1 Peter 1:13-16

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

1 Peter 1:13. Be sober.—The word suggests a sobriety of the Nazarite type. To the end.—Margin, perfectly; hope with a hope that lacks nothing of completeness.

1 Peter 1:14. Obedient children.—Lit. “children of obedience.” Read “lusts which were formerly yours in the time of your ignorance”—before the first revelation of Christ was made to you. It is implied that the ignorance is the mother of the lusts. The words are quite as applicable to unregenerate Jews as to unregenerate Gentiles.

1 Peter 1:15. Conversation.—Behaviour, conduct; turning about in daily relationships; moving to and fro with others. Swift is the first writer who limits the word to talking. Read the first clause of the verse: “After the pattern of the Holy One who called you.”

1 Peter 1:16. Be ye holy.—Or future “Ye shall be holy,” but with the force of an imperative. For application to Jewish nation see Leviticus 11:44; Leviticus 19:2; Leviticus 20:26.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Peter 1:13

Self Discipline.—Christian privilege ought always to act upon us as an inspiration to duty. But the first sphere of the Christian’s duty is himself, his own character, habits, and relationships. It never can be too constantly or too persuasively presented, that a Christian’s power lies first in what he is. The service a renewed man can render, and is called to render, is the service of his own cultured self. “Among whom ye shine as lights in the world, holding forth the word of life.” “Ye are the salt of the earth.” St. Peter has in mind, however, not only the duty of self-discipline, but the security that lies in it. The Christian who is diligently attentive to spiritual self-culture is guarded round, and protected safely from all the assaults of evil. Too much engaged, too interestedly occupied, to be overborne by any outward circumstances of persecution or trial. It may further be said that, in a well-ordered self-discipline the Christian finds so much personal pleasure that he is fully compensated for all losses of worldly pleasure which the self-culture may involve. Christian self-discipline is here seen to include:—

I. Bracing up.—“Girding up the loins of your mind.” To His disciples our Lord gave the same counsel. “Let your loins be girded about, and your lamps burning” (Luke 12:35). The figure is a familiar one, but it is more forcible when associated with the long, flowing garments of the East. The loose dress had to be turned up and bound round the waist, when active exertion was required. Thus, Elijah is said to have girded up his loins when he ran before the chariot of Ahab from Carmel to Jezreel (1 Kings 18:46), and the Lord required Job to “gird up his loins like a man,” to listen to His sublime response (Job 38:3). In modern times athletes brace up, or gird, the body before exertion. What is represented in the moral sphere we can well understand. There is a resolute dealing with ourselves in the face of difficulties—to use a familiar expression, a “pulling of ourselves together”—which enables us to present a strong front to the adversary, and to endure what may involve serious strain. Something of this severe self-dealing is indicated in the psalmist’s expression, “My heart is fixed, O God, my heart is fixed.” “I am purposed that my mouth shall not transgress.” Illustration may be taken from the soldiers in an enemy’s country, and on some dangerous expedition. Day and night they keep fully attired and armed, get what sleep they can beside their horses, ready at any moment to spring into the saddle—always braced up. The “loins of the mind” are the resolves and purposes. They keep the mind occupied, and brace it up for its duty. A striking instance of bracing up the loins of the mind, and standing four square to every temptation and every foe, may be found in Joshua, who was strong, and could say, “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

II. Self-restraint.—“Be sober.” Temperate in all things. Weakness attends upon excess in anything, partly because a rebound is sure to follow it, and all rebounds are perilous; partly because every excess tends to repeat itself, and the repetition involves entire loss of self-control. Moderation is essential to Christian virtue; and it has its application in the religious as well as the moral spheres. This, however, is seldom wisely insisted on, and many religious persons actually lose their power of self-restraint by excess in religious meetings, duties, and services. Self-restraint needs to be cultured in relation to everything. Physical health depends on our working up to, but never beyond, the limit of our powers, and so does moral health. But it is more practically helpful to show that each individual will find some particular sphere in which he is called to “be sober.” And the mastery of himself in that particular thing will be found a triumph which carries with it his easy restraining and ruling of all other things. It may be shown that we all need to win the power of self-restraint in relation to the “lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eyes, and the pride of life.” And the evils into which the unrestrained man falls may be vigorously described, as a warning against neglecting self-culture.

