Practical Commentary of 1 Peter Volume 2, Commentary · Chapter 2 · Verse 4
Verse 6.
6. For, for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.
IT is a thing of prime concernment for a Christian to be rightly inform'd, and frequently remembred, what is the true estate and nature of a Christian, for this the Multitude of those that bear that name, either knows not, or commonly forgets, and so is carried away with the vain fancies and mistakes of the World. The Apostle hath charactered Christianity very clearly to us in this place, by that which is the very nature of it, conformity with Christ, and that which is necessarily consequent upon that, disconformity with the World And as the nature, and natural properties of things hold universally, thus it is in those that in all ages are effectually called by the Gospel, are moulded and framed thus by it; thus it was, says the Apostle, with your Brethren, that are now at rest, as many as received the Gospel, and for this end was it preacht to them, that they might be judg'd according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.
We have first here, the preaching of the Gospel, or suitable means to a certain end. 2. The express Nature of that end.
1. For this Cause] There is a particular end, and that very important, which the preaching of the Gospel is aimed at; this end many consider not, hearing it, as if it were to no end, not propounding a fixed determined end in our hearing. This therefore is to be considered by those that preach this Gospel, that they aim right in it at this end and no other, no self end: The legal Priests not to be squint eyed, nor evangelical Ministers thus squinting to base gain, vain applause; and also that they make it their study to find in themselves this work, this living to God; otherwise they cannot skillfully nor faithfully apply their gifts to this effect on their hearers, and therefore acquaintance with God most necessary.
How sounds it to many of us at the least, but as a well couched story, whose use is to amuse us, and possibly delight us a little, and there is an end, and indeed no end, and turns the most serious and most glorious of all Messages unto an empty sound; and if we awake and give it hearing it is much, but for any thing further, how few deeply before hand consider, I have a dead heart, therefore will I go unto the word of Life, that it may be quickened; it is frozen, I will go and lay it before the warm Beams of that Sun that shines in the Gospel; my corruptions mighty and strong, and grace (if any) exceeding weak, there is in the Gospel a power to weaken and to kill sin, and to strengthen grace, and this being the intent of my wise God in appointing it, it shall be my desire and purpose in resorting to it, to find it to me according to his gracious intendment, to have faith in my Christ, the Fountain of my Life, more enabled, and more active in drawing from him; to have my heart more refined and spiritualized, and to have the Sluse of Repentance opened, and my Affections to Divine things enlarged, more hatred of sin, and more love of God, and communion with him.
Ask your selves concerning former times, and to take your selves even now, enquire within, why came I hither this day? what had I in mine eye and desires this morning ere I came forth, and in my way as I was coming? did I seriously propound an end or no, and what was my end? Nor doth the meer custome of mentioning this in prayer satisfie the question; for this, as other such things usually do in our hand, may turn to a lifeless form and have no heat of spiritual affection; none of David's panting and breathing after God in his ordinances: such desires as will not be still'd without a measure of attainment, as the Childs desire of the breast; as our Apostle resembles it, chap. 2.
And then again, being returned home, reflect on your hearts, much hath been heard, but is there any thing done by it, have I gained my point? it was not to pass a little time simply that I went, or to pass it with delight in hearing, rejoycing in that light as they did in S. Iohn Baptists, for a season [foreign] as long as the hour lasts, it was not to have my earpleased, but my heart changed, not to learn some new notions, and carry them cold in my head, but to be quickened and purified and renewed in the Spirit of my mind? is this done? think I now more esteemingly of Christ, and the life of faith, and the happiness of a Christian? and are such thoughts solid and abiding with me? what sin have I left behind? what Grace of the Spirit have I brought home? or what new degree or at least new desire of it, a living desire that will follow its point? Oh! this were good repetition.
A strange folly of multitudes of us to set our selves no mark, to propound no end in the hearing of the Gospel. The Merchant sails not only that he may sail, but for traffick, and trafficks that he may be rich. The Husband Man plows not only to keep himself busie with no further end, but plows that he may sow, and sows that he may reap with advantage, and shall we do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitlesly, hear only to hear, and look no further. This is indeed a a great vanity, and a great misery, to lose that labour, and gain nothing by it, which duly used would be of all others most advantageous and gainful, and yet all meetings are full of this.
Now when you come, this is not simply to hear a discourse and relish or dislike it in hearing: But a matter of life and death, of eternal death and eternal life, and the spiritual life, begot and nourisht by the word, is the beginning of that eternal life. Follows,
To them that are dead.] By which, I conceive, he intends such as had heard and believed the Gospel, when it came to them, and now were dead. And this, I think, he doth to strengthen these brethren to whom he writes, to commend the Gospel to this intent, and not to think the condition and end of it hard. As our Saviour mollifies the matter of outward sufferings thus, so persecuted they the Prophets that were before you. And the Apostle afterwards in this Chapter uses the same reason in that same subject: so here, that they might not judge the point of mortification he presses, so grievous as naturally Men will do, he tells, them it is the constant end of the Gospel, and they that have been saved by it, went that same way he points out to them. They that are dead before you, died this way that I press on you, before they died, and the Gospel was preached to them for that very end.
