Verses 1-25
Chapter 2
2:1-3 Strip off,
therefore, all the evil of the heathen world and all deceitfulness, acts
of hypocrisy and feelings of envy, and all gossiping disparagements of
other people, and, like newly-born babes, yearn for the unadulterated
milk of the word, so that by it you may grow up until you reach
salvation. You are bound to do this if you have tasted that the Lord is
kind.
No Christian can stay the way he is; and Peter urges his people
to have done with evil things and to set their hearts on that which
alone can nourish life.
There are things which must be stripped off. Apothesthai (compare Greek #595)
is the verb for stripping off one's clothes. There are things of which
the Christian must divest himself as he would strip off a soiled
garment.
He must strip off all the evil of the heathen world. The word for evil is kakia (Greek #2549);
it is the most general word for wickedness and includes all the wicked
ways of the Christless world. The other words are illustrations and
manifestations of this kakia (Greek #2549);
and it is to be noted that they are all faults of character which hurt
the great Christian virtue of brotherly love. There can be no brotherly
love so long as these evil things exist.
There is deceitfulness (dolos, Greek #1388).
Dolos is the trickery of the man who is out to deceive others to attain
his own ends, the vice of the man whose motives are never pure.
There is hypocrisy (hupokrisis, Greek #5272). Hupokrites (Greek #5273) (hypocrite) is a word with a curious history. It is the noun from the verb hupokrinesthai (Greek #5271) which means to answer; a hupokrites (Greek #5273)
begins by being an answerer. Then it comes to mean an actor, the man
who takes part in the question and answer of the stage. Next it comes to
mean a hypocrite, a man who all the time is acting a part and
concealing his real motives. The hypocrite is the man whose alleged
Christian profession is for his own profit and prestige and not for the
service and glory of Christ.
There is envy (phthonos, Greek #5355).
It may well be said that envy is the last sin to die. It reared its
ugly head even in the apostolic band. The other ten were envious of
James and John, when they seemed to steal a march upon them in the
matter of precedence in the coming Kingdom (Mark 10:41). Even at the last supper the disciples were disputing about who should occupy the seats of greatest honour (Luke 22:24).
So long as self remains active within a man's heart there will be envy
in his life. E. G. Selwyn calls envy "the constant plague of all
voluntary organisations, not least religious organisations." C. E. B.
Cranfield says that "we do not have to be engaged in what is called
'church work' very long to discover what a perennial source of trouble
envy is."
There is gossiping disparagement (katalalia, Greek #2636).
Katalalia is a word with a definite flavour. It means evil-speaking; it
is almost always the fruit of envy in the heart; and it usually takes
place when its victim is not there to defend himself. Few things are so
attractive as hearing or repeating spicy gossip. Disparaging gossip is
something which everyone admits to be wrong and which at the same time
almost everyone enjoys; and yet there is nothing more productive of
heartbreak and nothing is so destructive of brotherly love and Christian
unity.
These, then, are the things which the reborn man must strip off
for, if he continues to allow them to have a grip upon his life, the
unity of the brethren must be injured.
But there is something on which the Christian must set his heart. He
must yearn for the unadulterated milk of the word. This is a phrase
about whose meaning there is some difficulty. The difficulty is with the
word logikos (Greek #3050)
which with the King James Version we have translated of the word. The
English Revised Version translates it spiritual, and in the margin gives
the alternative translation reasonable. Moffatt has spiritual, as has
the Revised Standard Version.
Logikos (Greek #3050) is the adjective from the noun logos (Greek #3056) and the difficulty is that it has three perfectly possible translations.
(a) Logos (Greek #3056) is the great Stoic word for the reason which guides the universe; logikos (Greek #3050)
is a favourite Stoic word which describes what has to do with this
divine reason which is the governor of all things. If this is the word's
connection, clearly spiritual is the meaning.
(b) Logos (Greek #3056) is the normal Greek word for mind or reason; therefore, logikos (Greek #3050) often means reasonable or intelligent. It is in that way that the King James Version translates it in Romans 12:1, where it speaks of our reasonable service.
(c) Logos (Greek #3056)is the Greek for word, and logikos (Greek #3050)
means belonging to the Lord. This is the sense in which the King James
Version takes it, and we think it is correct. Peter has just been
talking about the word of God which abides forever (1 Peter 1:23-25).
It is the word of God which is in his mind; and we think that what he
means here is that the Christian must desire with his whole heart the
nourishment which comes from the word of God, for by that nourishment he
can grow until he reaches salvation itself. In face of all the evil of
the heathen world the Christian must strengthen his soul with the pure
food of the word of God.
This food of the word is unadulterated (adolos, Greek #97). That is to say, there is not the slightest admixture of anything evil in it. Adolos (Greek #97)
is an almost technical word to describe corn (American: grain) that is
entirely free from chaff or dust or useless or harmful matter. In all
human wisdom there is some admixture of what is either useless or
harmful; the word of God alone is altogether good.
The Christian is to yearn for this milk of the word; yearn is epipothein (Greek #1971) which is a strong word. It is the word which is used for the hart longing for the waterbrooks (Psalms 42:1), and for the Psalmist longing for the salvation of the Lord (Psalms 119:174).
For the sincere Christian, to study God's word is not a labour but a
delight, for he knows that there his heart will find the nourishment for
which it longs.
The metaphor of the Christian as a baby and the word of God as
the milk whereby he is nourished is common in the New Testament. Paul
thinks of himself as the nurse who cares for the infant Christians of
Thessalonica (1 Thessalonians 2:7). He thinks of himself as feeding the Corinthians with milk for they are not yet at the stage of meat (1 Corinthians 3:2);
and the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews blames his people for being
still at the stage of milk when they should have gone on to maturity (Hebrews 5:12; Hebrews 6:2).
