Food for Christ’s Lambs: Chapter 10 - The Christian’s Addition Table

2 Peter 1:5-16.
The Apostle Peter turns here in vs. 5 to the practical state of the believers; having given them what would comfort and refresh their hearts, he says, This is not all, now I look at your own state practically. “Besides this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge.” He knew how easy it was to get slothful, and so he exhorts them to give all diligence in thus adding. Virtue is that energy and courage of soul, that knows how to refuse, as well as to choose, like Moses, who “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season,” and so he says “Add to your faith virtue.” You have the faith that connects you with God, and you believe in what as yet you do not see, but now you must add virtue, that courage, which knows how to say “No” to the thousand things that come up day by day, and to press unswervingly on the pathway that is set before us.
Then you may find a person who has this energy, but who is a little rough, and so he says, there is something else needed, lest this roughness turn to rashness, therefore add to virtue knowledge of God, of the mind and ways of God., and of what suits God, for mere knowledge puffs up, this is the knowledge that humbles.
A man that knows God well, cannot know Him without being in His company, and a person who is rear to God is tender in his ways, though there may be energy in him to follow on. We need grace from the Lord to add this.
“And to knowledge temperance.” Not the mere external restraint, but the cultivation of the inward mystery of the soul day by day, governing ourselves, keeping ourselves in order: and depend upon it if we cannot keep ourselves in order, we cannot keep anyone else.
Temperance is that quiet gravity of spirit, that equable in every circumstance, like Christ, never upset by anything or anyone that came along.
“And to temperance patience.” Temperance will keep me from saying or doing a thing that will wound you, and patience will keep me from being upset by anything that you may do to wound me. Temperance is active, patience is passive!
If you have not knowledge, you will not know how to meet the mind of God. If you have not temperance you will be sure to do something that will hurt someone else, and if you have not patience you will be upset by what someone else may be doing to you.
“And to patience Godliness”—God-likeness——walking through this scene, and possessing the divine nature, see that you illustrate it, exemplify it! new me a man’s company, and I will skew you what sort of a man he is; and if you are keeping company with God you will be a godly person, for we all resemble the thing we are occupied with. It comes out in a thousand blessed details too every day.
Then in this the Christian’s addition table, we have brotherly kindness, and charity, two things that may seem alike, but are different.
Brotherly kindness is a thing that might be merely human, and might degenerate and fade away, and brotherly kindness might only love the lovable sort of people, might be partial, but when I come to charity, it is impartial and unfailing, it is divine. “Charity never fails.” In 1 Cor. 13 there are eight things it does not do, and eight things it does do, and it never breaks down. It is the very thing our souls need as we go through a scene where everything is against us.
Supposing a person repulsed me, and considered my love interference, brotherly kindness only might say, I will not go back; but charity is a divine thing and says, “I think of the blessing and good of the object, and of the glory of God in connection with that object.”
Charity is not the love that makes light of evil, but the love that seeks the real good of its object.
We have a guide how we may learn if we really love the children of God (1 John 5:2.) “By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments.” If you love the Father you love His children.
If we love Himself we love His people likewise, and we seek each other’s blessing, but always desiring to meet His mind.
You act as one who goes directly out from God, dependent on Him and obedient to Him, in grace to a, person no matter what his state may be. The Lord help us to profit by His word, and to seek to add these things to our faith, for there are many beautiful consequences of so doing.
If there be not this blessed adding, there is going back, for there is no such thing as standing still; if we are not progressing, we are retrograding. “Unto every one that hath, shall be given… but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.”
If there be not the desire to press on, to go on with the Lord, what is there? There is only a returning to the things from which the Lord called us out in days gone by. The Lord give us to have diligence o! heart in thus adding to our faith, and progressing in the knowledge of Himself.
From the frequency with which the Apostle alludes to the eight things mentioned in verses 5, 6, and 7,—would seem almost impossible to overrate their importance. He brings out the effect of having these things and the result of not having them.
