The word here rendered servants means not slaves in the strict sense of the term, but domestic servants-hence the exhortation is the more applicable to our own age and country.
I. Their duty.
1. “Servants, be subject to your masters in all fear.” Let not the service you render be constrained and forced, but ready and joyous, remembering that, however humble, it is ennobled by religion.
2. But to what extent are they to submit? Has God placed you under a master who is exacting and ungenerous? act worthily of your profession, and show that master that there is something real in religion.
3. A cogent reason is assigned. “For this is thank-worthy”-literally grace-“if a man for consciousness of God endure grief, suffering wrongfully.”
II. The example of the Lord Jesus is set before us as the ground on which the submission should be practised. (Thornley Smith.)
The duty of servants
I. Their duty. Be subject. Keep your order and station under your masters, and that “with fear” and inward reverence of mind and respect to them, for that is the very life of all obedience. Do faithfully to your utmost that which is entrusted to you and obey all their just commands, and suffer patiently even their unjust severities. But, on the other side, this does not justify nor excuse the unmerciful austerities of masters. It is still a perverseness in them, as the original word is here, and must have its own name, and shall have its proper reward from the sovereign Master and Lord of all the world.
II. The due extent of this duty. “To the froward.” It is a more deformed thing to have a distorted, crooked mind, or a froward spirit, than any crookedness of the body. How can he that hath servants under him expect their obedience when he cannot command his own passion, but is a slave to it? And unless much conscience of duty possess servants, more than is commonly to be found with them, it cannot but work a master into much disesteem with them when he is of a turbulent spirit, a troubler of his own house. The Christian servant, however, who falls into the hands of a froward master will not be beaten out of his station and duty of obedience by all the hard and wrongful usage he meets with, but will take that as an opportunity of exercising the more obedience and patience, and will be the more cheerfully patient because of his innocence, as the apostle here exhorts. All men desire glory, but they know neither what it is nor how it is to be sought. He is upon the only right bargain of this kind “whose praise is not of men, but of God.” If men commend him not he accounts it no loss, nor any gain if they do, for he is bound for a country where that coin goes not, and whither he cannot carry it, and therefore he gathers it not. That which he seeks in all is that he may be approved and accepted of God, whose thanks are no less to the least of those he accepts than a crown of unfading glory. Not a poor servant that fears His name and is obedient and patient for His sake but shall be so rewarded.
III. The principle of this obedience and patience. “For conscience towards God.” This imports, first, the knowledge of God and of His will in some due measure, and then a conscientious respect unto Him and His will so known, taking it for the only rule in doing and suffering.
1. This declares to us the freeness of the grace of God in regard to men’s outward quality, that He doth often bestow the riches of His grace upon persons of mean condition. He hath all to choose from, and yet chooses where men would least imagine (Mat_11:25; 1Co_1:27).
2. Grace finds a way to exert itself in every estate where it exists, and regulates the soul according to the particular duties of that estate. A skilful engraver makes you a statue indifferently of wood or stone or marble, as they are put into his hand; so grace forms a man to a Christian way of walking in any estate. There is way for him in the meanest condition to glorify God and to adorn the profession of religion; no estate so low as to be shut out from this; and a rightly informed and rightly affected conscience towards God shows a man that way and causes him to walk in it.
3. As a corrupt mind debaseth the best and most excellent callings and actions, so the lowest are raised above themselves and ennobled by a spiritual mind.
An eagle may fly high and yet have its eye down upon some carrion on the earth; even so a man may be standing on the earth, and on some low part of it, and yet have his eye upon heaven and be contemplating it. “For conscience.”
1. In this there is, first, a reverential compliance with God’s disposal, both in allotting to them that condition of life, and in particularly choosing their master for them, though possibly not the mildest and pleasantest, yet the fittest for their good.
2. In this there is, secondly, a religious and observant respect to the rule which God hath set men to walk by in that condition, so that their obedience depends not upon any external inducement, failing when that fails, but flows from an inward impression of the law of God upon the heart.
3. In this there is a tender care of the glory of God and the adornment of religion.
4. There is, lastly, the comfortable persuasion of God’s approbation, as is expressed in the following verse, and the hope of that reward He hath promised. “Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the inheritance, for ye serve the Lord Christ” (Col_3:24). (Abp. Leighton.)
The conduct of servants
I. Religion brought into the little things of life. It does not merely include duties unto kings, but duty towards lesser lords. We may learn from this-
1. That religion applies to all classes and conditions of men. Each state of life has its own little kingdom, its own little world.
2. That nothing is too insignificant to be brought under the power of Divine direction.
II. Principle superseding compulsion. In this verse the apostle establishes one of the most important principles of morality-that our obligations to relative duties are not to be gauged by the character of the person to whom they are performed.
1. It is not utility that should regulate our conduct. The will of the world is to discard that which is not useful or profitable.
2. It is not comfort that is to direct our lives.
3. It is not force that is to drive.
4. It is neither the fear nor the love of man that moves.
III. Obedience independent of circumstances. Masters, like kings, differ. Some are reasonable and kind, others are unreasonable and bitter. Is a servant only to serve them who are fair and kind? By no means. The reason is explained when we come to realise that the present is of very little moment to show who serve Christ. (J. J. S. Bird.)