To symbolize the rebirth of baptism in the early church, the newly
baptized Christian was clothed in white robes, and sometimes he was fed
with milk as if he was a little child. It is this nourishment with the
milk of the word which makes a Christian grow up and grow on until he
reaches salvation.
Peter finishes this introduction with an allusion to Psalms 34:8.
"You are bound to do this," he writes, "if you have tasted the kindness
of God." Here is something of the greatest significance. The fact that
God is gracious is not an excuse for us to do as we like, depending on
him to overlook it; it lays on us an obligation to toil towards
deserving his graciousness and love. The kindness of God is not an
excuse for laziness in the Christian life; it is the greatest of all
incentives to effort.
2:4-10 Come to him,
the living stone, rejected by men but chosen and precious with God, and
be yourselves, like living stones, built into a spiritual house until
you become a holy priesthood to offer spiritual sacrifices, which are
well-pleasing to God through Jesus Christ; for there is a passage in
Scripture which says, "Behold, I place in Zion a stone, chosen, a
cornerstone, precious, and he who believes in him shall not be put to
shame." So, then, there is preciousness in that stone to you who
believe; but, to those who disbelieve, the stone which the builders
rejected has become the headstone of the corner, and a stone over which
they will stumble, and a rock over which they will trip. They stumble
because they disobey the word--a fate for which they were appointed. But
you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a people dedicated to God, a
nation for him specially to possess that you might tell forth the
excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his glorious
light, you, who were once not a people and are now the people of the
Lord, you who were once without mercy and have now found mercy.
Peter sets before us the nature and the function of the Church.
There is so much in the passage that we divide it into four sections.
(1) The Stone Which The Builders Rejected
Much is made of the idea of the stone. Three Old Testament passages are symbolically used; let us look at them one by one.
(i) The beginning of the whole matter goes back to the words of
Jesus himself. One of the most illuminating parables he ever told was
the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen. In it he told how the wicked
husbandmen killed servant after servant and in the end even murdered the
son. He was showing how the nation of Israel had again and again
refused to listen to the prophets and had persecuted them, and how this
refusal was to reach its climax with his own death. But beyond the death
he saw the triumph and he told of that triumph in words taken from the
Psalms: "The very stone which the builders rejected has become the head
of the corner; this was the Lord's doing and it is marvellous in our
eyes" (Matthew 21:42; Mark 12:10; Luke 20:17).
That is a quotation from Psalms 118:22.
In the original it is a reference to the nation of Israel. A. K.
Kirkpatrick writes of it: "Israel is 'the head corner-stone.' The powers
of the world flung it aside as useless, but God destined it for the
most honourable and important place in the building of his kingdom in
the world. The words express Israel's consciousness of its mission and
destiny in the purpose of God." Jesus took these words and applied them
to himself. It looked as if he was utterly rejected by men; but in the
purpose of God he was the corner-stone of the edifice of the Kingdom,
honoured above all.
(ii) In the Old Testament there are other references to this
symbolic stone, and the early Christian writers used them for their
purposes. The first is in Isaiah 28:16
: "Therefore, thus says the Lord God, Behold I am laying in Zion for a
foundation a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure
foundation; he who believes will not be in haste." Again the reference
is to Israel. The sure and precious stone is God's unfailing
relationship to his people, a relationship which was to culminate in the
coming of the Messiah. Once again the early Christian writers took this
passage and applied it to Jesus Christ as the precious and immovable
foundation stone of God.
(iii) The second of these other passages is also from Isaiah:
"But the Lord of hosts, him you shall regard as holy; let him be your
fear, and let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary, and a
stone of offence, and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a
trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem" (Isaiah 8:13-14).
Its meaning is that God is offering his lordship to the people of
Israel; that to those who accept him he will become a sanctuary and a
salvation, but to those who reject him he will become a terror and a
destruction. Again the early Christian writers took this passage and
applied it to Jesus. To those who accept him Jesus is Saviour and
Friend; to those who reject him he is judgment and condemnation.
(iv) For the understanding of this passage, we have to take in a
New Testament reference to these Old Testament ones. It is hardly
possible that Peter could speak of Jesus as the corner-stone and of
Christians as being built into a spiritual house, united in him, without
thinking of Jesus' own words to himself. When he made his great
confession of faith at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus said to him, "You are
Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church" (Matthew 16:18). It is on the faith of the loyal believer that the Church is built.
These are the origins of the pictures in this passage.
(2) The Nature Of The Church
From this passage we learn three things about the very nature of the Church.
(i) The Christian is likened to a living stone and the Church to a living edifice into which he is built (1 Peter 2:5).
Clearly that means that Christianity is community; the individual
Christian finds his true place only when he is built into that edifice.
"Solitary religion" is ruled out as an impossibility. C. E. B. Cranfield
writes: "The free-lance Christian, who would be a Christian but is too
superior to belong to the visible Church upon earth in one of its forms,
is simply a contradiction in terms."
There is a famous story from Sparta. A Spartan king boasted to a
visiting monarch about the walls of Sparta. The visiting monarch looked
around and could see no walls. He said to the Spartan king, "Where are
these walls about which you boast so much?" His host pointed at his
bodyguard of magnificent troops. "These," he said, "are the walls of
Sparta, every man a brick."
The point is clear. So long as a brick lies by itself it is
useless; it becomes of use only when it is incorporated into a building.
So it is with the individual Christian. To realize his destiny he must
not remain alone, but must be built into the fabric of the Church.