III. Trust in provision and promise.—“Set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought unto you.” It is possible to present the duty of self-restraint only on its sterner side, as the resolute mastery of tendencies that are evil. And doing this may give a severer view of the Christian life than is necessary. Self-culture is the nourishing of the good. There is the call to self-restraint that we may win good, as well as that we may control evil. St. Peter would have those he addressed master all depression, and fear, and indifference, and so set the Christian hope before them, that they should always be working towards its attainment. He really speaks of the grace that is “being brought” day by day, and not of some grace that is “to be brought” some one day. But it involves self-restraint for us to loosen the self-confidence so that we may wisely trust.

IV. Distinct aim at holiness.—“Be ye yourselves also holy in all manner of living.” Our Lord set this aim before His disciples. “Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Self-discipline needs a pattern, a standard. It cannot be intelligent; it will not be wisely directed; it cannot hope to reach an effective result;—unless a man sees what he is restraining, disciplining himself unto. He is working at himself, at his moral character and relations; but to what end, after what pattern? When he has done his self-culturing work, what does he expect to be? Holiness, as God’s holiness, is the distinctly Christian aim, and it is the aim of no other religion besides Christianity. Holiness is more than cleanness and fitness of relations. It is an inward state of mind and feeling which ensures that the relations must be pure and right. And it is purity with a bloom on it, that makes it attractive, and gives it a peculiar power of influence. But it is practical, not dreamy and sentimental; and therefore St. Peter says, “Be ye holy in all manner of conversation”; holy in all the turning about, all the associations, of life. That tone on all life would in the most marked way distinguish the Jewish Christians from the older Jews, and from all the heathen world around them.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

1 Peter 1:13. Girding the Loins of the Mind.—The figure is Oriental. The Orientals wore a loose and flowing robe, which, dangling about the feet, hindered swift, straight motion. When they would move quickly and with precision, they must needs gather the trailing garment into the girdle about the waist. You remember how the children of Israel were commanded to eat the passover. The passover was the door of their deliverance. The lamb, slain, and roasted whole, they were to eat. How? Standing, with travelling-staff in hand, with loins girded. A journey was before them, They were to go forth from Egypt. On that journey no trailing robes were to hold them back. A definite aim was theirs—to leave Egypt, and march toward freedom and nationality. They were to be harnessed toward that aim. Robes, trailing, flowing down and out, catching at stones, sweeping up sticks—robes to be trodden on, and so the cause of stumbling—might do for the smooth floors of Pharaoh’s palace, might do for the even paths about their villages; but they would not do for men on the march. With girded loins they were to go forth. So, before these Christians to whom Peter wrote, there was an aim. They were to be sober, to hope to the end, to be obedient children, to refuse to live after the fashion of their former heathen lusts; they were to be holy, since He who had called them was holy. A shining and gracious aim was theirs. And there was but one way for them to reach it; wherefore toward this aim gird up the loins of your minds, says the apostle. Thoughts, loose and wandering; thoughts heedlessly trailing over this thing and that; allowed imaginings of your former heathen lusts; the robes of your minds unbound, and let down to flow over whatever they may list;—such ungirded thoughts will be as hindering to you, O Christians, as would have been the loose robes of the Israelites on their desert march. Girded thoughts are what you need. All this is very close and practical. Here is a young man who has come to the consciousness of life’s meaning and solemnity. “Ah,” he says, “I must be sober; I must take for my life a strong and noble aim.” But how may the young man make real and actual such aim? Here our Scripture comes in. By girded thought, not by thoughts loose and wandering.

1. What ungirds thoughts?
(1) Pleasure as an end for life ungirds them. Duty is the sacrifice for the great altar of the life, and pleasure—recreation—is to come in only as it helps us lay that sacrifice more constantly and worthily upon that holy place.

(2) Aimless and frivolous reading ungirds thoughts.
(3) Bad associations, also, ungird thoughts.
(4) Neglected Bibles and neglected secret prayers ungird thoughts.
(5) Carelessness of attendance on religious services ungirds thoughts.
(6) Sunday secular newspapers ungird thoughts.
2. What girds thoughts?
(1) A high and determined purpose girds them.
(2) Quick decisions for the Right gird thoughts.
(3) Love for the true and good girds thoughts. The best and most helpful girdle for the thoughts is passionate devotion to the personal Christ.—Anon.

