The primary sense of these words is this: A man’s best safeguard is benevolence; if we are ourselves inoffensive in our behaviour, others will be less likely to injure us; in proportion as we are anxious to do good, we shall be less likely to suffer evil. It is true, indeed, that the main scope of the argument is to show the manifold blessings which even in this world attend on the righteous. We are taught that he who will love life, and see good days, is to refrain his tongue from evil, etc. We are taught to eschew evil and do good: to seek peace and ensue it. And why? Because God’s favour is thus secured to us, and man’s enmity in a great measure disarmed. “For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous,” etc. The believers were to suffer; but they could take no harm. “Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?” Wonderful question! in its very calmness and simplicity. Who shall harm you? What, when the whole world was leagued in a malignant confederacy against them! “Who shall harm you?” What, when there was everything to harm them! Ignominy, torture, famine, the sword, dishonoured life or violent death. Neither, again, did they affect insensibility under their sufferings. How, then, were they sustained? They were sustained by God’s holy Spirit, and by a reliance on their Master’s infallible promises, and by an undoubting confidence in the life to come. Such is the application of the text with reference to the time at which it was written, and the circumstances of the first promulgators of the blessed gospel of Christ Jesus. With respect, again, to ourselves, it is far more directly true that no one “will harm us, if we be followers of that which is good.” I do not mean that there no longer remains any opposition whatever between the spirit of Christianity and the spirit of the world. But I believe that these adversaries, be they who they may, will not be able to do him any essential injury. I believe, also, that a steady and consistent godliness will go far ultimately to convert enemies into approvers, and rob all opposition of its sting. But, again, if we may trace an intimate connection between holiness and happiness, between physical and spiritual advantage-not invariably, perhaps, as to outward circumstances, because such a law, if altogether universal, might foster mistaken notions of God’s providence, while it would be incompatible with a state of probation-the converse proposition, or the inseparable union of vice and wretchedness, of impiety and fatal damage both to body and soul, must be still more obvious to every man. We might well alter the text, and ask, “Who is he that can do us any benefit, if we be not followers of that which is good?” If you are followers of that which is evil, you harm yourselves to the uttermost, and render even your temporal felicity an impossible thing. You may possess all the elements of felicity; but you so vitiate them that they become powerful only for your destruction. The noblest gifts of nature and of fortune you turn absolutely into curses for yourselves. For, take any endowment which God’s loving kindness may bestow, and see what becomes of it in the hands of the wicked. Is it health, and a vigorous constitution, and the prospect of long life? These advantages are transmuted into instruments of perdition, by inducing a more entire neglect of the concerns of eternity. Is it strength of will, energy, and decision of character? That decision only plunges men into crime with a more headlong zeal, with a more desperate recklessness. Is it acuteness of perception and an abundant measure of intellectual capacity? Alas, this superiority of understanding serves to make men more subtle in confounding truth and falsehood, in perverting right and wrong, in beguiling and destroying themselves with their own frightful sophistries. Is it beauty of person? Yet, ah! who has not had opportunity of seeing that personal beauty without religious principle is the most dreadful of all snares, the most terribly fatal of all possessions? Is it wealth, and station, and influence? Yet these things without holiness only enable men to spread mischief and profligacy around them, and dig for their own souls a deeper place in the pit of hell. The scorpion lash is made of our own vices. That which harms us is sin; they who harm us are those who would debauch our principles, and corrupt our moral feelings, and teach us to take right for wrong and wrong for right, good for evil and evil for good. Finally, then, as to all others, if you pretend to care for the happiness of mankind, labour strenuously for their spiritual improvement. As to your family and those about you, aim not so much to make them clever or accomplished, as to make them religious and upright. (J. S. Boone, M. A.)
The safety of the righteous man from injury and harm
I. The following of that which is good is the ready way to preserve us from violence and hurt, because this inoffensive and religious deportment commands the respect and love of those who are not enemies to piety and virtue.
II. The following of that which is good, the habitual practice of religion and charity, will shelter us against harm and wrong, because it entitles to those promises, whereby God has assured His servants, that so far as shall be suitable to His glorious designs in governing the world, and gracious purposes towards them, He will protect them against the malice of those who intend or attempt their hurt (2Ch_16:9; Psa_91:1-4; Psa_121:5-7; Isa_25:1; Isa_52:4; Isa_54:14; Isa_45:17; Pro_16:7).
1. God sometimes accomplishes His promises of protection to His servants by changing the hearts and dispositions of their bitterest enemies, so that they become favourers and friends (Pro_21:1). Esau (Gen_32:7; Gen_32:11); Egyptians (Exo_11:3).