Men pass away and others succeed, but the Gospel is still the same, hath the same tenour, and substance, and the same ends. As Solomon speaks of the Heaven's, and Earth, that remain the same while one Generation passes and another cometh; the Gospel surpasses both in its stability, as our Saviour testifies, they shall pass away but not one Iot of this Word. And indeed they wear and wax old, as the Apostle teaches us; but the Gospel is from one Age to another of most unalterable integrity, hath still the same vigour and powerful influence, as at the first.
They that formerly received the Gospel, it was upon these terms; therefore think them not hard: and they are now dead, all the difficulty of that work of dying to sin is now over with them; if they had not died to their sins by the Gospel, they had died in them, after a while, and so died eternally; it is therefore a wise prevention, to have sin judged and put to death in us before we die, if we die in them and with them, we and our sin perish together, if we will not part, but if it die first before us then we live for ever.
And what think you, of thy carnal will and all the delights of sin? What is the longest term of its life? uncertain it is, but most certainly very short: thou and these pleasures must be severed and parted within a little time, however thou must dye and then they dye, and you never meet again. Now were it not the wisest course to part a little sooner with them, and let them dye before thee, that thou mayest inherit eternal life and eternal delights in it, pleasures for evermore. Its the only bargain and let us delay it no longer.
This is our season of enjoying the sweetness of the Gospel, others heard it before us in our rooms that now we fill, and now they are removed, and remove we must shortly, and leave this same room to others, to speak and hear in. It is high time we were considering what we do here, to what end we speak and hear, and to lay hold on that Salvation that is held forth unto us; and that we lay hold on it, let go our hold of sin, and those perishing things that we hold so firm and cleave so fast to, do they that are dead who heard and obeyed the Gospel now repent their repentance, and mortifying the flesh, or do they not think ten thousand times more pains, were it for many Ages, all to little for a moment of that which now they enjoy and shall enjoy to eternity. And they that are dead who heard the Gospel and slighted it, if such a thing might be, what would they give for one of these opportunities that now we daily have, and daily lose, and have no fruit nor esteem of them. You have lately seen many of you, and you that shifted the sight, have heard of numbers cut off in a little time, whole families swept away by the late stroke of God's hand; many of which did think no other but that they might have still been with you here in this place, and exercise at this time and many years after this; and yet who hath laid to heart the lengthning out of their day, and considered it more as an opportunity of that higher and happier life, than as a little protracting of this wretched life which is hastening to an end. Oh! therefore be intreated to day, while it is day, not to harden your hearts: though the Pestilence doth not now affright you so, yet that standing mortality, and the decay of these earthen lodges, tells us that shortly we shall cease to preach and hear this Gospel. Did we consider, it would excite us to more earnest search after our evidences of that eternal life that is set before us in the Gospel, and we would seek it in the characters of that spiritual life, which is the beginning of it within us, and is wro…ght by the Gospel in all the heirs of Salvation.
Think therefore wisely of these things. (1.) What's the proper end of the Gospel. (2.) Of the approaching end of thy days, and let thy certainty of this drive thee to seek more certainty of the other, that thou maist partake of it, and then this again will make the thoughts of the other sweet to thee; that visage of death, that is so terrible to unchanged sinners, shall be amiable to thine eye, having found a Li…e in the Gospel as happy and lasting as this is miserable and vanishing, and seeing the perfection of that life on the other side of death, will long for the passage.
Be more serious in this matter of daily hearing the Gospel, why it is sent to thee, and what it brings, and think, it is too long I have flighted its Message, and many that have done so, are cut off, and shall hear it no more, I have it once more inviting me, and it may be this may be the last to me, and in these thoughts ere you come, bow your knee to the Father of Spirits, that this one thing may be granted you, that your Souls may find at length the lively and mighty power of his Spirit upon yours, in the hearing of this Gospel, that you may be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.
Thus is the particular nature of that end exprest and without the noise of various senses, intends, I conceive, no other, but the dying to the World and sin, and living unto God, which is the Apostle's main subject, and scope in the foregoing Discourse, that death was before called a suffering in the flesh, which is in effect the same: and therefore though the words may be drawn another way, yet its strange that Interpreters have been so far wide of this their genuine and agreeable sense, and almost all of them taken in some other intendment.
