Son of man must suffer many things and be delivered into the hands of the Gentiles, who should falsely condemn and crucify Him, and on the third day He should rise again from the dead. But Peter took Him and began to rebuke Him, and said, “Be it far from you, Lord: this shall not be unto you.” Then Jesus turned and with terrible rebuke, He answered Peter, “Get behind me, Satan; you are an offence unto me; for you savor not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.” Peter never forgot that rebuke, and he makes full amends for his unitarianism in this epistle. Six times he tells us about the suffering Christ.

1. He goes so far with the Unitarian as to hold up the suffering Master as our example that “you should follow his steps; who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth. Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered, he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judges righteously.” This is all very beautiful and very true. But this is only the beginning. Peter goes much farther than this and soon parts company with his Unitarian friends, for

2. He goes on to tell us of Christ as our Sacrifice and Substitute on the cross. “Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness.” (1 Peter 2:24.) Here there is no mistake about the substitutionary character of the Savior’s sufferings. He bore our sins on the tree. Thank God, He left them there, and so died to them that we with Him are also dead to sin and alive unto righteousness.

3. He makes all this plainer in another passage in the first chapter, where he describes the suffering One as our Redeemer. “You were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers. But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by him do believe in God.” (1 Peter 1: 18-21.) We hear some speak with scorn of the theology of the shambles, and that it degrades the Lord Jesus to represent Him under the gross imagery of sacrificial death. But here Peter uses no roundabout phrases, but tells us straight and plainly that Jesus suffered for us as a lamb on the altar of sacrifice. We see the precious blood. We see the dying Lamb. We see the ransom paid for the guilty, and we hear again, “the sweetest note in seraph song” and “sweetest word on mortal tongue” — REDEEMED. Not only so, but he tells us that redemption is God’s most ancient thought, and that Christ was foreordained before the foundation of the world to suffer and die for the sins of men, so that the cross is really the center of God’s plan, and the final cause of the whole work of creation. It is not merely an afterthought or a remedy suddenly conceived to meet an emergency, but Christ is “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world,” and His redeeming work will forever be the supreme glory of the universe.

“You were… redeemed,” Peter says, “… from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers.” So that redemption is much more than deliverance from a future hell. It is deliverance from this present evil world, deliverance from our life of sin and folly, deliverance from the spirit and maxims of the world, deliverance from the traditions we have inherited from our fathers. Beloved, have we been redeemed from these things? And have we claimed our freedom?

4. Christ as our atonement is still more definitely presented in 1 Peter 3: 18, “For Christ also has once suffered [rather, once for all suffered] for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” This passage is an excellent statement of the doctrine of the atonement. It asserts the once-for-all-ness of that great transaction, the finished work of Christ as a complete and eternal settlement of the question of sin. This passage has special reference to the relation of Christ’s sufferings to the justice and law of God. “Christ… once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” There were questions on God’s side that must be answered, and problems that must be solved, arising out of His inflexible justice and demanding a settlement of the debt of sin. Had God simply blotted out the record of man’s sin without an adequate satisfaction, the majesty of His law and His righteousness would have been compromised. His word would have been set at nought and His authority annulled throughout the universe. It was necessary that He should be a just God as well as a Savior. The debt could not be canceled. It must be paid and receipted in full. And this is just what the atonement of Christ has provided, putting the believer in the same position as if he had never sinned, and not only forgiving his fault, but judging him and pronouncing him righteous through the righteousness of Christ.

Then on the side of the sinner there were difficulties to be adjusted before He could bring us to God. The distrust and dread of the guilty soul must be removed and a spirit of confidence awakened. We must be reconciled to God. And, therefore, “God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself.” By the exhibition of the Father’s love and the place of salvation into which He brings us through His cross, the sinner is brought nigh to God by the blood of Christ, and thus atonement, that is literally at-one-ment, is accomplished, and we are brought to God in confidence and love.

5. Christ’s sufferings have accomplished our healing, “by whose stripes you were healed.” (1 Peter 2:24.) Our body as well as our soul is included in this great redemption. This is one of our redemption rights. Let us not suffer it to be lost by our default. Literally this means, “by His stripes.” His whole body was one dreadful laceration, and in that deadly stripe all our physical liabilities on account of sin were met. Well may it fill us with shame to think what our redemption cost, and with jealous love to make sure that such a costly boon shall not be lost.
6. Christ’s death is the pattern of our death as well as the price of our life. “Forasmuch then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind; for he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.” (1 Peter 4: 1.) That is to say, as Christ died to sin, so let us die with Him and thus arm ourselves against sin by entering into the fact of His death and resurrection. While in one sense
“He died for us that we might live,”

in another sense it is even more true that
“He died for us that we might die.”

The deepest experience of the Apostle Paul was this: “I have been crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live.” There is an absurd story told of an official on one of the Irish railroads whose superior had just died, and who, in sending by wire the announcement of his master’s death, did not feel at liberty to send it in his own name, but used the usual form signed by the principal, and running like this: “I regret to have to inform you that I died this morning at ten o’clock of pneumonia, W. J. Brown, Mgr., per J. Jones.” There is a real truth behind the Irish bull. The greatest crisis in our spiritual life is when we are able to say with the apostle, “I died today, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” That is the only way to get victory over sin. So long as we identify ourselves with our past self we are under the power of our old life. It is when we bury it and take the position that we are no longer the person that sinned, but that we have died with Christ and risen again in Him, and are now living His life, we have power over sin, and the wretched man that we dragged about with us is consigned to an eternal grave, and the new life springs into liberty and power.

Such then is Peter’s view of the sufferings of Christ, and the vision from which he once recoiled with intense antagonism is now to him so blessed that he speaks of it as one “into which the angels desire to look,” and he condenses into a single phrase his intense appreciation of the value and the glory of the cross when he tells us not only of the precious Christ, but “the precious blood of Christ.”

II. CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

He next bears testimony to the power of His resurrection.

1. It is the source of our life. He “has begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Peter 1: 3.) Our regeneration comes to us through the fellowship of His resurrection. We are born again through the fellowship of His resurrection life. We are born again through that life.

2. Christ’s resurrection is the ground of our faith and hope. “God… raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God.” (1 Peter 1:21.) Christ’s resurrection is the foundation of our faith. For “if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain… you are yet in your sins.” He went into the prison of the grave a debtor for your sins. Had He not come out, it would mean that the debt is still unpaid. But when we see Him rise in glory and ascend to the Father’s right hand, we know that the ransom has been accepted, the debt is paid, and our sins are gone. Therefore, He “was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”

His resurrection is also the foundation of our hope. “For if Christ be not raised…. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” The resurrection of Christ is the pledge of our resurrection and our future glory. Therefore our hope as well as faith rests upon His open grave.

