Chapter 9: Escape from the World's Corruption.
Chapter 9: Escape from the World's Corruption.
2 PETER.
IN NO SPARING terms, the sacred writers refer to the world of their time. And to this rule the Epistles of Peter are no exception. There is no kind of excess with which he does not charge it. The words lasciviousness, lust, and excess of riot, come with sad monotony from his lips. Indeed, the conception of the Second Epistle likens it to Sodom, on which the lawless deeds of the wicked brought the swift judgment of God.
But with equal clearness he defines the position of those whom he addressed, and who had obtained a like precious faith with himself. If the world of their time were another Sodom, they at least were as righteous Lot, distressed with the lascivious life of the wicked, whom the Lord delivered. Would that he had realized and maintained the life to which the Almighty God called him! Then he had enjoyed the free, glad life of the uplands, where Abraham walked with God!
Having escaped! (2 Peter i: 4). How positive this assertion! There at the foot of the cliffs the waves of ink welter, and yonder the bark is slowly going to pieces, but the crew have escaped safe to shore, and, climbing the rocky ledges, are standing far beyond the angry whirl of the waves, and the furthest cast of the spray. Not more absolutely does the Apostle John speak of those who have gotten the victory over the beast, than does this Apostle describe the escape from the corruption of the world, of those who were likely to survive him, and to whom he entrusted words that might help them when he had gone. They stood in the light, where darkness could not include them in its sable empire: they breathed air, in which the germs of contagion could not live: they were surrounded as by a cordon of fire, through which temptation could not pass.
Just escaping (ii: 18, R. V.). In the case of some, the escape was in process. They had heard the warning cry of the angels, felt the eager pressure of their hastening hands, and had arisen to flee from them that were living in error, steeped in unconsciousness, solaced by the lullaby of a false peace. It is a great spectacle to behold the awakening of a soul to love, or thought, or some noble conception of the possibilities of life, but it is a greater one to watch it just escaping, passing the city-gates in the early dawn, as the sun is rising on the earth, or beginning to climb the mountain slopes to the shelter of the cave.
After they have escaped the defilements of the world ... again entangled therein and overcome (ii: 20). This is a sad possibility that must ever be borne in mind. We are never saved in this world beyond the fear of relapse. Lot escaped Sodom's doom, but he was entangled again in her sins, and contracted eternal infamy. Many have emerged from the black waves, stood for a little on the cliffs of chrysolite, where the morning light ever shines, but have been sucked back into the remorseless waters. Let him that thinketh he stands take heed lest he fall. Life is full of perils, and not least so for those who vaunt their deliverance. Our salvation depends on our perpetual reception of the life and grace of the Lord Jesus, and if there is any intermission here, there will be inevitable decrepitude and failure everywhere, and the tempter will easily break into the citadel of the soul.
The method of escape is always alluded to in the same phrase. It must be through the knowledge of Him that hath called us. We must not be idle or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ; we can only escape the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; we must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (i: 3, 8; ii: 20; iii: 18). To know the second Man, who has undone the havoc of the first; to know Him as Jesus, tempted in all points like as we are, though without sin; to know Him as Christ, the Anointed of the Father; to know Him as Lord, the enthroned King of the heart-these are the conditions on which to know Him as, Saviour, through whose grace the soul may be delivered from the evil of sin, and know the way of righteousness. Well may we exclaim with Peter's beloved brother Paul, that I may know Him! The believing, adoring, experimental knowledge of what Jesus is and has done, is the entire secret of escaping from the world's corruption, and entering the life in which we may be addressed, as in these Epistles, "elect sojourners," "pilgrims and strangers."
(1) WE KNOW THE LORD JESUS IN HIS SINLESSNESS (I Peter ii: 22). He took our nature, not as it was in unfallen Adam, but further down the stream, as it was in the seed of Abraham, though He was without the slightest taint of sin. He could face the strictest scrutiny, and cry, "Which of you convinceth Me of Sin?" Herod, Pilate, Judas, searched His character in vain for what would have justified to their conscience their foul and treacherous deeds. "This Man hath done nothing amiss," was the perpetual verdict of men on the Man Christ Jesus.
But this spotless sinlessness did not diminish the perfect symmetry of His character. He was every whit a Man. All the Ages since His death have done homage to the incomparable beauty of His nature, and extolled Him as their example. Pilate's cry has rung down the corridor of the centuries, caught up by myriad lips, "Behold the Man!" From which we infer that sin is not indispensable to our nature-it is abnormal, not normal; accidental, not necessary; a disease, a parasite a blight, but not a constituent part.
Undoubtedly sin is coextensive with the range of human life. Wherever we find man, we encounter the same sins-lying, thieving, adultery, covetousness, murder. These vices, like weeds, are indigenous to every soil, and flourish under every sky. But the fact that one perfect Life has been lived without them, and that those who live nearest it share that emancipation, proves beyond doubt that sin is no necessary part of our nature, but that a time may come .when we shall cast it aside, as the ailing child the measles, whooping-cough, and other diseases incidental to childhood.
