Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John

Maclaren, Alexander

• Publisher: pubOne.info
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9782819903659

We are accustomed to confine the word to persons who tower above their brethren in holiness and manifest godliness and devoutness. The New Testament never does anything like that. Some people fancy that nobody can be a saint unless he wears a special uniform of certain conventional sanctities. The New Testament does not take that point of view at all, but regards all true believers in Jesus Christ as being, therein and thereby, saints.

I. We have, first, in verses 1 and 2, a general precept, based upon the

  broad view of Christ's earthly history. 'Christ hath suffered in the flesh.' That is the great fact which should shape the course of all His followers. But what does suffering in the flesh mean here? It does not refer only to the death of Jesus, but to His whole life. The phrase 'in the flesh' is reiterated in the context, and evidently is equivalent to 'during the earthly life.' Our Lord's life was, in one aspect, one continuous suffering, because He lived the higher life of the spirit. That higher life had to Him, and has to us, rich compensations; but it sets those who are true to it at necessary variance with the lower types of life common among men, and it brings many pains, all of which Jesus knew. The last draught from the cup was the bitterest, but the bitterness was diffused through all the life of the Man of Sorrows.

  That life is here contemplated as the pattern for all Christ's servants. Peter says much in this letter of our Lord's sufferings as the atonement for sin, but here he looks at them rather as the realised ideal of all worthy life. We are to be 'partakers of Christ's sufferings' (v. 13), and we shall become so in proportion as His own Spirit becomes the spirit which lives in us. If Jesus were only our pattern, Christianity would be a poor affair, and a gospel of despair; for how should we reach to the pure heights where He stood? But, since He can breathe into us a spirit which will hallow and energise our spirits, we can rise to walk beside Him on the high places of heroic endurance and of holy living. Very beautifully does Peter hint at our sore conflict, our personal defencelessness, and our all-sufficient armour, in the picturesque metaphor 'arm yourselves.' The 'mind of Christ' is given to us if we will. We can gird it on, and if we do, it will be as an impenetrable coat-of-mail, which will turn the sharpest arrows and resist the fiercest sword-cuts.

  The last clause of verse 1 is a parenthesis, and, if it is for the moment omitted, the sentence runs smoothly on, especially if the Revised Version's reading is adopted. The purpose of arming us with the same mind is that, whilst we live on earth, we should live according to the will of God, and should renounce 'the lusts of men,' which are in us as in all men, and which men who are not clad in the armour which Christ gives to us yield to.

  But what of the parenthetical statement? Clearly, the words which follow it forbid its being taken to mean that dead men do not sin. Rather the Apostle's thought seems to be that such suffering in daily life after Christ's pattern, and by His help, is at once a sign that the sufferer has shaken off the dominion of sin, and is a means of further emancipating him from it.

  But the two great thoughts in this paragraph are, that the Christian life is one in which God's will, and not man's desires, is the regulating force, and that the pattern of that life and the power to copy the pattern are found in Christ, the sufferer for righteousness' sake.

II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher

  life, follow, interwoven, as in the preceding verses, with a statement of the motives which make obedience to them possible to our weakness. The sins in view are those most closely connected with 'the flesh' in its literal meaning, amongst which are included 'abominable idolatries,' because gross acts of sensual immorality were inseparably intertwined with much of heathen worship. These sins of flesh were especially rampant among the luxurious Asiatic lands, to which this letter was addressed, but they flooded the whole Roman empire, as the works of poets like Martial and of moralists like Epictetus equally show. But New York or London could match the worst scenes in Rome or Ephesus, and perhaps would not be far behind the foul animalism of Sodom and Gomorrah. Lust and drunkenness are eating out the manhood of our race on both sides of the Atlantic, and, if we have 'the same mind' as the suffering Christ, we shall put on the armour for war to the knife with these in society, and for the rigid self-control of our own animal nature.