3. The resurrection of Christ is set forth in Christian baptism. “The like figure whereunto even baptism does also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” (1 Peter 3: 21.) That is to say, baptism does not signify the putting away of our uncleanness by washing, but by death and resurrection. We are so vile that no water can wash away the stain. The only thing to do with us is to bury us and raise up a new life through Christ’s resurrection. This is implied in the figure of baptism. “Therefore we are buried with him by baptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”

Now Peter tells us here that the ark and the deluge were also typical of the same spiritual truth and experience. The expression is used in the twentieth verse that “eight souls were saved by water.” It is not from water they were saved, but by water. The deluge saved Noah and his family from the sin that was engulfing the world, and through the ark his family was carried as by a seeming death and resurrection into the new world, where the race began again its career. So in baptism we pass through a seeming death and resurrection with Christ into a new life. The resurrection, therefore, is the brightest and most uplifting object of the believer’s faith. While it is true that we die with Christ once, it is more gloriously true that we live with Him forevermore. Have we entered into the fellowship of His sufferings and the power of His resurrection?

III. THE POSTHUMOUS MINISTRY OF CHRIST

This is His ministry in the interval between His death and resurrection. This is a part of His work of which Peter is almost the exclusive witness. It is true the Apostle Paul alludes to it when he speaks of Him who “also descended first into the lower parts of the earth.” Peter, however, tells us definitely that during the interval after His death He was quickened in the spirit, and in this state “he went and preached unto the spirits in prison; which sometime were disobedient… in the days of Noah.” (1 Peter 3: 19, 20.) There is little room to question the literal reference of this passage to the disembodied spirits of those who had lived in the days of Noah, and who were now in prison in the realm of the dead, the region called Hades in the Scriptures. That Christ visited this region is certain, and that He gave some message there is also plain. That it was a message of salvation to these imprisoned spirits there is no reason to believe, and there is no hint of it anywhere in the Scriptures. The word translated “preached” here is not the word usually employed for the preaching of the Gospel, but it literally means to herald, to give a proclamation. It is not difficult for us to surmise what He might have proclaimed in the realms of the dead. These souls had heard the Gospel for a hundred and twenty years in the days of Noah, and rejected it with scorn while God’s Spirit strove with men. Now they are informed by the authority of the Son of God that the message which they rejected and ridiculed is true, and has been at last fulfilled, and the testimony of Noah is vindicated. At the same time how natural it would be for Him to proclaim to the other spirits in Hades that had died in faith and waited for His coming, that at last the great redemption was complete, that sin was canceled, that death was conquered, and that He was about to open their prison doors and lead their captivity captive, and take them up with Him to heaven, to which He was about to ascend and open its portals henceforth to all believers. When He did ascend to heaven, we know He took with Him these captive spirits; and since that time the souls of believers, like Stephen, no longer pass into Hades to wait for their reward, but pass immediately into glory and are with Jesus Christ Himself in heaven, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies and their full inheritance and reward at His second coming.

IV. THE EXALTATION AND GLORIOUS SECOND COMING OF JESUS CHRIST

1. His ascension and exaltation. “Who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.” (1 Peter 3:22.) This is the picture of His present high priestly and kingly work. There He sits in the place of supreme authority and power; Head over all things for His body, the Church, every angel at His bidding, every authority and law in the universe subject to His command or suspension, and every power available for the help of His redeemed people.

2. His coming again in glory. It is only necessary to quote the apostle’s repeated references to this blessed hope. In 1 Peter 1: 7, He tells us that our trial “might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” In 1 Peter 4: 13, we are told that “when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy”; and in 1 Peter 5: 4, the faithful minister of Christ is reminded that “when the chief Shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory that fades not away.” Thus we see that the blessed hope of the Lord’s return was very clear to Peter’s mind, and very dear to his affection and his hope.

V. HIS RELATION TO THE CHURCH AS THE CHIEF CORNER STONE

“To whom coming, as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God, and precious…. Behold, I lay in Zion a chief cornerstone, elect, precious; and he that believes on him shall not be confounded.” (1 Peter 2: 4, 6.) It is recorded as a Jewish legend that when the temple of Solomon was being reared with noise-less hands, each prepared stone and timber being simply adjusted to its place, one stone of singular form was laid aside as unsuited to any place that they had found for it. After a while it became covered up with refuse and was known as the stone which the builders rejected. But later a niche was found on the principal corner that no stone would fit, and then they looked up this rejected stone and found it was the chief cornerstone, and the one designed to fill this place and connect together the two walls, and thus make the building one. And so it came to be a proverb among the Jews that the stone which the builders rejected is made the head of the corner. Our Lord applied the proverb to Himself. And well He might. For it is in Him that all the parts of the building are united and compacted and grow together into an holy temple in the Lord. It is as we are united to Him that we are attached to each other, and all Christian unity depends upon oneness with the Lord. The nearer we grow to the Master’s heart, the closer will we stand heart to heart in unison with each other. The secret of Christian union is not platforms, creeds, or even cooperative work, but it is one life, one heart, one spirit, in the fellowship and love of Jesus Christ.

VI. HIS RELATION TO THE INDIVIDUAL BELIEVER

“Unto you therefore which believe he is precious.” (1 Peter 2: 7.) Literally this means as in the revised version, “Unto you which believe he is the preciousness.” He is called in the previous passage the precious stone of God’s election. Now His preciousness passes over to you who believe. His merits are imparted to you, and His rights and glories become yours also. And thus “you also, as lively [living] stones” are built up into Him and become as precious as He. Just as when the iron touches the magnet it becomes partaker of its magnetism and in turn a magnet, too, so the soul that is united to Christ partakes with Him of His divine purity and power, and is no longer earthly and common, but precious and divine. Peter is undoubtedly referring to the interview between him and his Master when he was first called. “You are Simon the son of Jona,” the Lord had said. That is, you are but a piece of earthly clay. But “you shall be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, a stone.” That is, your nature shall be transformed by contact with Me, until you shall become part of the living Rock, which the word Peter signifies. And so we find in the vision of the New Jerusalem that Peter and the apostles of the Lamb are there as precious stones laid first on the corner Stone, Jesus Christ, and reflecting all His transcendent glory. This, then, is the meaning of the preciousness of Christ. It is not only that He is dear to us, for that is ineffably true, but rather that we are dear to God even as He, that we share His preciousness, shine in His beauty, stand in His merits, and shall be partakers of His glory.

“All that He has shall be mine,
All that He is I shall be;
Robed in His glory divine,
I shall be even as He.”

VII. HIS RELATION TO THE UNBELIEVER

“And a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence, even to them which stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed.” (1 Peter 2: 8.) If you reject this precious Savior, if you miss this supreme opportunity, if you pervert the grace of God and make it only an occasion for your idle criticism, Christ will become to you as great a curse as He might have been a blessing. “Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken,” but, oh, there is something immeasurably worse, “On whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.”

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 3 – Our High Calling in Christ

“I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims.” (1 Peter 2: 11.)

