The test of all true Christian experience is that it makes you loving. That is what Peter says in these verses.
A person who is spiteful, who bears grudges, who nurses jealousies, who is nice to your face but criticises you to others when your back is turned - such a person may be many things, says Peter, but born again? Hardly. What is born in us when we are born again is the Spirit of Christ, and these things are so foreign to His Spirit that when He occupies our souls He drives them out.
"Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth unto a sincere love for your brothers and sisters, let your love be whole-hearted and sincere."
Love is what the truth begets; it is what the Truth is truth about! You have been born again through the regenerating force of the Word of God, so ... be sure that no illwill or envy, no double-talk or hypocrisy, and no back-biting shows in you. You are a child of God - grow up! Let your heredity show! It is kindness - God's kindness - you are nourished on: that is what is to shape the way you grow. And what you are being nurtured for is priestly service: priests are trained to offer gifts and sacrifices ... and the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, not a mean one.
What Peter is saying in these verses, remembering what he has said about holiness and redemption, is put very succinctly in Paul's letter to Titus: "Our Saviour gave Himself for us to ... redeem us from all iniquity ... and to purify for Himself a people of His own who are zealous for ... good deeds."
Cleansing and love. Those are the two notes Peter strikes.
If we have no love, we are not yet cleansed. Only as we are cleansed can we find the power to love; but once cleansed, then love we will. That follows as the night the day. This inner connection between cleansing and loving, between being forgiven and being forgiving, between faith and love - this bond that holds the two in living togetherness - this Peter expresses by means of two references back to the Old Testament - one to do with the Word of God, the other the simile of a corner-stone on which we are built.
We look at both of these in turn.
First the Word of God.
What gives to God's Word the power it has, not only to make us alive to God, but also alive to others? How can a mere word have such power? What after all is a word? Is it not a mere breath, a thing of no substance? "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me," we say. But they can. In our relationships with one another, our words have the power to kill or to make alive. When someone whose friendship we value refuses to speak to us, it hurts. By deliberately ignoring us, they deal a sort of death to us. The life goes out of our friendship. To be ignored is in some strange and frightening way to die. We express it when we say, "He cut me dead." But to be noticed, to be spoken to - and especially to be spoken to kindly - is to come alive. Gladness stirs in us; we are "back in" again; our vitality level soars!
This is a fact of experience. We all feel it; we all know it. Persons have the power to make us inwardly alive, or inwardly to die, according as they speak to us or ignore us.
Supreme among the persons with whom we have to do is God. If God does not speak to me, then in the depth of my being I am dead. There is a part of me, at the centre of my being, that can be stirred into life only by response to Him. Only He can make me truly to live ... by addressing me, by speaking to me His Word. When in the still centre of my being I become aware that God, the great God of my life is speaking, and speaking to me, then life begins to stir in me - such life as no other has the power to awaken. His Word brings me to life.
Now when God speaks to me what will He say? He will speak to me of my guilt - of the wrong I have done - of my failure as a human being.
i. He speaks first a word of Wrath
No man has heard God speak who has not heard first this note of condemnation in the Word He addresses to us. We know it. How does this help me? For His word of condemnation is a sentence of death. It brings me alive to Him only to fill me with the fear of death. It strikes fear into me, not joy.
Peter knows that too: "If you invoke as Father Him Who judges each one impartially according to his deeds, conduct yourselves with fear."
God first awakens me to the fear of judgement.
But that is precisely the word I need first to hear ... to know that He takes me seriously, that it really is me He is addressing, for I am a guilty man. My guilt is the burden that weighs heaviest upon me, and if, when I hear a voice, it has nothing to say of my guilt, then it is the voice of one who does not yet know me, who does not attend to my deepest pain, and who is therefore paying me only superficial attention. But because God speaks to me first of my guilt, I know He speaks out of a true care for me and that He speaks truth. His word reaches to my secret heart; it calls to me where I really am.
In a curious way, it is a comfort to me that God's first word is a word of wrath: He cares enough to be angry. We are most easily tolerant toward those for whom we care little; with those we care about deeply we are demanding. What I have been matters to God, and I know that until He speaks to me of my guilt, we have not come to the real thing at issue between us. All that is amiss in me - my hate, my spite, my jealousy, my hypocrisy and the rest - all stands condemned, and incurs His righteous indignation.
This Word of condemnation that awakens me to fear He speaks through His Law. But this is only His first Word to me.
ii. Then He speaks His Word of Mercy
This word He speaks to me, not through the Law, but through His Son, and especially through the Cross of His Son. There He shows me how His judgement and His mercy work together for my forgiveness. Just when I fear the stroke of His uplifted hand in judgement, I see His hand, not uplifted to strike, but fixed to the wood where my sin has nailed Him. It is not I who suffer the stroke of His judgement, but He who suffers the stroke inflicted by my sin. The sin in me that He condemns, He bears.
"The chastisement of my peace is upon Him."
Out of the pain to which I have put Him He speaks the word of forgiveness to me. He tells me that He does not count my trespasses against me; He releases me from all the debt I owe.
We may recall the words from Jesus story: "The lord of that servant, out of pity for him, forgave him all that debt." But to do that cost the servant's lord the loss of all he owed. The cost to God of our forgiveness was met in the suffering and death of Christ.
"By His stripes we are healed."