Suppose that in time of war a man says, "I wish to serve my
country and to defend her from her enemies." If he tries to carry out
that resolution alone, he can accomplish nothing. He can be effective in
that purpose only by standing shoulder to shoulder with others of like
mind. It is so with the Church. Individualistic Christianity is an
absurdity; Christianity is community within the fellowship of the
Church.
(ii) Christians are a holy priesthood (1 Peter 2:5). There are two great characteristics of the priest.
(a) He is the man who himself has access to God and whose task
it is to bring others to him. In the ancient world this access to God
was the privilege of the professional priests, and in particular of the
High Priest who alone could enter into the Holy of Holies. Through Jesus
Christ, the new and living way, access to God becomes the privilege of
every Christian, however simple he may be. Further, the Latin word for
priest is pontifex, which means bridge-builder; the priest is the man
who builds a bridge for others to come to God; and the Christian has the
duty and the privilege of bringing others to that Saviour whom he
himself has found and loves.
(b) The priest is the man who brings an offering to God. The
Christian also must continuously bring his offerings to God. Under the
old dispensation the offerings brought were animal sacrifices; but the
sacrifices of the Christian are spiritual sacrifices. He makes his work
an offering to God. Everything is done for God; and so even the meanest
task is clad with glory. The Christian makes his worship an offering to
God; and so the worship of God's house becomes, not a burden but a joy.
The Christian makes himself an offering to God. "Present your bodies,"
said Paul, "as a living sacrifice to God" (Romans 12:1).
What God desires most of all is the love of our hearts and the service
of our lives. That is the perfect sacrifice which every Christian must
make.
(iii) The function of the Church is to tell forth the
excellencies of God. That is to say, it is to witness to men concerning
the mighty acts of God. By his very life, even more than by his words,
the Christian is to be a witness of what God in Christ has done for him.
(3) The Glory Of The Church
In 1 Peter 2:9 we read of the things to which the Christian is a witness.
(i) God has called the Christian out of darkness into his
glorious light. The Christian is called out of darkness into light. When
a man comes to know Jesus Christ, he comes to know God. No longer does
he need to guess and to grope. "He who has seen me," said Jesus, "has
seen the Father" (John 14:9).
In Jesus is the light of the knowledge of God. When a man comes to know
Jesus, he comes to know goodness. In Christ he has a standard by which
all actions and motives may be tested. When a man comes to know Jesus
Christ, he comes to know the way. Life is no longer a trackless road
without a star to guide. In Christ the way becomes clear. When a man
comes to know Jesus Christ, he comes to know power. It would be little
use to know God without the power to serve him. It would be little use
to know goodness and yet be helpless to attain to it. It would be little
use to see the right way and be quite unable to take it. In Jesus
Christ there is both the vision and the power.
(ii) God has made those who were not a people into the people of God. Here Peter is quoting from Hosea 1:6; Hosea 1:9-10; Hosea 2:1; Hosea 2:23).
This means that the Christian is called out of insignificance into
significance. It continually happens in this world that a man's
greatness lies not in himself but in what has been given him to do. The
Christian's greatness lies in the fact that God has chosen him to be his
man and to do his work in the world. No Christian can be ordinary, for
he is a man of God.
(iii) The Christian is called out of no mercy, into mercy. The
great characteristic of non-Christian religion is the fear of God. The
Christian has discovered the love of God and knows that he need no
longer fear him, because it is well with his soul.
(4) The Function Of The Church
In 1 Peter 2:9
Peter uses a whole series of phrases which are a summary of the
functions of the Church. He calls the Christians "a chosen race, a royal
priesthood, a people dedicated to God, a nation for him specially to
possess." Peter is steeped in the Old Testament and these phrases are
all great description of the people of Israel. They come from two main
sources. In Isaiah 43:21 Isaiah hears God say, "The people whom I formed for myself." But even more in Exodus 19:5-6
the voice of God is heard: "Now, therefore, if you will obey my voice
and keep my covenant, you shall be my own possession among all people;
for all the earth is mine: and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests,
and a holy nation." The great promises which God made to his people
Israel are being fulfilled to the Church, the new Israel. Every one of
these titles is full of meaning.
(i) Christians are a chosen people. Here we are back to the covenant idea. Exodus 19:5-6
is from the passage which describes how God entered into his covenant
with Israel. In the covenant he offered a special relationship with
himself to Israel; but it depended on the people of Israel accepting the
conditions of the covenant and keeping the law. That relationship would
hold only "if you will obey my voice, and keep my covenant" (Exodus 19:5).
From this we learn that the Christian is chosen for three
things. (a) He is chosen for privilege. In Jesus Christ there is offered
to him a new and intimate fellowship with God. God has become his
friend and he has become God's friend. (b) He is chosen for obedience.
Privilege brings with it responsibility. The Christian is chosen in
order that he may become the obedient child of God. He is chosen not to
do as he likes but to do as God likes. (c) He is chosen for service. His
honour is that he is the servant of God. His privilege is that he will
be used for the purposes of God. But he can be so used only when he
brings to God the obedience he desires. Chosen for privilege, chosen for
obedience, chosen for service--these three great facts go hand in hand.
(ii) Christians are a royal priesthood. We have already seen
that this means that every Christian has the right of access to God; and
that he must offer his work, his worship and himself to God.
(iii) Christians are what the Revised Standard Version calls a
holy nation. We have already seen that the basic meaning of hagios (Greek #40)
(holy) is different. The Christian has been chosen that he may be
different from other men. That difference lies in the fact that he is
dedicated to God's will and to God's service. Other people may follow
the standards of the world but for him the only standards are God's. A
man need not even start on the Christian way unless he realizes that it
will compel him to be different from other people.