Peter has told us about Christ. Now, what has he to tell us about ourselves? His first epistle contains a number of significant titles and attributes of the believer.

1. Strangers. “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered,” etc. (1 Peter 1: 1.) This applies primarily to the Jews, as Peter was especially the apostle of the dispersion. How truly they may be called “strangers scattered abroad,” a land without a people, a people without a land!

“Tribes of the wandering foot and weary breast,
Where shall you fly away and be at rest?
The wood dove has her nest, the fox his cave,
Mankind his country, Israel but the grave.”

But the term also applies to the Christian of Gentile as well as of Jewish blood. This is not our home. We are strangers here, or should be.

2. Elect. “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,”(1 Peter 1: 2.) Though strangers and aliens, for whom the world has no more place than for their Master, they are of great value to God, and they have been chosen and selected out of the great mass of the human family for the work of grace and the destiny of glory. But their election is not arbitrary and apart from their personal character and conduct. No man can plant his feet in dogmatic willfulness on the decrees of God and say, “If I am elected, I will be saved, whatever I do,” for the Lord Jesus has given us the first test of our election in these simple words, “All that the Father gives me shall come to me,” and if we have not come to Christ, it is as idle to talk about our election, as for a man to expect a civic election until he has first become a candidate. Then the apostle Peter has told us here that our election is through sanctification and to obedience. If, therefore, we are not receiving the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit and walking in obedience to Christ, we have no right to claim our election. The last phrase, “sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ,” has a special application to the deeper work of our sanctification. The shed blood was the special symbol of Christ’s atonement for our guilt. The sprinkled blood, applied in every case of fresh defilement, stands for the cleansing efficacy of that precious blood. God has called us, therefore, not to an absolute destiny so much as to a high and holy character, and we are to make our calling and election sure by claiming all the privileges of grace and giving all diligence to walk in all the will of God.

3. Begotten, born again, newborn babes (1 Peter 1: 3, 23; 2: 2.) This is translated literally, “regenerated.” It refers, of course, to the work of the Holy Ghost, through which we become the children of God and partakers of the new life, and without which our Lord has told us that we shall neither see nor enter into the kingdom of God. But in the third of these passages is a special and most beautiful sense intended by the phrase, “as newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.” The idea is not that at a certain stage of our experience we are to be newborn babes, but that this is to characterize our whole Christian life, and that the ideal spirit of the child of God is the simplicity, sincerity, docility, and sweetness of the little child. We are not to be childish, but we are to be childlike. The ordinary conception of Christian life looks back to the halcyon days when we first believed as a springtime that will never come again. We speak and sing of

“The sweet comfort and peace
Of a soul in its earliest love.”

But our Lord severely rebukes the Ephesian church because it had left its first love, and He means surely to imply that we should never lose the tenderness of the newborn babe. This will keep us surely, as the apostle so well expresses it, from “all guile, and hypocrisies and envies, and all evil speaking.”

4. Obedient children. “As obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts in your ignorance: But as he which has called you is holy, so be you holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be you holy; for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1: 14-16.) Literally this verse means, “As the children of obedience.” That is, it is so natural to them to obey that they are, as it were, born of the spirit of obedience. The following verse suggests also the idea of imitating the Father. “As he which has called us is holy, so be you holy.” It is the same thought expressed by the apostle Paul in Ephesians 5: 1, R.V., “Be you therefore imitators of God as dear children.” Obedience should be instinctive with us as God’s children. This is also suggested in the next term attributed to believers.

5. Servants. “As the servants of God.” (1 Peter 2:16.) Literally this is “as the slaves of God.” Our ideas of service were unknown in classical times. A servant was a slave, his master’s property, and belonged to him absolutely for purposes of pleasure, gain, or even crime. The apostle did not announce a crusade against slavery, though it was wrong in a hundredfold more aggravated sense than modern slavery ever was. But he told the slaves to be so true to their masters, and so blameless in their lives, that with well doing they should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men. Christianity does not call us to great socialistic movements against the wrongs of society, but rather to purify and elevate the individual influence of Christians, so abolishing as it has done, the wrongs of woman and the cruelties of slavery. But from the human relation of the slave the apostle rises to the conception so dear to all New Testament writers, of God’s ownership of us and our absolute slavery to His authority and will. The term ‘despot’ is applied to God in this epistle, conveying the idea of the right of absolute proprietorship and control, and this the disciple loves to acknowledge and accept in implicit surrender and obedience.

6. The apostle now begins a series of figures with reference to believers, founded upon the types of the Old Testament and the calling of Israel as a people. The first of these is ‘living stones’. “You also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house.” (1 Peter 2: 5.) This is an allusion to the Hebrew temple, and is connected with what he has already said about Christ, the Corner Stone. We are built upon Him and so attached to Him that we become partakers of His nature and His life. Just as you have seen a powerful magnet or loadstone attracting and holding to itself a great number of smaller pieces of metal so that they seem to be part of its substance and are held by an invisible and irresistible bond, so we are attracted and attached to Christ and built up in Him as a spiritual temple.

7. A spiritual house. (1 Peter 2: 5.) This carries forward the figure from the individual stones to the entire temple, and at once brings before our minds the splendid figure of the temple and tabernacle service as a type of our spiritual life. Each of us should be a miniature of that sacred temple, and our whole life a constant offering up of spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For God has said to us, “I will be to them a little sanctuary,”and we may so “dwell in the secret place of the Most High” and “abide under the shadow of the Almighty,” and have “boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,” that every moment of our experience shall be a rehearsal of the sacred service of that ancient tabernacle. It is a delightful spiritual exercise to come in the secret fellowship of the soul, first to the altar of burnt offering where we lay our guilt and sin upon the Lamb of God, and know that we are accepted through His precious blood as a sacrifice and a sweet smelling savor. Then we may come to the cleansing laver where first we see our sins in its mirrored bosom, and then wash them away in its flowing waters. Now we are prepared to enter into the holy place through the sacred door which the priests might enter, and claim the privilege of Christian priesthood. And this leads us to the next of these significant figures:

8. An holy priesthood. (1 Peter 2: 5.) For the priesthood is not now confined to any exclusive class as in the Aaronic line, but we are all called to be priests unto God. And yet that does not mean that all believers really enjoy the privilege of priesthood, although they are entitled to it, for we must first qualify for this high and holy ministry. We are a holy priesthood, and he alone that has clean hands and a pure heart can ascend unto the hill of God and stand in the holy place. Therefore we must wash in the laver and enter in by the door which is Jesus Christ Himself in the fullness of His life. For He has said, “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” The “more abundant” life is the holy priesthood of which we have just spoken, and the secret place of the Most High where we may dwell as His hidden ones. There stands the golden candlestick with its perfect and supernatural light. For there is an inner light for the consecrated believer which the world cannot comprehend, but which speaks to the finer senses of the quickened spirit, and makes divine truth a vivid reality and Christ more real

“Than any outward object seen.”