2. God preserves the honest followers of that which is good from harm, by so chaining up and overawing the malice of their enemies, that however their inward hatred remain, yet they do not manifest it by outward injuries (Gen_31:42; Exo_34:24).
3. As the enemies of the righteous are often constrained to conceal their malice; so, when God thinks it fit to interpose His power, He screens the righteous from the most furious assaults of their open hatred and wrath, Red Sea; Saul and David; Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego; Mordecai.
III. The following of that which is good, though it does not always mollify the hearers, nor manacle the hands of men, yet it does that which is much better, viz., it turns the greatest injuries of their most deadly enemies to their profit and advantage. This effect it produces sometimes in their temporal, but always in their spiritual and eternal interests (Rom_8:28). Conclusion:
1. We are informed from the truth already cleared, of the most certain, the most innocent method of securing ourselves and our interests against oppression and wrong, viz., the sincere following of that which is good (Isa_32:17; Isa_23:18; Isa_33:16; Pro_18:10).
2. Seeing God has taken the followers of that which is good under His protection, this should fill their hearts with joy and courage, and banish from them sinful and disquieting sadness and fear, even when their enemies are most powerful (Isa_26:1; Psa_5:11-12; Psa_27:1-3).
3. The consolation which this doctrine yields to the sincerely good is much enhanced while he considers that the greatest injuries are turned by the sovereign providence and grace of God to their benefit, sometimes in their temporal, and always in their spiritual and eternal interests.
4. Since the safety of our persons and interests from oppression lies chiefly in the following of that which is good, it should endear unto us religion and virtue, and powerfully dissuade us fromungodliness and vice.
5. Since the harming of those who are the followers of that which is good is so unreasonable in itself, and such a perfect contradiction unto God, who is the great Patron of holiness, this should make men both ashamed and afraid to be guilty thereof.
6. Though they who, after serious examination of their ways, see their own uprightness, need not suspect the same because of those evils they meet with from the world, yet persecution, as all other afflictions do, fairly invites us to search and try our heart and behaviour, that so we may know, whether or not by our turning aside from that which is good, we have provoked God to expose us to the spite and violence of men. (David Ranken.)
The godly protected
It may justly be asked whether this is consistent either with experience or with other passages of Scripture, seeing that piety appears to have practically no power in subduing enmity or destroying its injuriousness. We cannot deny that in a great variety of cases, religion, so far from disarming hostility and securing goodwill, exposes a man to insult and persecution. The man may not be altogether a follower of that which is good; there is much even in the best which requires to be amended, and which must be disapproved of by a heart-searching God. Now you will have gathered from these observations, with regard to the apparent non-fulfilment of the promise of our text, that it is attributable to a defective performance. In the question before us St. Peter unequivocally intimates that where such is the experience there must have been some deviation from the strict path of duty. And we would therefore contend for the literal truth of the words of our text, notwithstanding all which may elsewhere be said of the persecutions attendant on righteousness. And first we observe, that it is in the power of God, without visible interference with the fixed order of things, to bring about such results as seem good to His wisdom. It is not needful that He should suspend any known laws or work by any strange processes. He can effect whatsoever He wishes to accomplish by touching some secret spring, or putting some hidden force into action, while all along there shall be nothing apparent but the ordinary operations of effects and causes. This may be specially true with regard to the human heart; on which, beyond all doubt, God can mysteriously work, and yet give no outward signs of supernatural agency. If God have the human heart thus entirely at His disposal, He may evidently cause it to lay aside lust, and may turn its affections into a different channel, without anything of violence, and without open restraint to its designs and its desires. The wicked man may not be converted to righteousness; there may not pass on him that great spiritual change which would necessarily lead him to give friendship where before he had given hatred; and nevertheless there may be a soothing of the irritated feelings, a dethronement of his anger, and even a substitution of something like favour for dislike, of which perhaps he cannot himself give account. The cases are far from uncommon, in which God thus secretly diverts or disarms enmity. It is just the same with countries or communities as with individuals. In the case of the Israelites, their history is little more than a practical demonstration of the truth of our text. At any point of their history, if you find the nation endangered by enemies, you infer at once that there has been disobedience and idolatry; whilst, on the other hand, if you find them living in conformity with God’s laws, you may conclude, without further examination, that the national condition was prosperous and flourishing. We would not indeed overlook the peculiarities of the Jewish Dispensation; therefore we do not take what happened to the Israelites as precisely the model of what may be expected by ourselves. But we know that God acts on general principles, and we therefore believe that the high road to national prosperity, under one dispensation, must, in the main, be also the high road to it under any other. Let the laws of a nation be laws framed in the spirit of the Bible; laws which discountenance vice in its every form and patronise piety; let the