1 Peter 2:1 The Milk of the Word. This subject divides itself into three parts: I. Healthy appetite, or, in other words, an earnest desire for spiritual nourishment: "As new-born babes, desire" earnestly, covet eagerly, "the sincere milk of the word." II. Healthy food, or, in other words, God's... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:2 The Baptismal Vow. I. In our hearts and lives, the evil which we cast away is for ever returning; the truths which we have learned we are for ever forgetting; the good which we should do we are continually leaving undone. Wherefore our baptismal promise requires to be renewed, not once... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:3 The Spiritual Temple of Priestly Worshippers. I. We have in the text a spiritual house: "Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house." Christ is the foundation; and as stone after stone is placed on Him, He, being a living stone, infuses His life right through the entire m... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:4 The Living Stone. I. Note the Church, or spiritual temple, in its foundation: Christ. II. The Church, or spiritual temple, in its superstructure. III. The Church, or spiritual temple, in its service: "a holy priesthood." J. C. Jones, _Studies in First Peter,_p. _233._ The Spiritual... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:5 Trifles to do, not Trifles to leave undone. I. It was a great saying of the Psalmist when he said, "I am small and of no reputation, yet do I put my trust in Thee." A very great saying; for, indeed, nothing makes man yield to temptation so easily as the thought of being insignificant, a... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:6 The Divine Foundation. I. Jesus Christ as the foundation-stone. This means that Jesus is (1) the cardinal truth of the Christian system; (2) the central truth of Christianity; (3) the all-comprehensive truth of Christianity. II. Jesus Christ is the corner-stone, or the harmonising tru... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:6 Christ the One Foundation. Let us consider a few of the senses in which Christ makes good this title of corner-stone. I. How, do we think, did the first preachers to the heathen win converts? By appealing to men's deepest sense of need, to the felt necessity of a centralising, consolid... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:7 The Preciousness of Christ. The writer, in some four or five verses of the chapter, has been employing the image of a building, or rather of a temple, to describe the relation existing between Christ and His Church. According to this image, the Lord Jesus Christ is the solid foundation-... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:7 Believers and Unbelievers. I. The relation which Jesus Christ sustains to believers: "Unto you therefore which believe He is precious." (1) The first element in our idea of preciousness is rarity. (2) Another important element in our idea of preciousness is usefulness. (3) There must a... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:9 Predestination. I. It is impossible to read the Scriptures and not to see that there are some persons predestinated to glory. There are persons who, in the words of St. Paul, are vessels which God hath aforetime prepared unto glory. It is a fact we see it with our eyes that God makes a... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:9 The True Israel. I. "Ye are a chosen generation," the word "generation" here meaning, not contemporaries, but the offspring of one common parent, the offshoots of one original stock. The Israelites were a special "generation." (1) They had sprung from Abraham as their common progenitor... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:16 I. The designation "servant of God" embodies an opinion or theory about human life. When a being like man finds himself in this present sphere of existence, with the endowments of thought and of passion which go to make up his nature, he naturally asks himself how he may make the best o... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:16 Christian Freedom. I. We are here warned against two great enemies of our souls, which are ever seeking to bring us into bondage, and to substitute for the true Christian liberty the fancied freedom, but real slavery, of self-indulgence. These two enemies are (1) the lust of the flesh,... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:17 The Obligation of Christians to the World and the Church. I. "Honour all men." Christians in deed and truth, called by the grace of God to be a peculiar people, separate from the world, have this rule laid upon them. Why? Because in all men, even in those who refuse the Gospel, in the... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:19 Patience under Undeserved Wrong. I. St. Peter teaches that suffering is thankworthy, a gift from God, and acceptable in turn to Him, if it be accompanied by two conditions. (1) It must be undeserved. A slave, too, might be punished for doing what would merit punishment in a free man; a... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:20 Writing probably from Rome, certainly in one of the closing years of his life, St. Peter saw the great tendency of social and political circumstances around him towards that outbreak of violence against the worshippers of Christ which is known in history as the first persecution, in whi... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:21 The Great Exemplar. I. That which strikes us first in the example which Christ has left is its faultlessness. We are startled by His own sense of this. He never utters one word to God or to man which implies the consciousness of a single defect. Read the lives of the great servants of... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:21 Christ our Example. I. While our salvation is specifically described as the effect of our Lord's greatest obedience that is, His death yet, viewing the subject of redemption generally, our salvation is the fruit of His whole obedience. This is apparent from the plan itself of salvatio... [ Continue Reading ]
1 Peter 2:24 The Witness of the Apostles. I. St. Peter says of Christ, with whom he had lived in daily intercourse, He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree." Wonderful and unexampled assertion that He whom he called the sacrifice for human sin, the reconciliation of the world, was no person w... [ Continue Reading ]