Next we come to the table of shewbread, a type of Christ our living bread, and find in Him the supply of all our need and the sustenance of all our life. A little farther on stands the golden altar of incense with the censer with burning coals and fragrant frankincense, and the whole chamber of this inner sanctuary is filled with the sweet odors of divine communion, “the peace of God that passes all understanding,” and the very breath of heaven. Yes, and even farther in we may enter now, through the rent veil into the holy of holies, and dwell in the innermost presence of God where the Shekinah shines and the overshadowing wings of the cherubim remind us of our coming glory into which, indeed, in foretaste we may already enter. Thus we are a holy priesthood, and in the fellowship of the Spirit offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

9. A chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people. (1 Peter 2: 9.) Now just as the previous phrases were all connected with the tabernacle and temple, so this series is similarly connected with the calling of Israel as a people. They were an elect race, a holy nation, a kingdom of priests, and a people for a possession. Had they fulfilled their high destiny, they would have become to the world what the four and twenty elders and the four living creatures are to the heavenly temple. They would have represented God to men and become the custodians of His sacred oracles and the leaders of His worship and His work among the nations. But Israel failed to understand and fulfill her high calling. Instead of being a peculiar people, she sought to be like the nations. Instead of recognizing God as her King, and being a theocratic kingdom as He had intended, she said, “Give us a king that we may be like the rest of the nations,” and soon her kings and people were sunk in all the gross idolatries of the nations around them. No sooner had the kingdom reached its zenith in the glory of Solomon that he introduced not only the luxuries but the abominable idolatries of Egypt and the world. And God had to rend the kingdom and send its people into captivity and even give over the sovereignty of the world to the Gentile nations, until Israel should learn that her only place must ever be that of a kingdom of priests and of a peculiar people. To that high destiny she is once more to come in the glorious day of her restoration under Christ her King. But now having lost her national calling for the time, God has called His Church to take her place, and to be instead His chosen generation, His holy nation, His royal priesthood, His peculiar people. Let us not forget that we can only enjoy this high destiny in separation from the world; and that when we become like the present evil age, we lose our separation and our glory, and the Lord will have to reject us too. This indeed is the sad picture of the last stage of Christianity as set forth in the Laodicean church just before the coming of the Lord. But while the Church as a body and a visible institution may thus be rejected by her coming Lord, the true Bride of the Lamb, the little flock of His hidden ones shall be kept true and pure as a people for His possession. Let us remember that this is our calling, to belong to Him and to Him alone, to represent Him to the world and to wait for our kingdom and glory when we also shall be glorified at His coming.

10. Strangers and pilgrims. (1 Peter 2: 11.) The apostle began with one of these titles. It is fitting that he should return to it again at the close of this series of sacred names and titles for the people of God. Literally these terms may be translated sojourners and pilgrims. The first expresses the idea that we have no home here; the second, that we have a home beyond, that we are pressing forward to it and that we are having it ever in view. One may be a stranger without being a pilgrim. A stranger is a tramp. The pilgrim is a traveler. The tramp is homeless. The traveler is going home. Both should be true of the child of God. We should be weaned from the world as a resting place or a goal of final hope and expectation. We are in it but not of it. We have our earthly duties, occupations, and relationships, but it is only a stage on our journey home, and the true heart will often be lonesome for the home beyond. A poor Irish laborer who had spent forty years of his life amid the brick and mortar of the great city, went out to the country for a few days to work at a special job, and one morning as he stood in the field he heard a sudden whir of wings and saw a little speck shooting up into the air, and immediately there came a burst of music that filled his eyes with tears, and sent him to sit down on one of the rough building stones until the flood of memories that song awakened had surged through his simple heart. An American who had never noticed the song of the lark asked him what was the matter. “Oh,” said the poor Irishman, “that bird made me think of the ould counthry and the days long gone by.” Poor fellow, he had not heard the lark since his childhood, and it made him feel that he was a stranger in a strange land. Beloved, do you know the home longing? and best of all, are you going home? Are you not only a stranger, but a pilgrim too? They say the Swiss soldiers, when they sometimes hear the old horn that calls the sheep and cattle home at night in the Alpine valleys, throw down their arms and cannot be restrained from starting home. Is the heavenly country drawing you? Can you say like the little fellow whose kite was out of sight and someone asked him how he knew it was there, “I feel it pull”? Is your life projected on the heavenly scale? Are your friendships, your ambitions, your occupations, your money, your studies, and your life plans invested where moth and rust cannot come, nor thieves break through and steal?

“I am waiting for the coming of the Bridegroom in the air,
I am longing for the gathering of the ransomed over there;
I am putting on the garments which the heavenly Bride shall wear,
For the glad homecoming draweth nigh.

“I am letting go the pleasures and the treasures worldlings prize,
I am laying up my treasures and ambitions in the skies;
I am setting my affections where there are no broken ties;
For the glad homecoming draweth nigh.”

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 4 – Social and Civil Duties of the Christian Life

“Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake; whether it be to the king, as supreme; Or unto governors as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well.” “Honor all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.” (1 Peter 2:13, 14, 17.)

The apostle here calls our attention to the duties of the Christian in all the various relationships of life. 1. As men. “Honor all men.” (1 Peter 2:17.). Peter had a great deal of human nature in him, and human nature is a very good thing to have if we have the divine nature, too. “Simon, son of Jona,”as the Lord often called him, was a real man and had every cord of human feeling and sympathy vibrant. It cost him a great deal to be so human; but when a human heart is divinely sanctified, it is a great storehouse of power. So Peter looks at all men as men. He sweeps the larger circle of the race, and reminds us that in every human being there is something of infinite value, something that God appreciates, something that brought Christ all the way from heaven to die, and something that we can find in every soul and make it a point of contact to better things. It was of this the Scotch poet sang so much better than he lived when he said:

“The rank is but the guinea’s stamp,
The man’s the gowd (gold) for a’ that.”

It was this that Jesus sought and found when He reached the woman at the well through her heart, and even saw in the little Jew in the sycamore tree something worth saving and transforming into heavenly gold. God help us to see the value of a human soul, and to be able to touch it. It was Lord Shaftsbury who once slapped on the shoulder a poor drunken fellow just getting over a terrible temptation and said, “John, by the grace of God, we’ll make a man out of you yet,” and that touch of a human hand was never forgotten. The poor drunkard lived to be a man of God and a blessing to his fellow men. Over in Indiana there was a woman who had been the terror of her town, and even in the penitentiary she had to be confined and bound with chains. Nobody had ever been able to approach her. One day a quiet Quakeress called at the prison and asked to speak to her; and as the manacled criminal was brought in with scowling and cursing lips, she simply stepped up to her, and saying with unobtrusive kindness the two little words “My sister,” she kissed her on both cheeks. The woman staggered as if struck. She tried for a moment to resume her old violent manner, and then burst into tears, saying that it was her first pure kiss since her mother died, and from that hour she was a changed woman. God help us to “honor all men,” and by His grace to find the angel in the roughest block of marble.