  Observe the strong motives which Peter just touches without expanding. A sad irony lies in his saying that the time past may suffice. The flesh had had enough of time given to it, – had not God a right to the rest? The flesh should have had none; it had had all too much. Surely the readers had had enough of the lower life, more than enough. Were they not sick of it, 'satisfied' even to disgust? Let us look back on our wasted years, and give no more precious moments to serve the corruptible flesh. Further, the life of submission to the animal nature is characteristic of 'the Gentiles,' and in sharp contrast, therefore, to that proper to Christ's followers. That is as true to-day, in America and England, as ever it was. Indeed, as wealth has increased, and so-called 'civilisation' has diffused material comforts, senseless luxury, gluttony, drunkenness, and still baser fleshy sins, have become more flagrantly common in society which is not distinctively and earnestly Christian; and there was never more need than there is to-day for Christians to carry aloft the flag of self-control and temperance in all things belonging to 'the flesh.'

  If we have the mind of Christ, we shall get the same treatment from the world which Peter says that the primitive Christians did from the idolaters round them. We shall be wondered at, just as a heathen stared with astonishment at this strange, new sect, which would have nothing to do with feasts and garlands and wine-cups and lust disguised as worship. The spectacle, when repeated to-day, of Christians steadfastly refusing to share in that lower life which is the only life of so many, is, perhaps, less wondered at now, because it is, thank God! more familiar; but it is not less disliked and 'blasphemed.' A total abstainer from intoxicants will not get the good word of the distiller or brewer or consumer of liquor. He will be called faddist, narrow, sour-visaged, and so on and so on. 'You may know a genius because all the dunces make common cause against him,' said Swift. You may know a Christian after Christ's pattern because all the children of the flesh are in league to laugh at him and pelt him with nicknames.

  Further, the thought of Christ as the judge should both silence the blasphemers and strengthen the blasphemed to endure. That judgment will vindicate the wisdom of those who sowed to the spirit and the folly of those who sowed to the flesh. The one will reap corruption; the other, life everlasting.

  The difficult verse 6 cannot be adequately dealt with here, but we may note that introductory 'for' shows that it, too, contains a motive urging to life, 'to the will of God,' and that no such motive appears in it if it is taken to mean, as by some, that the gospel is preached after death to the dead. Surely to say that 'the gospel was preached also (or, even) to them that are dead' is not to say that it was preached to them when dead.

  Peter's letter is of late enough date to explain his looking back to a generation now passed away, who had heard it in their lifetime. Nor does one see how the meaning of 'in the flesh,' which belongs to the phrase in the frequent instances of its occurrence in this context, can be preserved in the clause 'that they might be judged according to men in the flesh,' unless that means a judgment which takes place during the earthly life.

  We note, too, that the antithesis between being judged 'according to men in the flesh,' and living 'according to God in the spirit' recalls that in verse 2 between living in the flesh to the lusts of men and to the will of God. It would appear, therefore, that the Apostle's meaning is that the very aim of the preaching of the gospel to those who are gone to meet the Judge was that they might by it be judged while here in the flesh, in regard to the lower life 'according to men' (or, as verse 2 has it, 'to the lusts of men'), and, being so judged, and sin condemned in their flesh, might live according to God in their spirits. That is but to say in other words that the gospel is meant to search hearts, and bring to light and condemn the lusts of the flesh, and to impart the new life which is moulded after the will of God.

III. The reference to Christ as the judge suggests a final motive for a

  life of suppression of the lower nature, – the near approach of the end of all things. The distinct statement by our Lord in Acts i. 7 excludes the knowledge of the time of the end from the revelation granted to the Apostles, so that there need be no hesitation in upholding their authority, and yet admitting their liability to mistake on that point. But the force of the motive is independent of the proximity of the judgment. Its certainty and the indefiniteness of the time when we each shall have to pass into the other state of being are sufficient to preserve for each of us the whole pressure of the solemn thought that for us the end is at hand, and to enforce thereby Peter's exhortation, 'Be ye therefore of sound mind.'

  The prospect of that end will sweep away many illusions as to the worth of the enjoyments of sense, and be a bridle on many vagrant desires. Self-control in all regions of our nature is implied in the word. Our various faculties are meant to be governed by a sovereign will, which is itself governed by the Divine will; and, if we see plain before us the dawning of the day of the Lord, the vision will help to tame the subordinate parts of ourselves, and to establish the supremacy of the spirit over the flesh. One special form of that general self-control is that already enjoined, – the suppression of the animal appetites, especially the abstinence from intoxicants. That form of self-control is especially meant by the second of these exhortations, 'Be sober.' How could a man lift the wine cup to his lips, and drown his higher nature in a flood of drunken riot, if the end, with its solemnities of judgment, blazed before his inner eye? But this self-command is inculcated that we may be fit to pray. These lower appetites will take all desire for prayer and all earnestness in it out of us, and only when we keep the wings of appetites close clipped will the pinions grow by which we can mount up with wings as eagles. A praying drunkard is an impossible monster.