(iv) Christians are a people for God specially to possess. It
frequently happens that the value of a thing lies in the fact that some
one has possessed it. A very ordinary thing acquires a new value, if it
has been possessed by some famous person. In any museum we find quite
ordinary things--clothes, a walking-stick, a pen, books, pieces of
furniture--which are of value only because they were once possessed by
some great person. It is so with the Christian. The Christian may be a
very ordinary person but he acquires a new value because he belongs to
God.
2:11-12 Beloved, I
urge you, as strangers and sojourners, to abstain from the fleshly
desires which carry on their campaign against the soul. Make your
conduct amongst the Gentiles fine, so that in every matter in which they
slander you as evil-doers, they may see from your fine deeds what you
are really like and glorify God on the day when he will visit the earth.
The basic commandment in this passage is that the Christian
should abstain from fleshly desires. It is of the greatest importance
that we should see what Peter means by this. The phrases sins of the
flesh and, fleshly, desires have become much narrowed in meaning in
modern usage. For us they usually mean sexual sin; but in the New
Testament they are much wider than that. Paul's list of the sins of the
flesh in Galatians 5:19-21,
includes "immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery,
enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit,
envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like." There are far more than
bodily sins here.
In the New Testament, flesh stands for far more than the
physical nature of man. It stands for human nature apart from God; it
means unredeemed human nature; it means life lived without the
standards, the help, the grace and the influence of Christ. Fleshly
desires and sins of the flesh, therefore, include not only the grosser
sins but all that is characteristic of fallen human nature. From these
sins and desires the Christian must abstain. As Peter sees it, there are
two reasons for this abstinence.
(i) The Christian must abstain from these sins because he is a stranger and a pilgrim. The words are paroikos (Greek #3941) and parepidemos (Greek #3927).
They are quite common Greek words and they describe someone who is only
temporarily resident in a place and whose home is somewhere else. They
are used to describe the patriarchs in their wanderings, and especially
Abraham who went out not knowing where he was to go and whose search was
for the city whose maker and builder is God (Hebrews 11:9; Hebrews 11:13).
They are used to describe the children of Israel when they were slaves
and strangers in the land of Egypt before they entered into the Promised
Land (Acts 7:6).
These words give us two great truths about the Christian. (a)
There is a real sense in which he is a stranger in the world; and
because of that he cannot accept the world's laws and ways and
standards. Others may accept them; but the Christian is a citizen of the
Kingdom of God and it is by the laws of that Kingdom that he must
direct his life. He must take his full share of responsibility for
living upon earth, but his citizenship is in heaven and the laws of
heaven are paramount for him. (b) The Christian is not a permanent
resident upon earth; he is on the way to the country which is beyond. He
must therefore, do nothing which would keep him from reaching his
ultimate goal. He must never become so entangled in the world that he
cannot escape from its grip; he must never so soil himself as to be
unfit to enter the presence of the holy God to whom he is going.
(ii) But there was for Peter another and even more practical reason
why the Christian must abstain from fleshly desires. The early church
was under fire. Slanderous charges were continually being made against
the Christians; and the only effective way to refute them was to live
lives so lovely that they would be seen to be obviously untrue.
To modern ears the King James Version can be a little
misleading. It speaks about "having your conversation honest among the
Gentiles." That sounds to us as if it meant that the Christian must
always speak the truth, but the word translated conversation is
anastrophe (Greek #391),
which means a man's whole conduct, not simply his talk. That is, in
fact, what conversation did mean in the seventeenth century. The word
translated honest is kalos (Greek #2570). In Greek there are two words for good There is agathos (Greek #18), which simply means good in quality; and there is kalos (Greek #2570),
which means not only good but also lovely, fine, attractive, winsome.
That is what honestus means in Latin. So, what Peter is saying is that
the Christian must make his whole way of life so lovely and so good to
look upon that the slanders of his heathen enemies may be demonstrated
to be false.
Here is timeless truth. Whether we like it or not, every
Christian is an advertisement for Christianity; by his life he either
commends it to others or makes them think less of it. The strongest
missionary force in the world is a Christian life.
In the early church this demonstration of the loveliness of the
Christian life was supremely necessary, because of the slanders the
heathen deliberately cast on the Christian Church. Let us see what some
of these slanders were.
(i) In the beginning Christianity was closely connected with the
Jews. By race Jesus was a Jew; Paul was a Jew; Christianity was cradled
in Judaism; and inevitably many of its early converts were Jews. For a
time Christianity was regarded merely as a sect of Judaism. Antisemitism
is no new thing. Friedlander gives a selection of the slanders which
were repeated against the Jews in his Roman Life and Manners under the
Early Empire. "According to Tacitus they (the Jews) taught their
proselytes above all to despise the gods, to renounce their fatherland,
to disregard parents, children, brothers and sisters. According to
Juvenal, Moses taught the Jews not to show anyone the way, nor to guide
the thirsty traveller to the spring, except he were a Jew. Apion
declares that, in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Jews every year
fattened a Greek, and having solemnly offered him up as a sacrifice on a
fixed day in a certain forest, ate his entrails and swore eternal
hostility to the Greeks." These were the things which the heathen had
persuaded themselves were true about the Jews, and inevitably the
Christians shared in this odium.
(ii) Apart from these slanders attached to the Jews, there were
slanders directed particularly against the Christians themselves. They
were accused of cannibalism. This accusation took its rise from a
perversion of the words of the Last Supper, "This is my body. This cup
is the new covenant in my blood." The Christians were accused of killing
and eating a child at their feasts.
They were also accused of immorality and even of incest. This
accusation took its rise from the fact that they called their meeting
the Agape (Greek #26),
the Love Feast. The heathen perverted that name to mean that the
Christian feasts were sensual orgies at which shameless deeds were done.