Suffering wrongfully.-
Endurance of wrong
It may be asked whether the advice of St. Peter to submit quietly to wrong does not destroy manliness and force of character if it is acted on? Does it not tend to create a race of effeminate, spiritless men? This question involves another. In what does moral strength consist? It is sometimes taken for granted that moral strength must catch the eye, must inflict itself on the imagination; that it must be something bustling, demonstrative, aggressive; that it must at least have colour, body, muscle, to recommend it. This is not the ease. Moral strength, in its very finest forms, may be the reverse of all this; when it makes no show, and is passive, it is often at its best. Many a man who can act with great courage in moments of great personal danger, in a struggle with a brigand, or in a burning house, cannot go through an illness as bravely and patiently as a little girl. The hardest thing often is to do nothing, to await the approach of danger or of death, and yet not to lose nerve and self-possession. No moral strength in the whole history of mankind ever equalled that which was displayed on Calvary, where all that awaited Him was present from the first to the mind of the Divine victim, “who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously” (1Pe_2:23). Nothing that has been said will be so greatly misconstrued as to be taken to imply that cruelty, tyranny, oppression, can be agreeable to the mind of God. He permits these things among men from time to time, just as He permits much else that is evil for His own wise ends. He brings good out of them, yet He condemns them. By and by He will punish them. Nowhere is it implied in the Bible that the systems involving the oppression of man by man have vested rights in the moral universe, or that the circumstances which permit it are even tolerable, unless they are perpetuated for very different purposes indeed. The days will come when Englishmen will look back to the abolition of the slave trade by the English Parliament as a greater title to glory than was Trafalgar or Waterloo; as among the very greatest in the course of our history. Wilberforce and Clarkson will rank even before those celebrated commanders, to whose courage and genius, under God, we owe the independence of our country. Among yourselves there are probably some who, for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully. There are no slaves, thank God, on English soil, but there are multitudes of persons in positions of dependence whose lives can easily be made miserable by the cruel ingenuity of their betters, and too often for no worse crime than that of obeying a higher sense of right. Every rank in society has its petty tyrants and its secret confessorships; to suffer wrongfully for conscience toward God is the monopoly of no one class. Here is a cadet of a noble family who will not consent to a transaction which he knows to be unjust, and he is cut off with a shilling. There is an apprentice or clerk in a large city house who will not abandon the duties or restraints of a Christian life in deference to pressure or abuse or ridicule from his companions, and he has a hard time of it. Yonder is a governess who has learnt a higher estimate of life and duty than her wealthy and ostentatious employer; or a clergyman who feels too keenly the real character of Divine revelation and the tremendous issues of life and death to acquiesce in some popular but shallow misrepresentation of the gospel which makes his people comfortable without bringing them nearer to God. These, and such as these, must, “for conscience toward God, endure grief, suffering wrongfully.” Law can do but little for them; the province of law lies outside the spheres of the heart and the conscience; the whole world of motive is beyond it. But religion can do much, or rather everything, by pointing to the crucified and risen Prince of that vast company in all ages who have cared less to avoid discomfort than to be true to known truth and duty; by pointing to the unapproached bitterness of His sorrow, and to the completeness and splendour of His triumph. (Canon Liddon.)
The blessings of injustice
Where shall we look for an explanation of God’s permission of prevalent injustice and wrongful suffering in the world? Some have sought an explanation in the circumstance that all have sinned, and therefore all deserve to suffer. This affirmation is undoubtedly true, yet it offers no kind of solution to the problem. Nor does the promise of the ultimate termination of all evil in the world, or the promise of the future reversal of all present injustices, or the final recompense of the righteous, offer a perfect solution of the mystery of present wrongful suffering. All these promises shed some light of comfort on the mystery; they also help the sufferers to endure their wrongful sufferings gloriously; but they do not explain why the patient endurance of such wrongful sufferings is permitted by, and especially acceptable unto, God. And perhaps no sufficient explanation is possible in our present darkened and limited condition of existence. And, for anything we know to the contrary, the present exercise of simple faith may be, through all eternity, of such unspeakable value to man that injustice and wrongful suffering may be permitted by God chiefly for the sake of the training and development of simple, victorious faith. There is, however, another blessing of injustice which lies within our ken and is perfectly manifest. It is the splendour of spiritual character, which is engendered by injustice and wrongful suffering; and which, as far as we can see, is never engendered in any other way. As the finest gold is the gold most heated in the furnace, so the finest souls are the souls whose furnace in life has been the hottest. Without burning and welding, human souls inevitably continue gross and feeble. If when we commit a fault and are buffeted for it we take it patiently, there is no glory in patience like that. The finest spiritual glory requires a furnace heated with injustice and wrong to make its splendour and its strength appear. The very injustice which is a curse to the soul of him who commits it is transfigured by patient endurance into a blessing and a glory to the soul of him who suffers it. Not those who merely suffer, but those who suffer wrongfully, have perfect fellowship with the sufferings of Christ. And the patient endurance of such sufferings, because of the strength and glory which it imparts to the souls of His greatest children, is acceptable and well-pleasing unto God. (Canon Diggle.)
Gratitude for wrongful suffering
The words imply-
1. That man has a conscience.
2. That conscience sometimes leads to suffering.
3. That sufferings that spring from the following out of a good conscience are reasons for gratitude. “This is thank worthy.”
I. Because they involve the highest moral triumph. It is a triumph-
1. Of the spiritual over the material.
2. Of the right over the expedient.
3. Of the Christly over the selfish.
II. Because they open up within the man the highest sources of happiness.
III. Because it identifies the sufferer with the illustrious men of all times. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
Suffering wrongfully
A minister was asked by a Quaker lady, “Dost not thee think that we can walk so carefully, live so correctly, and avoid every fanaticism so perfectly, that every sensible person will say, ‘That’s the kind of religion I believe in’?” He replied, “Sister, if thee had a coat of feathers as white as snow, and a pair of wings as shining as Gabriel’s, somebody would be found somewhere on the footstool with so bad a case of colour blindness as to shoot thee for a blackbird.” (King’s Highway.)
