It is truly blessed to see by faith the strength and
firmness of the foundation which God has laid in Zion. We have this firm and
strong foundation brought before us in those words of the Apostle with which
we closed our last article, and in which having spoken of Christ as of "a
lamb without blemish and without spot," he adds, "Who verily was
foreordained before the foundation of the world." He would thus direct our
minds to those eternal transactions before the world itself had birth or
being, and to that everlasting covenant in which the whole plan of
redemption was laid in the Person of the Son of God. As thus set up in the
mind of the Father, and as in due time to assume a nature in and by which
all the purposes of grace and love which were in the bosom of God to a
guilty race might be accomplished and manifested, he is the Lamb of God
slain from before the foundation of the world. (Rev. 13:8.) But as we have
almost pledged ourselves to close our exposition of this chapter with the
closing year we cannot enter further upon this blessed subject.
The main point in it to which we would call the attention
of our readers is the stability and firmness which were thereby given to all
the thoughts of God's heart and all the counsels of his infinite wisdom,
goodness, and mercy in the gift of his dear Son. We live in a changeable,
ever-changing world. All outside us is stamped with mutation, death, and
decay; and as regards ourselves everything within us tells us how frail,
weak, and mutable we are. Thus, as viewed by the eye of sense and reason,
uncertainty and changeability are ever seen to be deeply stamped, not only
on every event of time, but on all we are and have in body and soul; and
this experience of what we feel in ourselves and see in all around us often
greatly tries both our faith and hope, for we are apt to measure God by
ourselves and judge of our state before him, not according to his word, but
according to the varying thoughts and exercises of our mind.
But when we can look by faith through all these mists and
fogs which, as resting on the lower grounds of our soul, so often obscure
our view of divine realities, to the fixed purposes of God as manifested in
an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure, and have at the same
time some testimony of our interest therein, ground is thus afforded both
for faith and hope as resting, not on our ever-changing feelings, but on the
word and promise of him that cannot lie. It was thus David was comforted on
his bed of languishing when the cold damps of death sat upon his brow. Much
trouble had that servant of God had in his house, and much of it, we may
add, procured by his own sins. But what were his last words as he lay upon
his dying pillow when the Spirit of the Lord spoke by him and his word was
in his tongue? "Although my house be not so with God; yet he has made with
me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure—for this is all
my salvation, and all my desire, although he make it not to grow." (2 Sam.
23:5.)
In a similar way the Apostle lays the foundation for
faith and hope, not in ourselves, but in the hope and promise of
God—"Because God wanted to make the unchanging nature of his purpose very
clear to the heirs of what was promised, he confirmed it with an oath. God
did this so that, by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for
God to lie, we who have fled to take hold of the hope offered to us may be
greatly encouraged." (Heb. 6:17, 18.) It was then in this "everlasting
covenant, ordered in all things, and sure," that even before the world was
formed, man made, or sin committed—a Savior was provided, a Redeemer set up,
and the persons of the redeemed chosen in him and given to him. How can we
think, then, that any changing and changeable events in time can alter and
frustrate what was thus absolutely fixed by firm and sovereign decree, or
that any mutable circumstances in ourselves or others can defeat and
disannul the eternal purposes of God?
But we would have known nothing of these eternal
realities had not these counsels of infinite wisdom and grace been brought
to light in the Person and work of the Son of God as manifested in his
appearance in the days of his flesh, and here spoken of by Peter as "a lamb
without blemish and without spot," in reference to the sacrifice he was to
offer, and of which the Paschal lamb was the type and figure. He, therefore,
says, "Who was manifested in these last times for you."