The Christians were accused of damaging trade. Such was the charge of the silversmiths of Ephesus (Acts 19:21-41).
They were accused of "tampering with family relationships"
because often homes were, in fact, broken up when some members of the
family became Christians and others did not.
They were accused of turning slaves against their masters, and
Christianity indeed did give to every man a new sense of worth and
dignity.
They were accused of "hatred of mankind" and indeed the
Christian did speak as if the world and the Church were entirely opposed
to each other.
Above all they were accused of disloyalty to Caesar, for no
Christian would worship the Emperor's godhead and burn his pinch of
incense and declare that Caesar was Lord, for to him Jesus Christ and no
other was Lord.
Such were the charges which were directed against the
Christians. To Peter there was only one way to refute them and that was
so to live that their Christian life demonstrated that they were
unfounded. When Plato was told that a certain man had been making
certain slanderous charges against him, his answer was: "I will live in
such a way that no one will believe what he says." That was Peter's
solution.
Jesus himself had said--and doubtless the saying was in Peter's
mind: "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good
works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).
This was a line of thought which the Jews knew well. In one of the
books written between the Old and the New Testaments it says: "If ye
work that which is good, my children, both men and angels shall bless
you; and God shall be glorified among the Gentiles through you, and the
devil shall flee from you" (The Testament of Naphtali 8: 4).
The striking fact of history is that by their lives the
Christians actually did defeat the slanders of the heathen. In the early
part of the third century Celsus made the most famous and the most
systematic attack of all upon the Christians in which he accused them of
ignorance and foolishness and superstition and all kinds of things--but
never of immorality. In the first half of the fourth century, Eusebius,
the great Church historian, could write: "But the splendour of the
catholic and only true Church, which is always the same, grew in
magnitude and power, and reflected its piety and simplicity and freedom,
and the modesty and purity of its inspired life and philosophy to every
nation both of Greeks and barbarians. At the same time the slanderous
accusations which had been brought against the whole Church also
vanished, and there remained our teaching alone, which has prevailed
over all, and which is acknowledged to be superior to all in dignity and
temperance, and in divine and philosophical doctrines. So that none of
them now ventures to affix a base calumny upon our faith, or any such
slander as our ancient enemies formerly delighted to utter" (Eusebius:
The Ecclesiastical History, 4.7.15). It is true that the terrors of
persecution were not even then ended, for the Christians would never
admit that Caesar was Lord; but the excellence of their lives had
silenced the calumnies against the Church.
Here is our challenge and our inspiration. It is by the
loveliness of our daily life and conduct that we must commend
Christianity to those who do not believe.
2:13-15 Submit to
every human institution for the Lord's sake, whether it be to the king,
who has the first place, or to governors as sent by him for the
punishment of those whose deeds are evil and the praise of those whose
deeds are good, for it is the will of God that by so doing you should
muzzle the ignorance of foolish men.
Peter looks at the duty of the Christian within the different
spheres of his life; and he begins with his duty as a citizen of the
country in which he happens to live.
Nothing is further from the thought of the New Testament than
any kind of anarchy. Jesus had said, "Render therefore to Caesar the
things that are Caesar's; and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21).
Paul was certain that those who governed the nation were sent by God
and held their responsibility from him, and were, therefore, no terror
to the man who lived an honourable life (Rom 13:17). In the Pastoral Epistles the Christian is instructed to pray for kings and all in authority (1 Timothy 2:2).
The instruction of the New Testament is that the Christian must be a
good and useful citizen of the country in which his life is set.
It has been said that fear built the cities and that men huddled
behind a wall in order to be safe. Men join themselves together and
agree to live under certain laws, so that the good man may have peace to
do his work and go about his business and the evil man may be
restrained and kept from his evil-doing. According to the New Testament
life is meant by God to be an ordered business and the state is divinely
appointed to provide and to maintain that order.
The New Testament view is perfectly logical and just. It holds
that a man cannot accept the privileges which the state provides without
also accepting the responsibilities and the duties which it demands. He
cannot in honour and decency take everything and give nothing.
How are we to translate this into modern terms? C. E. B.
Cranfield has well pointed out that there is a fundamental difference
between the state in New Testament times and the state as we in Britain
know it. In New Testament times the state was authoritarian. The ruler
was an absolute ruler; and the sole duty of the citizen was to render
absolute obedience and to pay taxes (Romans 13:6-7).
Under these conditions the keynote was bound to be subjection to the
state. But we live in a democracy; and in a democracy something far more
than unquestioning subjection becomes necessary. Government is not only
government of the people; it is also for the people and by the people.
The demand of the New Testament is that the Christian should fulfil his
responsibility to the state. In the authoritarian state that consisted
solely in submission. But what is that obligation in the very different
circumstances of a democracy?
In any state there must be a certain subjection. As C. E. B.
Cranfield puts it, there must be "a voluntary subordination of oneself
to others, putting the interest and welfare of others above one's own,
preferring to give rather than to get, to serve rather than to be
served." But in a democratic state the keynote must be not subjection
but cooperation, for the duty of the citizen is not only to submit to be
ruled but to take a necessary share in ruling. Hence, if the Christian
is to fulfil his duty to the state, he must take his part in its
government. He must also take his part in local government and in the
life of the trade union or association connected with his trade, craft,
or profession. It is tragic that so few Christians really fulfil their
obligation to the state and the society in which they live.
It remains to say that the Christian has a higher obligation
than even his obligation to the state. While he must render to Caesar
the things which are Caesar's, he must also render to God the things
which are God's. He must on occasion make it quite clear that he must
listen to God rather than to men (Acts 4:19; Acts 5:29).
