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2 Peter 1 - Nisbet James - Church Pulpit Commentary

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2 Peter 1

1 Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us through the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ:

2 grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord,

3 according as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue:

4 whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.

5 And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge;

6 and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness;

7 and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.

8 For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

9 But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins.

10 Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall:

11 for so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

12 Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.

13 Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance;

14 knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me.

15 Moreover I will endeavour that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.

16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.

17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.

19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

20 knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

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2 Peter 1

THINGS PRECIOUS

‘Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises.’

2Pe 1:4 ‘Precious’ is a very favourable word with the writers of the Bible, especially with St. Peter. He speaks of many things as precious.

I. Christ.—‘Unto you therefore which believe He is precious’ (1Pe 2:7 ). Precious as a Saviour from sin, a present friend, and a final deliverer.

II. Faith.—‘To them that have obtained like precious faith with us’ (2Pe 1:1 ). Now faith depends for its value upon that which calls it forth. Faith in man, in ordinances, in sacraments, in the Church cannot benefit us by giving us salvation. Faith is precious only as it embraces Christ and enables us to say, ‘He is mine, and I am His.’

III. The Precious Blood.—‘The precious blood of Christ’ (1Pe 1:18-19 ). ‘Blood of Christ’ refers to His life taken away and signifies His death, and is precious because it points to the central doctrine of the gospel—the atonement, which stands to all other doctrines in the Bible as the keystone of an arch to all the other stones which are built up upon it; or as the sun to the earth and all the other planets which revolve around it.

IV. The promises.—‘Great and precious promises.’ In old time the Psalmist sang, ‘How precious are Thy thoughts to me, O God!’ The promises are but the thoughts of God put into words, that we might be more able to grasp and understand them.



PRACTICAL CHRISTIAN LIFE

‘And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; and to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; and to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity.’

2Pe 1:5-7 Such words are evidently addressed to those who are professedly separated from an evil world. They have ‘escaped from the corruption of the world through lust.’ But the Apostle would have them making good their escape by putting as wide an interval as possible between their old life and their new. ‘Beside this’ escape, he says, there is something else, ‘make your calling and election sure’ by ‘working out your salvation with fear and trembling.’ ‘Giving all diligence’ complete the work which is begun. The Revised Version renders the words more exactly, ‘Yea, and for this very cause, adding on your part all diligence, in your faith supply virtue,’ etc. The meaning is substantially the same. The idea is that of Christian progress.

I. There is the starting-point, faith.—If we are seeking a destination, the place from which we set forth is of the greatest importance. So in the Christian life. Faith must come first. Without faith—and it is essential that we should learn the lesson—it is impossible to please God.

II. From faith to virtue.—Christian virtue is moral manliness, fighting the battle of life with a brave spirit in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. No doubt the Apostle remembered that spiritual enemies and dangers surrounded Christians at all times. There is nothing more perilous than having faith without the support of manly life. The individual or the community which attends much to doctrine or to feelings, without moral earnestness, without practical endeavour, will be tempted to Pharisaic pride or inflated fanaticism. ‘Devils believe and tremble,’ but ‘Satan cannot love.’ What the world especially wants is not so much confident believers to dogmatise, but Christ-like men and women sending forth spiritual influence like streams of new life into the moral wilderness. The ‘virtue’ is something that all men can appreciate. It is not only light, but heat. It appeals not only to the head, but to the heart. When it touches men in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, it bids them rise up and walk, and spiritual miracles testify to the truth with a power which ‘none of the adversaries are able to gainsay or resist.’ For our own sakes, that we may be held up in a time when many fall, for the world’s sake, that the truth may be glorified in us, let us add to our faith virtue.