To be judged in the flesh] In the present sense is to die to sin, or that sin die in us, and its thus exprest. 1. Suitably tably to the nature of it, it is to the flesh, a violent death, and it is according to a Sentence judicially put against it, that guilty and miserable life of sin is in the Gospel adjudged to death, there that arrest and sentence is clear and full, Rom. 6. 6, &c. 8. 13. That sin must die, that the Soul may live, it must be crucified in us, and we to it, that we may partake of the Life of Christ and Happiness in him. And this is called to be judged in the flesh, to have this sentence executed, 2. The thing is the rather spoke here under the term of being judged, in counter-ballance of that Judgment mentioned immediately before, v. 5. The last Judgment, of quick and dead, wherein they that would not be thus judged, but mockt and despised those that were, shall fall under a far more terrible Judgment, and the sentence of a heavy death, indeed everlasting death: though they think they shall escape and enjoy liberty in living in sin. And that, to be judged according to men; is, I conceive, added, to signifie the connaturalness of the life of sin to man's now corrupt nature. That men do judge it a death indeed to be severed and pulled from their sins, and that a cruel death; and the Sentence of it in the Gospel a heavy Sentence, a hard Saying to a carnal Heart, that he must give up with all his sinful delights, must die indeed in self-denial, must be separated from himself, which is to die, if he will be joyned with Christ, and live in him. Thus men judge that they are judged to a painful death by the Sentence of the Gospel, although it is, that they may truely and happily live, yet they understand it not so. They see the death, the parting with sin, and all its pleasures: but the life they see not, nor can any know it till partaking of it; it is known to him in whom it is, it is hid with Christ in God: And therefore the opposition here is very fi…ly thus represented, that the death is according to men in the flesh; but the life is according to God in the Spirit.
As the Christian is adjudged to this death in the flesh by the Gospel, so he is lookt on and accounted by carnal men as dead: for that he enjoyes not with them what they esteem their life, and think they could not live without it, one that cannot carrouse and swear with prophane Men, is a silly dead Creature, good for nothing; and he that can bear wrongs, and love him that injured him, is a poor spiritless fool, hath no mettal nor life in him in the World's account, thus is he judged according to men in the flesh, he is as a dead man, but lives according to God in the Spirit, dead to men and alive to God, as ver. 2.
Now if this life be in thee, it will act: all life is in motion, and is called an act; but most of all active is this most excellent, and, as I may call it, most lively life, it will be moving towards God; often seeking to him, making still towards him as its principle and fountain, holy and affectionate thoughts of him: sometimes on one of his sweet attributes, sometimes on another, as the Bee amongst the Flowers. And as it will thus act within, so outwardly laying hold on all occasions: yea, seeking out ways and opportunities to be serviceable to thy Lord, employing all for him, commending and extolling his goodness, doing and suffering chearfully for him, laying out the strength of desires, and parts, and means in thy station to gain him Glory. If thou be alone, then not alone, but with him; seeking to know more of him, and be made more like him; if in company, then casting about how to bring his name in esteem, and to draw others to a love of Religion and Holiness by Speeches as it may be …it, and most by the true behaviour of thy carriage. Tender over the Souls of others to do them good to thy utmost, thinking each day an hour lost when thou art not busie for the honour and advantage of him to whom thou now livest: thinking in the Morning, now what may I do this day for my God? How may I most please and glorifie him, and use my strength and wit, and my whole self as not mine but his? and then in the evening, reflecting, O Lord, have I seconded these thoughts in reality? what glory hath he had by me this day? whither went my thoughts and endeavours? what busied them most? have I been much with God? have I adorned the Gospel in my converse with others? And if finding any thing done this way, to bless and acknowledge him the spring and worker of it. If any step aside, were it but to an appearance of evil, or if any fit season of good hath escapt thee unprofitably, to check thy self, and to be grieved for thy sloth and coldness, and see if more love would not beget more diligence.
Try it by sympathy and antipathy, which follows the nature of things, as we see in some Plants and Creatures that cannot grow, cannot agree together, and others that do favour and benefit mutually. If thy Soul hath an aversion and reluctancy against holiness, this is an evidence of this new Nature and Life. Thy heart rises against wicked ways and speeches, oaths and cursings, and rotten communication; yea, thou canst not endure unworthy discourses wherein most spend their time, findest no relish in the unsavory societies of such as know not God, canst not sit with vain persons; but findest a delight in those that have the image of God upon them, such as partake of that Divine Life, and carry the evidences of it in their carriage. David did not disdain the fellowship of the Saints, and that was no disparagement to him, he implies in the name he gives them, Psal. 16. The excellent ones, the Magnifick or Noble; and that word is taken from one that signifies a robe or noble Garment, so he thought them Nobles and Kings as well as he, and had robes royal, and therefore Companions of Kings. A spiritual eye looks on spiritual dignity, and esteems and loves them that are born of God, how low soever be their natural birth and breeding. The Sons of God have of his Spirit in them, and are born to the same inheritance where all shall have enough; and they are tending homewards by the conduct of the same Spirit that is in them, so that there must be amongst them a real complacency and delight in one another.
