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Read Ebook: Expositions of Holy Scripture Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John by Maclaren Alexander
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Ebook has 740 lines and 119536 words, and 15 pages
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF PETER
PAGE SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION 1
BY, THROUGH, UNTO 7
SORROWFUL, YET ALWAYS REJOICING 17
THE TRUE GOLD AND ITS TESTING 27
JOY IN BELIEVING 34
CHRIST AND HIS CROSS THE CENTRE OF THE UNIVERSE 41
HOPE PERFECTLY 51
THE FAMILY LIKENESS 61
FATHER AND JUDGE 69
PURIFYING THE SOUL 76
LIVING STONES ON THE LIVING FOUNDATION STONE 86
SPIRITUAL SACRIFICES 92
MIRRORS OF GOD 101
CHRIST THE EXEMPLAR 107
HALLOWING CHRIST 116
CHRISTIAN ASCETICISM 123
THE SLAVE'S GIRDLE 130
SYLVANUS 138
AN APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY AND EXHORTATION 146
THE CHURCH IN BABYLON 154
MARCUS, MY SON 161
THE SECOND EPISTLE OF PETER
LIKE PRECIOUS FAITH 170
MAN SUMMONED BY GOD'S GLORY AND ENERGY 178
PARTAKERS OF THE DIVINE NATURE 189
THE POWER OF DILIGENCE 198
GOING OUT AND GOING IN 206
THE OWNER AND HIS SLAVES 215
BE DILIGENT 224
GROWTH 234
THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN
THE MESSAGE AND ITS PRACTICAL RESULTS 247
WALKING IN THE LIGHT 253
THE COMMANDMENT, OLD YET NEW 261
YOUTHFUL STRENGTH 269
RIVER AND ROCK 279
THE LOVE THAT CALLS US SONS 289
THE UNREVEALED FUTURE OF THE SONS OF GOD 301
THE PURIFYING INFLUENCE OF HOPE 310
PRACTICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS 320
CHRIST'S MISSION THE REVELATION OF GOD'S LOVE 329
THE SERVANT AS HIS LORD 338
LOVE AND FEAR 347
THE RAY AND THE REFLECTION 355
SOJOURNERS OF THE DISPERSION
'Peter, an Apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered ...'--1 Peter i. 1.
The words rendered 'strangers scattered' are literally 'sojourners of the Dispersion,' and are so rendered in the Revised Version. The Dispersion was the recognised name for the Jews dwelling in Gentile countries; as, for instance, it is employed in John's Gospel, when the people in Jerusalem say, 'Whither will this man go that we shall not find Him? Will he go to the Dispersion amongst the Greeks?' Obviously, therefore the word here may refer to the scattered Jewish people, but the question arises whether the letter corresponds to its apparent address, or whether the language which is employed in it does not almost oblige us to see here a reference, not to the Jew, but to the whole body of Christian people, who, whatever may be their outward circumstances, are, in the deepest sense, in the foundations of their life, if they be Christ's, 'strangers of the Dispersion.'
Now if we look at the letter we find such words as these--'The times of your ignorance'--'your vain manner of life handed down from your fathers'--'in time past were not a people'--'the time past may suffice to have wrought the will of the Gentiles'--all of which, as you see, can only be accommodated to Jewish believers by a little gentle violence, but all of which find a proper significance if we suppose them addressed to Gentiles, to whom they are only applicable in the higher sense of the words to which I have referred. If we understand them so, we have here an instance of what runs all through the letter; the taking hold of Jewish ideas for the purpose of lifting them into a loftier region, and transfiguring them into the expression of Christian truth. For example, we read in it: 'Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation'; and again: 'Ye are built up a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices.' These and other similar passages are instances of precisely the same transference of Jewish ideas as I find, in accordance with many good commentators, in the words of my text.
So, then, here is Peter's notion of--
All those who really have faith in Jesus Christ are 'strangers of the Dispersion'; scattered throughout the world, and dwelling dispersedly in an order of things to which they do not belong, 'seeking a city which hath foundations.' The word 'strangers' means, originally, persons for a time living in an alien city. And that is the idea that the Apostle would impress upon us as true for each of us, in the measure in which our Christianity is real. For, remember, although all men may be truly spoken of as being 'pilgrims and sojourners upon the earth' by reason of both the shortness of the duration of their earthly course and the disproportion between their immortal part and the material things amongst which they dwell, Peter is thinking of something very different from either the brevity of earthly life or the infinite necessities of an immortal spirit when he calls his Christian brethren strangers. Not because we are men, not because we are to die soon, and the world is to outlast us; not because other people will one day live in our houses and read our books and sit upon our chairs, and we shall be forgotten, but because we are Christ's people are we here sojourners, and must regard this as not our rest. Not because our immortal soul cannot satisfy itself, however it tries, upon the trivialities of earth any more than a human appetite can on the husks that the swine do eat, but because new desires, tastes, aspirations, affinities, have been kindled in us by the new life that has flowed into us; therefore the connection that other men have with the world, which makes some of them altogether 'men of the world, whose portion is in this life,' is for us broken, and we are strangers, scattered abroad, solitary, not by reason of the inevitable loneliness in which, after all love and companionship, every soul lives; not by reason of losses or deaths, but by reason of the contrariety between the foundation of our lives, and the foundation of the lives of the men round us; therefore we stand lonely in the midst of crowds; strangers in the ordered communities of the world.
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