2 Peter 1:6

2 Peter 1:6

Patience.

I. Of most things God has made the beginning easy and inviting, the next stages arduous, but the ulterior progress delightfully rewarding. Of this you have a familiar example in learning a language. So even in the Christian life: there is an alluring outset, followed by an arduous interval; and that once conquered, there comes the platform of even and straightforward discipleship, the life of faith, the walk with God. From their glorious high throne, with a perfect knowledge of the contest and with what we so lack, a full knowledge of the glory yet unrevealed, the King of martyrs and the cloud of witnesses keep cheering the Church still militant, and every several member: "Lay aside every weight, and more especially the sin that besets you, and run with patience the race set before you."

II. If patience be viewed as equanimity, it is near akin to control of temper; and need I say what a field for patience, understood as submission to the will of God, there is in the trials of life? The stoic is not patient, for he is past feeling; and when the pain is not perceived there is no need for patience. But the Christian is a man of feeling, and usually of feeling more acute than other people; and it is often with the tear of desolation in his eye or the sweat of anguish on his brow that he clasps his hands and cries, "Father, Thy will be done!" But this the believer, through grace, can do, and this some time or other in his history almost every believer has actually done. And though most have been so human that they were startled at the first beneath the stroke of bodily affliction, amidst the crash of fallen fortunes, at the edge of the closing grave, they have all sooner or later been enabled to exclaim, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." "We are always thinking we should be better with or without such a thing; but if we do not steal a little content in present circumstances, there is no hope in any other."

J. Hamilton, Works,vol. v., p. 374.

2 Peter 1:6

I. The coarser or entirely corporeal gratifications are the more obvious sphere for the exercise of temperance, and in some respects the easiest. We do not canonise a man because he only drinks to quench his thirst, and because his use for food is the restoration of his exhausted powers. And without converting the Christian Church into a convent or making one long Lent of the Christian year, we think it is often by greater simplicity in our tables and in our attire that most of us are to be able to do something for Christ's sake and the Gospel's.

II. The passions also fall within the domain of temperance. As far as they are implanted by the Creator, they are harmless, and it would be easy to show the important purposes subserved by anger, the love of approbation, and such-like. But, temperate in all things, the manly Christian adds to his faith the control of his passions. He neither lets them fire up without a rightful occasion, nor in the outburst does he allow his own soul or interests which ought to be even more dear to suffer damage.

III. All have not the same need of temperance, for all have not the same temptations. From the leisurely life they lead, from the even flow of their spirits, from the felicitous state of their bodily sensations, some are seldom provoked, and therefore seldom in danger of wrathful explosions. In the domains of appetite, passion, or imagination we all have need of temperance; and that man alone is temperate, thoroughly and consistently temperate, whose self-command keeps pace with every precept of Scripture.

J. Hamilton, Works,vol. v., p. 361.

References: 2 Peter 1:6; 2 Peter 1:7. J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,Part I., p. 10. 2 Peter 1:8. W. Cunningham, Sermons,p. 159; Preacher's Monthly,vol. iv., p. 188; vol. ix., p. 341.