Ye take it patiently.-
Patience
Patience is the endurance of any evil, out of the love of God, as the will of God. The offices of patience are as varied as the ills of this life. We have need of it with ourselves and with others; with those below and those above us, and with our own equals; with those who love us and those who love us not; for the greatest things and for the least; against sudden inroads of trouble, and under our daily burdens; disappointments as to the weather or the breaking of the heart; in the weariness of the body or the wearing of the soul; in our own failure of duty or others’ failure towards us; in everyday wants or in the aching of sickness or the decay of age; in disappointment, bereavement, losses, injuries, reproaches; in heaviness of the heart or its sickness amid delayed hopes, or the weight of this body of death, from which we would be free, that we might have no more struggle with sin within or temptation without, but attain to our blessed and everlasting peace in our rest in God. All other virtues and graces have need of patience to perfect or to secure them. Patience interposes herself and receives and stops every dart which the evil one aims at them. “Patience is the root and guardian of all virtue”; impatience is the enemy of all. Impatience disquiets the soul, makes her weary of conflict, ready to lay aside her armour and to leave difficult duty. Impatience, by troubling the smooth mirror of the soul, hinders her from reflecting the face of God; by its din it hinders her from hearing the voice of God. How does it shake faith to be impatient of evils, either in the world or in the Church, or those which befall a person’s own self! How does impatience with others’ defects chill love, or impatience with even our own failings and shortcomings extinguish hope! To be impatient at blame is a blight to humility; at contradiction, destroys meekness; at injuries, quenches long suffering; at sharp words, mars gentleness; at having one’s own will crossed, obedience. Impatience at doing the same things again and again hinders perseverance; impatience of bodily wants surprises people into intemperance or leads them to deceive, lie, steal. “In patience,” our blessed Lord tells us, “possess ye your souls.” By patience we have the keeping of our own souls; we command ourselves, anal our passions are subdued to us; and “commanding ourselves, we begin to possess that which we are.” Patience, then, is the guardian of faith, the fence of love, the strength of hope, the parent of peace. Patience protects humility, keeps meekness, is the soul of longsuffering, guides gentleness, strengthens perseverance. Patience makes the soul to be of one mind with God, and sweetens all the ills of life. It casts the light of heaven upon them and transforms them into goods. It makes the bitter waters sweet; the barren and dry land fruitful. Desolation it makes a loneliness with God; the parching of sickness to be the fire of His love; weakness to be His strength; wounds to be health; emptiness of all things to have things from Him; poverty to be true riches; His deserved punishments to be His rainbow of mercy; death to be His life. (E. B. Pusey, D. D.)
Patience under oppression
Writing, probably from Rome-certainly in one of the closing years of his life-St. Peter saw the great tendency of social and political circumstances around him towards that great outbreak of violence against the worshippers of Christ which is known in history as the first persecution, in which he and St. Paul laid down their lives. He is anxious to prepare the Asiatic Christians for the trials which are before them. Then, as now, there were bad Christians who fell under the just sentence of the criminal law, and St. Peter reminds them that there is no moral glory in suffering that which we have deserved, even though we take our punishment uncomplainingly. “What glory is it if, when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye shall take it patiently?” But he knows also that aggravated sufferings awaited numbers of inoffensive men and women, whose only crime would be that they were worshippers of the meek and lowly Jesus, and centres of light and goodness in a corrupt and demoralised society. When the storm burst, as it would burst, they might be tempted to think that the government of the world was somehow at fault in this award of bitter punishment to virtuous and benevolent persons, conscious of the integrity of their intentions-conscious of their desire to serve a holy God-to do any good in their power to their fellow creatures. Accordingly, St. Peter puts their anticipated, trials in a light which would not, at first sight, present itself, and which does not lie upon the surface of things. “If, when ye do well, and suffer for it, ye take it patiently, this is acceptable with God.” There is a peculiar moral glory in patience under unmerited wrong, if not according to any human, yet certainly according to a Divine, standard. “This is acceptable with God.” Now, many men have said, and more, perhaps, have thought, about such teaching as this, that it is a splendid paradox. That a criminal should suffer what he has deserved satisfies the sense of justice. That a good man should suffer what he has not deserved violates the sense of justice; and if he submits uncomplainingly he acquiesces in injustice. Nay, he does more: he forfeits the independence-the glory-of his manhood. The precept to take it patiently is, in a word, objected to as effeminate and anti-social. Now, here it must be remarked, first of all, that for serious Christians this question is really settled by the precepts and example of our Lord Himself. “Even hereunto were ye called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example,” etc. In His public teaching our Lord made much of patient submission to undeserved wrong. He pronounced those men blessed who suffered for righteousness’ sake. Not in exemption from suffering, but in truthful endurance, would His true followers find their peace. “In your patience possess ye your souls.” Nay, more. Christians, He says, are to welcome such trials. They are to meet the persecutor half way. They are to do good to them that hate them, to pray for their persecutors, etc. And in perfect harmony with this teaching is His own example. Well, it is this sinless being who is also the first of sufferers. Nothing was wanting, humanly speaking, to make patience impossible. The natural sensitiveness of His tender frame, the ingenious appliances of torture, such as a crown of thorns pressed down upon the head and the temples, the coarse brutality of His executioners, the vivid consciousness of the sufferer sustained from moment to moment, might well have exhausted patience. And what His mental sufferings must have been we may infer distantly from the agony in the garden. But St. Peter directs especial attention to the insults to which our Lord was subject, and which may have tried His patience even more than the great sorrows of His soul or the tortures of His body. “When He was reviled He reviled not again; when He suffered He threatened not, but submitted Himself to Him that judgeth righteously.” No complaint, properly speaking, escaped Him. Certainly, He asked the soldier who struck Him on the face for the reason of the act. He for a moment broke His majestic silence in His compassion to this poor man’s insensibility to natural justice, and perhaps also in order to show that if when suffering more He did not complain, it was not because His feeling was dulled, but only what was due to patience. For Christians, then, I say, the question whether patience under undeserved wrong is right-is a duty-is not an open question. It has been settled by the highest authority-our Lord Jesus Christ Himself. From His teaching there is no appeal In His example we Christians see the true ideal of human life. “As He is, so are we in this world.” And yet if, for Christians, the question is not an open one, the very authority which settles it enables us to see some reasons for the decision. Indeed, our Lord teaches us by His sufferings more than in any other way. By these He reveals to us the love of God: by these He points to the value of heaven. These sufferings are the measure of the gravity of our sins, of the miseries of hell, of the