  But exhortations to self-control are not all. We have to think of others, as well as of our own growth in purity and spirituality. Therefore Peter casts one swift glance to the wider circle of the brethren, which encompasses each of us, and gives the all-embracing direction, which carries in itself everything. 'Fervent love' to our fellow-Christians is the counterpoise to earnest government of ourselves. There is a selfishness possible even in cultivating our religion, as many a monk and recluse has shown. Such love as Peter here enjoins will save us from the possible evils of self-regard, and it will 'cover the multitude of sins,' – by which is not meant that, having it, we shall be excused if we in other respects sin, but that, having it, we shall be more desirous of veiling than of exposing our brother's faults, and shall be ready to forgive even when our brother offends against us often. Perhaps Peter was remembering the lesson which he had once had when he was told that 'seventy times seven' was not too great a multitude of sins against brotherly love to be forgiven by it in one day.

  THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE '... Be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.' – 1 Peter v. 5.

  The Apostle uses here an expression of a remarkable kind, and which never occurs again in Scripture. The word rendered in the Authorised Version 'be clothed,' or better in the Revised Version, 'gird yourselves with,' really implies a little more than either of those renderings suggests. It describes a kind of garment as well as the act of putting it on, and the sort of garment which it describes was a remarkable one. It was a part of a slave's uniform. Some scholars think that it was a kind of white apron, or overall, or something of that sort; others think that it was simply a scarf or girdle; but, at all events, it was a distinguishing mark of a slave, and he put it on when he meant work. And, says Peter, 'Do you strap round you the slave's apron, and do it for the same reason that He did it, to serve.'

  So, then, there are three points in my text, and the first is what we have to wear; second, what we have to wear it for; and, third, why we should wear it.

I. What we have to wear.

  'Gird yourselves with the slave's apron of humility.' Humility does not consist in being, or pretending to be, blind to one's strong points. There is no humility in a man denying that he can do certain things if he can do them, or even refusing to believe he can do them well, if God has given him special faculties in any given direction. That is not humility at all. But to know whence all my strength comes, and to know what a little thing it is, after all; not to estimate myself highly, and, still further, not to be always insisting upon other people estimating me highly, and to think a great deal more about their claims on me than fretfully to insist upon my due modicum of respect and attention from others, that is the sort of temper that Peter means here.

  Now, that temper which may recognise fully any gift that God has given me, its sweep and degree, but that nevertheless takes a true, because a lowly, measure of myself, and does not always demand from other people their regard and assistance, that temper is a thing that we can cultivate. We can increase it, and we are all bound to try specifically and directly to do so. Now, I believe that a great part of the feeble and unprogressive character of so many Christian people amongst us is due to this, that they do not definitely steady their thoughts and focus them on the purpose of finding out the weak points to which special attention and discipline should be directed. It is a very easy thing to say, 'Oh, I am a poor, weak, sinful creature!' It would do you a great deal more good to say, 'I am a very passionate one, and my business is to control that quick temper of mine,' or, 'I am a great deal too much disposed to run after worldly advantage, and my business is to subdue that,' or, 'I am afraid I am rather too close-fisted, and I ought to crucify myself into liberality.' It would be a great deal better, I say, to apply the general confession to specific cases, and to set ourselves to cultivate individual types of goodness, as well as to seek to be filled with the all-comprehensive root of it all, which lies in union with Jesus Christ. We have often to preach, dear brethren, that the way of self-improvement is not by hammering at ourselves, but by letting God mould us, and to keep the balance right. We have also to insist upon the other side of the truth, and to press the complementary thought that specific efforts after the cultivation of specific virtues and all the more if they are virtues that are not natural to us, for the gospel is given to us to mend our natural tempers – is the duty of all Christian people that would seek to live as Christ would have them.

  And how is this to be done? How am I to gird upon myself and to keep – if I may transpose the metaphor into the key of modern English – tightly buckled around me this belt which may hold in place a number of fine articles of clothing?