Of this manifestation of the Son of God, the Scriptures,
in the New Testament, everywhere speak. It is, indeed, the sum and substance
of that special revelation of God which we call the New Testament, for every
line of it testifies to the appearance of Christ in the flesh. How striking,
for instance, on this point, are the words of John—"And the Word was made
flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." (John 1:14.) And what a
summing-up of the whole gospel is that testimony of the Apostle—"And without
controversy great is the mystery of godliness—God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world, received up into glory." (1 Tim. 3:16.) All the
difference, in fact, between a believer and an unbeliever, between being
saved and being lost is summed up in the belief in the Son of God as thus
made manifest, according to those striking words of our Lord himself—"He who
believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he who believes not shall be
damned." (Mark 16:16.) And how well with this agrees the testimony given by
him who leaned his head upon the Lord's loving bosom—"And this is the
record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
He who has the Son has life; and he who has not the Son of God has not
life." (1 John 5:11, 12.)
By "these last times" is meant this present dispensation,
the dispensation of grace under which we live, and they are called the last
times chiefly for two reasons—1, Because Christ was manifested in the last
days of the legal dispensation of the old covenant, which now, as decaying
and waxing old, was ready to vanish away (Heb. 8:13), which it did when at
the destruction of Jerusalem the whole of the temple service, including the
sacrifices offered there, was brought to an end.
But 2, Another reason why the dispensation under which we
live is called "the last days" is because it is the final revelation of God.
We cannot here enlarge upon this point. Suffice it to say that under this
dispensation we now live. It is "the time accepted," the "day of salvation,"
of which all the prophets have spoken. (2 Cor. 6:2; Acts 3:24.) Christ is
now upon his throne of grace; the great, the glorious, the only Mediator
between God and man is now at the right hand of the Father; the Intercessor
who is able to save to the uttermost all who come unto God by him—seeing he
ever lives to make intercession for them, still lives to plead, as an
Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, as the great High
Priest over the house of God. But he will leave the throne of grace to take
his seat on the throne of judgment; and then "these last days" will close in
all the glories of salvation to his friends—and in all the horrors of
destruction to his foes.
But this leads us to a very important question, that is,
to show, with the Apostle, who they are for whom Christ was thus
manifested. "Who by him believe in God, who raised him from the dead and
glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God." Several things here
will demand our attentive consideration.
1. Observe, first, the special mark which is here given
of those for whom Christ was manifested. It is said of them that "by him
they believe in God." If this be their distinctive mark, we may well inquire
what is intended by it. It must surely be a very great thing to believe in
God with a faith that brings salvation with it. It is easy to believe that
there is a God in nature, or a God in providence, or a God in grace,
according to the mere letter of the word, and this is what thousands do who
have no manifested interest in redeeming love and atoning blood. In fact, it
is the great delusion of the day, the religion of that religious multitude
who know neither God nor themselves, neither law nor gospel, neither sin nor
salvation. All this is a believing about God, or a believing of
God, such as that he exists, or that he is such a God as the Scriptures
represent him to be; but this is a very different thing from believing in
God. This is a special and peculiar faith, and implies a spiritual and
saving knowledge of God, such as our Lord speaks of (John 17:3); and as none
can thus know him unto eternal life but from some discovery of himself, some
personal manifestation of his presence, some coming near of himself in the
power of his word and the operations of his grace, so none can believe in
him without a faith of divine operation. The Apostle, therefore, says, "Who
by him do believe in God," that is, not only through the merits and
mediation of Christ as the Mediator between God and men, but by his special
grace, as the Author and Finisher of faith. To believe, therefore, in God is
not an act of the natural mind, but it is the gift and work of God, bestowed
upon us through the mediation of Christ, and, therefore, as the Apostle
says, "given in the behalf of Christ." (Phil. 1:29.)
2. But observe further, that thus to believe in God is to
believe in him as he has manifested himself in his dear Son in all the
fullness of his love, in all the riches of his grace, and in all the depth
of his mercy. "No man," says John, "has seen God at any time; the only
begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he has declared him." (John
1:18.) God must be seen, not in the terrors of a holy law, but in the mercy
and truth of the glorious gospel of the Son of God, and thus be approached
and believed in as the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our
Father in him. How few see and realize this, and yet how severely exercised
are many of the living family upon this point! To believe in God in such a
way as to bring pardon and peace into their conscience; to believe in God so
as to find manifest acceptance with him; to believe in God so as to call him
Abba, Father, and feel that the Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit
that we are his children; to believe in God so as to find him a very present
help in trouble; to receive answers to prayer, to walk in the light of his
countenance, to have his love shed abroad in the heart, to be manifestly
reconciled to him and feel a sense of his manifested goodness and mercy—this
is to believe in God through Jesus Christ. And O how different is this from
merely believing about God from what we see in nature that he is the Creator
of all things, or from what we may have realized of his footsteps in
providence that he watches over us as regards the things that perish, or
from seeing in the letter of the word that he is the God of all grace to
those who fear his name!