The end of every dealing of God with our souls is to make us know Christ better. If a person goes on with these three verses, you find about that person the savor of Christ. Peter felt that everything was nothing that did not lead a person to a deeper knowledge of Christ. That which puts us nearer to Christ has this effect, we feel how unlike Christ we are, and also it allures us from the world, so that we are more fit morally to pass through the world.
Many a saint of God feels, I am fit for heaven, but not fit for earth, because I am not sufficiently with the Lord to be equal to the occasions that arise as I pass through this scene. We feel our impotence and folly feel how we have broken down as witnesses for Christ. It is only as Christ becomes better known that there is a fitness to pass through this scene.
Verse 9. You will say this is a backslider. Not at all! He is confident about his eternal salvation, “But,” you say, “he is blind.” Quite true; put the things that belong to the Lord before him, he does not see them, he has forgotten too that he was purged from his old sins. What has he forgotten? Has he forgotten that his old sins were purged away? Not a bit! He has forgotten that he was purged away from his old sins, and so he has turned back to them again, got back into the world, lost completely the sense of what Christianity is as being a heavenly thing, and the Christian as being a heavenly person. There has been a dropping down, and losing sight of the things the Lord has called us to, a dropping down to earth, and its ways, its principles, and its religion likewise, the whole thing has been let go. Bit by bit the standard has been lowered, till there has been a dropping down so far, that the Lord has had to awaken us in a startling way.
Verse 10. Here the apostle comes in again with the solemn exhortation “give diligence,” and it is a thing we need, this holy diligence of soul to keep up, with purpose of heart to the thing the Lord has called us to. Peter alludes, doubtless, in this verse to the terrible fall he had had himself.
“But,” you say, “how can we make our calling and election sure?” Who called us? Our Father. Who chose us? Our Father. But this does not do for other people. Who are you to make your calling and election sure with? with the One who called you? the One who chose you? Not a bit, but with everyone who watches you, everyone who could say “You a called person! You do not look a bit like it. You a chosen person! No one would think so.” You are to make it manifest to the eyes of everyone else that you have been thus called of God.
Verse 11. That is more than the soul being sustained, kept of the Lord, though that in itself is a wonderful mercy, for there is many a fall in the history of a child of God, that God and his own heart alone knows of.
But is there not something very beautiful about the path of a Christian of whom you could say, from the first till the Lord took that one home, “He never took a backward step, there was not a trip, nothing manifest but a pathway of beautiful devotedness.” There is no reference here to forgiveness or pardon, but Peter reverts to his great subject of the government of God, and he says, if you have these things and abound, not only will you be kept from falling, but there passes before his mind the thought of the place, and the portion, and the reward that the saint of God has in the coming kingdom of the Lord, for though the grace of God gives us a common place in heavenly glory, there is such a thing as the kingdom, or a place in the kingdom, and reward for service which has nothing to do with grace. Grace gives us a common place in heavenly glory, but the government of God gives us an unequal place in the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, according to service.
It is a question of the reward that a saint gets from the Lord by-and-by, and there is the same difference in this, as there is between a vessel, that goes abroad, and encounters storms by the way, but has been badly rigged, badly manned, and badly commanded, and though it gets into port, yet it comes up the channel with masts torn away, and tugged by a steamer; and a vessel that comes into port with all sails set—everything in order, and cargo safe.
Peter says, If you do not go on adding, you will fall down by the road, and there will be a sense of loss at the end. There comes a moment when the soul deeply feels, Would to God I had been devoted to Christ, instead of being worldly, cold, trivial, half-hearted. Most beautifully Peter guards the sheep, lest they should fall into the thing from which he would fain protect them.
Verses 12, 13. We may sometimes think it not worthwhile to be going over the same things again and again. Not so Peter. And if our hearts are only put in remembrance of these things God be thanked. It will be blessed fruit to our account in the days to come.
Do we not need stirring up? We do. Satan does his utmost to hinder our souls. The Lord lead us to be more watchful, more on our guard against the wiles of the enemy.