solemnity of life. But beyond this our Lord gives us lessons about pain. The existence of pain in the world is a fact which has from the earliest ages attracted and perplexed human thought. What is it in itself? It is a certainty both to feeling and to thought, and yet it is beyond analysis; and its inaccessibility to any real examination adds to its mysteriousness with all thoughtful minds, and increases the anxious interest with which it is regarded. It is ubiquitous: it is importunate: it meets us everywhere: it leaves us today only that it may return tomorrow. In this vast district of human experience deism sees, however reluctantly, an unexplained libel upon the character of God-atheism a hideous flaw, which, however bound up with the order of nature, impairs and disintegrates it. The Greeks talked much of a Divine Nemesis, a word which has played a great part in human thought; but Nemesis was not merely Divine justice overtaking human crime: it was also a malignant envy which grudged man his power or his good fortune, and which humbled him accordingly. Heathendom saw that there was a connection between pain and conscience. It had very indistinct ideas of the nature of this connection. What it was exactly revelation must say. Accordingly in the Old Testament there is one predominating aspect of the moral use of misfortune and pain. It is the punishment of sin. The righteousness of God is the great feature of the Jewish revelation of God. God is power; God is intelligent; but above all else God is righteousness. And it is in accordance with His righteousness-not, observe you, as the caprice of an arbitrary will, but in deference to the unalterable necessities of our self-existing moral nature-that He inflicts pain and misfortune as punishment for sin. This faith that pain justly follows misdoing, because God who governs all is righteousness and could not have it otherwise, runs through the Old Testament. It dictates the law: it is illustrated again and again in the history: it is the keynote to more than half the Psalms: it supplies the prophets with their greatest inspirations. But although it is true that sin is followed by punishment, because God is righteousness, it does not follow that all human suffering in this life is a punishment for sin. Against this idea the Old Testament itself contains some very emphatic protests. Thus the Book of Job has for its main object to show theft Job’s misfortunes are no real measure of his sins. And when Psalmists could say, “It is good for me that I have been in trouble,” or “The Lord hath chastened and corrected me, but He hath not given me over unto death,” or “All Thy waves and storms are gone over me,” it is clear that already a new light was breaking upon the world. But it was by our Lord that the cloud was fully lifted from this great district of human experience, so that we are now able to map it out, and to discover its bearings, and turn it to practical account. Our Lord does not reverse what the old dispensation had taught as to the penal object of a great deal of human pain, but He also rules that much pain is strictly a discipline-a Father’s discipline of His children. Pain may thus be a token of favoured sonship; and, if so, then to pass through life without pain may be anything but an enviable lot. “If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards and not sons, for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” Pain thus need not be an enemy: it may be a friend in disguise: at least it may become so. Why should it not be welcomed? This is the voice of Christian teaching. Why, like the natural elements, fire and water, should it not be taken in hand and conquered and made the most of? Why should we not get out of it all the disciplinary and purifying virtue that we can, and so turn the scourge into a blessing? And if the question be asked by some anxious soul, “How am I to know? Is this unjust humiliation, or this insult, or this loss of means, or this illness, or this heartache, a punishment for past sin or a tender discipline?” the answer is, “Conscience must itself reply.” Here, then, is the answer to the criticism on St, Peter’s precept, to which I was referring just now. There may be cases in which the interests of truth and righteousness-the interests of others-may make resistance to oppression a duty. They are rare, indeed. As a rule, trouble and pain are to be taken patiently as coming from God, inflict them who may. The early Christians were men who felt they had nothing to do either with the legal government of the Roman Empire or with the moral government of the universe. All that they knew was that they had to suffer for being what they were, and for believing what they did believe. The only question with them was how to suffer. And as for society, society has been again and again purified, regenerated, saved, by the passive endurance, as distinct from the active struggles, of its very best members. And let me make two remarks in conclusion. In this glad acceptance of undeserved pain we see one of the central forces of the Christian religion by which, as a matter of fact, it made its way among men eighteen centuries ago and ever since. Literature, social prestige, political influence, were all against the Church; but in the long run the old empire was no match for a religion which could teach its sincere votaries, generation after generation, to regard pure suffering as a privilege, as a mark of God’s favour, as a pledge of glory. Depend upon it patient, cheerful acceptance of suffering is a great force which achieves more than many active energies that command the attention of mankind. And if this way of taking the troubles which are laid upon us supplies Christianity with its force, so it secures to human life its best consolations. We live in an age of progress. The circumstances under which we pass life are being brought more and more under the control of man; but is there less suffering in the wend than there was a hundred years ago? Looking to the present state of the world, is there likely to be? I fear not. Even science, which does so much for us, shifts the scene of suffering, rather than diminishes its area. What is taken away by one hand is returned by the other. If disease is assuaged, life is prolonged under conditions which, in an unscientific age, would have been fatal to it, and which necessarily involve suffering. And human nature does not change. The same principles and passions and dispositions which, needlessly or intentionally, inflict suffering on others are at work now, although their operation is limited by improvements in human society. Some of us may be young and lighthearted, and may not yet know what real trouble and pain mean. We shall know in time. The lesson comes to most men early enough in life, whether inflicted by others or, as more frequently, direct from above. The important point is to be prepared for it when it does come, to see in it the hand of our Father in heaven, to thank Him for treating us thus as children, for punishing, for purifying us here, that He may in His mercy spare us hereafter. (Crown Liddon.)
The duty of patience under injuries
I. What is implied is this duty.
1. The not entertaining the impression of injuries with acrimony of thought and internal resentment.
2. The not venting any such resentment in virulent vindictive language.
II. Whence it is that this duty comes to be so exceedingly difficult.
1. From the peculiar provoking quality of ill language.
2. Because nature has deeply planted in every man a strange tenderness of his good name, which, in the rank of worldly enjoyments, the wisest of men has placed before life itself. For, indeed, it is a more enlarged and diffused life, kept up by many more breaths than our own.
III. By what means a man may work himself to such a composure and temper of spirit, as to be able to observe this great and excellent duty. And here, when we consider what obstructions are to be conquered and removed, we must acknowledge that nothing under an omnipotent grace can subdue the heart to such a frame. To discommend this, of returning railing for railing, slander for slander, both to our practice and affection, I shall fasten only upon this one consideration; namely, that it is utterly useless to all rational intents and purposes.
