Bible Commentaries
1 Peter 2

Verses 1-6

XX

WHAT TO PUT AWAY

1 Peter 2:1-4:6

This section commences at 1 Peter 2:1: What to put away, and on what to be nourished. The Christian should put away wickedness, guile, hypocrisies, and evil speaking. The nourishment is "the sincere milk of the word, which is without guile, that ye may grow thereby." No man can grow in the Christian life without feeding upon Christian food, and therefore men who preach the word are said to break the Bread of life to the people.

This brings us to a new and emphatic item of the analysis: "The spiritual temple," (1 Peter 2:4-10), as follows: "Unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Because it is contained in Scripture. Behold, I lay in Zion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: And he that believeth in him shall not be put to shame. For you therefore that believe is the preciousness: but for such as disbelieve, The stone which the builders rejected, The same was made the head of the corner; and a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offence; For they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed. But ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his own marvelous light: who in time past were no people, but now are the people of God: who had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy."

Consider first the foundation of the spiritual house. The characteristics of this foundation are first, that it is a livingstone, not a dead one. The foundation of Solomon’s Temple was inert matter. The foundation stone of the spiritual house of which Peter speaks was the Lord Jesus Christ himself; not dead, but living. This foundation is not only alive, but the stone which constitutes it was elected. That means it was chosen. God selected that foundation. As it is God’s house, it is for him to say what substructure shall uphold the superstructure. For this purpose he elects his only begotten Son. Not only elect, but it is precious. The word precious there has the sense of costly. We say a precious stone in contradistinction from a stone of no particular value. Precious Christ. From that word we get our word "appreciate." To appreciate anything is to put it at its value. To depreciate it is to put it below its price. So it is not only an elect stone, but a costly one.

The next thing in this spiritual building is that all of the material that goes into this spiritual house must be living material. We also are living stones. No man can be put into the temple of God who is not made alive by the Spirit of God. The apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 3:11, referring to the foundation, says, "There can be but one foundation." The building is God’s building, and that he, a preacher, is a co-laborer with God in putting up that building. Now he says that if in putting up that temple this human laborer shall put in material that will not stand the first test, all that material is lost, and the man who puts it in suffers loss in the day that tries his work by fire. He refers then to the building material used. Some people use hay, wood, and stubble for thatching a house; they put that on the roof, and some build the walls of wood. Combustible material will perish in the fire. There is a passage in Jeremiah which refers to the same thing, that in putting up the spiritual temple we should not daub with untempered mortar. Mortar must be such that when it is dry it will hold together. Now the thought is the same here, that this spiritual house of which Christ is the foundation (and he is the only foundation) must be made of spiritual, living material. That distinguished Christ’s house from Solomon’s house. This passage interprets Matthew 16:18. It shows that Peter never supposed himself to be the rock on which the church is built.

The next thing in connection with the spiritual house is that its members (here he changes the figure, no longer speaking of them as the component parts of the wall, but speaking of them as servants in the house) constitute a priesthood. Every member of God’s true flock is a priest without regard to age or sex. They are all priests – a spiritual priesthood. In the Old Testament the priesthood was a special class. In the New Testament God’s people constitute a kingdom of priests. Every one of them is a priest.

The next thing is the kind of sacrifices that this priesthood offers. In the Old Testament the sacrifices were symbolical. Here they are spiritual. Praise is spiritual; prayer also is, contribution is, when given from the right motive. The entire family of God are priests, offering sacrifices unto God. The next thought (here the figure is changed again) is: There was an old nation deriving its descent from Abraham. Now Christians belong to a new nation. That is clearly expressed here in the passage. It says, "Ye are an elect race," that is, "you derive your descent from the spiritual seed, Christ being the head of the race." The old-time Israel was a national people made up of those who by fleshly descent constituted its members. Now we are a spiritual nation. The people of God are conceived of as a nation as well as a race.

Now we come to the purpose, and that is expressed in these words: "That ye may show forth the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." That is the purpose. That is really the purpose of every Christian organization, of every Christian life, that the Christian should show forth the excellency of God, his Saviour.

We have in 1 Peter 2:11-17 some general exhortations that do not particularly need any exposition, and in 1 Peter 2:18-22. we have some exhortations based on the fact that a large number of the Christian people in that day were slaves, servants, and he starts out with that idea. He speaks to slaves: "Be in subjection to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward, for this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye take it patiently? But if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God." All this bears on the hard condition of the slave at that time; that the slave would be put to grief wrongfully; that he would be buffeted wrongfully; that he would be reviled wrongfully. Now what are these slaves to do if they are Christians? He does not preach as a member of an abolition society. He doesn’t propose to introduce any revolutionary measures. But he tries to fix the minds of those slaves upon better things: First, that they can as slaves illustrate the truth and the power of the Christian religion, and can show forth the excellencies of God. That if they are buffeted, so was Christ. If they are reviled, so was Christ. If they are maltreated, so was he. "The thing to do, whatever your lot) is in it to illustrate the power of the Christian religion, and you will do more good that way than by trying to organize a slave insurrection."