Verse 15. How persistent Peter is “To have these things always in remembrance.” “These things,” are five times spoken of. It is impossible therefore for our souls to over-estimate the value, and the worth of vss. 5,6,7, to which the apostle thus alludes five times after. The Lord grant we may have them always in remembrance, have them engraved upon the tablets of our hearts.
How Peter felt there was no apostolic succession, no one to do the work he was doing, after his death. I leave you, he says, in my Epistle that which may always be a blessing and a help to your souls.
In all ages the people of God have clung in a peculiar way to Peter’s Epistles. Why, do you think? I believe it is because they come right down to where we are in the world, and meet us so beautifully with a presentation of Christ, which comes to us and suits us in our need in this world.
We have Satan presented as a roaring lion in the first epistle, and as a snake in the grass in the second epistle, and we have what meets him in both these characters, and preserves us from his devices.
Our Living Association With Christ in Heaven
The present position of Christ in heaven apprehended by faith determines our
(3) New standing and state in Him.— “That I may be found in Him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” (vs. 9.) All his former supposed gains had been given up for Christ—to have Him as gain; and, instead of Saul figuring before the Jewish Sanhedrin and displaying himself as the leading legalist invested with his own righteousness which had its source in the law, his self-abnegating aim is,—sinking Saul,—to “be found in Him” whom he had seen as the risen Lord of glory; and if “found in Christ” then Saul was gone and only Christ appeared to faith instead of him; and he made Him appear before others, as the only One in whom he trusted and boasted as giving him a standing before God and being the cause of his investiture with the righteousness issuing from God and which is apprehended by faith in Christ, and solely on the ground of faith, and not on the principle of law, or on the ground of works of law. He is in a new place where “all old things” have passed away; and all things are become new, and all things there are “of God who hath reconciled us to Himself by Jesus Christ.” Seeing Christ in glory—he recognized his standing and righteousness as complete in Him before God. His former state was what his own righteousness had made him; but he had seen Christ in the glory of God in God’s righteousness, and he will have none of his “own righteousness which is of the law but that which through the faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by faith.” If you seek for the great ritualist leader and legalist Saul of Tarsus he cannot be found within the entire domain of the law; for he has abandoned all as loss to have Christ as gain; and be “found in Him.” He has been justified and sanctified in Christ, and has had Christ Jesus made on the part of God, wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption that he may glory in the Lord: and now, here, he glories in Him as giving him a share in the new moral estate of man in Christ in heaven.
His uniform testimony is that, flowing from revelation and his own experience, salvation and a place before God in Christ are not from works of righteousness of law done by us (Titus 3:4-7), (2 Tim. 1:9), (Gal. 2:16-21). How he delights to contrast what he had in virtue of his faith in Christ with what he had before He revealed Himself to Him and was revealed by God in him. “Found in Him,” not in self; “not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is by the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith,” Whether it be objective and judicial as in Romans, or subjective and of the new creation, “having put on the new man which according to God is created in righteousness and holiness of truth,” as in Ephesians; or the whole new and future moral state of man in glory as here, it is most certainly “of God.” The language is that which the apostle frequently employs when he is giving our standing and our state as in Romans and Galatians, and it is of the new and future position of man in Christ and of the fundamental things attaching to it he speaks here antedating, by faith and the Spirit, that day when we shall be revealed in glory and be.so identified with Him, in bodies of glory, that we shall be “glorified together.” But for faith and the Spirit he is “found in Him” now as in the very source and element of his spirit’s life as well as divine righteousness. Let “in him” mean only what it does in “Romans;” yet that connects him with the dead and risen One— “the last Adam the second man” in whom as the Head of a new race we have life and righteousness “for as by the disobedience of the one man the many have been constituted sinners; so also by the obedience of the one the many will be constituted righteous” (Rom. 5): and closely bound up with this is our subjective state (Rom. 6) in which we reckon ourselves dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God in Christ Jesus; we yield ourselves unto God as alive from the dead and our members instruments of righteousness unto God. There is certainly also the molding of life corresponding to the gaining of Christ. God is working in us both to will and to do: the Christ, who humbled himself and became obedient even unto death, when here in grace and graciousness being our pattern: and that same One highly exalted at God’s right hand and having a name above every name, in life and righteousness, our object; and the Holy Ghost giving us discovery of our place in Him where He is and working in us, in association with Him, we get “strengthened with all might by His Spirit in the inner man that Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith”; and “strengthened also with all power according to the might of his glory unto all endurance and long suffering with joy.”