Spiritual Sobriety.—This injunction may refer inferentially to the practice of temperance as commonly understood; but its significance and scope are much deeper and wider than that. Writing of the surpassing excellence of that great salvation of which prophets had prophesied, into which angels desired to look, which had really been made known by the Spirit of God (1 Peter 1:12), Peter urges his readers to “gird up the loins of their mind”—i.e., to call forth all their spiritual resources, that they may understand and appreciate it; he then bidsthem “be sober”—i.e., exercise in this great matter a sound judgment, command themselves, not to be led to harmful extremes, or give way to illusions that would disappoint them, but maintain a manly, intelligent, healthful self-restraint. Doing this, they might “set their hope perfectly” [to the fullest possible limit] “on the grace that was being brought unto them at the revelation of Jesus Christ”—i.e., they might confidently expect the largest and richest blessings which the manifestation of the grace of Christ was fitted to bring with it. We may strive and we may look for the greatest good, the fullest prosperity, in connection with the gospel, but at the same time we must cherish and exercise spiritual sobriety.

I. In the acceptance of Christian doctrine.—

1. The Church at Thessalonica had a strong hold on the doctrine of the second coming of Christ. “The coming of the Lord draweth nigh” was its watchword, its prevailing thought. It had a right to anticipate the hour when there would be another manifestation of its Lord. But it fell into insobriety of thought and of conduct in this matter. Its members thought that, as Jesus Christ might appear among them at any hour, they need not concern themselves with the ordinary duties of life, with provision for its bodily necessities; and they began to be “disorderly.” They had to be rebuked by the apostle Paul (2 Thessalonians 3), and summoned to be sober in doctrine and in deed.

2. The Church of Corinth had an unusual share of “gifts,” particularly of this “gift of tongues.” The members of that Church had a perfect right to make the most of its possession. But they were bound to hold their special powers in subordination to the great ends of glorifying Christ, and of edifying one another. This they did not do; they were not taking a sober view of the subject, and had to be corrected (1 Corinthians 14).

3. It is a distinct Christian doctrine that we must be “separate” from the world; that while in it we are not to be of it. But the hermits of the earlier time, and the monks and nuns and the ascetics of a later, and of the present, time, fell into sad insobriety when they sought to retire altogether from the engagements and relationships of human life. Painful facts have superabundantly proved that we cannot decline what our heavenly Father offers us without doing ourselves harm rather than good. On the other hand, proof abounds on every side that in accepting the joys and filling the spheres which open to us in the providence of God, we may “walk holily, righteously, and blamelessly,” and adorn the doctrine of our Saviour in all things. It is the sober view of separateness from the world which is the right, wise, Christian one.

4. That “we are justified by faith” is according to Scripture. By faith in Jesus Christ we have access to the grace of God; believing on Him we have eternal life. But when men say, as they have said, that when we have once believed, and been restored to the favour of God, we cannot forfeit His friendship by any folly, or even by any sin, they fall into the gravest spiritual insobriety; they push certain statements to an extreme, and they fall into dangerous, even destructive, error.
5. We are sanctified by the Spirit of God. When we have returned unto God and been received by Him, there remains much in us that has to be removed from us; there is much absent from us that has to be gained by us. We are not “complete in Him.” The process of spiritual completion is the work of the Divine Spirit. But when it is maintained, as it has been, that if we only give our hearts to Him, and invite His entrance, and make entire surrender of ourselves, we may be instantaneously lifted up to the full height of holiness, then the mistake is made of not “being sober” in thought and in belief. Christian maturity is a growth; it is the gradual upbuilding ourselves on our holy faith; it is the result of a strenuous struggle; it is the consummation of a wise and true Christian course; it is the blessed consequence of daily prayer, of the continual reception into our minds of the thoughts of God, of much fellowship with Jesus Christ, of the wise use of all forms of Christian privilege, of active work in the field of sacred usefulness, of the lighter and also the severer discipline of the Lord of our life, of the wise Father of our spirit. That is the “sober” view, strongly substantiated by Scripture, constantly confirmed by the experience of the good.

II. In the regulation of Christian life.

III. In the nourishment of Christian character.—There is a kind of spiritual sustenance which is pleasant “to the flesh,” but which is dangerous, if not delusive; it is that of perpetual religious excitement; the reading of those books, and the hearing of those sermons, which make an almost unbroken appeal to the imagination. This cannot be said to be taking milk (1 Corinthians 3:2), but drinking champagne. If we would build up a robust and fruitful Christian character we must eat the “strong meat” of Divine truth, which informs the mind, which enlarges the view, which braces the will, which sustains and strengthens the soul. There is much occasion here for attention to the apostolic admonition—be sober.—William Clarkson, B.A.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 1

1 Peter 1:16. An African Figure of Holiness.—Dr. Livingstone once asked a Bechuana what he understood by the word “holiness” (foitsepho). He answered, “When copious showers have descended during the night, and all the earth and leaves and cattle are washed clean, and the sun rising shows a drop of dew on every blade of grass, and the air breathes fresh—that is holiness.