CHAP. I 1-5.
We have already noticed that the epistle is addressed to Jewish Christians, but the second verse calls them "elect;" and then follows a remarkable outline of the work of the Trinity. Election is according to the foreknowledge of God the Father; sanctification is by the Spirit; and that sanctification is unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.
As to works of law, all was lost; the works of the flesh were unholy ; but by the Father's counsels and choice, and the Spirit's inward work in the new birth, and the cleansing of the blood of Jesus. they were set apart to the path of obedience.
The effect of the Spirit's work in the new birth is a nature that is holy-a being who is pure and holy:" Seeing ye have purified your souls (5:22) in obeying the truth through the Spirit,"-that is, as in John 3:, we are born of water (obedience to the truth) and of the Spirit. Thus the sanctification of the second verse and the purification of the twenty-second verse refer to the holy nature we. receive when born of God. It is by the Spirit we are sanctified in the second verse, by the truth, and by the Spirit we are purified in the twenty-second verse, and correspondingly in Jno. 15:3-" Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you."
The seed in the good ground is the Word received when the will is broken. This is at once repentance toward God and faith toward Christ; and this work is wrought by the Spirit; and we have a new nature according to which we delight in obedience and love, whereas the mind of the flesh is enmity to God and to one's neighbor.
Therefore in ver. 22, those who have been thus purified by the new birth are to walk according to it:" See that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently." In ver. 22, it is obedience which is toward God; here, it is love which is toward one another-fruits of the new life to the glory of our
God, and for our joy and blessing. How great the contrast to the works of the flesh, which have filled the world, and, alas! the Church too, with shame and sorrow! But in the contrast shines the glory of God. "Unto obedience" (5:I), "as obedient children" (5:14), and "obeying the truth" (5:22) show obedience to be the character of faith,-as in Rom. 16:26, the gospel is made known to all nations " for the obedience of faith."
We must distinguish between the sanctifying of the Spirit and the Spirit indwelling. The Holy Spirit comes to abide in the one who is already sanctified, as Jehovah came to dwell in the temple when it had been built and set apart to God. We are born of the Spirit on believing,-that is, we are by the Spirit (as by the blood and by the water- the Word) set apart, or sanctified, to God from the evil nature within and from the world without, when born of God,-that is, when we believe on Christ.
Now we are prepared for the Spirit to come and dwell in us as His temple, as in Eph. 1:13-"In whom after that ye believed," or, as it should be, " In whom having believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise." This is the order of Scripture:First, born of the Spirit on believing (and in effect sanctified), then also indwelt, or sealed, by the Spirit; but the latter truth is not a doctrine of the apostle Peter in these epistles, though implied in chap. 1:13.
" Sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood " has its type in Lev. 8:30-" And Moses took of the anointing oil (type of the Spirit), and of the blood which was upon the altar, and sprinkled it upon Aaron, and upon his garments, and upon his sons, and upon his sons' garments with him; and sanctified Aaron, and his garments, and his sons, and his sons' garments with him." But in Lev. 14:14 the order is different:First, the blood; then, the oil upon the blood afterward ; because there it is a type, not of the sanctifying of the Spirit, but of the sealing of the Spirit upon one already sanctified.
The doctrine of election according to the foreknowledge of God the Father is here presented. It is full of solemnity and of tenderness of love. " Many are called, but few are chosen." The solemn reality is, that all naturally with one consent refuse (Luke 14:18); and it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy (Rom. 9:). But how precious to the believer to know that he was chosen-that he is the object of the Father's love, "as the elect of God, holy and beloved." (Col. 3:) " This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found."
There is tenderness of love in this, and the effect in the believer who knows this love is, to work affections that correspond,-" Put on, therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind." It is as we know and enjoy the "electing grace of God, and the Father's love in Christ, that we become worshipers in spirit and in truth. We become worshipers toward God ; and toward one another, ministers of love and of good; and there is no other power for this in the world but the sovereign electing grace of God by which we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love. Unbelief will question, and harden the heart; but faith rests in the love of God, and worships Him, and rejoices.
Does this show indifference to others-to the world-to the lost? Nay, it is the very power of ministry to others, and has been for these eighteen hundred years; for whence has the gospel gone out to the whole world? Was it by the law? No, but from those who had known this grace, and could not but make it known to others. Am I saved ? I rejoice to know it was only grace that did it. Have I neighbors unsaved? The word is, "Preach the gospel unto every creature;" "and whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely" (Rev. 22:17); for God "would have all men to be saved, . . . for there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus" (i Tim. 2:4); and yet ".strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, that leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it."