1. The first reason that would induce a man, upon provocation, to do a violent action by way of return, should be to remove the cause of that provocation. But the cause that usually provokes men to revile, are words and speeches; that is, such things as are irrevocable. Such a one vilified me; but can I, by railing, make that which was spoken, not to have been spoken? Are words and talk to be reversed? Or can I make a slander to be forgot, by rubbing up the memory of those that heard it with a reply?
2. Another end, inducing a man to return reviling for reviling, may be by this means to confute the calumny, and to discredit the truth of it. But this course is so far from having such an effect, that it is the only thing that gives it colour and credibility; all people being prone to judge, that a high resentment of a calumny proceeds from concernment, and that from guilt; which makes the sore place tender and untractable.
3. A third end for which a man may pretend to give himself this liberty is because in so doing he thinks he takes a full and proper revenge of him that first reviled him. But certainly there is no kind of revenge so poor and pitiful; for every dog can bark, and he that rails makes another noise indeed, but not a better. (R. South, D. D.)
Of patience
The word patience hath in common usage a double meaning, taken from the respect it hath unto two sorts of objects somewhat different. As it respecteth provocations to anger and revenge by injuries or discourtesies, it signifieth a disposition of mind to bear them with charitable meekness; as it relateth to adversities and crosses disposed to us by Providence, it importeth a pious undergoing and sustaining them. That both these kinds of patience may here be understood, we may, consulting and considering the context, easily discern.
I. Patience, then, is that virtue which qualifieth us to bear all conditions and all events by God’s disposal incident to us, with such apprehensions and persuasions of mind, such dispositions and affections of heart, such external deportments and practices of life as God requireth and good reason directeth. Its nature will, I conceive, be understood best by considering the chief acts which it produceth, and wherein especially the practice thereof consisteth; the which briefly are these:
1. A thorough persuasion, that nothing befalleth us by fate, or by chance, or by the mere agency of inferior causes, but that all proceedeth from the dispensation or with the allowance of God.
2. A firm belief that all occurrences, however adverse and cross to our desires, are well consistent with the justice, wisdom, and goodness of God.
3. A full satisfaction of mind that all (even the most bitter and sad accidents) do (according to God’s purpose) tend and conduce to our good.
4. An entire submission and resignation of our wills to the will of God, suppressing all rebellious insurrections and grievous resentments of heart against His providence.
5. Bearing adversities calmly, cheerfully, and courageously, so as not to be discomposed with anger or grief; not to be put out of humour, not to be dejected or disheartened; but in our disposition of mind to resemble the primitive saints who “took joyfully the spoiling of their goods,” who “accounted it all joy when they fell into divers tribulations.”
6. A hopeful confidence in God for the removal or easement of our afflictions, and for His gracious aid to support them well; agreeable to those good rules and precepts: “It is good that a man should both hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord”; “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him”; “Wait on the Lord, be of good courage, and He shall strengthen thine heart.”
7. A willingness to continue, during God’s pleasure, in our afflicted state, without weariness or irksome longings for alteration.
8. A lowly frame of mind (that is, being sober in our conceits of ourselves, sensible of our manifold defects and miscarriages; being meek and gentle, tender and pliable in our temper and frame of spirit; being deeply affected with reverence and dread toward the awful majesty, mighty power, perfect justice and sanctity of God; all this wrought by our adversity, effectually, according to its design, softening our hard hearts, mitigating our peevish humours.
9. Restraining our tongues from all discontentful complaints and murmurings, all profane, harsh expressions, importing displeasure or dissatisfaction in God’s dealings toward us, arguing desperation or distrust in Him.
10. Blessing and praising God (that is, declaring our hearty satisfaction in God’s proceedings with us, acknowledging His wisdom, justice, and goodness therein, expressing a grateful sense thereof, as wholesome and beneficial to us) in conformity to Job, who, on the loss of all his comforts, did thus vent his mind: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
11. Abstaining from all irregular and unworthy courses toward the removal or redress of our crosses; choosing rather to abide quietly under their pressure, than by any unwarrantable means to relieve or relax ourselves.
12. A fair behaviour toward the instruments and abettors of our affliction; those who brought us into it, or who detain us under it, by keeping off relief, or sparing to yield the succour which we might expect; the forbearing to express any wrath or displeasure, to exercise any revenge, to retain any grudge or enmity toward them; but rather even on that score bearing goodwill, and showing kindness unto them.
13. Particularly in regard to those who, by injurious and offensive usage, do provoke us, patience importeth-
(1) That we be not hastily, over easily, not immoderately, not pertinaciously incensed with anger toward them.
(2) That we do not in our hearts harbour any ill will, or ill wishes, or ill designs toward them, but that we truly desire their good, and purpose to farther it as we shall have ability and occasion.
(3) That in effect we do not execute any revenge, or for requital do any mischief to them, either in word or deed; but for their reproaches exchange blessings (or good words and wishes), for their outrages repay benefits and good turns.
14. In fine, patience doth include and produce a general meekness and kindness of affection, together with an enlarged sweetness and pleasantness in conversation and carriage toward all men; implying that how hard soever our case, how sorry or sad our condition is, we are not therefore angry with the world, because we do not thrive or flourish in it; that we are not dissatisfied or disgusted with the prosperous estate of other men; that we are not become sullen or froward toward any man because his fortune excelleth ours, but that rather we do “rejoice with them that rejoice”; we do find complacence and delight in their good success; we borrow satisfaction and pleasure from their enjoyments.
II. The example of our Lord was indeed in this kind the most remarkable that ever was presented, the most perfect that can be imagined; He was, above all expression, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”; He did undertake, as to perform the best works, so to endure the worst accidents to which human nature is subject; His whole life being no other than one continual exercise of patience and meekness, in all the parts and to the utmost degrees of them. (Isaac Barrow, D. D.)