I have a Texas friend who wishes me to quit preaching the gospel and preach socialism. He says that I am wasting my time and gifts. I tell him that I am following in the footsteps of our Lord. I go through the world seeing many things that are wrong – wrong politically, wrong economically, wrong in a thousand other ways. If I enter into this political arena, try to revolutionize the world as a politician, I will certainly fail as a preacher. Other men before me have tried it and failed. I do a better thing; I can preach a gospel whose principles will reform society, whose principles will ultimately bring about the greatest good to the greatest number in all things.

In 1 Peter 3:1-7 he discusses the relation of husband and wife, and very much as Paul discusses it in his letters. In every letter Paul writes, he takes up the case of the slave, the husband, the wife, the citizen, the child, the parent. Peter does the same thing, and shows that real Christianity in the heart of a good woman will prompt her to honor and respect her husband, to be obedient, and will prompt the husband to love and cherish the wife, and that a married state blessed by the power of religion will do more toward reforming society than all the divorce courts in the world. That is his way of dealing with social, domestic, economic, and political questions.

He calls attention to the fact that Christian women, like all other women, like adornment. That is characteristic of the sex, and he is not depreciating a woman wearing nice apparel – that is not the thing with him – but in the method of the New Testament teaching, he is showing a higher kind of adornment when he says this: "Whose adorning let it not be the outward adorning of braiding the hair, and of wearing jewels of gold, or of putting on of apparel; but let it be the hidden man of the heart, in the incorruptible apparel of a meek and quiet spirit, which is, in the sight of God, of great price." There are many teachings of the New Testament that, taken on their face, seem to condemn external adornment altogether.

Dr. Sampey in a judicious article calls attention to the power of contrast in certain Hebraisms, and shows how that principle goes all through the New Testament. When God says, "I will have none of their offerings," he does not mean that he would not accept the offerings which he had commanded them to make, but he means when compared to what they signify they are but the chaff of the wheat. If a woman lives merely for dress, and her adornment is merely jewels and silks and ribbons and things of that kind, then it is a very poor kind of external beauty. But over against that he puts the true adornment of the soul, and virtues and graces of the Christian religion, and that gives her in the true idea of dress, the most shining apparel in the world. That is his thought.

In 1 Peter 3:10, we reach a new idea in the analysis: The way of a happy life. Let us see what it is: "He that would love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile. Let him turn away from the evil and do good. Let him seek peace and pursue it."

Here are three directions for a happy life, summed up as follows: "Watch out what you do; watch out about what you pursue." Now if a man goes around talking evil and doing evil and pursuing fusses, it is impossible for him to have a happy life. The reason is expressed in 1 Peter 3:12: "For the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears are open to their supplications; but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil." That is the reason. God is above man, his eye is on us all the time, his ears listen. We are under his jurisdiction, his face is against them that do evil. His favor is toward them that do well. Now the question comes up about a happy life. I am to do these three things: Keep my tongue from evil, turn away from doing evil, and live in peace and not fusses. And the reason that those directions will bring happiness is that God is against the bad and for the good. That constitutes the way of a happy life.

At the beginning of a great meeting in Caldwell, a good many years ago, the old pastor preached the opening sermon from that text: "The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and his ears are open unto their supplications, but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil"; and his theme was the government of God. It was a fine introduction to a revival.

Continuing the thought, he says, "Who is he that will harm you if ye be zealous of that which is good?" That is, take the general run of things. If one moves to a community, and while living in it he does not speak evil of his neighbors, he does good and not evil, and he avoids fusses and cultivates peace, now who is going to harm him? Now as a general rule (there are exceptions to it) he will be liked in the community.

That is the rule; now the exceptions: "But even if ye should suffer for righteousness’ sake, blessed are ye; fear not their fear, neither be troubled." Suppose as an exception that one moves into a community and lives right and talks right, but on account of his religion he is subjected to ill-treatment – and that may happen, has happened, there is always a possibility of that exception coming in – now what if he does suffer, he is blessed in it; nobody can take anything away from him that God cannot restore to him a thousand-fold, or give him something better in the place of it.