III. From virtue to knowledge.—In Bible language, knowing is not a mere cultivation of our human faculties, nor a mere receiving goods into a warehouse. In the Christian life, knowledge calls in the light of God into the treasury of a sanctified intelligence, whence the steward brings forth continually things new and old. ‘The entrance of Thy words giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple.’ ‘I have more understanding than all my teachers, because I have kept Thy word.’ In a busy age like ours, energetic life makes great demand upon us. The multiplication of efforts and interests is necessary in all departments of practical Christianity. But our activity is prone to dissipate itself for lack of concentration, to exhaust itself prematurely for lack of nourishment. Knowledge, when it is derived immediately from God, obtained by prayerful search into the Scriptures, thoughtful inquiry after the mind of Christ, diligent cultivation of fellowship with higher and holier minds than our own, wonderfully feeds the vital strength, lifts us up into the higher life.

IV. Faith, virtue, knowledge, these are the leading graces of the Christian character, and those which follow them in the Apostle’s exhortation are fruits of the Spirit, which abound wherever the Word of God strikes downward into the heart and comes forth into the life—temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity.

Illustration

‘If you would succeed in your efforts to make progress in the Christian life, every plan should be formed, every business entered upon, every work, engaged in, with prayer. Sir Matthew Hale once observed, ‘If I omit praying and reading a portion of God’s blessed Word in the morning, nothing goes well the whole day.’ The late Earl Cairns was known to go constantly from his knees to important meetings of the Cabinet. Such men were Christians indeed. They brought everything to the touchstone of their religion. And they brought their religion into everything. We want more effort in the Christian life, more decision for Christ, more determination to be separate from the world.’



PROPHECY THE GUIDE TO CHRIST

‘Prophecy, whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place.’

2Pe 1:19 Such is St. Peter’s description of prophecy. He speaks of certain dark spots covering the earth, and scattered over the surface of humanity, upon which a sudden light has burst; just as on a spring day a beam of sunshine will force its way through a reft in the obscuring clouds.

I. This light is prophecy.—What the ‘dark places’ are we need not doubt. The writings of Jew and Gentile alike tell us this. These convince us that men were then living who were like ourselves in every respect, anxious to know the truth, having thoughts and aspirations similar to our own; men who realised to themselves the warfare between the spirit and the flesh, the spiritual and the natural man; who knew as well as we do (though they spoke of it in different language) the keen strife which is carried on within the man between good and evil, and wondered which of the two would be triumphant. These men longed to know the issue of the conflict between right and wrong, and these yearnings are evidence that the ‘dark places’ existed. To these longings we may say, without the least hesitation, ‘Prophecy was as a light that shineth in a dark place.’ All doubts, all difficulties could be resolved by the light which was thrown by the Holy Ghost, ‘Who spake by the prophets.’ Such we may presume to have been the use of prophecy in the dark times that prevailed before the coming of Christ. Prophecy was a light which guided the erring into the truth, and assured the doubters that He Whom they sought was not far from them if haply they might feel ‘after Him and find Him.’

II. And at the time when Christ came, and in the early Apostolic age, when, undoubtedly, this remarkable Epistle of St. Peter was written, prophecy had still its function to fulfil. Otherwise why should St. Peter have added the words ‘whereunto ye do well that ye take heed’? There were at that time both Jews and Christians to whom prophecy was a ‘light.’ There can be no doubt about this; for—

(a) The Jews saw in their dissensions, which marked the concluding years of the existence of Jerusalem, the clearest signs of the decay of Israel, so far as it had existed as a nation.

(b) And to the Christian in the Apostolic age prophecy also had its message.—Of course, inasmuch as the greater part of the earlier Christians were converts from Judaism, the prophecies, whether typical or verbal, were cited by the Apostolic teachers in such a way as to convince them of the identity of the two covenants, the Gospels of the Old and New Testaments respectively. This is evident to any careful reader of the Epistles to the Romans and to the Hebrews.

III. If we turn from the Apostolic age to the writings of Christian teachers in the second century of the Christian era, you will notice that a very striking use of prophecy is made, when the prophetical words of the Old Testament are cited to those who had been brought up from their infancy in the Christian faith. When no controversy existed between Jews and Christians it may be said, as a general rule, that the ‘prophecy’ of the Old Testament is quoted just as any book of the New. ‘Prophecy’ is employed, just as the Gospels or Apostolical writings are, to show the importance of some Christian virtue or some article of Christian faith. Throughout the writings of the so-called Apostolic Fathers there is not a single passage cited from the prophets as evidence of the supernatural character of the Kingdom of Christ. That was taken for granted as a fact, thoroughly accepted by those to whom these early letters were written. In other words, in early Christian times prophecy was not used for controversial purposes, it was employed simply to show people the importance of practical religion.