It is a great matter for us to realize what was God's original ideal, when He created us; because all that is foreign to His original purpose must awake His undying opposition. In our combat with it, we may count on His ready and efficient aid.
(2) WE KNOW THE LORD JESUS HAS SUFFERED IN THE FLESH (I Peter iii: 18; iv: I). He suffered for us, and bare our sins in His own body on the tree. He once offered there a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the whole world. But He did more. He died unto sin. He ceased out of the Time-world, in which sin reigned. In Him, the likeness of our sinful flesh was nailed up to the ignominy and shame of the cross, beneath the curse of God. And all was done to emancipate us from the dominion of sin, so that we should no longer live the rest of our time to the lust of men, but to the will of God.
We must understand this aspect of the death of Christ, if we would secure all the help the cross was intended to give. It is not enough to think of Christ as our Substitute and Sin-bearer; we must regard Him as the Noah with whom, in the purpose of God, we crossed the waters of judgment between the old world with its curse, and the new world on which the smile of the Creator lay in benediction -the world of resurrection-the new heavens and the new earth, arched by the bow of hope.
"Arm yourselves with the same mind" (or thought, R. V. marg). Let this thought be deeply inwrought by the power of the Holy Ghost. Let it be the ruling conception of your soul. Muse on it as steadfastly as the saint is said to have considered the stigmata. Gird it about you each morning, as the soldier his cuirass before he enters on the fight. Whenever the world approaches with its soft caress, or the flesh allures, or the devil tempts, answer each unhallowed suggestion with the words, "I cannot do that now; I have passed into a new world, where such things are not admissible; I am seated in Christ Jesus, where all that is unclean and defiling is far down under my feet." Then reckon on the blessed Spirit to make your boasting good, and to realize in you all that Jesus accomplished when He breathed out His Spirit in the last throes of death. There is no need to be overcome of sin. We are risen: we have ascended; we are one with Jesus in His glorious triumph. The Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in us, and is prepared to realize in us, as in miniature, all that glory and victory which He wrought in our glorious Lord. "He that hath suffered in the flesh (and we have done that in Jesus) hath ceased from sin." Let us ponder these deep and precious words.
(3) WE KNOW THAT THE LORD JESUS HAS PURCHASED US FOR HIMSELF. This thought is a favorite one with the Apostle Peter: "Redeemed, not with silver and gold, but with precious blood," " A people for God's own possession"; "Denying even the Master that bought them."
In the wide market-place of the world, we stood for sale; nay, rather had become sold in sin, and enslaved to the will of the Prince of the Power of the air. But Jesus bought us for Himself. We are His, not only by the gift of the Father, but by the purchase of His most precious blood.
Consecration is simply the restoring to Christ His own property; recognizing and answering His rightful claims; saying gladly and reverently, "I am Thine, 0 Lord." When once this attitude has been thoughtfully assumed, it answers all the questions which arise in the conduct of life. These hands are my Master's, they may not touch the unclean thing; these feet are His, they may not go in forbidden paths; these senses and faculties are His, they must not be used outside the circle of His will; this body is His, no voice but His can control or direct it; these members are His, they may not be presented as weapons of unrighteousness unto sin. Reasonings like these make us feel that we dare not sin. A holy fear forbids that we shall grieve our Master, or injure His reputation in the world. "We cannot do this wickedness," we cry, "for we are not our own; we have been bought with a price, and we must glorify our Master in our body and spirit, which are His." And as we say the words in the energy of the Holy Ghost, lo! the snare is broken, and we are escaped.
(4) WE KNOW THAT THROUGH OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST WE HAVE BECOME PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE (2 Pet. i : 4). There is no more potent wedge than this text to split the modern error that all men are equally the children of God. There is a lower sense (that in which the Apostle Paul used the words on Mars' Hill) in which all men are the children of God, since they have sprung from His creative hand, but this is not the meaning in which the apostles used the words when they said, " Because ye are sons, He hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son in our hearts," and "Now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be."
Man may be the offspring of God, but he is not the son of God until he has, in regeneration, received the very life of God into his nature. The Spirit of God begets in the believing and receptive spirit that very life which was in the Father before the worlds were made, and was manifested in the Lord Jesus. Thus we become partakers of the Divine nature. As a child partakes of its mother's life, so do we partake of God's. We love what He loves, hate as He hates, and make His purposes our own. There is, moreover, a perpetual communication and interchange of life, as of water between the ocean and the inlets into the land. As the tide rises in the one, it rises in the other; and the movements of the one are transmitted to the other.
This is the secret of escaping from the defilement around. We have become possessed of a new set of shuttles which are ever weaving desires for purity and righteousness, and in contrast to these, we have no desire for the old sins. Nay, more: Christ is within us, and is eager to reproduce Himself in us, and as He does so, we are weaned from the things of which we are now ashamed, and hunger with an insatiable desire to be partakers of the holiness of God.
This is even better than an escape-that Jesus lives in us by His Spirit, and seeks to manifest through our yielded lives His own glorious character.