The spirits in prison: This is a hard passage. Let us look at it carefully: "Christ being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit; in which he also went and preached unto the spirits in prison that aforetime were disobedient, when the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved through water; which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ; who is on the right hand of God, having gone into heaven; angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him."

I call attention first to the textual difficulty. The version that I have before me reads this way: "being put to death in the flesh, and made alive in the spirit." This translation contrasts Christ’s soul with Christ’s flesh, and says that he was put to death in his body, but made alive in his soul. The same translators take the passage in Timothy 3:16 : "was manifested in the flesh, justified in the spirit," and there they again make the spirit refer to Christ’s soul as opposed to Christ’s body.

I take the position unhesitatingly that they are in error in both places – that there is no reference in either place to the soul of Christ. Christ was put to death in the flesh, and that flesh was made alive by the Holy Spirit. That is what it means. He was declared to be the Son of God with power by his resurrection) and in other places he was manifested in the flesh, and so manifested he was justified by the Holy Spirit. "The Spirit" refers not to Christ’s soul in either passage, but refers to the Holy Spirit. That with me is a capital point. It is the later modern radical critics that insist on making "spirit" in both of these passages refer not to the Holy Spirit, but to Christ’s soul, and hence their teaching of this passage is that Christ died as to his body, but was made alive as to his soul, and hence in his soul he went and preached to the other spirits.

My first objection to their view is this: That Christ was not made alive in his soul at the time he was put to death in his flesh – nothing was the matter with his soul. The question is whether it means the Holy Spirit or Christ’s soul. I say it means the Holy Spirit.

The second thought is: "being put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Holy Spirit." His body that was put to death was revived by the Holy Spirit, made alive, in which Holy Spirit he went (in past tense) and preached to those that are now disembodied spirits and in prison. But when he preached to them, they were not disembodied. Christ preached through the Holy Spirit to the antediluvians while the ark was preparing, as Genesis 6:3 says, "My Spirit will not always strive with man." Through the Holy Spirit, Christ was preaching to those people while the ark was preparing. The very same Holy Spirit, when Christ’s body died, made it alive in the resurrection. So in answering the question: "To whom did he preach?" I say that he preached to the antediluvians. When did he preach to them? When they were disobedient, in the days of Noah. How did he preach to them? By the Holy Spirit. Where are those people now? They are in prison, shut up unto the judgment of the great day; they are the dead now, and in the next chapter he will say the gospel was preached to them that are dead for this cause. They are dead now, but when they were living they had the gospel preached to them, but they rejected it.

The theory of the translation before us is open to these insuperable objections:

(1) It fails to explain how he was "made alive in his own spirit when his body died."

(2) It teaches a probation after death which is opposed to all the trend of the Scriptures.

(3) It provides a work for Christ’s disembodied soul contrary to the work elsewhere assigned to him in that state, namely, his going to the Father (Luke 23:46) to make immediate atonement by offering his blood shed on the cross (see Lev. 16; Hebrews 9:24 ff.). He was elsewhere and on quite a different work.

(4) It fails to explain why, if his disembodied soul went on such a mission, it was limited to antediluvians only.

(5) It robs him of his Old Testament work through the Holy Spirit.

(6) It leaves out the making alive of Christ’s dead body by the Holy Spirit (Romans 1:4), so powerfully described by Peter elsewhere (Acts 2:22-36).

I believe that Jesus entered into hell, but when? Not as a disembodied soul between the death and resurrection of his body, nor after he arose from the dead. We have clearly before seen what he did while disembodied, and what he did after his body was raised. He entered into hell, soul and body, on the cross, in the three hours of darkness, when he was forsaken of the Father, and met the dragon and his hosts, and triumphed over them, making a show of them openly.

To show that the Spirit here is the Holy Spirit, and that the Holy Spirit made alive Christ’s body that was put to death in the flesh, he is now going to bring in the subject of the resurrection. The Holy Spirit made Christ’s body alive in the resurrection, and the illustration used is the waters in the flood – that the waters of the flood, in a certain sense, saved a few. The very waters that destroyed man saved a few; that is, those that obeyed God and got into the ark, eight of them, they were saved by the water. Now he says in like figure, or the antitype of the flood, is baptism, and that baptism now saves us; that is what it says. The only question is how does it save us? He answers both positively and negatively. .Negatively he says it does not put away the filth of the flesh. That is what it does not do. It doesn’t mean that. There, flesh means the carnal nature, and not the dirt that is on the outside of the body. If we take the word, "flesh," and run it through the New Testament, we will see what he refers to there, that baptism does not cleanse the carnal nature. So the salvation referred to is not an internal, spiritual cleansing of the nature. When we talk about baptism saving us, we must be sure that it does not accomplish that salvation. Well, what salvation does it accomplish? It accomplishes a salvation by answering a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. Well, what is that?