IV. Prophecy has not even now lost one jot or tittle of its importance.—It continues to be a light which guides men to Christ, and keeps them with Him. And this it does, not only because the predictions contained in prophecy declare that God is the Author of prophecy, but because the prophecies themselves imply the presence of Christ with His prophets. Prediction is indeed evidential, but prophecy is such in a far higher sense. For prediction only teaches us that there is such a supernatural fact as that God has revealed the future to man. It shows us that God did not leave Himself without witness to the truth, either in the land of Balaam the alien, or that of Isaiah the Jew. The power of prediction, like that of miracles, was only incidental to the prophetical office. Prediction was not the essence of prophecy, but only subsidiary to it, as a sign to unbelievers. But to us prophecy is as the light that guides us to Christ, because each page of prophecy, whether predictive or not, argues the presence of Christ with the prophets.

Illustration

‘If the prophecies are to be a light to us, beware lest that light be quenched. St. Paul has an important text which may be applied as a caution to all who study their Bibles with minuteness. “If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?” If a life is spent in mere textual or verbal criticism, what is gained if the Divine words are not realised in the heart? What does a man gain if he succeeds in assigning to the various sections of the Bible dates which will satisfy the opinions of others besides himself, unless those words which he handles so lightly, and perhaps flippantly, have some effect upon his life? The Bible cannot be studied too critically, too minutely, but let every one who ventures on that task remember the two inspired cautions: “If the whole body were an eye, where were the hearing?” “Ye do well that ye take heed [unto prophecy], as a light that shineth in a dark place.” ’



HOW THE SCRIPTURES WERE WRITTEN

‘Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.’

2Pe 1:21 Here we have the apostolic definition of the work of inspiration, and by that definition we are taught that there are two distinct elements to be considered, the Divine and the human; the Divine, for the Holy Ghost moved the writers; and the human, for the communication did not come as a direct voice from heaven, but holy men spake as they were moved. In order therefore fully to investigate the subject, it will be necessary to examine: (1) the Divine element; (2) the human element; and (3) the combination of the two.

I. The Divine element.—I need scarcely say that this Divine element is the great subject of modern controversy. But I hope we may meet the points more especially agitated, by considering four questions:—

(a) Does it extend over the whole book? We have no right to pick and choose amongst the various portions of the Word of God. The whole is arranged as a whole for the accomplishment of God’s great purpose, the whole is included in ‘the Scriptures,’ and the parts are so interwoven one with another, and so beautifully fitted into each other by God’s Divine hand, that there will be found ultimately to be no intermediate path between receiving the whole as the Word of God, or sweeping away the whole and launching forth on a sea of scepticism, without a Bible, without a Saviour, and, as the last step, without a God.

(b) Is it equal? So far as the authorship is concerned, we find no distinction whatever. All alike is called ‘Scripture’; all ‘the Word of God’; all is included in the statement, ‘Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, that we through patience and comfort of the Scripture might have hope’; and all is stamped by Divine authority in the words, ‘All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.’

(c) Is it verbal? It is our privilege to regard the whole as one, to receive the whole with equal reverence, and to accept the whole, prediction, psalm, history, facts, thoughts, and words, as the inspired Word of the living God. But the question of verbal inspiration is not the one really at issue. For no one believes that, if there be any accuracy, it took place in the words only. It must have taken place in the thoughts, in the matter, in the facts. If, e.g., there is a variation between St. Matthew and St. Luke, no one supposes that they meant to convey the same thoughts, but made a mistake in accidentally selecting different words. The real point of the controversy is the infallible accuracy of the matter.

(d) Is it infallible? The testimony of our Lord Himself is sufficient. Witness two passages—the one referring to a nice point in a quotation from the Psalms (Joh 10:35 ); the other to the whole Word in its sanctifying power (Joh 17:17 ). Now what is His language? In the one, ‘The Scripture cannot be broken’; in the other, ‘Thy word is truth.’ With these statements of our Blessed Lord, I am content to leave the subject. In the words of Scripture, I believe that God Himself has spoken to man, and therefore, in the midst of all the world’s disappointments, and in all the failures of even the Church of God, we have here that on which the soul may calmly, peacefully, and fearlessly repose. And whether we look at history or prediction, at promises or judgments, at prophecies understood by those who uttered them, or language veiled in mystery until the Divine purpose is developed in history, we receive the whole as inviolable truth, for all has the stamp of the Spirit Himself, and all is given by inspiration of God. We receive it, we honour it, we submit to it, we acknowledge its Divine authority, and welcome with heartfelt thanksgiving its infallible promises. Yes, we receive it not merely with the deepest conviction of our most deliberate judgment, but we welcome it to our soul with all the deep feelings of a thankful heart, and say with the inspired Psalmist, ‘Thy word is very pure, therefore Thy servant loveth it.’

II. The human element.—But there is a human element in the book as well as a Divine. ‘Holy men spake as they were moved.’ The human authorship is as prominent and conspicuous as the Divine, and any theory of inspiration which excludes it is, I cannot but think, opposed to the facts of Scripture.

(a) There is distinctive character in the different writers. Compare St. Paul and St. John, St. Peter and St. James, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and you see the most transparent variety, a variety which renders it impossible to suppose that they were merely pens, machines, or copyists.

(b) There is the use of natural powers or gifts. St. Paul was a well-educated, intellectual man, with great reasoning powers, so he supported truth by argument. David was a poet, so he breathed out as the sweet psalmist of Israel the hallowed outpourings of a sanctified heart.

(c) There is the use of feeling. All the emotions of the human heart may be found in Scripture.

(d) There is the use of memory. Our Lord’s promise to His Apostles in Joh 14:26 applies clearly to this point, and shows that the gift of the Holy Ghost, so far from superseding memory, would quicken it, and give it the power of recalling with accuracy the words entrusted to it. ‘He shall bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’

(e) There was also the use of personal experience, as, e.g., when St. John said, ‘The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory’ (Joh 1:14 ); and again, ‘That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you’ (1Jn 1:1 ; 1Jn 1:3 ).

(f) There was the diligent use of collected information. See St. Luk 1:1-3 , where St. Luke does not claim to write original matter, but to have received it from those who from the beginning were eye-witnesses, and ministers of the Word.

III. The Divine and the human element.—How is the union to be explained?

(a) Not by supposing that the writers were mere pens, or machines. This is sometimes termed the mechanical theory, but it is clearly inconsistent with facts. Pens never think, argue, remember, weep, or rejoice, and all these things were done by the writers of Scripture.

(b) Not by supposing them to be mere copyists or amanuenses employed to write down the words of the Spirit, as Baruch took down the words of Jeremiah. This may have been the case when they received direct communication, as when Moses wrote out the ten commandments at the dictation of God; but it will not apply to inspiration, as it gives no scope for variety of character. The one dictating mind would be the only one to appear on such a theory.

(c) We will not attempt to explain it by constructing any artificial theories as to the action of the Spirit on the mind of men. Some have endeavoured to classify the modes in which they consider the Spirit may have acted, as, e.g., supervision, elevation, direction, and suggestion. All this may be right, and it may be wrong; for we are taught (Heb 1:1 ) not merely that God spake in divers times, but in divers manners unto the fathers by the prophets. But all such distinctions are unsupported by Scripture, and therefore we may leave them.

Remember that there are two channels through which God has manifested His will, viz. the incarnate Word and the written Word; and surely we are justified in expecting that there will be something of the same character in the two manifestations.

Rev. Canon Edward Hoare.




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Rights in the Authorized (King James) Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Published by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.
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