He suffers what He hates at the hands of those He loves, and it is in the awful suffering He is willing to bear that I perceive the greatness of His love. If that is what my sin does to Him, to whom I must answer for it ... and if, out of the grief and pain to which my sin has put Him He says to me, "Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more," then I know that I have been received with overwhelming love, such love as sweeps my sin away.
My sin has been exposed, only to be put away. It is no longer held against me; I am no longer required to answer for it, so I am relieved of all my guilt ... for guilt is the condition of having to answer for what I have done. The fear of death is lifted from me, and the bondage in which that fear holds me is broken. I am free - free at last - and reconciled to God. I have come alive to Him. God has spoken kindly to me. "His Word is the Good News that was proclaimed to you," says Peter. "Through that living and abiding Word of God, you have been born anew. So ... put away all malice, and all guile, and insincerity and envy and all slander, for you have tasted the kindness of the Lord."
Woe betide the servant, who, forgiven all that debt, cannot find it in his heart to bear the hurt of his brother's lesser sin and forgive him freely from the heart.
No wonder Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, "Concerning love of the brethren, you have no need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another." When did God teach them that? When they responded to the Gospel - when love sprang up within their hearts in response to God's love, flooding their hearts with His forgiveness.
And this Word, says Peter, this Word of Judgement and of Mercy is like a seed sown in a man's heart that grows there with a life of its own, a life God gives to it, so that it rises up and puts forth branches and yields fruits - the fruits of a very great love - for others to enjoy. You taste the flavour - and others taste it from you.
Now perhaps we can understand why Peter turns next to the idea of a corner-stone, for the corner-stone determines the lines on which the building grows that is built upon it. Peter uses this idea to illustrate how Christ and Christians are related to each other.
It was a favourite illustration with Bible writers.
In Judges and Samuel the leaders of the tribes of Israel are described as corner-stones, i.e. as men whose wisdom gives direction to the life of the tribe.
In Isaiah ch. 19 Zoan and Noph, princes of Egypt, are described as corner-stones of that nation - men to whom the people looked for guidance; but they are so crooked the empire built on their counsel is going to crumble.
In Psalm 144:12 David prays for the young women of Israel to be "like corner pillars, cut for the structure of a palace." (They had fashion designers in Israel - I wonder if this royal poem gave rise to a "pillar look" in David's day!) David is praying that the nation's womanhood should be such as to shape the nation's life to purity, good sense and honour.
Then in the passage before us, Peter quotes Isaiah 28:16, in which God promises to establish a corner-stone in Israel, tried, tested and secure, on which the whole fabric of the nation's life can be confidently built.
At that time the nation's leaders were trying to build their national security on political alliances with their neighbour states. They were playing the diplomatic game. Assyria to the north of them, and beyond her Babylon, were massing for war with Egypt to the south of them, and Israel saw that in the conflict that was brewing she would be caught in the middle; so they were negotiating treaties with both powers, trying to play both ends against the middle ... and becoming in the process, of course, expert liars.
"This," thundered Isaiah, "is no way to carry on. Dishonesty will bring us into defeat even more surely than will Assyria or Egypt. Only integrity, not clever diplomacy, can make us strong." It is a timely message for governments still! "You've scorned truth and you are relying on a tissue of lies to see you through; it's madness," said Isaiah. "God will lay a very different corner-stone on which to build the strength and security of this nation's life."
It would be seen later, of course, that Jesus Himself was the fulfilment of that promise.
Reflect how corner-stones figured in the building techniques of Peter's day. First the trenches were dug, and the foundations brought up to ground level; then they were left for several months to settle, after the heavy falls of summer and winter rain, and for the surrounding earth to pack up hard against the foundations. Then the first stone was laid, the corner-stone. More care was devoted to its shaping and its setting than to any other part of the building, more care by far. For from this stone all the lines were projected for the length and breadth and elevation of the building that rose from it. The corner-stone had to be ...
i. flawless, with no cavities, cracks or faults that might split under the weight it would bear, or under the influence of frosts.
ii. absolutely true, its angles mathematically precise, for the lines of the whole building were set from it.
iii. set firm, so that nothing built on it would tip or bulge.
Corner-stones were even taken from old and ruined buildings to serve for new ones, because they were tried and proven. The corner-stone from the ruins of the Temple of Diana in Ephesus, for example, was used in the building of the church of St. Sophia in Istanbul.
It was always the work of a Master Mason, and respect for his craft was enormous. Now perhaps we can understand Paul's word in Ephesians 2:20. "We are members of the household, he said, built on ...
(1) The foundation of the prophets and
apostles (well settled and firm)
(2) Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone -
flawless, true and firm - from Whom the whole structure grows into a
holy temple of God. You are yourselves being built into it on the
right lines - the lines marked out by Christ - for a dwelling of God
in the Spirit."
We are to be "trued" to Jesus Christ. His are the only right lines on which to build our life. His life alone can set the guidelines for ours. Any lines that are out of square with His will bring the whole structure of our life tumbling down in ruins. What are those lines? Truth and love - absolute truth and absolute love.
This world rejects those lines. "That's no way to build," it says. "Build like that and you'll never get off the ground. You have to cut corners, you have manipulate, you have to be tough and give no quarter." To be sure, you can build fast that way. But you cannot build true, and under stress what you build that way falls down around your ears.
Those who build on Jesus Christ, the cornerstone rejected by men but precious in God's eyes, may build more slowly and with more difficulty, but what they build survives all storms.
Are we on the right lines? Nothing will encourage our development in them like listening to God speaking to us through our attention to the Scriptures ... every day.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|