Patience in tribulation
I. The special beauty of Christian behaviour. “This is the grace or beauty.”
1. The disciple of Christ does not act from motives of expediency, but from principle.
2. The disciple of Christ does not pursue pleasure or ease, but duty.
II. The exciting motive which prompts the attainment of this character. He will know that he is pleasing God. He will realise that God is the avenger.
III. The natural argument to be specially considered. “For what glory is it,” etc. This is an urgent and important warning and caution. It urges discrimination and self-examination with regard to our sufferings. (J. J. S. Bird.)
Acceptable with God.-
Thanks from God
“This is acceptable with God.” And the Greek might bear such a rendering as this: “God says, Thank you.” Yes, so it is. If in some great house some poor servant, or if in a school some persecuted child, will dare, for God’s sake, to choke back the passionate outburst of indignation, and to endure grief, suffering wrongfully, there is a thrill of delight started through the very heart of God, and from the throne God stoops to say, “Thank you.” The hero explorer may be thanked by his country and his Queen, but the weakest and obscurest saint may receive the thanks of the Almighty. (F. B. Meyer, B. A.)
Even hereunto were ye called.-
God has ordained his people to undergo troubles in this world
Godhas ordained that all His shall suffer troubles, therefore we are to look for them, and bear them patiently. Through many afflictions we must enter into the kingdom of heaven. God knows how ill we can bear prosperity, but are ready to surfeit thereof, as children do of sweetmeats. Standing waters gather mud. As the Israelites in their journey to Canaan suffered much, so must we in this tabernacle, before we come to heaven; thus is God pleased to exercise us for His own glory and our good.
Uses:
1. We must not think the worse of any because of their afflictions, or conclude them to be bad men and hypocrites, which was the fault of Job’s friends.
2. We must not think the better of ourselves for prosperity. God can afford the dogs the bones, the things of this world.
3. We must not dislike ourselves for our afflictions. It is an argument of God’s love, not of His hatred (Heb_12:6). To have afflictions and to profit thereby is the sign of a happy man.
4. We must prepare for afflictions, not dreaming for ease; they are the better borne when looked for.
5. We must bear them patiently, as being of God.
6. We must bear them thankfully, as whereby we are furthered in holiness.
7. We must bear them joyfully, in respect of the eternal happiness and immortal glory we shall be shortly brought to.
8. If the children of God get not to heaven but through many sorrows, what shall then become of the wicked and ungodly (1Pe_4:18; Jer_25:29; Jer_49:12)? (John Rogers.)
Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example.-
Christ’s sufferings in Gethsemane
“Hesuffered for us”; it was during His agony in the garden that our Lord appears to have been most deeply penetrated with the sense of His afflictions.
I. The intensity of those sufferings which our Saviour experienced in the garden of Gethsemane; and,
II. What His conduct under those sufferings ought to teach us. There is, perhaps, no circumstance of the gospel at which our reason is so inclined to cavil, as the affliction which our Saviour then experienced. We cannot understand how it is possible that the Messiah, who is “one with the Father,” should be thus liable to grief, and thus deeply moved at the prospect of His approaching persecutions. Our difficulty here results from our utter inability of forming any notion of the infinite magnitude of the Divine power, We can understand that in the Majesty of the Deity, He should hold pain and sorrow as His subjects; but we cannot understand His rendering Himself subject to them. We are unable to conceive that exercise of His power by which He manifested Himself as entire a master of His own infinite attributes, and withdrew Himself, as it were, from the sustaining succours of His eternal Godhead, that, as a man, He might suffer for our redemption. Yet this is what our Saviour did. If we were merely to confine ourselves to temporal views, and exclude all consideration of the spiritual cause of our Lord’s sufferings, it may even then be with truth affirmed that such an accumulation of woes was never brought to bear at one moment on one man. He knew to a certainty that He had no deliverance to look for; that Judas, His companion, would betray Him; that the princes and rulers would condemn Him; that the people would reject Him and save Barabbas; and that His enemies would heap their persecutions upon Him to the last. In the mere anticipation of what He was about to undergo, our Redeemer had full cause for the agony which He experienced and expressed in the garden of Gethsemane. But, with such aggravations suggested by His own prophetic spirit as no other man ever knew, Jesus was cut off by the very sublimity and holiness of His character, from a source of succour which, under similar circumstances, has often afforded relief to other men. If they do not actually extract the sting of human suffering, they serve to divert the thoughts, and thus to allay the pain of it. But what are those passions? They are either a sullen pride which will not allow the afflicted under any circumstances to confess themselves subdued; or a fierce resentment which induces them to baffle the malice of their enemies by opposing a mask of obstinate insensibility to every attack; or an empty vanity which leads them in the lowest depths of wretchedness, and on the very borders of the grave, to angle for the applauses of the world by putting on a light appearance of unconcern. But whatever support such feelings might afford to others, they could have afforded none to Jesus in the hour of His agony. They are repugnant to the dispositions by which His gentle heart was animated. But it may be conceived that Jesus, under all His troubles, might still have found relief in the consciousness of His innocence. If there are occasions when this reflection may prove a source of secret comfort to the sufferer; there are others when it serves as the severest aggravation to his misery. If an elder brother who had mercifully interposed to save the children of their common parents from destitution, who had succeeded in placing them in a prosperous condition, should, after all, detect them conspiring with his enemies to malign and ruin him, would it be any consolation to reflect that he had not deserved such treatment at their hands? Even so must the consciousness of His innocence have affected the heart of Jesus. It must have been the most galling addition to the weight of those oppressions which were heaped upon Him by His countrymen. The consideration that they, who would be the authors of His oppressions, ought to have been bound together by the remembrance of His loving kindnesses, as His firm protectors, must have struck far deeper into His heart than ever the soldier’s spear wound in His side could pierce. But not only on His own account: His compassionate nature would grieve for others; for His disciples, whom the profession of the faith in His name should render obnoxious to the enmity of their friends, and expose to persecution. But, as yet, we have only surveyed our Saviour’s agony in the garden as resulting from human feelings. We will now proceed to regard it as affected by those views which would have been suggested by the religious aim of His approaching passion. Our Saviour, by His death upon the Cross, was about to pay the price of the transgressions of the whole world. He was about to suffer for our sins; and those sins for which His death was demanded, would naturally engage His contemplations. He would now see before Him the multitude of those offences for which a sacrifice was to be offered; the heinousness of them; the outrage that they were against the majesty of God; the ruin, the destitution which they had spread over the face of the earth; and the weight of the punishment they deserved. The bare idea of any one of those wicked acts which are daily committed by the cruel or the impure, is hateful to every innocent mind. What horror then must necessarily have filled the soul of our Saviour when, not singly, but in their aggregate amount, those mortal offences were brought before His holy view, as He estimated the extent of the ransom which was due, and which He had Himself undertaken to discharge? But our Lord thus “suffered for us,” says St. Peter in my text, “leaving us an example that we should follow His steps.” The lessons which His sufferings ought to teach us:
1. We should learn from them to submit ourselves in every condition of life with an unreserved obedience to the will of the Almighty.