There may be times, therefore, when the Christian will fulfil his
highest duty to the state by refusing to obey it and by insisting on
obeying God. By so doing, at least he will witness to the truth, and at
best he may lead the state to take the Christian way.
2:16 You must live as free men, yet not using your freedom as a cloak for evil, but as the slaves of God.
Any great Christian doctrine can be perverted into an excuse
for evil. The doctrine of grace can be perverted into an excuse for
sinning to one's heart's content. The doctrine of the love of God can be
sentimentalized into an excuse for breaking his law. The doctrine of
the life to come can be perverted into an excuse for neglecting life in
this world. And there is no doctrine so easy to pervert as that of
Christian freedom.
There are hints in the New Testament that it was frequently so
perverted. Paul tells the Galatians that they have been called to
liberty but they must not use that liberty as an occasion for the flesh
to do as it wills (Galatians 5:13). In Second Peter we read of those who promise others liberty and are themselves the slaves of corruption (2 Peter 2:19).
Even the great pagan thinkers saw quite clearly that perfect freedom
is, in fact, the product of perfect obedience. Seneca said, "No one is
free who is the slave of his body," and, "Liberty consists in obeying
God." Cicero said, "We are the servants of the laws that we may be able
to be free." Plutarch insisted that every bad man is a slave; and
Epictetus declared that no bad man can ever be free.
We may put it this way. Christian freedom is always conditioned
by Christian responsibility. Christian responsibility is always
conditioned by Christian love. Christian love is the reflection of God's
love. And, therefore, Christian liberty can rightly be summed up in
Augustine's memorable phrase: "Love God, and do what you like."
The Christian is free because he is the slave of God. Christian
freedom does not mean being free to do as we like; it means being free
to do as we ought.
In this matter we have to return to the great central truth
which we have already seen. Christianity is community. The Christian is
not an isolated unit; he is a member of a community and within that
community his freedom operates. Christian freedom therefore is the
freedom to serve. Only in Christ is a man so freed from self and sin
that he can become as good as he ought to be. Freedom comes when a man
receives Christ as king of his heart and Lord of his life.
2:17 Honour all men; love the brotherhood; fear God; honour the king.
Here is what we might call a four-point summary of Christian duty.
(i) Honour all men. To us this may seem hardly needing to be
said; but when Peter wrote this letter it was something quite new. There
were 60,000,000 slaves in the Roman Empire, everyone of whom was
considered in law to be, not a person, but a thing, with no rights
whatever. In effect, Peter is saying, "Remember the rights of human
personality and the dignity of every man." It is still possible to treat
people as things. An employer may treat his employees as so many human
machines for producing so much work. Even in a welfare state, where the
aim is to do so much for their physical welfare, there is a very real
danger that people may be regarded as numbers on a form or as cards in a
filing system.
John Lawrence in his book, Hard Facts, A Christian Looks at the
World, says that one of the greatest needs in the welfare state is "to
see through the files and forms in triplicate to God's creatures who are
at the other end of the chain of organization." The danger is that we
fail to see men and women as persons. This matter comes nearer home.
When we regard anyone as existing solely to minister to our comfort or
to further our plans, we are in effect regarding them, not as persons,
but as things. The most tragic danger of all is that we may come to
regard those who are nearest and dearest to us as existing for our
convenience--and that is to treat them as things.
(ii) Love the brotherhood. Within the Christian community this
respect for every man turns to something warmer and closer; it turns to
love. The dominant atmosphere of the Church must always be love. One of
the truest definitions of the Church is that it is "the extension of the
family." The Church is the larger family of God and its bond must be
love. As the Psalmist had it (Psalms 133:1):
Behold, how good a thing it is,
And how becoming well,
Together such as brethren are
In unity to dwell!
(iii) Fear God. The writer of the proverbs has it: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge" (Proverbs 1:7).
It may well be that the translation should be, not that the fear of the
Lord is the beginning of knowledge but that the fear of the Lord is the
principal part, the very foundation of knowledge. Fear here does not
mean terror; it means awe and reverence. It is the simple fact of life
that we will never reverence men until we reverence God. It is only when
God is given his proper place in the centre that all other things take
their proper place.
(iv) Honour the king. Of the four injunctions of this verse this
is the most amazing, for, if it was really Peter who wrote this letter,
the king in question is none other than Nero. It is the teaching of the
New Testament that the ruler is sent by God to preserve order among men
and that he must be respected, even when he is a Nero.
2:18-25 Servants, be
subject to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good
and equitable, but also to those who are perverse, for it is a real
sign of grace when a man bears pains in unjust suffering because of his
consciousness of God. It is to live like this that you were called,
because Christ too suffered for us, leaving behind him an example that
we should follow in his steps. He did no sin nor was any guile found in
his mouth. When he was insulted, he did not return insult for insult.
When he suffered, he uttered no threats, but he committed himself to him
who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree,
that we might depart from sins and live to righteousness. With his
stripes you have been healed, for you were straying away like sheep but
now you have turned to the Shepherd and Watchman of your souls.
Here is the passage which would be relevant to by far the
greatest number of the readers of this letter, for Peter writes to
servants and slaves, and they formed by far the greatest part of the
early church. The word Peter uses for servants is not douloi (Greek #1401), which is the commonest word for slaves, but oiketai (Greek #3610), the word for the household and domestic slaves.
To understand the real meaning of what Peter is saying we must
understand something of the nature of slavery in the time of the early
church. In the Roman Empire there were as many as 60,000,000 slaves,
Slavery began with Roman conquests, slaves being originally mainly
prisoners taken in war, and in very early times Rome had few slaves but
by New Testament times slaves were counted by the million.