  Well, there are three things, I think, that we may profitably do. Go down deep enough into yourself if you want to cure a lofty estimate of yourself. The top storeys may be beautifully furnished, but there are some ugly things and rubbish down in the cellar. There is not one of us but, if we honestly let the dredge down into the depths, as far down as the Challenger's went, miles and miles down, will bring up a pretty collection of wriggling monstrosities that never have been in the daylight before, and are ugly enough to be always shrouded in their native darkness. Down in us all, if we will go deep enough, and take with us a light bright enough, we shall discover enough to make anything but humility ridiculous, if it were not wicked. And the only right place and attitude for a man who knows himself down to the roots of his being is the publican's when 'he stood afar off, and would not so much as lift up his eyes to heaven, and said, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Ah, dear friends, it will put an end to any undue exaltation of ourselves if we know ourselves as we are.

  Further, let us try to cultivate this temper, by looking at God, and having communion with Him. Think of Him as the Giver of anything in us that is good, and that annihilates our pride. Think of Jesus as our pattern; how that kills our satisfaction in little excellences! If you get high enough up the mountainside, the undulating country which when you were down amongst the knolls showed all variations of level, and where he who lived on the top of one little mound thought himself in a fine, airy situation as compared with his neighbour down in the close valley, is smoothed down, and brought to one uniform level; and from the hilltop the rolling land is a plateau.

  I have heard of a child who, when she was told that the sun was ninety-five millions of miles off, asked if that was from the top or the bottom storey of the house! There is about as much difference between the great men and the little, between heroes and the unknown men, as measured against the distance to God, as there is difference in the distance to the sun from the slates and from the cellar. Let us live near God, and so aspiration will come in the place of satisfaction, and the unattained will gleam before us, and beckon us not in vain, and the man that sees what an infinite stretch there is before him will be delivered from the temptations of self-conceit, and will say, 'Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfected, but I follow after.'

  But there is another advice to be given – cultivate the habit of thinking about other people, their excellences, their claims on you. To be always trying to get a footing in a social grade above our own is a poor effort, but there is a sense in which it is good advice – live with your betters. We can all do that. A man writes a bit of a book, preaches a sermon, makes a speech – all the newspapers pat him on the back, and say what a clever fellow he is. But let him steep his mind and his heart in the great works of the great men, and he finds out what a poor little dwarf he is by the side of them. And so all round the circle. Live with bigger men, not with little ones. And learn to discount – and you may take a very liberal discount off – either the praises or the censures of the people round you. Let us rather say, 'With me it is a very small matter to be judged of man's judgment. He that judgeth me is the Lord.'

  There are plenty of hands, foremost among them a black one that is not so much a hand as a claw, ready to snatch the girdle of humility off you! Buckle it tight about you, brother; and in an immovable temper of lowly estimate of yourself live and work.

II. The second thought here is, What we are to wear the apron or girdle

for?

The Revised Version makes a little alteration in the reading as well as in the translation of our text, the previous words to which, in the Authorised Version stand, 'Yea, all of you be subject one to another.' There is another reading which strikes out that clause, and adds a portion of it to the first part of my text, which then runs thus: 'Yea, all of you gird yourselves with humility to serve one another.' That is what Christian humility is for. The slave put on his garment, whatever it was, when he had work to do.

But perhaps there is a deeper thought here. I wonder if it is fanciful to see in the text one of the very numerous allusions in this epistle to the events in our Lord's Passion. You remember that Jesus laid aside His garments, and took a towel, and girded Himself, and washed the disciples' feet, and then said, 'The servant is not above His master. I have...