2. We should learn from our Lord’s conduct never to despair of the loving kindness of our Heavenly Father, but to rely upon His unfailing goodness; to look to Him for succour and relief; and to feel assured that, if He see not fit to remove our cause of sorrow, He will, in His infinite mercy, answer our prayers for assistance, by vouchsafing to our souls the ability to support it.
3. We should learn humility from the example of our Saviour’s sufferings.
4. We should learn from our Lord’s example the extent of that Christian love which, as His disciples, we are bound to bear our fellow creatures. Our Lord suffered for us. He exhibited, in dying for us, the fulness of that brotherly charity with which our hearts should glow towards each other. He condemned every affection which emanates from a selfish and ungenerous source, by His willing immolation of Himself for the sins of the world that had condemned Him. His thus dying for us teaches us not only the value we ought to set upon our own salvation, but the value we ought to set upon the salvation of others. (W. Harness, M. A.)
Christ our example
The first reason for the gift of the Incarnate Son to a perishing world, is that He might be a sacrifice for its sin. The second reason is, that He might be an ensample of godly life to those who believe in Him. We sinners cannot invert the order, and say that He was given, first as our example, and secondly as our sin offering before God. For we cannot imitate Him until He has redeemed us from the power and guilt of sin; the first need of a sinner is pardon and moral freedom, the second, the ideal of a new life.
I. Why we need such an example at all. Let us ask ourselves what it is which makes human nature radically different from that of any of the creatures that surround us. The great characteristic of man is the possession of free will. The growth of the human body indeed is as little within man’s control as is that of an animal. But human character, and so much of the bodily life as bears on character, is as much under our control as are the canvas and the colours under that of a painter. Our passions, our inclinations, our thoughts, our sympathies, our antipathies, our habits, are at the disposal of our wills; we are what we have gradually made ourselves. Man, then, is an artist. And as an artist he needs not merely the material out of which to mould some expression of thought, but an example, an ideal, to copy. It may indeed be asked whether it will not do as well to obey a precept as to copy an example. Example, it is said, is vague; precept is explicit. Precept is active; it seeks you out and addresses you. Example is passive; it lets you imitate if you will. Example merely says, “This may be done because it has been done.” Precept says, “Do it.” No, you especially who, as parents or masters, are responsible for influence on others; assuredly, no. Example goes further than precept. Precept leads us to the foot of a precipitous mountain, and it cries, “Scale that height.” But example whispers: “Mark what I do, and then do it; it cannot be hard for you since it is easy for me, Look how I step over that crevice, and rest on this projecting foothold, and tread lightly and quickly along that insecure bit of the path. Watch me; keep close to me. Then all will be well in the end.”
II. We do then need an example, and our Lord has satisfied this need of our nature and completely. In Him we have before us an example which is unique. He passed through life in the humblest circumstances: yet He belongs to the human race. He alone in the world is the universal man; He is the one man who corresponds to that ideal of humanity of which there are traces in the minds of all of us; He is the great example.
1. That which strikes us, first of all, in the example which He has left us, is its faultlessness. We are startled by His own sense of this. He never utters one word to the Father or to man which implies the consciousness of a defect. “I do always those things that please the Father.” “The prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me.” Was this an illusion, or did it correspond with the fact? He was surrounded by jealous observers. He could reckon on no forbearance, no generosity, no equity, in His opponents. Yet He passed their criticism unscathed. “Which of you,” He could say, “convinceth Me of sin?” And there was silence. In this sinlessness He is, although our model, yet beyond our full reach of imitation. The best of men knows that in his best moments he is beset by motives, or thoughts, or inclinations, from which Christ was utterly free. But this does not destroy, it rather enhances, the value of our Lord’s example. In all departments of thought and work, the ideal is, strictly speaking, unattainable by man; yet man should never lose sight of it.
2. We are struck by the balance and proportion of excellences in our Lord’s human character. As a rule, if a man possesses some one excellence in an unusual degree, he will be found to exhibit some fault or shortcoming in an opposite direction. Our finite and fallen nature exhausts itself by an effort in a single direction; it would almost seem bound to atone for a temporary success by some compensating failure. Of this want of balance in excellence, of this exaggeration in particular forms of excellence which entails an accompanying defect, there is no trace in our Lord. Read His life over and over again, with this point in view; and nothing will strike you more than its faultless proportions. In so vast a field, take one illustration out of many: the balance which He keeps between severity and tenderness.
3. Consider again a feature which runs through His whole character: its simplicity. In nothing that He says or does can we detect any trace of contrivance or of aiming at effect. He takes the illustrations which come ready to His hand, or which meet His eye: the birds of the air, the rain, the red and lowering sky, the lily, the grain of mustard seed, the corn, the ruined tower of Siloam. On these He grafts this or that fragment of eternal truth. We cannot enrich His teaching by any additions. Our crude efforts could not but disfigure its incomparable beauty. As with His words, so is it with His actions. He acts with a view to the glory of God the Father, and with a view to nothing else. Hence a directness and transparency in His conduct, which we feel in every detail of it.