Here the reasoning mind will adopt one extreme or another error, but faith embraces and holds to the truth which makes equally plain the love and grace of God, and the righteous judgment of God, and man's responsibility. Faith believes that God is good, and that He forgives the repentant sinner; that He is just, and that He will judge the evil-doer. This is to the glory of God; and thus He reveals Himself in His Word, and faith delights in His Word, and will refuse to reason against it, but will receive all sides of the truth in its fullness.
Those that believe are saved; but such are born of God-born again. They enter into a new life, which could not be by law,-that is, by works; for works can only be according to the life already there-the fruit is according to the tree; but children of God are "born, not of blood (not of Abraham, for example), nor of the will of the flesh (not of works), nor of the will of man (by no power in man, Jew or Gentile), but of God." (Jno. 1:13.)
How great a revelation (see Gal. 3:23), then, to these Jewish Christians, to have the heart lifted up from works of law, which tell us only of sin and shortcoming, to the knowledge that we are the elect of God the Father, the work His, and the glory His forever, to us the joy of worship and thanksgiving forever, and willing service!
" Grace unto you, and peace be multiplied," is His salutation. This is the good-will of God for us as we read and hear His Word; and each moment of our lives, we stand in grace (Rom. 5:2); but we also need grace ministered to us to sustain us (Heb. 4:16); and peace is supplied to us from on high, to keep the feet, to keep the heart, in the difficult ways of the great and terrible wilderness. Like the diver, our life is sustained from above. The words "be multiplied" are peculiar to these two epistles, and are perhaps added because we are here being prepared for the fiery furnace and varied testings of the wilderness more than in other epistles (chap. 1:7, 17; 2:20; 3:13; 4:12; 5:10). From the annoyances and sufferings of a servant in a household, to the extreme of sufferings, grace is multiplied to the Christian through all, that the soul may be kept in peace, and the Lord's name be glorified in us.
Let us picture to our minds a people of old drawing near to a mount that burned with fire, and to blackness and darkness and tempest, and a voice that made them tremble, and what a contrast to the salutation we are considering-"grace and peace"! In the one case, we have what man is before a holy God; in the other, what God is in grace for man. The Christian needs to lay firmly hold of grace, for it is not only peace to the soul, but the power for holiness. (See Rom. 6:)
And now the apostle who had once looked into the empty tomb in doubt and perplexity, breaks forth into praise and blessing, that by the resurrection of Christ from the dead they had been called to a new and living and heavenly hope that could never perish. All is of grace now, and in the hands of God-the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who had wrought this salvation in His abounding mercy, and a heavenly and unfading inheritance is reserved for us, and we, by God's power, through faith, are kept for it. It is through faith, but the power is of God from first to last (Rom. 1:16; Heb. 7:25 ; 2 Tim. 1:8, 9).
The salvation is not yet revealed, but it is ready to be in the last time. When the Lord ascended, may we not say our place there was prepared-our salvation was ready to be revealed ? It was " when He had by Himself purged our sins " that He " sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high." (Heb. 1:3.) Therefore His appearance in the presence of God for us (9:24) meant, a place prepared for us. But when this salvation shall be revealed, we shall appear with Him in glory.
We are saved now, as regards the soul (5:9; 2 Tim. 1:9), but the Church is not yet delivered out of this scene of humiliation (Rom. 8:18) as it will be at the Lord's second coming. In that sense, our salvation is future.
The saint who dies rests from conflict, and enjoys the presence of the Lord; but the salvation we look for will be when the dead saints are raised and the living ones changed, and all are together caught up into the air, to be forever with the Lord, with bodies of glory like to His (i Thess. 4:15; Phil. 3:21) at His second coming. For this we should be watching hourly. It will not be the end of the world, but the end of this present period of grace, during which the Church is being gathered out, and after which apostate Christendom will be given up to delusion (2 Thess. 2:), and the great tribulation will come upon the whole world (Rev. 3:10), to be followed by the millennium, or a thousand years of blessing, righteousness, and peace upon the earth, at the close of which will be the resurrection and judgment of the wicked before the great white throne and the beginning of eternity. (Rev. 19:; 20:)
The salvation, then, that we look for will be at the resurrection of the just (Acts 24:15), the resurrection of life (Jno. 5:28), the first resurrection (Rev. 20:), which precedes the second by more than a thousand years, and which is the ever-present blessed hope and expectation of the Church.
The Thessalonian saints were told to have on, for a, helmet, "the hope of salvation"-that is, the hope of deliverance by the Lord's coming, which is specially unfolded as a doctrine in first and second Thessalonians.
" Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection, on such the second death hath no power." May we be daily walking in newness of life, in the power of which, by the Spirit, the believer will enter into heavenly glory at the first resurrection, at the second coming of the Lord.
E. S. L.
(To be continued.)