Table of contents

• I. A Christian is a saint.
• II. Further, Christian men are saints because they are believers.
• III. Lastly, a Christian may be a saint, and a believer, and in Christ
• I. And I note, first of all, the character and the extent of these
• II. So much, then, for the first point; now, in the second place, note
• III. In the next place, notice the one place where all these blessings
• IV. Lastly, note the one Person in whom all spiritual blessings are
• I. Note that that divine will which underlies and is operative in, and
• I. The measure of our possible attainments is the whole wealth of God.
• II. We have another form of the same measure in another set of verses
• III. In the third place another form of this measure is stated by the
• IV. And now the last form of this measure is 'according to the energy of
• I. Now, then, let me ask you to look first at this mutual possession.
• II. And now let me point you in a very few words to some of the plain,
• I. And I ask you to look with me, first, at the incompleteness of the
• II. Now, secondly, notice the certainty of the completion of the
• III. And so, lastly, a word about the completion of the possession.
• I. Now the first thought that these words suggest to me is this, that
• II. And so, secondly, notice how this hope of our text is in some sense
• III. Thirdly, notice how this hope is an all-important element in the
• IV. Lastly, this hope needs enlightened eyes.
• I. First, then, note the inheritance.
• II. Now notice, secondly, the heirs.
• III. Lastly, we have here the heirs' present knowledge of their future blessedness.
• I. So, then, I ask you to look, first, at the measure and example of the
• II. Secondly, notice the knowledge of the unknowable power.
• III. Lastly, notice the conditions for the operations of the power.
• I. First, here is a picture, a dogmatic statement if you like, about the
• II. Now, notice, in the second place, the pitying love that looks down
• III. And so that is the last thing on which I speak a word – viz. the
• I. The purpose of God in Christ is the display of His grace.
• II. The great manifestation of grace is God's kindness to us in Christ.
• III. The manifestation of God through men 'in Christ' is for all ages.
• I. Here we have the Christian view of man's deepest need, and God's
• II. Here we have the Christian unfolding of the source of salvation.
• III. That leads me to the last point – viz. the Christian requirement of
• I. We have, first, then, this as the root of everything, the divine
• II. I ask you to look at the purpose of this new creation brought out in
• III. And now, lastly, and only a word – here we have the field provided
• I. The process of building.
• II. The foundation on which the building rests.
• III. The corner-stone which underlies and unites the whole.
• I. Consider the Lord's Supper as a sign that the Church on earth is a
• II. The Lord's Supper as a prophecy of the family at home above.
• III. The Lord's Supper is a token of the present union of the two.
• I. First, then, I remark that God means, and wishes, that all Christians
• II. Now notice, next, that this Divine Power has its seat in, and is
• III. And now, lastly, let me point you still further to the measure of
• I. Consider the Indwelling of Christ, as desired by the Apostle for all
• II. So now, in the second place, notice the open door through which the
• III. And the last point is the gifts of this indwelling Christ, – 'ye
• I. First, we have this thought that only the loving heart can know
• II. Now a word in the next place as to the other thought here, that not
• I. What, then, is the breadth of that love?
• II. Then, in the next place, what is the length of the love of Christ?
• III. Then again, what is the depth of that love?
• IV. And lastly, what is the height of the love of Christ?
• I. First of all, think with me of the significance of this prayer.
• II. Now turn, in the next place, to consider briefly the possibility of
• III. One word to close with, as to the means by which this prayer may be
• I. The measure of the power to which we trust.
• II. Notice the relation of the divine working to our thoughts and
• III. The glory that springs from the divine work.
• IV. The eternity of the work and of the praise.
• I. The Christian calling and the life that is worthy of it.
• II. And now, let us turn to the other thought, the Christian heaven and
• I. The one Lord.
• II. One faith.
• III. One baptism.
• I. Each Christian soul receives grace through Christ.
• II. The gift of this grace is in itself unlimited.
• III. This boundless grace is in each individual case bounded for the
• I. The true unity is oneness of relation to Christ.
• II. Oneness in faith and knowledge knits all into a 'perfect man.'
• III. This perfect manhood is the possession of all who are in Christ.
• I. First, Christ our Lesson and Christ our Teacher.
• II. Secondly, mark the condition of learning the Lesson and hearing the
• III. Lastly, the test and result of having learned the Lesson and
• I. I wish to fix, first of all, upon the very significant, though brief,