And then consider the temper of thy heart towards spiritual things, the Word and ordinances of God, if thou dost esteem highly of them and delight in them; that there is a compliance of thy heart with Divine Truths; somthing in thee that suits and sides with them against thy corruptions. That in thy affliction thou seekest not to the puddles of earthly comforts, but hast thy recourse to the sweee Christal Streams of the Divine Promises, and findest refreshment in them. It may be at sometimes in a spiritual distemper, holy exercises and ordinances will not have that present sensible sweetness to a Christian, that he desires, and some will for a long time lie under dryness and deadness this way, yet there is here an evidence of this spiritual life, that thou stayest by thy Lord and reliest on him; and will not leave these holy means how sapless soever to thy sense for the present: thou findest for a long time little sweetness in prayer, yet thou prayest still; and when thou canst say nothing yet offerest to it, and lookest towards Christ thy life; thou doest not turn away from these things to seek consolation else where, knowest life is in Christ, and will stay till he refresh thee with new and lively influence, its not any where but in him. As St. Peter said, Lord whether should we go, thou hast the words of eternal life.
Consider thy self, if thou hast any knowledge of the growth or deficiences of this spiritual life, for it is here but begun and breaths in an air contrary to it, and lodges in an house that often smoaks and darknes it. Canst thou go on in formal performances from one year to another, and no advancement in the inwards of Grace, and restest content with that? it is no good sign. But art thou either gaining victories over sin, and further strength of faith, and love, and other graces, or at least art earnest seeking these, and bewailing thy wants, and disappointments of this kind, then thou livest. At the worst wouldest thou rather grow this way, be further off from sin and nearer God, than grow in thy estate or credit or honours? esteemest thou more of grace than of the whole World? There is life at the root; although thou findest not that flourishing thou desirest, yet the desire of it is life in thee: and if growing this way, art thou content, whatsoever is thy outward estate? Canst thou solace thy self in the love and goodness of thy God, though the World frowns on thee? art thou not able to take comfort in the smiles of the World when his face is hid? this tells thee thou livest, and he is thy life.
Although many Christians have not so much sensible joy, yet they account spiritual joy and the light of God's countenance the only true joy, and all other without it madness, and they cry, and sigh, and attend for it; mean while not only duty, and hopes of better, but even love to God, makes them to be so, to serve and please and glorifie him to their utmost. And this is not a dead resting without God, but it is a stable compliance with his will in the highest point, waiting for him and living by faith, which is most acceptable to him; in a word, whether in sensible comfort or without it, still this is the fixed thought of a believing Soul, its good for me to draw nigh to God, only good; and will not live in a willing estrangedness from him, what way soever he is pleased to deal with …
Now for the entertaining and strengthning this life, which is the great business, and care of all that have it, beware of omitting and interrupting these spiritual means, that do provide it and nourish it. Little neglects of that kind will draw one greater, and great neglects will make great abatements of vigour and liveliness. Take heed of using holy things coldly, and lazily without affection; that will make them fruitless and our life will not be advantaged by them, unless used in a lively way. Be active in all good within thy reach, as this is a sign, so its a helper and friend to it. A slothful unstirring life will make a sickly unhealthful life. Motion purifies and sharpens the Spirits, and makes Men robust and vigorous.
2. Beware of admitting a correspondence with any sin, yea do not so much as discourse familiarly with it, or look kindly toward it, for that will undoubtedly cast a damp upon thy Spirit, and diminish thy Graces at least, and will obstruct thy Communion with God; thou knowest (that hast any knowledge of this life) that thou canst not go to him with that sweet freedom thou wert wont, after thou hast been but tampering or parlying with any of thy old loves. Oh! do not make so foolish a bargain as to prejudge the least of thy spiritual comfort, for the greatest and longest continued enjoyments of sin, that are base, and but for a season.
But wouldest thou grow upwards in this life? have much recourse to Jesus Christ thy head, the spring from whom flow the animal Spirits, that quicken thy Soul. Wouldest thou know more of God? he it is that reveals the Father, and reveals him as his Father, and in him thy Father, and that's the sweet notion of God. Wouldest thou overcome thy lusts further? our victory is in him, apply his conquest, We are more than Conquerors, through him that loved us? wouldest thou be more replenisht with graces, and spiritual affections? his fulness is for that use open to us, life and more life in him, and for us, this was his business here, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly.