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‘For even hereunto were ye called’
1Pe_2:21
I. St. Peter’s natural disposition was what we should call hot and fiery.—He was eager, and impetuous, and impatient. He was always for doing everything at once. And you will remember especially how angry he was when first our Lord revealed to him that He was to be put to death by the Jews. St. Peter could not take in the idea. He loved his Master. He wanted to see Him honoured and obeyed, and he could not stop to think what our Lord might mean, and why it might have to turn out true. St. Peter was startled and shocked, and he never stopped to think, but spoke out hastily and angrily, and contradicted his Lord’s words, and drew down upon himself our Lord’s solemn anger, for he had spoken very wrongly. So, again, you know, it was St. Peter who tried to rescue our Lord when He was arrested the night before His Crucifixion. And yet for all his eagerness and forwardness, St. Peter was not steadfast. One time he would be going too far, another time not far enough. He wanted steadiness. Though he was so ready to act and to strike, he was not ready to endure. It was not natural to him to bear. His natural disposition, as we say, was quick and sudden, but it was not naturally good at endurance. Such, then, was the natural disposition of the Apostle St. Peter, who was commissioned by God to write this letter or Epistle.
II. Now let us look at the message from God in our text, and let us put it alongside of what we have seen of the natural disposition of the Apostle who wrote it.
(a) What is the message? He is telling Christian people something about what God meant them to be and to do when God called them to be Christians. St. Peter says to us ‘hereunto were ye called.’ Whereunto? What is the particular thing that St. Peter chooses out of all the many points of a Christian’s life to write to us about? It is about that very thing which St. Peter had found it so very hard even to hear of, when Christ his Master told him He would have to bear it. It is all about suffering wrongfully and taking things patiently, about doing well and being treated ill, and still not murmuring or reviling, but committing ourselves to Him that judgeth righteously.
(b) And why? Because such was Christ’s example, and because we are called to copy our Master, and therefore, hard as all this may seem, we must not think it hard. We are called Christians, and this is being Christians. Just as being a soldier means that a man must be ready to bear wounds and hardships and death; just as being a lawyer means that a man must study and think and advise, and not be enjoying himself in the sports of the field; just as being a clergyman means that a man must give up many worldly pleasures which may be quite right in themselves—so being a Christian means that we are bound to be patient and gentle, to be very enduring, to take injustice quietly, and not be at all surprised if we are found fault with for the very things which we know to be the best things we have ever done.
III. Taking St. Peter’s natural disposition, this is just the very last thing which we should have expected to find him writing about.—And it is not as if this came only once in St. Peter’s letters. If you will read them through you will see that the same thing comes over and over again. He is always telling us this. It seems as if he felt that it was one of the chief things he was commissioned by God to teach Christian people. It really looks as if St. Peter had never forgotten the rock on which, but for God’s grace, he was in such danger of making shipwreck—the rock of an impetuous, hasty disposition, quick to strike, impatient to bear, and therefore—as such people always are—unstable and unsteady. And we can hardly doubt it was so. Different people have different self-denials, according to what their dispositions are. What is a self-denial to one man comes quite easily to another. And we can have no doubt that to St. Peter the greatest self-denial was the checking his eager disposition, the having to bear injustice, and—what to a generous-tempered man is the hardest thing of all—the having to see injustice done, and yet not meddle because it was no business of his.
IV. Thus St. Peter learnt to bear his cross.—And then, when he had learned to bear it, he became quite changed; and instead of impatience being his particular sin, quietness and trust in God became his particular virtue; and then God chose him to preach the duty he had learned to practise; and we Christian people, all these centuries after, are learning from St. Peter to this day the great Christian duty of bearing injuries and forgiving injustice. By God’s choosing St. Peter to teach us this, he is teaching us more also. It is not as if it was anybody that God had inspired to write this Epistle and preach this duty. When God causes St. Peter to set forth the Christian duty of bearing injuries, He is teaching us the use He means us to make of what we call our natural defects. We have all of us some particular faults—besetting sins, as we commonly call them. Some of us are naturally lazy; some of us are naturally proud; some of us are naturally covetous—everybody has something which he is naturally prone to. This is so plain that we all of us admit it; but the wrong may be overcome.