There are three things the apostle said at the close of his life that he had done: (1) “I have fought a good fight; (2) I have finished the race; (3) I have kept the faith;” (2 Tim. 4:7). Here we find him occupied with all the three; but that which stands out most prominently is his energy in pressing on in the race. He saw the glorious Man in whom, as risen from the dead, (for he knew Him not otherwise), He wished to be found in God’s sight, the righteousness of God in Him, and be with Him in glory where He is, cost what it may. But while on the road he has (4) A new occupation: “that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed unto His death, if any way I arrive at the resurrection from among the dead.” (vs. 10). Paul is looking “to be found in Him” having not his own righteousness but that which is through the faith of Christ—the righteousness which is of God by faith, to know Him, &c.
Nothing keeps men so effectually from the knowledge of Christ and Christianity as a mixture of religious observances and legal righteousness. The Hebrew Christians were kept back by it:—became “unskillful in the word of righteousness” “needing milk and not strong meat.” (Heb. 5). The Galatians too, who were taught, by those ritualists who troubled them, to add circumcision to faith in Christ in order to help them in the Christian life, were warned by the apostle that it was “another gospel,” and “not the gospel of Christ:”
and he tells them that he stood in doubt of them, and travailed in birth for them that Christ might be formed in them. And in the epistle to the Colossians, he sets distinctly before the saints who were in danger of being made a spoil of, and “not holding the head” by means of philosophy and vain deceit and the ritualism that presented the ordinances of men—that “Christ is all; and in all”: “all,” as an object; “in all,” as their life; and they needed nothing else and none but Christ.
It is, therefore, of great importance to our knowing Christ that we have a divine assurance and settled consciousness of our place in Him in heaven where He is and of our being the righteousness of God in Him. Clear as to our standing in a risen and glorified Christ; and as to the righteousness of God in taking Him up from the dead to His own presence in glory, and in giving a place in Him there to all who through faith in Him and the Holy Ghost, become associated with Him as those who have “the righteousness which is of God by faith” and not on the principle of law or by works of law, we are in a state to “know Him.” A standing before God in all holy peacefulness in Him who is our peace, and has made peace by the blood of His cross is essential to our being in that calm state of spiritual restfulness, in which we may be so entirely free from ourselves and have Christ before us so really and continuously that we “may know Him, &c.” He is the one engrossing Object of the truly-delivered Christian who has seen an end both of his sins and of himself in the cross of Christ, and has had a sight by faith’s eye of the glorious One who appeared in such matchless grace to Saul on the road to Damascus, and who thenceforward stood out before Him all his life as the nearest and dearest object to His heart.
The whole of the new moral estate of man is looked at here as in the future, in heavenly glory with Christ; and, being in resurrection, the whole matter in hand is its attainment—for what else is there for a saint to do? The resurrection here is that which enters us into this new state in glory— “the Politeuma in the heavens”—identified with the last Adam, the risen, and accepted and glorified man. But although everything here is in the future, yet by faith, and the revealings of the Spirit of Christ, we enter now, in spirit, into all that it will be by and bye; and our present occupation is to know the very Christ for whose coming to fetch us thither we are waiting, and with whom we are expecting to be in that bright glory forever. We have eternal redemption with the perfect purging of our consciences through the blood of Christ; present reconciliation through the death of Christ; sonship, and the Holy Ghost giving us the consciousness of a new relationship in the Son of God risen from the dead, and the affections of children; and the most magnificent hope set before us “Glory with Christ above:” “Christ who is our hope,” being Himself our present object in the glory of heaven, our whole moral existence is formed by our having the knowledge of Him communicated to us in the living energy of the Holy Ghost who keeps us continuously in spiritual activity, pushing our way through every hindrance to reach Him, be like Him, and with Him in the glory of heaven forever. Said He, “I will come again and receive you to myself that where I am there ye may be also.” And we wait for God’s Son from heaven.