upholding of Christianity be proposed by rulers and pursued by people as the great end to which all others should be postponed; let there be at all times a public recognition of the supremacy of God, and the paramount importance of obedience to His statutes, and of His inalienable right to the homage, the love, and the services of His creatures, and we may affirm of this nation that it is a “follower of that which is good,” just as might anyone be a follower who is “adorning in all things the doctrines of the Saviour.” Yea, and if a nation did this, we believe that it would as much insure itself prosperity as did the Jews when obeying the laws which were given to them by Moses. May it not be that the enmity of the world is allowed to injure and harm the righteous man, just because he has been remiss in the duties of righteousness; because there has been some portion of conformity to the present evil world, or some undue attachment to a perishable good? And let it, too, be learned, from the words under review, that there cannot be a greater delusion than the thinking to produce or preserve peace with men by means which must hazard the favour of God. Think not to avert danger except by braving it. Do all you can to please men, except by displeasing God. And be sure that the attempt to secure human favour at the expense of Divine will always issue in the loss of both. The traitor to his God becomes, sooner or later, the scorn of his fellow men. Remember, for your consolation, that in this, as in every other respect, God hath made your interest at one with your duty, so that Divine favour shall be the best security for human. And there are more hurtful enemies than angry relations and unprincipled opponents. A man’s foes may be those of his own household-ay! of his own heart-the lusts, the passions, the desires of corrupt nature. These are the enemies with which the Christian has the hardest struggle, and through which he is exposed to the greatest danger. But if he be a “follower of that which is good”; if he be sincere in his wishes and earnest in his efforts to be “holy even as God is holy,” he will gradually be enabled to keep those enemies in check, and find that grace has the mastery of nature. Those who speak most of the strength of their passions are often those who take least pains to resist them. In fact they make that strength an excuse for submission, whereas God would put bands on that strength if they were honest and desired to overcome. There approaches another enemy-one emphatically described as “the last enemy-death.” Can this enemy be stayed from doing harm to the Christian? Why, it is beautiful to observe how Christians, who have felt a dread of death, have found their anxiety depart as the foe drew nigh. They have been “followers of that which is good,” striving to cast all their care upon God, believing that He careth for them. Therefore, as death approached it appeared less harmful, and they who feared him most, but whom the fear only made more fervent in prayer, are enabled to look him calmly in the face, and even cheerfully resign themselves to his embrace as to that of a friend. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The advantage of imitating the good
There is something in a meek and holy carriage that is apt, in part, to free a man from many mischiefs which the ungodly are exposed to. It will be somewhat strange to rage against the innocent.
I. The carriage, “followers of that which is good”; the Greek word is imitators. The Word of God contains our copy in its perfection, and so the imitation of good, in the complete rule of it, is the regulating of our ways by the word. But even there we find, besides general rules, the particular tracks of life of divers eminently holy persons, that we may know holiness not to be an idle imaginary thing, but that men have really been holy; though not altogether sinless, yet holy and spiritual in some good measure; have shined as lights amidst a perverse generation. Why may we not then aspire to be holy as they were, and attain to it? Would you advance in all grace? Study Christ much, and you will find not only the pattern in Him, but strength and skill from Him to follow it.
II. The advantage, “Who is he that will harm you?” In the life of a godly man, taken together in the whole frame of it, there is a grave beauty or comeliness, which oftentimes forces some kind of reverence and respect to it even in ungodly minds. Though a natural man cannot love them spiritually, as graces of the Spirit of God, yet he may have and usually hath a natural esteem of some kind of virtues which are in a Christian, and are not, in their right nature, to be found in any other, though a moralist may have somewhat like them. Meekness, and patience, and charity, and fidelity-these and other suchlike graces do make a Christian life so inoffensive and calm, that, except where the matter of their God or religion is made the crime, malice itself can scarcely tell where to fasten its teeth or lay its hold; it hath nothing to pull by, though it would; yea, oftentimes, for want of work or occasions, it will fall asleep for a while. Whereas ungodliness and iniquity, sometimes by breaking out into notorious crimes, draws out the sword of civil justice, and where it rises not so high, yet it involves men in frequent contentions and quarrels. (Abp. Leighton.)
Doing good, as security against injuries from men
I. The qualification supposed is, that we be “followers of that which is good.” But what is that? The apostle does not go about to define it, but appeals to every man’s conscience to tell him what it is. It is not anything that is controverted, which some men call good and others evil, but that which is universally approved by heathens as well as Christians, that which is substantially good, and that which is unquestionably so. It is not zeal for lesser things, about the ritual and ceremonial part of religion, and a great strictness about the external parts of it, but a pursuit of the weightier things of the law, a care of the great duties of religion, mercy, and justice, and fidelity; those things wherein the kingdom of God consists-righteousness and peace.