4. One further point to be remarked in our Lord’s example is the stress which it lays upon those forms of excellence which make no great show, such as patience, humility, meekness, and the like. As we read the gospels, we are led to see that the highest type of human excellence consists less in acting well than in suffering well. It is this side of His example of which St. Peter is thinking as being so useful to the Christian slaves to whom for the moment he is writing (verse23). Christ had before Him a purpose of infinite beneficence; that of recovering man to God and to endless happiness. Yet in carrying it out He met with scorn, resistance, hatred, persecution. Yet no unkind or impatient word falls from Him. He bears in silence the contradiction of sinners against Himself. He prays, “Father, forgive them.” He is obedient unto death. “Leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps.” “Yes,” it is said, “it is a beautiful, a transcendental picture; and if Christ were merely man, we might perhaps imitate Him! But then He is God as well as man; and this seems to remove Him from the category of beings whom man can imitate. His theological glory in the fourth gospel is fatal to His moral value as a human model in the first three.” The difference between Jesus Christ and ourselves is indeed infinite; it is the difference between the Creator and the creature. And yet He is also truly man; and for the purposes of imitation the truth of His manhood secures all that we require. For the purposes of imitation, He is practically not more out of our reach than is a father of great genius and goodness out of the reach of his child. Certainly we cannot imitate Jesus Christ when He heals the sick, or raises the dead. But we can enter into and cherish the spirit of those high works of mercy. We can do the natural kindnesses which are akin to them. And there are deeds and words of His which we can copy in the letter as well as the spirit. Indeed, the objection has been already solved by the experience of eighteen centuries. The imitation of Christ is the perpetual source of saintly effort in the Church of Christ. Generation follows generation, looking unto Jesus. One man says, I will imitate His patience; and another, I will copy His humility; and a third, I would practise, though afar off, His obedience; and a fourth, His love for men; and another, His simplicity; and another, His benevolence; and another, His perpetual communion with the Father; and another, His renunciation of His Own will. When one point is gained, others follow. Thus, little by little, “Christ is formed,” in the characters of His servants. This imitation of our Lord is not a duty which we are free to accept or decline. “The elect,” says St. Paul, “are predestined to be conformed to the image of the Son of God.” If there is no effort at conformity, there is no true note of predestination. A devoted layman of the Church of England said on his deathbed, that, on reviewing his life, the omission which he chiefly deplored was that he had not made a daily effort to study and imitate Jesus Christ as He is described in the gospels. Is not this a common omission even with serious Christians? Should we not do what we may, while yet we may, thus to follow in the footsteps of the Perfect Man? (Canon Liddon.)
The Christian ideal
“TheChristian is the noblest type of man,” says our Christian poet; and, assuredly, if the Christian be, in any extent, a reflection of the spirit of Christ, this language must be true. Whatever the grace we seek to inculcate we may find in Him a perfect illustration. Amid all life’s trials, perplexities, temptations, and requirements we can have no law so suited to every occasion as this: “Let the same mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”
I. An unconscious and indirect evidence of this is the frequent use of the term “Christlike” as an epithet descriptive of the noblest type of human character.
II. The essential difference between the morality which the world professes to honour and that of the gospel, is to be found in the endeavour of the latter to reflect the mind of Christ as it actually exists. I do not mean, of course, the morality of pure selfishness-if it be worthy the name of morality at all-which is all that numbers would acknowledge, but that which is cultivated by those who would develop a character higher than the Christian-the morality of the “Religion of Humanity,” and of those who hang on its outskirts, approaching more or less nearly to its ideas. What is it, and how does it differ from that which the Church of Christ commends to the acceptance of men? It is clear that up to a certain point there is no outward difference. The law of truth, righteousness, sobriety is common to both. Further, the morality outside the Church is different from that which was in the world before the gospel, in that it has incorporated with its precept that law of gentleness, mercy, self-forgetfulness which was first set before men in the life of the Lord Jesus. Here, then, is likeness so great, that there are some only too eager to conclude that they are the same. These are the graces for which we seek lofty aims, pure desires, gentle thoughts, loving deeds. What can Christianity do more? Alas! has it not failed even to do as much? Without entering at length into the controversy here, it is at all events clear to those who will look beneath the surface, that this is not Christianity. The characteristic of the Lord was that the zeal of God’s house had eaten Him up. In other words, the central idea of His life was to please God. It would be misleading in the very highest degree to describe a life out of which this ruling idea of the Saviour’s conduct, this inspiration of His whole being, was omitted as Christlike. The difference is an essential one. It goes to the root of the whole being, affects every motive, touches every principle, regulates the whole ambition of the soul.
III. One of the first and most frequent charges against the teaching of the Church is, that it encourages a selfish type of religion. A grave impeachment this, and one which, if sustained, certainly indicates a separation from the spirit of Christ. It is a mere truism to say that there is no feature more prominent in His entire ministry than that of unselfishness. The one ruling thought of His life on earth was the salvation of others, and the sacrifice of Himself for this end. And as with His life, so with His teaching; it was full of emphatic warnings repeated against selfishness. This certainly, is lost sight of in too many of the current representations as to the nature of salvation. How often is the stress of exhortation laid upon happiness, whether here or hereafter, rather than upon holiness as the supreme object of Christian endeavour! Nay, how often is the idea of salvation almost restricted to this one point of deliverance from the wrath of God and the sentence of the law!
IV. In the distinctness and prominence given to the thought, that the object of the Gospel is to change the condition of men only by a change amounting to an entire renewal of heart in the men themselves, is to be sought the true answer to the suggestion that the Church is only fostering a higher type of selfishness. Looked at thus, salvation is the richest blessing which can be conferred upon man. It means salvation from himself-from the evil heart of unbelief which makes him depart from the living God; but which also places him in selfish antagonism to his fellowmen; from the sway of passions which scorn all restraints of right and duty; from the curse of a restless, discontented, repining, ambitious heart. The effect of a work like that can be only to purify and ennoble the character. Its polar star is no longer happiness but duty, and duty defined for it by its understanding of the will of God.
V. The question which is of grave and critical importance, is w