“That I may know Him!” He would know Him as risen, and in the glory of heaven where first he saw Him. Among carnal saints who gloried in men and gifts, and were worldly in their spirits, he said he would know only Jesus Christ, and Him crucified. But in the normal condition of the Christian he can be occupied with Christ Jesus his Lord, glorified. He can contemplate Him in all the honor, power, and glory of His heavenly state. This glorious One is the divine person in whom God’s nature and character were revealed on earth, One in whom all God’s glory had shone out in His life and death and resurrection. His nature and ways had been seen in Him when walking here in divine love and grace, and giving Himself for our sins: all that the Father is was glorified in raising Him from the dead and seating Him with Himself in heavenly glory. It was but holy consistency with Himself to raise and glorify the One who had perfectly revealed Him, and glorified Him on the earth, even when occupied about our sin: this Divine One—this now glorified man set on high and crowned with glory and honor for his suffering of death, is the One he ever sought to know—to know Himself “the person of the Christ, enfolding every grace.”
Then further, he adds “and the power of his resurrection:” not the power of his raising up in the flesh, nor yet the power by which He was raised and rose; but the power and efficacy which flow from His resurrection. Perfect love had been manifested in death and the basis of divine righteousness laid, perfect self-sacrifice displayed, and Christ had passed through death in the power of life, and its perfection was demonstrated in resurrection: and victory too attaches to it. The apostle as one who, in the Spirit, is united to Him who is the source of this perfect, victorious life, desires to know Him thus—and realize that the divine life in which one runs on his course to Christ in glory, (its source and vital energy,) is not life on probation, but life in victory, having already gone through death and risen out of it triumphant over all the power of the enemy. This is to “know Him and the power of His resurrection.” He was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection of the dead. This risen man, Paul had seen in glory,—he knew Him not otherwise than risen,—and he had such a longing to be with Him, and conformed to Him in glory, that whatever might be in the road he would encounter, should it be even death itself. Nothing but Christ’s resurrection power could sustain a man like Paul, who was dying daily.
Suffering was given the apostle by the Lord at his conversion as a special mark of distinction. “I will show him how much he must suffer for my name’s sake.” And, knowing the power flowing from His resurrection in the Holy Spirit of God, he is desirous of knowing (and by this time he had had much of it) “the fellowship of his sufferings.” His first experience and present circumstances gave him a share in this coveted “fellowship;” and should he be “conformed to his death” by being crucified by the Romans, as the issue of his imprisonment, that would be joyfully accepted; for the glorious One is so entirely before him that he says “if by any means I might attain to the resurrection from among the dead.”1 The Lord is seen in resurrection and if he should experience the fellowship of his sufferings by suffering even to death itself, it would be only to assimilate him the more to His Lord in death and resurrection.
By his arriving at “the resurrection from among the dead,” he would share in the last possible feature of conformity with his Lord, save participation in heavenly glory with Him in “a body of glory” like His own. Death, resurrection, and glory were still before him; and his spirit’s fervent aspiration was to know his Lord and Saviour practically in all the three.
That he might get to Him in heaven now, and wait with Him there, for his glorified body made him welcome sufferings, and even death itself – for then he would, by and bye, arrive at the resurrection that is from among the dead. “This is the first resurrection:” and it consists of two parts: “Christ the first-fruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at His coming,” (Cor. 15:23). His present condition is peculiar, as raised spiritually from among the “dead in trespasses and sin;” and he aspires to the completion of this privileged peculiarity when he shall share with his Lord in an eclectic resurrection like his own—for He rose “from out among the dead,” leaving the dead in myriads behind Him, and this also shall all his dead saints do.1