3. But observe, also, the firm foundation which the
Apostle has laid for this faith in God, and how needful it is that this
foundation would be strong and good. We build for eternity. Our faith, if it
be the faith of God's elect, rests not upon a notion or an opinion, or what
the Apostle calls "the wisdom of men," however clear, deep, logical, or
refined. (1 Cor. 2:5.) It rests upon a solid foundation—the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Let us never forget this. Our faith may ebb and flow, it may
sink very low or rise very high; but its ebbings and flowings, its sinkings
and risings do not touch or affect the foundation. That foundation is Jesus
Christ, "declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the Spirit
of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead." (Rom. 1:4.) This is the
witness of God as distinct from the witness of men, as John speaks—"If we
receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; for this is the
witness of God which he has testified of his Son." (1 John 5:9.) Now, when
this witness of God to his dear Son, by raising him from the dead, meets
with the witness in our own bosom that this blessed Jesus is the Son of the
Father in truth and love, this witness in our own bosom to the Son of God as
revealed in us, raises up and draws forth a living faith first in the Son of
God, and then by him in the Father, who has sent him. This is the witness of
which John speaks—"He who believes on the Son of God has the witness in
himself" (1 John 5:10); and by this double witness the soul becomes assured
of, and established in the truth as it is in Jesus.
"And gave him glory."—There is a close and intimate
connection between the sufferings and death of Christ, his resurrection from
the dead, and his entrance into glory. Our Lord, therefore, said to the two
disciples journeying to Emmaus—"Ought not Christ to have suffered these
things, and to enter into his glory?" First the cross, then the crown; first
"being made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death," then
"crowned with glory and honor." (Heb. 2:9.) This "glory," which God is here
said to have given Christ, is his mediatorial glory, the glory which he now
has as wearing our nature in union with his own divine Person in the courts
of heaven. Our faith, then, has to embrace Christ, not only as suffering and
dying on the cross, and thus delivered for our sins, and Christ as risen
from the dead for our justification, but as crowned with glory and honor in
the presence of the Father. This is that glory of the Lord which we with
open face behold as in a glass, that is, the glass of the gospel on which it
shines, and by which it is reflected into the heart, and by beholding which
we are, says the Apostle, "changed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as by the Spirit of the Lord." (2 Cor. 3:18.)
Now, if we watch the movements of faith upon and toward
the blessed Lord, we shall see that it embraces Christ mainly under these
three points of view as revealed in the word, and through the word revealed
by the Spirit to the heart—1, Christ crucified, as putting away sin by the
sacrifice of himself; 2, Christ risen from the dead as declared to be the
Son of God with power; and 3, Christ in his present heavenly glory as our
Mediator, Advocate, and Intercessor above. It is only thus in the actings of
faith that we have "boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of
Jesus, by a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the
veil, that is to say, his flesh." (Heb. 10:19, 20.) Now, it is this faith in
Christ that draws forth and maintains both faith and hope in God.
Out of Christ God is a consuming fire! Our sins are so
great, our backslidings so repeated and aggravated, our nature so vile, our
hearts so deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, that as we view
the infinite Majesty of God, his unspeakable holiness, purity, and justice,
and thus see our sins in the light of his countenance, our heart sinks
within us with guilty fear, and we can neither believe in him with any
comfort, nor even hope in his mercy with any sweet assurance. It is only,
then, as we view God manifesting himself in the Person of his dear Son, and
for his sake and through his blood and righteousness pardoning iniquity,
transgression, and sin, and accepting us in the Beloved in a way of free and
sovereign grace, that our faith and hope can so be in him as to enable us to
believe that he is our God, our Father, and our Friend.