II. The benefit and advantage which may reasonably be expected from it, and that is, security from the injuries of men: “Who is he that will harm you?” etc. The apostle doth not absolutely say none will do it, but he speaks of it as a thing so very unreasonable and so unlikely that it will not often happen. And this will appear-
1. If we consider the nature of virtue and goodness, which is apt to gain upon the affections of men, and secretly to win their love and esteem. True goodness is inwardly esteemed by bad men; it carries an awe and majesty with it, so that bad men are very often restrained from harming the good by that secret reverence which they bear to goodness.
2. If we consider the nature of man, even when it is very much depraved and corrupted. There is something that is apt to restrain bad men from injuring those that are remarkably good-a reverence for goodness, the fear of God, and of bringing down His vengeance upon their heads; and many times the fear of men, who, though they be not good themselves, cannot endure to see them oppressed, especially if they have found the real effects of their goodness in good offices done by them to themselves.
3. If we consider the providence of God, which is particularly concerned for the protection of innocency and goodness.
III. And yet we are not to understand this saying of the apostle, as declaring to us the constant and certain event of things without any exception. For good men are sometimes exposed to great injuries of which I shall give you an account in these following particulars-
1. Sonic that seem to be good are not sincerely so, and when they, by the just judgment of God, are punished for their hypocrisy, in the opinion of many goodness seems to suffer.
2. Some that are really good are very imperfectly so, have many flaws which do very much obscure their goodness; they are “followers of that which is good,” but they have an equal zeal for things which have no goodness in them, or so little that it is not worth all that bustle which they make about them, and will contend as earnestly for a doubtful opinion as for the articles of “the faith which was once delivered to the saints,” and will oppose a little ceremony with as much heat as the greatest immorality. In these cases it is not men’s goodness which raiseth enmity against them, but their imprudent zeal and other infirmities which attend it.
3. The enmity of some men against goodness is so violent and implacable that no innocency can restrain their malice. Against these the providence of God is our best safeguard.
4. The last and chief exception is that of the cross, when the sufferings and persecutions of good men are necessary for the great ends of God’s glory, for the advancement of religion, and the example and salvation of others. (Abp. Tillotson.)
The practice of virtue the greatest security against our enemies
I. If a man be a follower of that which is good, ‘tis probable no man will have any desire to harm him.
II. If we be followers of that which is good, ‘tis certain no man, whatever his will be, shall have any power to do us any real harm.
1. The providence of God does in a peculiar manner watch over the righteous, to preserve them under all events.
2. The enemies of a righteous man cannot do him any real harm, because they cannot take from him anything wherein his true and proper happiness consists.
3. Whatever loss a good man sustains in the world upon the account of his concern for truth and virtue, shall be abundantly made good to him in that which is to come; and consequently ‘tis so far from doing any real harm, that it ought rather to be accounted a gain than a loss. (S. Clarke, D. D.)
The protection of God
So long ago as the time of William Penn the efficacy of arbitration was demon strafed. He proposed to come to America without any weapons, and treat with the worst savages. Charles
II. scoffed at him and said, “What: venture yourselves among the savages of North America! Why, man, what security have you that you will not be in their war kettle within two hours after setting your foot on their shores?” “The best security in the world,” said William Penn. “I doubt that, friend William,” said the king. “I have no idea of any security against these American cannibals but a regiment of good soldiers with their bayonets and muskets: and I tell you beforehand, with all my goodwill for you and your family, to whom I am under obligations, I will not send a single soldier with you.” “I want none of your soldiers,” said William Penn. “I depend upon something better.” “On what?” asked the king. William Penn answered, “On the Indians themselves, and their moral sense, and the protection of the Almighty God.” And it is a fact in American history that for seventy years the red men kept that treaty, and it was not broken until the white men broke it.
Good still left unharmed
I have fallen into the hands of the publicans and sequestrators, and they have taken all from me. What now? let me look about me. They have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still discourse; and, unless I list, they have not taken away my merry countenance, and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience: they still have left me the providence of God, and all the promises of the gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity to them too: and still I sleep and digest; I eat and drink; I read and meditate; I can walk in my neighbour’s pleasant fields, and see the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which God delights, that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, and in God Himself. (Bp. Jeremy Taylor.)
Followers of that which is good.-
Personal goodness
I. Its prospectiveness.
1. A desire for future good.
2. An expectation of future good.
II. Its sociality. It has a community of-
1. Paramount interest.
2. Leading aims.
III. Its reasonableness.
1. Our nature was made for goodness.
2. Christ came into the world to give us goodness.
3. God works to make us good.
4. The great struggle of our nature is to be good.
IV. Its reverence. Genuine religion is modest, devout, meek. (Homilist.)