It was by no means only menial tasks which were performed by
slaves. Doctors, teachers, musicians, actors, secretaries, stewards were
slaves. In fact, all the work of Rome was done by slaves. Roman
attitude was that there was no point in being master of the world and
doing one's own work. Let the slaves do that and let the citizens live
in pampered idleness. The supply of slaves would never run out.
Slaves were not allowed to marry; but they cohabited; and the
children born of such a partnership were the property of the master, not
of the parents, just as the lambs born to the sheep belonged to the
owner of the flock, and not to the sheep.
It would be wrong to think that the lot of slaves was always
wretched and unhappy, and that they were always treated with cruelty.
Many slaves were loved and trusted members of the family; but one great
inescapable fact dominated the whole situation. In Roman law a slave was
not a person but a thing; and he had absolutely no legal rights
whatsoever. For that reason there could be no such thing as justice
where a slave was concerned. Aristotle writes, "There can be no
friendship nor justice towards inanimate things; indeed, not even
towards a horse or an ox, nor yet towards a slave as a slave. For master
and slave have nothing in common; a slave is a living tool, just as a
tool is an inanimate slave." Varro divides the instruments of
agriculture into three classes--the articulate, the inarticulate and the
mute, "the articulate comprising the slaves, the inarticulate
comprising the cattle, and the mute comprising the vehicles." The only
difference between a slave and a beast or a farmyard cart was that a
slave happened to be able to speak. Peter Chrysologus sums the matter
up: "Whatever a master does to a slave, undeservedly, in anger,
willingly, unwillingly, in forgetfulness, after careful thought,
knowingly, unknowingly, is judgment, justice and law." In regard to a
slave, his master's will, and even his master's caprice, was the only
law.
The dominant fact in the life of a slave was that, even if he
was well treated, he remained a thing. He did not possess even the
elementary rights of a person and for him justice did not even exist.
Into this situation came Christianity with its message that every man
was precious in the sight of God. The result was that within the Church
the social barriers were broken down. Callistus, one of the earliest
bishops of Rome, was a slave; and Perpetua, the aristocrat, and
Felicitas, the slave-girl, met martyrdom hand in hand. The great
majority of the early Christians were humble folk and many of them were
slaves. It was quite possible in the early days that the slave should be
the president of the congregation and the master a member of it. This
was a new and revolutionary situation. It had its glory and it had its
dangers. In this passage Peter is urging the slave to be a good slave
and a faithful workman; for he sees two dangers.
(i) Suppose both master and servant became Christians; there
arose the danger that the slave might presume upon the new relationship
and make an excuse for shirking his work, assuming that since he and his
master were both Christians, he could get away with anything. That
situation is by no means at an end. There are still people who trade on
the goodwill of a Christian master and think that the fact that both
they and their employers are Christians gives them a right to dispense
with discipline and punishment. But Peter is quite clear. The
relationship between Christian and Christian does not abolish the
relationship between man and man. The Christian must, indeed, be a
better workman than anyone else. His Christianity is not a reason for
claiming exemption from discipline; it should bring him under
self-discipline and make him more conscientious than anyone else.
(ii) There was the danger that the new dignity which
Christianity brought him would make the slave rebel and seek to abolish
slavery altogether. Some students are puzzled that no New Testament
writer ever pleads for the abolition of slavery or even says in so many
words that it is wrong. The reason was simple. To have encouraged the
slaves to rise against their masters would have been the way to speedy
disaster. There had been such revolts before and they had always been
quickly and savagely crushed. In any event, such teaching would merely
have gained for Christianity the reputation of being a subversionary
religion. There are some things which cannot happen quickly; there are
some situations in which the leaven has to work and in which haste is
the surest way to delay the desired end. The leaven of Christianity had
to work in the world for many generations before the abolition of
slavery became a practical possibility. Peter was concerned that
Christian slaves should demonstrate to the world that their Christianity
did not make them disgruntled rebels but rather workmen who had found a
new inspiration towards doing an honest day's work. It will still often
happen that, when some situation cannot at the time be changed, the
Christian duty is to be Christian within that situation and to accept
what cannot be changed until the leaven has worked.
But Christianity did not leave the matter in that merely negative
form. It introduced three great new principles into a man's attitude as a
servant and a workman.
(i) Christianity introduced a new relationship between master
and man. When Paul sent the runaway slave Onesimus back to Philemon, he
did not for a moment suggest that Philemon should set Onesimus free. He
did not suggest that Philemon should cease to be the master and that
Onesimus should cease to be the slave. What he did say was that Philemon
must receive Onesimus not now as a servant, but as a brother beloved (Philemon 1:16
). Christianity did not abolish social differences; but it introduced a
new relationship of brotherhood in which these other differences were
overpassed and transformed. Where there is real brotherhood, it does not
matter if you call one man master and the other servant. There is
between them a bond which transforms the necessary differences which the
circumstances of life make necessary. The solution of the world's
problems lies in the new relationship between man and man.
(ii) Christianity introduced a new attitude to work. It is the
conviction of the New Testament that all work must be done for Jesus
Christ. Paul writes: "Whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in
the name of the Lord Jesus" (Colossians 3:17). "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 10:31).
In the Christian ideal work is not done for an earthly master or for
personal prestige or to make so much money; it is done for God. It is,
of course, true that a man must work in order to earn a wage and he must
work to satisfy a master; but beyond that there is for the Christian
the conviction that his work must be done well enough to be able to show
it to God without shame.
(iii) But when these great ideals were set against the situation
in the early church--and the situation does not entirely change--one
great question arose. Suppose a man has the Christian attitude to men
and to work and is treated with injustice, insult and injury--what then?