And surely there is every encouragement for poor, guilty
sinners, "self-condemned and self-abhorred," thus to believe, and thus to
hope in God, as having sent his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
him should not perish, but have everlasting life, as all such will, sooner
or later, find to the joy of their soul.
Having thus spoken of a living faith and hope in God, and
having pointed out the firmness of the foundation on which they rest,
through Whose mediation they are bestowed, and by Whose power they are
wrought, the Apostle goes on to show that this faith and hope will have
their attendant fruits—"Seeing you have purified your souls in obeying the
truth through the Spirit unto sincere love of the brethren, see that you
love one another with a pure heart fervently." (1 Peter 1:22.)
Three fruits of faith and hope in God are spoken of
here—1, obedience to the truth; 2, a purifying of the soul; 3, sincere love
of the brethren. We shall now, then, with God's help and blessing, attempt
to show the connection of these fruits with faith and hope.
1. The first is, "Obeying the truth through the Spirit."
By "the truth" we are to understand the whole truth of God connected with
the Person and work of Christ as distinct from the law or any scheme of the
wisdom of man. The word "truth" has often this meaning in the New Testament.
Thus, of our Lord it is said—"For the law was given by Moses, but grace and
truth came by Jesus Christ." (John 1:17.) Our Lord is himself emphatically
"the Truth" (John 14:6); he came that he would bear witness of the truth,
and every one that is of the truth hears his voice. (John 18:37.) But it is
in the gospel, in the word of his grace, that this truth is revealed to us.
All truth is in Christ; and there is no truth but what comes from him,
testifies of him, and centers in him. But this truth is made known to us
only in the gospel, and, therefore, the Apostle says—"For the hope which is
laid up for you in heaven, whereof you heard before in the word of the truth
of the gospel; which has come unto you, as it is in all the world; and
brings forth fruit, as it does also in you since the day you heard of it,
and knew the grace of God in truth." (Col. 1:5, 6.)
Now, when this truth is made known with a divine power to
our hearts, when, as our Lord says, we know the truth, and the truth makes
us free (John 8:32); when we receive it by the teaching and testimony of
that Holy Spirit who guides into all truth, then we are said to "obey" it;
for the first act of obedience is to receive it implicitly, and to submit to
it. The Apostle says of Israel of old, that "they being ignorant of God's
righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, did not
submit themselves unto the righteousness of God."
Submission, then, to the truth, a reception of it into
the heart, an embracing of it in faith and affection, a yielding of
ourselves to it as exceedingly precious, is an obeying of it, and is,
therefore, called by the Apostle, "the obedience of faith." (Rom. 16:26.)
This is receiving the kingdom of God as a little child in humility and love;
and those who do not so receive the kingdom of God cannot enter therein.
This is "an obeying from the heart that form of doctrine which is delivered
to us" (Rom. 6:17), by which is meant that the heart obeys the mold of truth
in the same way as in casting metal the copy obeys the model. But this
obedience which the Apostle calls "obeying the gospel" (Rom. 10:16) is
"through the Spirit," who by his secret teachings, not only brings the truth
before the eyes, but sealing it upon the heart by his divine power, produces
that obedience of faith whereby the truth is received in the love of it.
2. Now, the effect of this is to purify the soul.
Speaking of the Gentiles, Peter said in the council at Jerusalem—"And God,
who knows the hearts, bore them witness, giving them the Holy Spirit, even
as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying
their hearts by faith." (Acts 15:8, 9.) Thus we see that there is it
purifying of the heart by faith. This purifying consists mainly in four
things. 1. In purifying the understanding by the shining in of divine
light, so as to cleanse it from error; 2, in the purifying of the
conscience, to cleanse it from guilt; 3, in the purifying of the
will, to cleanse it from self-will and self-seeking; and 4, in purifying
the affections, to cleanse them from the love of all that is evil.