Let us get at the precise thought. We want to see how baptism saves. It saves us in a figure, not in reality. It does not put away carnal nature. It saves us in a figure – the figure of the resurrection. Now that is exactly what it does. It gives us a picture of salvation, a pictorial, symbolical resurrection. In baptism we are buried, and in baptism we are raised. Now through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which that baptism memorializes – that is salvation. Not a real one, but a figurative one – that pictorial representation of salvation. That as we have been buried in the likeness of Christ’s death, so shall we be in the likeness of his resurrection. It is likeness, not the thing itself – a picture. It is true that baptism washes away sin, because Ananias says to Paul, "Arise, and wash away thy sins." But it does not actually wash away sins, because it is the blood of Christ that cleanses us from all sin. It does wash away sin symbolically and in no other way. Baptism saves, not actually, by change of the carnal nature, but in a figure. It is the figure of the resurrection. That is the way it saves.

The literature upon that passage in Peter is immense, and there are a great many people in the Church of England today who hold that in the interval between the death and the resurrection of Christ he spent the time visiting lost souls and preaching to them. We have already shown what he was doing between his death and the resurrection: that his spirit went to the Father; that it went with the penitent thief into the paradise of God; that he went there to sprinkle his blood of expiation on the mercy seat in order to make atonement, and then he came back. And when he came, there took place what this text says, "He who was put to death in the flesh and made alive by the Holy Spirit," as to his body. The Holy Spirit raised his body. The text has not a word to say about what Christ’s spirit did between his death and his resurrection – not a thing. But this text does say that in the Holy Spirit, before he ever became manifest in the flesh, he used to preach, but not in person. In other words, he is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever, and that through the Holy Spirit the gospel was preached in Old Testament times. That Abraham was able to see Christ’s day and rejoiced; that Abel was enabled by faith to take hold of Christ. All these people back yonder in the old world had the gospel preached to them. They had light, and it was spiritual light.

QUESTIONS

1. On the thought in 1 Peter 2:2, that the soul needs a healthful and nutritious diet as well as the body, what things must be put away as poisonous, and what must be used as nourishing?

2. In the figure of a spiritual house (1 Peter 2:4-10), show what is the Christian temple, what the foundation and chief cornerstone, what the priesthood, what the sacrifices, what the object, contrasting each point with the Jewish type.

3. In Matthew 16:18 Christ says to Peter, "On this rock I will build my church," and evidently here (1 Peter 2:4-7) there is a reference to our Lord’s words, hence the question: Who is the foundation rock on which the church is built as Peter himself understood Christ’s words, and who the rock as Isaiah understood it (Isaiah 28:16), which Peter quoted, and as Paul understood it (1 Corinthians 3:9-16)?

4. In 1 Peter 2:9 state the points of contrast between Israel after the flesh and the spiritual Isaiah.

5. In 1 Peter 2:11-3:7 are exhortations to Christiana as pilgrims, as subjects of human government, as slaves, as husbands, and wives, parents and children. (1) Show, how by the exhortations Christianity is not revolutionary in its teachings on citizenship, slavery and society, and how they correspond with other New Testament teachings on the same points. (2) Show the meaning of such Hebraisms as 1 Peter 3:3-22.

6. What the force of "bare our sins in his body upon the tree," or in other words, what the scriptural meaning of "to bear sins"?

7. What Peter’s rule of a happy life?

8. On 1 Peter 3:18-21, with 1 Peter 4:6, answer: (1) Does "spirit," the last word of 1 Peter 3:18, mean Christ’s own human spirit, or the Holy Spirit? (2) How did Christ preach to the antediluvians, i.e., in his own person or by another, and if another, what other? (3) When did he so preach, while the antediluvians were living and disobedient while the ark was preparing and by the Holy Spirit (Genesis 6:3), or to them in prison after death, either between his death and resurrection, or between his resurrection and ascension, and if to them after their death and imprisonment, what did he preach? (4) Did Christ, as the sinner’s substitute, enter the pangs of hell, when, in the body or out of it, and what the proof? (5) On 1 Peter 4:6, was the gospel preached to the dead before they died, or afterward? (6) Show the difficulties and heresies of interpreting "spirit" in 1 Peter 4:18 as Christ’s own spirit and his preaching to men after their death, either between his own death and resurrection, or between his resurrection and ascension. (7) On 1 Peter 3:21, what the meaning of "filth of the flesh," is it dirt of the body, or the defilement of the carnal nature? And then how does baptism now save us?