Peter's great answer is that this is exactly what happened to Jesus. He
was none other than the Suffering Servant. 1 Peter 2:21-25 are full of reminiscences and quotations of Isaiah 53:1-12
, the supreme picture of the Suffering Servant of God, which came to
life in Jesus. He was without sin and yet he was insulted and he
suffered; but he accepted the insults and the suffering with serene love
and bore them for the sins of mankind.
In so doing he left us an example that we should follow in his steps (1 Peter 2:21). The word Peter uses for example is very vivid. It is hupogrammos (Greek #5261), a word which comes from the way in which children were taught to write in the ancient world. Hupogrammos (Greek #5261)
can mean two things--an outline sketch which the learner had to fill in
or the copyhead of copperplate handwriting in a writing exercise book
which the child had to copy out on the lines below. Jesus gave us the
pattern which we have to follow. If we have to suffer insult and
injustice and injury, we have only to go through what he has already
gone through. It may be that at the back of Peter's mind there was a
glimpse of a tremendous truth. That suffering of Jesus was for the sake
of man's sin; he suffered in order to bring men back to God. And it may
be that, when the Christian suffers insult and injury with uncomplaining
steadfastness and unfailing love, he shows such a life to others as
will lead them to God.
(1) The Shepherd Of The Souls Of Men
In the last verse of this chapter we come upon two of the great names
for God--the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls--as the King James
Version has it.
(i) God is the Shepherd of the souls of men. The Greek is poimen (Greek #4166)
and shepherd is one of the oldest descriptions of God. The Psalmist has
it in the best-loved of all the Psalms: "The Lord is my shepherd" (Psalms 23:1).
Isaiah has it: "He will feed his flock like a shepherd: he will gather
the lambs in his arms; he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead
those that are with young" (Isaiah 40:11).
The great king whom God was going to send to Israel would be the
shepherd of his people. Ezekiel hears the promise of God: "And I will
set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them;
he shall feed them, and be their shepherd" (Ezekiel 34:23; Ezekiel 37:24).
This was the title which Jesus took to himself when he called
himself the Good Shepherd and when he said that the Good Shepherd lays
down his life for the sheep (John 10:1-18).
To Jesus the men and women who did not know God and who were waiting
for what he could give them were like sheep without a shepherd (Mark 6:34). The great privilege given to the servant and the minister of Christ is to shepherd the flock of God (John 21:16; 1 Peter 5:2).
It may be difficult for those of us who live in an industrial
civilization to grasp the greatness of this picture; but in the East the
picture would be very vivid, particularly in Judaea, where there was a
narrow central plateau which held danger on either side. It was on this
narrow tableland that the sheep grazed. Grass was sparse; there were no
protecting walls; and the sheep wandered. The shepherd, therefore, had
to be ceaselessly and sleeplessly on the watch lest harm should come to
his flock.
In The Historical Geography of the Holy Land Sir George Adam
Smith describes the shepherd of Judaea. "With us, sheep are often left
to themselves; but I do not remember ever to have seen in the East a
flock of sheep without a shepherd. In such a landscape as Judaea, where a
day's pasture is thinly scattered over an unfenced track of country,
covered with delusive paths, still frequented by wild beasts, and
rolling off into the desert, the man and his character are
indispensable. On some high moor, across which at night the hyenas howl,
when you meet him, sleepless, far-sighted, weather-beaten, armed,
leaning upon his staff, and looking out over his scattered sheep,
everyone of them on his heart, you understand why the shepherd of Judaea
sprang to the front in his people's history; why they gave his name to
their king, and made him the symbol of providence; why Christ took him
as the type of self-sacrifice."
This word shepherd tells us most vividly of the ceaseless
vigilance and the self-sacrificing love of God for us who are his flock.
"We are his people and the sheep of his pasture" (Psalms 100:3).
(2) The Guardian Of Our Souls
(ii) The King James Version speaks of God as the Shepherd and Bishop
of our souls; but nowadays Bishop is an inadequate and misleading
translation of the Greek (episkopos, Greek #1985).
Episkopos (Greek #1985) is a word with a great history. In Homer's Iliad, Hector, the great champion of the Trojans, is called the episkopos (Greek #1985) who, during his lifetime, guarded the city of Troy and kept safe its noble wives and infants. Episkopos (Greek #1985)
is used of the gods who are the guardians of the treaties which men
make and of the agreements to which men come, and who are the protectors
of house and home. Justice, for instance, is the episkopos (Greek #1985), who sees to it that a man shall pay the price for the wrong that he has done.
In Plato's Laws the Guardians of the state are those whose duty
it is to oversee the games, the feeding and the education of the
children that "they may be sound of hand and foot, and may in no wise,
if possible, get their natures warped by their habits." The people whom
Plato calls market-stewards are the episkopoi (Greek #1985)
who "supervise personal conduct, keeping an eye on temperate and
outrageous behaviour, so as to punish him who needs punishment."
In Athenian law and administration the episkopoi (Greek #1985)
were governors and administrators and inspectors sent out to subject
states to see that law and order and loyalty were observed. In Rhodes
the main magistrates were five episkopoi (Greek #1985) who presided over the good government and the law and order of the state.
Episkopos (Greek #1985)
is, therefore, a many-sided but always a noble word. It means the
protector of public safety; the guardian of honour and honesty; the
overseer of right education and of public morals; the administrator of
public law and order.
So, then, to call God the episkopos (Greek #1985) of our souls is to call him our Guardian, our Protector, our Guide, and our Director.
God is the Shepherd and the Guardian of our souls. In his love
he cares for us; in his power he protects us; and in his wisdom he
guides us in the right way.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)