Our space will not allow us to trace out the various ways
in which the soul is thus purified, nor how a believer may be said,
according to the language of the Apostle, to purify his soul by acting in
sweet co-operation with the blessed Spirit. The point on which the Apostle
seems chiefly to dwell in this purification of the soul by obeying the
truth, through the Spirit, is the purifying of the affections from
selfishness, so that the third fruit of which we have already spoken may be
brought forth—"sincere love of the brethren."
3. Love to the brethren is the first evidence of having
passed from death unto life, and will ever be found to rise or sink with
faith in the Son of God and with receiving the love of the truth into an
obedient heart. In our day there is little "sincere love of the brethren,"
and the reason is because faith and love in and toward the Lord himself are
at so low an ebb. There is a great deal of feigned love, hypocritical love,
as the word "feigned" means in the verse before us—many soft, smooth,
honeyed words—but little real, sincere, spiritual affection. In a similar
way, says Paul, "Love must be sincere." (Rom. 12:9), where it is the same
word as is here rendered "sincere," and in both places means literally, as
we have hinted, "without hypocrisy."
The Apostle, therefore, here bids us put away all this
hypocrisy, all this pretense of affection, often worn as a cloak of real
dislike and hatred, all these words smoother than butter when there is war
in the heart (Psalm 55:21), all this "How are you, my brother?" before the
dagger was plunged into his belly (2 Sam. 20:10); and "to love one another
with a pure heart;" that is, a heart purified by grace and the love of God
shed abroad in it from selfishness, self-seeking, carnal preferences, and
every other corrupt affection which may mar the purity of spiritual love.
Nor is he satisfied with a cold, half-hearted love. He
says, "See that you love one another with a pure heart fervently."
Let there be warmth and fervor in your love to the brethren as well as
sincerity and truth. Do not content yourselves with a poor, base, pitiful,
half-dead love, a love that bears nothing, suffers nothing, and does
nothing; a love which neither warms your own heart nor anybody else's, and
which is so feeble and so faint that, like a fire almost gone out, we can
scarcely tell whether it is alight or not, and which neither blowing nor
poking will make to burn up.
He thus urges on us a love to the brethren which has
these two qualities—purity and warmth, or, as the word might be rendered,
intensity. Let your love first be pure and then fervent or intense, not
slack and loose, like a let-down musical string, but tense and tightened, so
as to give out a clear and definite note. Let heart be joined to heart with
a tender flame of pure affection; let all impure motives be hated and
abhorred, such as loving the rich for what you can get, "having men's
persons in admiration because of advantage" (Jude 16); or the respectable as
reflecting a little of their station on you; or the amiable because they are
so kind and gentle; or the young, the handsome, and the well-dressed because
they please the eye, and thus, perhaps, mingle the lust of the flesh with
the love of the Spirit. Hate and abhor all this filth of the flesh, and not
only so, but let your love be fervent as well as pure, and let the fervor of
your mutual love break forth and burst through all those hindrances which so
dampen and obscure it. Alas! alas! how deficient are we all here! What
little real brotherly love there is in the churches! What strife,
contention, and division in many! What coldness, shyness, and deadness in
nearly all! A few here and there may seem closely knit together and to walk
in love and affection; but taking the churches generally, never was love to
the brethren, as it appears to us, sunk lower than now.
But we must not linger here; but as we wish to close our
Meditations with the closing year, pass on to the next point dwelt on by the
Apostle—"Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by
the word of God, which lives and abides forever." (1 Peter 1:23.)
It is only those who are born again of the incorruptible
seed of the word of God who can and will love one another. All that is born
of the flesh is flesh, and therefore corrupt and corruptible; and such ever
must be the feigned love of mere professors of religion. It is corrupt in
its very birth, has the taint of mortal disease in it from the beginning,
and usually manifests itself in its true character as false, deceitful, and
hypocritical before it dies its natural death in open enmity and dislike.
But that which is born of God, the new man of grace, of which love is the
distinguishing feature (1 John 4:7; 5:1), is, like himself, incorruptible.