2. As citizens. “Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme, or unto governors,” etc. (1 Peter 2: 13.) Peter had his lesson on the subject of civil government that day in Capernaum when the natural Simon rose in irritation against the tax collector, and the Lord so graciously supplied the money and shared the burden with Peter as he uttered that beautiful phrase, “For me and you.” No true Christian can be an anarchist. While there is an extreme of spread-eagle patriotism, there is also a middle ground of Christian loyalty which recognizes the powers that be as ordained of God, and even when they are not altogether as they should be, submits and supports “for the Lord’s sake.” Especially in a country like the United States, and to a great extent even under limited monarchies, is the individual Christian responsible for his part in good government; for if the people be the kings and their elective voice determines the quality of the government, surely no sincere Christian can be indifferent or negligent concerning his civic duties.

3. As members of society. “Finally, be you all of one mind having compassion one of another, love as brethren, … be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing; but contrariwise blessing; knowing that you are there unto called, that you should inherit a blessing. For he that will love life, and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: Let him eschew evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and pursue it.” (1 Peter 3: 8-11.)

Here we have a fine picture of the good manners of the child of God. There is nothing among the things of secondary importance more attractive than social grace, refinement of manners, and the spirit of deportment of a true lady or gentleman. The Christian should always be a gentleman. The spirit of Christ will lift the commonest life to a higher plane of culture, and you can tell immediately by the dress and the deportment of the new convert that he has come into the society of higher beings. The lack of this is very sad and very hurtful to the cause of Christ. Fenelon was so much of a gentleman that one of the courtly infidels of England upon leaving his house, said that if he had stayed much longer he would have been compelled by the charm of the French divine to become a Christian. On the other hand, by our brusqueness how much we dishonor our Master, and repel hearts that would have sought Him!

The spirit of Christ will invariably show itself on the railroad train, in the church aisle, in the little courtesies of the home, in a thousand minute touches which together constitute a great part of the experience of everyday life. These things are not matters of temperament or education. They can be cultivated until they become the habit of our life. There is a little tract entitled “The Girl for Whom Nobody Cared.” She was good in her way and had no serious faults of character or conduct, but rather prided herself on her independence, met her friends with a careless nod, and never wasted words in social amenities and what she was pleased to consider empty forms. The result was that in due time she became thoroughly disliked, and people avoided her as much as she had avoided them. Of course, it became extremely embarrassing to her when she really discovered it, and she had a good cry and an earnest conference with her sensible aunt. The result was that she took some good advice and resolved from that time to study her manners as well as her intentions, and deliberately to plan to say or do some courteous thing to everybody she met. The first person was a garrulous neighbor of whom she was always particularly tired. But this morning she set to work on her with her new lesson. “How is Jimmy?” she asked. And the old lady was delighted to tell her how Jimmy had just got over the measles and a dozen little tiresome things that made the mother’s face glow with pleasure to find a willing listener, and the effect was contagious. The young lady herself became strangely interested in the pleasure she had so easily given to the other. And so the first lesson was a complete success. A little farther on she met Sissy, the daughter of the washerwoman, whom she was used to pass with a very curt nod as quite beneath her. But now there was a gracious smile, a moment’s pause, and a kind word of thanks to Sissy for having brought the laundry so promptly the day before, and greatly accommodated her as she had a social engagement for which she needed her clean dress. Before long she had exhausted all subjects except the weather, but even a kindly remark about the weather, especially in good weather, is more cheerful than a silent nod; and so when she returned home her face was shining and her day had been a great success. It was not long before the girl that nobody liked was the girl that everybody liked, and she had found inexpensive kindness more precious than gold.

A good deal of this has to do with faults of the tongue, and so Peter is as decided as James in reminding us that if we would have good health, long life, and God’s blessing, we must keep our tongue from evil and our lips from speaking guile. This, too, can be studied if we habitually remember the Psalmist’s prayer, “Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.” In this way many of the weakest and most foolish of God’s children have learned to be so guarded that their very silence speaks for Christ and a life of victory as no words could. Let us remember that we are called to dispense blessing. This is our occupation to scatter sunshine and make others glad.

An old Quaker was once visited by a garrulous neighbor who complained that he had the worst servants in the world, and everybody seemed to conspire to make him miserable. “My dear friend,” said the Quaker, “let me advise you to oil yourself a little.” “What do you mean?” said the rather irritated old gentleman. “Well,” said the Quaker, “I had a door in my house some time ago that was always creaking on its hinges, and I found that everybody avoided it; and although it was the nearest way to most of the rooms yet they went round some other way. So I just got some oil, and after a few applications it opened and shut without a creak or a jar, and now everybody just goes to that door and uses the old passage. Just oil yourself a little with the oil of kindness. Occasionally praise your servants for something they do well. Encourage your children more than you scold them, and you will be surprised to find that a little sunshine will wear out a lot of fog, and a little molasses is better than a great deal of vinegar.” Be courteous.

4. As servants. “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.” (1 Peter 2: 18.) We have already seen that the condition of a Roman slave was not only much worse than that of a modern servant, but really very much worse than anything we know in connection with modern slavery. And yet to these selfish, brutal, cruel masters and mistresses, the Christian slave was to be obedient, and by his conduct seek to win them to higher things. If they were in error, as servants sometimes are, and were buffeted for it, they were to take it patiently. And there is no higher quality in man or woman than to be able to make an apology with humility and yet with dignity. But if they were innocent, how much more might they endure their wrong and wait for God’s vindication.

In the present day almost every position in life involves the idea of service, and more or less of subjection to a higher authority. Let us render this for Christ’s sake, even when it is not due for the sake of the person immediately concerned. How it exalts our menial toil to realize that we are working for Him, and that some day He will thank us and reward us before the universe! In such a service nothing is menial or degrading. The motive glorifies the deed. There is no smaller man in the world than he who is ashamed of manual labor or honorable employment. In a book of “The Life of Washington” it is said that riding by among his encampments in military undress, he found a petty officer ordering a small squad of men to change the position of a heavy gun which seemed beyond their strength, while he was coolly looking on, giving orders but not touching the heavy burden himself. The general, unrecognized by the officer or men, sprang from his horse, and putting his shoulder to the wheel soon helped them to lift the heavy load and place the gun in position. Then he turned to the petty officer and asked him why he wasn’t helping. “Why,” said he, “I’m a corporal.” “Then, Mr. Corporal,”said he, “the next time you have a load too heavy for your men and want assistance just send for the commanding officer to come and help you. I bid you good morning,” and the General withdrew, leaving the Corporal discomfited and the men infinitely amused. Let us take up our burdens with new heart and bear them for Him, who, like us, was a Man of sorrow and toil, and even in heaven is not thinking of His own ease or self-indulgence, but as our girded Priest ever living to make intercession for us.