• II. Note how, this being so, we have here the hopeless command to put
• III. The possibility of fulfilling the command.
• I. The great purpose of the Gospel is our moral renewal; 'the new man
• II. A second principle contained in these words, is that this moral
• III. It is further to be noticed that this new creation has to be put on
• IV. And, finally, the text contains the principle that the means of
• I. A wonderful revelation.
• II. A plain lesson here, as to the great purpose for which the Divine
• III. A plain warning as to the possibility of thwarting these influences.
• IV. A Tender Motive, a dissuasive from sin, a persuasive to yielding and
• I. First, then, this sublime precept.
• I. Aim at an all-round productiveness of the natural fruits of the light.
• II. Secondly, the general exhortation of my text widens out itself into
• III. Thirdly, we have here another expansion of the general command, and
• I. Now, first of all, I have just a word to say about this light which
• II. Now, secondly, notice the fruitfulness of this indwelling light.
• III. And so, lastly, notice the specific fruits which the Apostle here
• I. So, then, in these brief words, so comprehensive, and going so deep
• II. Now, secondly, let me ask you to notice that we have here the
• III. Again, notice that we have here an all-powerful motive for
• I. Let me ask you to note with me, first, the fruitlessness inherent in
• II. And now, secondly, notice the plain Christian duty of abstinence.
• III. Lastly, note the still harder Christian duty of vigorous protest.
• I. First of all, then, the condition of the persons addressed.
• II. Secondly, let me ask you to look at the summons to awake.
• III. And so my last point is the promise of the morning light which
• I. We have, first, what we ought to think about 'the time.'
• II. Now, note secondly, how to make the most of the season.
• III. Lastly, note the motives for this course.
• I. We must be ready for times of special assaults from evil.
• II. To withstand these we must be armed against them before they come.
• III. To be armed with this armour, we must get it from God.
• IV. The issue of successful resistance is increased firmness of footing.
• I. We must be braced up if we are to fight.
• II. The girdle is to be truth.
• III. Our truthfulness is the work of God's truth.
• I. The first thing that I would notice here is that the Gospel brings
• II. Further, this Gospel of peace will prepare us for the march.
• III. Again, the Gospel of peace prepares us for combat.
• I. Now, looking at this metaphor from a practical point of view, the
• II. Consider next, the defence: 'the shield of faith.'
• III. The Grasp of the Shield.
• I. The Salvation.
• II. The helmet of salvation.
• III. Take the helmet.
• I. Note what the word of God is.
• II. The purpose and power of the word.
• III. The manner of its use.
• I. First, the root of everything is a continuous and growing trust.
• II. And now, next, notice how inseparably associated with a true faith
• III. And now, lastly, these two inseparably associated graces of faith
• I. So then, note, first, the comprehensive designation of the recipients
• II. Mark the impartial sweep of the divine gifts.
• III. Lastly, note the width to which our sympathies should go.
• I. PETER
• I. What the Christian Life is.
• II. Some of the plain consequent duties that arise from this
• III. The Home in Glory.
• I. In the first place, what are we guarded for?
• II. Notice what we are guarded by.
• III. Lastly, what we are kept through.
• I. This paradox.
• II. Further, consider the blessed possibility of this paradox.
• III. Now lastly, we have here a duty.
• I. Peter pits against each other faith that has been tried, and 'gold
• II. Note, again, the testing of the wealth.
• III. Now a word, lastly, about the ultimate discovery.
• I. The All-sufficient Ground or Source of this Glad Emotion.
• II. The Characteristics of the Christian Gladness.
• III. The Obligation of Gladness.
• I. First, then, Christ and His Cross is the substance of prophecy.
• II. Note here Christ and His Cross, the theme of Gospel preaching.
• III. Once more, here we have Christ and His Cross as the study of
• IV. And now my last point is that Christ and His Cross is, by the
• I. The object of the Christian hope.
• II. And now notice the duty of the Christian hope.
• III. And now one last word. My text speaks about the discipline or
• I. The Pattern of Holiness.
• II. Again, notice the field of this Godlike holiness.
• III. Now, lastly, note the motive or inspiration of holiness.
• I. Soul purity is in, or by, obedience.
• II. Purifying through the Spirit.
• III. Purifying ... unto ... love.
• I. Those that are in Christ have perpetually to make the effort to come
• II. Those who come near Christ will become like Christ.
• III. Lastly:
• I. There is the living sacrifice of the body.
• II. There is the sacrifice of praise.
• III. There is the sacrifice of help to men.
• IV. Lastly, there is the sacrifice of death.
• I. Here we get a wonderful glimpse into the heart of God.
• II. There is another thing here, and that is, a wonderful glimpse of