It is a new, holy, and heavenly nature, and therefore cannot be stained with
sin, though it lives and dwells in a body which is nothing but sin; nor can
it ever die or see corruption, for as God himself lives and abides forever,
so will that which is born of God live and abide forever, for it lives in
death, through death, and after death, and has its eternal home in the bosom
of God.
Now, none but those who are thus made partakers of the
divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) are born again, and as such possess a life which
can never die; for as their first birth introduced them into this lower
world, so their second birth introduces them into the upper world. Our Lord,
therefore, said, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He who believes in me has"
(not "shall have" hereafter, but "has" now) "everlasting life." (John 6:47.)
And similarly to the woman of Samaria—"The water that I shall give him shall
be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life." (John 4:14.)
All around us is fading away; but the life which Christ gives to those whom
the Father has given unto him is eternal. (John 17:2; 10:28.)
He, therefore, adds, "For all flesh is as grass, and all
the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower
thereof falls away. But the word of the Lord endures forever. And this is
the word which by the gospel is preached unto you." (1 Peter 1:24, 25.) All
flesh, and everything that springs from the flesh, and is connected with the
flesh, is as grass, which, for a time, looks green and flourishing; but
touched with the mower's scythe, or scorched by the midday sun, soon withers
and fades away. Such is all flesh, without exception, from the highest to
the lowest. As in nature, some grass grows thicker and longer than others,
and makes, for a while, a brighter show, but the scythe makes no distinction
between the light crop and the heavy, so the scythe of death mows down with
equal sweep the rich and the poor, and lays in one common grave all the
children of men. No, all the glory of man, everything in which he boasts
himself, all his pride and honor, pomp and power, are but as the flower of
grass.
You have seen sometimes in the early spring the grass in
flower, and you have noticed those little yellowish "anthers," as they are
termed, which tremble at every breeze. This is "the flower of grass;" and
though so inconspicuous as almost to escape observation, yet as much its
flower as the tulip or the rose is the flower of the plant which bears each.
Now, as the grass withers, so the flower thereof falls away. It never had,
at its best state, much permanency or strength of endurance, for it hung as
by a thread, and it required but a little gust of wind to blow it away, and
make it as though it never had been. Such is all the pride of the flesh, and
all the glory of man.
But is there nothing that endures amid all that thus
withers and falls away? Yes, the word of the Lord. We need hardly observe
that the Apostle here is quoting and commenting on a well-known passage in
the prophet Isaiah—"A voice said, "Shout!" I asked, "What should I shout?"
"Shout that people are like the grass that dies away. Their beauty fades as
quickly as the beauty of flowers in a field. The grass withers, and the
flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. And so it is with people. The
grass withers, and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands
forever." (Isa. 40:6-8.) Upon this prophetic declaration the Apostle puts
his comment—"This is the word which, by the gospel, is preached unto you;"
as if he would say, "The word of our God, of which the prophet declared it
would stand forever, is the word of his grace in the gospel of Jesus Christ,
which is now preached by us apostles unto you. It was to this preached
gospel that Isaiah referred, and you yourselves who hear it are witnesses of
its accomplishment."
Now, the same gospel which was preached unto them is
preached unto us in the word of truth which we have in our hands; and if we
have received that gospel into a believing heart, we have received for
ourselves that word of the Lord which endures forever. And thus, though all
our own flesh is as grass, and all in which we might naturally glory is but
as the flower of grass, and though this grass must wither in death, and the
flower thereof shall fall away, when the place which now knows us shall know
us no more, yet we have an enduring substance in the gospel of the grace of
God, and, so far as we have received that gospel, and known it to be the
power of God unto salvation, when our earthly house of this tabernacle is
dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal
in the heavens.
With these words we close our exposition of 1 Peter 1;
and if we have in any way been favored and blessed to throw any light upon
this part of God's word, or brought forward anything which may have been for
the edification, encouragement, and consolation of our spiritual readers, to
the God of all grace be ascribed all the honor and glory!