5. As wives and husbands. “Likewise, you wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; while they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear. Whose adorning . . . let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.” (1 Pet. 3: 1-4.) If the position of a servant was extremely trying in ancient Rome, much more difficult and confused was the position of a wife, and the state of society with regard to marriage. Woman was by universal consent regarded as the inferior of man, and the wife of a heathen was subject to much humiliation and wrong. But the apostle tells the Christian wives not to desert their unworthy husbands, but so to live as to win them for God. Many a wife has done this. The Scriptures discountenance the marriage of Christian women to ungodly men, yet it often happens that both are unsaved at the time of marriage; and when the wife becomes a follower of Christ, under these circumstances there are the strongest reasons for expecting the grace of God to interpose for the salvation of her husband. And even if she has made the mistake of marrying against the Word of God, all the more should she repair her wrong by endeavoring to bring her husband to Christ.

The secret of woman’s most supreme and sweetest attraction is here in a most beautiful phrase. Her ornament is not to be outward fashion and display, but a meek and quiet spirit, the beauty of the hidden man of the heart, the loveliness of character, gentleness, and love. This is woman’s kingdom, and there is no doubt that many a man would be a better man if he had a different wife. Dear sisters, recognize your calling and rise to your high scepter and noble ministry. While marriage is not the lot of every woman, yet if God gives to woman a true and happy marriage, there is no higher vocation, there is no sweeter or nobler task than to live to be the blessing and crown of another life of which hers is the inspiration and the benediction. “My wife has been an open book to me,” said an infidel who had read all other books in vain, and who yielded his heart to Christ because the beautiful life that was linked with his compelled his confidence and won his heart.

And the husband, too, has his reciprocal responsibilities. “Likewise, you husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honor unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.” (1 Peter 3: 7.) The phrase “according to knowledge” seems to require of the husband an intelligent understanding of the partner of his life, a thoughtful love that recognizes her disabilities and difficulties as the weaker vessel, and finds his highest honor in honoring her. The tendency of modern social life is disintegrating the home. The husband finds his substitute in his club, and the wife follows with her receptions and the program of social calls, and, of course, it is his fault as much as hers. A wise wife uttered a well merited reproof of this state of things one day when she asked her husband to permit her to make an appointment for some evening to meet a mutual friend. But every evening was occupied by him with some society. On Thursday night it was the Odd Fellows’ Society, on Friday night it was the Foresters’ Society, on Saturday night it was the Masonic Society, and on Sunday night it was the Church Society. At last his wife gave him a keen look and said, “My dear, I think in the multitude of your societies you have forgotten one.” “What one is that?” he said. “Why,” said she, “it is your wife’s society.”

But the real secret of a true Christian home life is given us by the apostle’s reference to united prayer. “Walk together,” he says, “as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.” This is the spark of celestial fire that will keep the altar of home from growing cold and love from dying out in the ashes of bitterness. How many of you fathers and husbands are keeping up the family altar? How many of you are praying every day with your wife? Is not this the telltale secret of all your troubles? Let us go back to Bethel and dwell there, and God will love and bless the dwellings of Jacob as well as the tabernacles of Zion.

Dr. Norman McLeod tells of a father that burst into his study one day with the bitter cry that his daughter had died that morning; and, added the father, “I hope she has gone to be with Christ, but if she has, she has gone to tell that never in all her life did she hear a prayer in her father’s house.”

7. As Christian brethren. “Love as brethren.” (1 Peter 3: 8.) “Use hospitality one to another.” (1 Peter 4:9.) “Yes, all of you be subject one to another.” (1 Peter 5: 5.) “As every man has received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” (1 Peter 4: 10.) These are some of the social obligations of the disciples of Christ. Space will not allow us to enlarge upon them now, but the keynote of all is the same that has rung through all other relationships, “For the Lord’s Sake.” This will make you a faithful servant to the worst of masters, a loving wife to the man that you could not love for his own sake, a genial and courteous friend, that you may the better represent your Lord and attract others to Him, a subject and a citizen for Christ, and a Christian worker adjusted to your brethren, fitted into your place, and so “Whatsoever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus.” (Col. 3:17.) Lord, shed this supernal light on every common thing until it shall shine in the light of God like the glory which the sun reflects from the meanest bit of broken glass.

“So let your works and actions shine
To show the doctrine all divine.”

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.



Chapter 5 – Sanctification

“Be you holy; for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1: 16.)

“Grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18.)

We have already seen what Peter has to say to us about regeneration and the Christian life and calling. Let us now listen to his testimony concerning sanctification and the deeper experiences of our Christian life and growth.

I. REGENERATION AND SANCTIFICATION

1. Regeneration brings us life, but sanctification brings us “life more abundantly.”

2. Regeneration brings us life, but sanctification brings us life that comes out of death; the death-born life which has entered into the crucifixion of Christ, and the power of His resurrection.

3. Regeneration brings us into Christ, sanctification brings Christ into us. “Abide in me, and I in you,” implies a twofold relation. “In Him” is to be saved; “in you” is to be sanctified. It is the indwelling life of the Lord Jesus in personal union and manifestation to the soul.

4. Regeneration makes us the subjects of the Holy Spirit’s working, but sanctification makes us temples of the Holy Spirit’s indwelling. In regeneration the Spirit is working upon us as the builder of the house; in sanctification He has become the resident of the dwelling and enters to abide as our guest, or, rather, as our host, while we dwell with Him in the fellowship of the Spirit.

5. Regeneration comes to us through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior; sanctification comes to us through full surrender and faith in the incoming and indwelling of the Comforter. It is as we yield ourselves to God and give Him the right of way, without a single reservation, that He accepts the offering and makes us His abode.

Now this twofold experience runs through all the personal and public types of the Bible. We see in Jacob the revelation of God at Bethel, through which he became the servant of Jehovah, and then the deeper experience at Peniel, through which he became the prince of God. We see it in Moses, in his first choice of God in Egypt, and then his deeper experience in Midian. We see it in Job and Isaiah; we see it in Simon Peter and the other disciples with their new experience after Pentecost; and Paul seems to give us this chapter in his own experience in the seventh of Romans, through which he passed into the victory of the eighth. We see it very definitely in the passage of the Red Sea and the exodus of Israel, which represents our salvation; and then the crossing of the Jordan and the entrance into Canaan, which represents our sanctification. We see it in the Passover, which marked the first year of Israel’s history, the setting out under the blood, even as we step out from the cross of Calvary; and then the equally marked beginning of the second year when the tabernacle was dedicated and anointed, and the cloud came down and entered in as the Shekinah presence of Jehovah in the holy of holies, the latter representing the incoming and indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the consecrated soul. But time and space forbid enlargement. Beloved, have you also entered into the “twofold life”?