• III. Lastly, we have here a piece of stringent practical direction.
• I. We have first to note the substitution, as a matter of course,
• I. We have, first, in verses 1 and 2, a general precept, based upon the
• II. More specific injunctions, entering into the details of the higher
• III. The reference to Christ as the judge suggests a final motive for a
• I. What we have to wear.
• II. The second thought here is, What we are to wear the apron or girdle
• III. Lastly, why we should wear this girdle.
• I. First, then, I think we may see here a hint as to the worth and
• II. Another lesson which is own sister to that first one, but which may
• III. The last thing that I would suggest is – here is an example to us of
• I. Peter's testimony.
• II. Further, notice Peter's exhortation.
• I. We have here an object lesson as to the uniting power of the gospel.
• II. We note, further, the clear recognition here of what is the strong
• III. Then, lastly, we may find here a hint as to the pressing need for
• I. The first of them is the working of Christian sympathy.
• II. The history of Mark suggests the possibility of overcoming early
• III. Take another lesson – the greatness of little service.
• IV. Take as the last lesson the enlarged sphere that follows
• II. PETER
• I. And the first thing that I would desire to point you to is, what we
• II. Let me ask you to look, in the next place, to what this text
• III. Now, lastly, note the identity of faith.
• I. So I want you to look with me, first, at this lofty purpose which is
• II. Look, in the second place, at the costly and sufficient means
• III. Let me say, lastly, that this great text adds a human accompaniment
• I. Now as to the homely virtue itself, 'giving all diligence.'
• II. Note the wide field of action for this homely grace.
• I. The first of them is this, the double Christian aspect of death.
• II. Now note, secondly, the great fact on which this view of death
• III. Now I meant to have said a word, in the close of my sermon, about a
• I. Here we have the Owner of us all.
• II. The sale, and the price.
• III. And now, lastly, notice the runaways.
• I. First, then, the clear hope which should fill our future.
• II. Then, secondly, note the definite aim which this clear hope should
• III. Lastly, notice the earnest diligence with which that aim should be
• I. I begin, first, with a word or two about the direction which
• II. Now, for a moment, look at another thought, viz., the obligation.
• III. Now, again, consider the method of growth.
• IV. Lastly, observe the solemn alternative to growth.
• I. JOHN
• I. We have, first, a wonderful gathering up of the whole gospel message
• II. With characteristic moral earnestness, John passes at once to the
• III. Chapter ii. 1-6 is in structure analogous to the preceding section.
• I. Note this 'Walking in the light,' which is the only Christian walk.
• II. So much, then, for my first point; the second is: The companions of
• III. That brings me to my last point: The progressive cleansing of those
• I. And the first one that strikes me is – 'the word' is 'a commandment.'
• II. The old Christ is perpetually new.
• III. Lastly, in the Christian life the old commandment is perpetually
• I. First, then, note here the strength which you young people ought to
• II. Now note, secondly, how to get it.
• III. Now, lastly, notice the field on which the strength is to be
• I. First, then, the river, or the sad truth of sense.
• II. Now let me say a word, and it can only be a word, about the second
• I. The love that is given.
• II. Look next at the sonship which is the purpose of His given Love.
• III. Now, still further, let me ask you to look at the glad recognition
• IV. We have here, finally, the loving and devout gaze upon this
• I. The fact of sonship makes us quite sure of the future.
• II. Now I come to the second point, namely, that we remain ignorant of
• III. Now I must be very brief with the last thought that is here, and I
• I. First, then, notice the principle that is here, which is the main
• II. The second thought here is this: This purifying of ourselves is the
• III. Now I must briefly add finally: that this self-cleansing of which I
• I. So let me try just to insist, first of all, on that thought that
• II. Now let me say, secondly, that being righteous is the way to do
• III. Union with Jesus Christ by faith makes us 'righteous even as He is
• I. Now there are three questions that suggest themselves to me, and the
• II. Now I have to ask, secondly, how comes it that Christ's mission says
• III. My last question is this: what does Christ's mission say about
• I. A Christian is Christ's living likeness.
• II. Look for a moment at the second thought that is here: such a
• III. One word about the last point; the process by which this likeness
• I. The empire of fear.
• II. That brings me to the second point – viz., the mission of fear.
• III. Lastly, the expulsion of fear.
• I. The ultimate word about God.
• II. Here we have the ultimate word as to our religion.
• III. Lastly, here is the ultimate word about our conduct to men.
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