The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. PeterLumby, J. Rawson (Joseph Rawson)
Religion
The Expositor's Bible: The Epistles of St. Peter
Lumby, J. Rawson (Joseph Rawson)
Bible. Peter -- Commentaries
such limits. The commission of the Master was, "Go ye forth into all
the world." All mankind are to be won for Him; all are embraced in the
name of brethren. For if they be not so now, it is our bounden duty to
endeavour that they shall be so. And in thus interpreting we have the
mind of Christ with us, who came to seek and to save them that were
lost, to die for the sins of the whole world, and who found His
brethren among every class who would hear His words and obey them. We
have with us, too, the acts of God Himself, who would have all men
come to the knowledge of the truth, and who, with impartial love,
maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth His
rain upon the just and the unjust, that thus even the evil and unjust
may be won to own His Fatherhood. Such Divine love is the end of the
commandment (1 Tim. i. 5), and terminates the list of those graces the
steps whereto St. Paul has more briefly indicated when he says the
love which is most like God's springs from a pure heart, a good
conscience, and faith unfeigned. In this way shall men be borne upward
into the hill of the Lord.
The knowledge of Christ is a lesson in which we cannot be perfected
till we behold Him as He is, but yet through it from the first we
receive the earnest and pledge of all that is meant by life and
godliness, and the culture of the Divine gifts will yield a rich
increase of the same knowledge. _For if these things are yours and
abound, they make you to be not idle nor unfruitful unto the knowledge
of our Lord Jesus Christ._ Men in this life can draw nearer unto this
full knowledge, and the bliss of each new gain prompts to more zealous
exertion. There can be no relaxation of effort, no remissness, in such
a quest. For hope is fostered by the constant experience of a
deepening knowledge, and receives continual pledges that the glory to
be revealed is far above what is already known. The enlightened vision
grows wider and ampler; and the path, which began in faith, shineth
more and more unto the perfect day. The world offers other lights to
its votaries, but they lead only into darkness. _For he that lacketh
these things is blind, seeing only what is near, having forgotten the
cleansing from his old sins._ He who has taken no heed to foster
within him the light which is kindled by faith, and which can only be
kept alive by the grace of the Divine Spirit, is blind, yea blind
indeed, for he is self-blinded. He has quenched the inward light which
was of God's free gift, and made the light within him to be darkness,
a darkness, like Egypt's, which may be felt. Such a man has no insight
into the glories of the celestial vision, no joy of the widening
prospect which captivates the gaze of the spiritual man. He can see
only things close at hand, and is as one bowed downward to the earth,
groping a dreary way, with neither hope nor exaltation at the end. For
he has forgotten--nay, St. Peter's words are stronger and very
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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