II. SANCTIFICATION — ITS PRINCIPLES AND PROCESS

1. It is an obligation. God commands us to be holy. We are called to be holy. He will not excuse anybody from holiness. We have no right to call ourselves His children if we continue to live in sin. “Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid.” God forbids you to continue in sin. There are no two classes of Christians between which you may choose; there are no options here. Every child of God is called to be holy.

2. The pattern and source of sanctification. “Be you holy; for I am holy.”God is our standard, and as His children we must be like Him. No lower standard will pass. We must not aim to be as good as some people; we must not excuse ourselves because we are no worse than others. It is God who is our pattern. “Be you therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.”

He is not only the pattern, but the source. His holiness is the guarantee of ours. He commands because He gives what He commands. Out of His fullness we receive and shine in His reflected light, even as the planets that shine in the light of the great day star.

3. The secret of holiness is death and resurrection. Peter gives it to us very profoundly in the fourth chapter and the first verse: “Forasmuch then as Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.” This thought, this great principle and truth that Christ died, will become a powerful weapon and victorious armor in our experience as we enter into it in fellowship with Him. Sanctification is not the improvement of our natural character, not even the cleansing of our spirit. It is to discover that we are wholly lost and utterly helpless, and to yield ourselves over to Him, to die to self as well as sin, to our natural goodness as well as natural sinfulness, and then receive a new life altogether from Him: Indeed, we are to receive Christ Himself, the risen one, as our new life, and then be as though we had been born out of heaven, and were not the same spirit that formerly lived in sin. Oh, what an inspiration this gives to the new life, to be wholly free by death from the entangling weight of our old habits, memories, and the discouraging sense of our past, and to spring, death-born, into a life of holiness and victory. It is our privilege.

4. Sanctification is the gift of God’s grace. We pass over now to the second epistle of Peter to supplement the teachings of the first, and there we are taught in the first chapter and the third verse that, “His divine power has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness.” He has given unto us this higher life. It is not an attainment, but a bestowal. God has provided the robes of the sanctified, and we simply put them on, and claim His efficiency and His complete provision for every spiritual condition and need. It is now awaiting you, beloved reader, if you will simply recognize your need of it, your helplessness to work it out yourself, and in full surrender accept Him for all that you can never be alone. “Put on the Lord Jesus Christ,” and put Him on now.

5. Sanctification comes to us through our being made “partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1: 4.) God is our sanctification. The very nature of God passes into us. It is a divine holiness. Sanctification is not a degree of progress on the old plane, but it puts us entirely upon a new plane, and we pass out of the human into the divine, and henceforth it is not the best that man can be and do, but the best that God can be and do. Therefore, it becomes natural for us to be holy, just as once it was natural for us to be sinful. We act according to the divine nature in us, and our choices, desires, and ministries are spontaneous and free, and obedience is just a luxury instead of a duty.

6. Sanctification comes to us through knowing God, and believing His word of promise. This is very finely brought out by the apostle in the opening verses of his second epistle. “Whereby,” he says, “are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these you might be partakers of the divine nature.” It is through claiming the promises that we receive the Holy Spirit and the divine nature. We take His Word and present it as a check on the Bank of Grace, and He turns it into the currency of spiritual blessing and actual grace. So again Peter says, He “has given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that has called us” not “to glory and virtue,” but “by his glory and virtue.” That is to say, His glory and virtue, His divine excellency, revealed to us by the Spirit, calls us to the same high and holy character; and as we know Him, we become like Him.

The power by which we appropriate these precious promises and make the gifts of God’s grace personal and real is faith. But even this faith is not a struggling effort of our weak will, but the apostle tells us we “have obtained like precious faith.” The faith is given, and so from first to last it is all grace. God reaches out to us the fullness of His love and power, and then He puts into our paralyzed hand the energy to reach out and grasp the blessing and make it ours.

7. Once more the apostle’s language implies that we enter into this experience of sanctification at a definite moment of time. It is not something into which we gradually drift, but it is a crisis point up to which we come and at which we settle something forever. This is implied in the peculiar Greek tense known to scholars as the aorist tense, used in this passage, verse 4, “Having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.” We have no tense in the English grammar corresponding to this. It denotes an act accomplished at a given moment in the past, and quite finished. Therefore, at a given moment we have escaped the corruption that is in the world through evil desire; we were delivered from the world and the flesh by becoming “partakers of the divine nature” and receiving “all things that pertain unto life and godliness.” We do not drag through a dreary and endless cycle of vain attempts, but we come up to Jordan, we enter in, we pass over, and we sing henceforth, “I am over in the promised land.” Beloved, this is the gospel of holiness according to Peter. Surely, it is good news, it is all divine, it is all freely given, it is all for you. Have you received it? Will you receive it?

III. SANCTIFICATION AND GROWTH IN GRACE

Now we are ready to grow, and, therefore, it is in the second epistle that the writer advances to these higher experiences and bids us to go on to perfection. Had we attempted to grow before, it would have been distortion. We must have a true life complete in all its parts before we can safely develop it. There must be a good foundation and every wall connected before we can rear the superstructure with safety. Now then, the foundation is laid, and so the apostle adds, “And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith.” (2 Peter 1:5.) Dean Alford has translated this, “Because of this thing;” not “beside,” but “because.” Just because you are sanctified, therefore, grow. Because you have resources, such a glorious guarantee, and divine supplies, therefore, go forward and make the most of them. But notice even in our growth that the same principle of grace must be recognized all the way through. We are not to grow in character and virtue and strength, but we are to grow in grace. That means we are to grow in the habit of receiving, of being more and more helpless and dependent every moment to the end of life; it is to be all grace to the finish, and the more we grow, the more will it be true, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”

This is also finely expressed in the phrase, “Add to your faith.” You are not to add to yourself, but to your faith. And what is faith? It is just the power to receive from God something which you yourself cannot do or have independently. Faith is just a hand to take His grace. Therefore, the way to grow is just to take from Him in each new emergency the supply needed for that occasion. Do we want more love? When we come up to some hard place where we are wronged, we are not to struggle to work up love in ourselves. We are not to be discouraged because we do not find the love there. We are not to pump at our dry well until we get worn out and discouraged. But we are to do as you would do with such a well; pour a little water in, and then it will flow freely out. Go to God and take the love from Him. Tell Him you are unloving and helpless, and ask Him to put the heart of Christ into your cold heart, and thus add to your faith His love. And so, if you need courage or patience or joy, no matter what, just draw upon your bank account. Use the faith that He has given to claim the exceeding great and precious promises, and you will get tired asking before He gets tired giving.

And now the apostle gives us a very fine and symmetrical portrait of the graces and features in which we are to grow. First he says, “Add to your faith virtue.” This does not mean moral purity, for all this has already been settled in your sanctification; but the word “virtue” is derived from an old Latin root, which means manhood, courage, virility. It is spiritual forcefulness. God does not want us good and amiable weaklings, but men and women that accomplish things; lives that tell for God and the race. He will give us His strength and make us good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and “strong in the Lord and the power of His might.”

Next is knowledge. Blind courage is often wild and dangerous. Power without intelligence and judgment is distortion. He wants us not only to have the “spirit of power,”but also the spirit of “a sound mind.” He will give us His wisdom and knowledge, for “if any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God . . . and it shall be given him.” How wise Christ was! How beautifully we find Him always in order, on time, with a ready answer for His enemies and a right message for needy souls — a pattern of divine wisdom. And so, by faith we may take His Spirit to rest upon us, as “the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord,” that shall make us of “quick understanding in the fear of the Lord.”

Next is temperance. That is self-control, the power of poise, the balanced character, the reserve force that can hold your tongue, and wait in the silence that so often speaks more vitally than words. He will give it through your faith and through His grace, if you are willing to be taught to be silent unto God and let Him mold you.

Next is patience. That is the power to suffer not only that which comes to you from the hand of God, but that, so much harder, which comes to you from the hand of man. This is the fusing process that burns all the ingredients into one living mass of spiritual strength. No character is permanent, no quality is fixed, until it has been proved in the furnace of affliction. But patience is His gift. The savage can meet suffering with stoical indifference, but only the heart of Christ can stand in the judgment hall or the garden of Gethsemane and suffer long and yet be kind. You will come up to your trials and fail at first, but you will find the unfailing One at your side, and if you will lean hard on Him, He will give you His victory; and through each new trial you will add to your faith patience, until patience has her perfect work, and you will stand “perfect and entire, lacking nothing.”

Next comes godliness. This is the quality of the Spirit which crowns the character. This is the upper chamber, the observatory, where we look up and out upon the heavens, where we meet and know God, where we commune with Him and worship Him and do all things unto His glory. It is this which gives spirituality and devoutness to the character, and makes saints like Rutherford, McCheyne, Fenelon, and the souls whose very names crush our hearts with sacred veneration. Into this we may grow by faith, for piety is one of the gifts of God; and we can have as much as we can claim and wear as a divine habiliment.

But there is danger even on spiritual lines. We may not become extreme and selfish. The cloister and the cell are not the finishing rooms for holy character, but the slums of sin, the wastes of heathenism, and the dark places of human suffering. It is here we reach the largest circumference of spiritual growth. There is a circle, a vertical circle, that rises heavenward and takes in God and all the heights of devotion and communion; but there is another circle, a lateral circle, that takes in all the length and breadth of loving sympathy and service. And so he adds two more features to this divine portrait: “brotherly kindness” and “charity.” The first relates to our brethren, the love we owe to the household of faith. The second relates to the great world beyond, the unsaved, the unhappy, the sick, the poor, the lost, our enemies, the people that we cannot love naturally, but whom God has placed in our pathway to teach us that great and heavenly grace He here calls charity.

Such is the fullness of the stature of a perfect man in Christ; the ideal up to which God would have us grow under the molding hand of His grace. Such are the seven colors of this sacred prism — seven, yet one; the white light of faith and grace separated into the sevenfold graces of courage, knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity.

There is a fine shade of expression in the beautiful Greek in connection with the word “add.” Literally, it means “chorus.” It is a technical word, describing the business of the choir leader who harmonized the music at some great concert in all the parts, voices and instruments, until they blended in one magnificent harmony; many, yet one. And so we are to chorus into our Christian life all the graces of the Spirit until they shall blend in symmetrical proportion, and nothing shall be exaggerated, but all shall be in harmony, and the effect of the whole shall be that our lives shall become a sublime chorus of praise, a doxology to the glory of Him, of whom and by whom and for whom are all things.

Once more, we are to give all diligence to this. The Greek word again is forceful. It reminds one of the finger post which they used to place on the amphitheater in the Grecian games at the homestretch, containing one Greek word, meaning, literally, “make speed.” They did not place this at the beginning of the course, but near the end, just at the place where the prize was to be lost or won. There the racers were summoned to the last strenuous endeavor. And so it is after we are sanctified and have learned the fullness of Jesus, that God is calling us from on high to the utmost vigilance and diligence, and to make speed, that we “so run that we may obtain.” In conclusion, the apostle gives us several strenuous reasons why we should thus make speed.

1. This will save us from spiritual nearsightedness. “He that lacks these things is blind and cannot see afar off.” The reason some people never get a vision of God or deeply realize spiritual things is because they live on too low a plane.

2. It will keep us from living too near the edge. “He has forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.” Some people seem to like to live on the edge of the pit and the wonder is that they do not slip back again. God bids you press on from the borderland of danger into all the strength and breadth of the land of promise. If you do not, you will find yourself back even in your old sins.

3. “If you do these things, you shall never fall”; literally, “stumble.” Would you be kept from stumbling? Then press on. It is easier to be holy than to be half sanctified, just as it is easier for the car to run on both tracks than to run with one wheel on the paving stones.

4. This will make your life fruitful and active, “for if these things be in you, and abound, they will make you that you shall neither be barren nor unfruitful”; literally, “idle nor unfruitful.” How little some Christians accomplish for God! How wasteful of time and opportunity their precious lives! It is because they live too low. Get filled with the Spirit, and you shall neither be idle nor unfruitful.

5. “For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” This is the crowning reason for a life of devotion. There is a glorious prize and there is a solemn possibility of missing it. I have seen three different persons land from a great ocean steamer. One landed as a criminal, a prisoner bound with chains, and led away to the Tombs and the dark future of punishment. And so some will reach yonder destination. A second stepped down from the deck on the gangplank, a stranger in a strange land. He was not in danger of arrest, but there were no familiar faces to greet him, and he almost wished he were back in his own country. And some shall reach the eternal port in this way, saved as by fire, but no soul to meet them at heaven’s gate; strangers even in the home above. God save you from such a home coming. But I have seen another figure on that deck, his face glowing with pleasure, his eyes sparkling with tears of joy, his hat and handkerchief waving in response to thousands on the shore who were welcoming him home. And as he landed amid the cheers of the musical bands and the shouts of ten thousand voices, they carried him on their shoulders to receive ovations of honor and the highest rewards that his nation could bestow. He was a public servant and had done his duty and had finished his course with joy. He was coming home to his reward. There shall be such abundant entrance through yonder heavenly gates. Shall they be for you? Shall they be for me? We are making our history now. God help us to write it in enduring letters that shall shine in that glorious day.

The same word translated “chorus,” in verse five, is used again in verse eleven, and translated “ministered”; literally, “an entrance shall be chorused unto you abundantly.” The things you did and suffered for God, the graces of your Christian life which you put on in the earthly struggle, the souls you led to the Savior — all these shall meet you there, and like celestial attendants accompany your triumphal march and sing your coronation hymn as they bid you welcome to your great reward. Oh, with such an inspiring hope, let us give all diligence to receive all the possibilities of grace and obtain all the rewards of glory!

At the name of JESUS every knee will bow.