Practical Commentary of 1 Peter Volume 1, Chapter 1 · Verse 21
Verse 21.
Who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory that your Faith and hope might be in God.
NOW because 'tis Faith that gives the soul this particular title to Jesus Christ, the Apostle addes that, to declare who he meant by You; (sayes he) who by him do believe in God, &c.
Where we have. 1. The compleat Object of Faith. 2. The Ground, or Warrant of it. The object, God in Christ. The Ground or warrant, In that he raised him up from the dead and gave him glory.
A Man may have (living out of Christ) yea, he must, he cannot chuse but have a conviction within him that there is a God, and further he may have, even out of Christ, some kind of belief of those things that are spoken concerning God, but to repose on God, as his God, and his Salvation which is indeed to believe in him, this cannot be, but where Christ is the mids through which we look upon God; for so long as we look upon God through our own Guiltiness, we can see nothing, but his wrath, and apprehend him as an armed enemy, and be so far off from resting on him, as our happiness, that the more we view it, it puts us upon the more speed to fly from him, and to cry out, Who can dwell with Everlasting burnings, and abide with a consuming fire: But our Saviour taking sin out of the way, put himself betwixt our sins, and God, and so makes a wonderfull change of our apprehension of him. When you look through a red glass, the whole Heavens seem bloody: But through pure unco…our'd glass, you receive the clear light, that is so refreshing and comfortable to behold: When Sin unpardoned is betwixt, and we look on God through that, we can perceive nothing but Anger, and Enmity in his Countenance: But make Christ once the Medium, our pure Redeemer, and through him as clear transparent Glass, the beams of Gods favourable Countenance shine in upon the soul, the Father cannot look upon his wellbeloved son, but graciously and pleasingly. God lookes on us out of Christ, sees us rebels, and fit to be condemn'd, we look on God as being just and powerfull to punish us▪ but when Christ is betwixt, God looks on us in him, as justified, and we look on God in him as pacified, and see the smiles of his favourable countenance: Take Christ out, all is terrible; interpose him, all is full of peace. Therefore set him always betwixt, and by him we shall believe in God.
The warrant and ground of believing in God by him is this that God rais'd him from the dead, and gave him glory, which evidences the full satisfaction of his death, and in all that work both in his humiliation, and exaltation standing in our room, we may repute it his as ours: if all is payed that could be exacted of him, and therefore he set free from death, then are wee acquitted and have nothing to pay: If he was rais'd from the dead and exalted to glory then so shall we, he hath taken possession of that glory for us and we may judge our selves possessed in it, already, because he our head possesseth it. And this the last words of the Verse confirm to us, in meaning this to be the very purpose and end for which God having given him to death raised him up and gave him glory, its for this end expressly that our faith and hope might be in God: The last end is that we may have life and glory through him; the nearer end, that in the mean while, till we attain them, we may have firme belief and hope of them, and rest on God as the giver of them, and so in part enjoy them before hand, and be upheld in our joy and conflicts by the comfort of them; and as St. Steven in his vision, faith doth in a spirituall way look through all the visible heavens, and see Christ at the Fathers right hand, and is comforted by that in the greatest troubles, though it were amidst a showre of stones, as he. The comfort is no less than this, that being by faith made one with Christ, his present glory wherein he …its at the Fathers right hand is assurance to us, that where he is we shall be also.