1 Peter 4:7-11

THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM

‘The end of all things is at hand … watch unto prayer.… Have fervent charity.… Use hospitality.… Speak as the oracles of God … that God in all things may be glorified.’

1 Peter 4:7

These verses teach us how our earthly calling is to be made a preparation for the complete coming of the kingdom of heaven. And four conditions of this completion are here mentioned.

I. Prayer. (1 Peter 4:7).—The complete coming of the Kingdom of God is this—that God may be all in all; that all things, as they have their origin in Him, may in Him also find their completion; that Jesus Christ, Whom He had sent to us in order to make an end of our sinful separation from God, and assure us of reconciliation with God, may be found in each of us, and mankind perfectly transformed into His image. But that we may more and more and nearer and nearer approach to this goal, we must keep open the channel between God and our Saviour and ourselves, in order that through it His grace may flow into our present earthly life. And the power by which this is effected is prayer. In prayer our soul rises from the transitory to the eternal, from human weakness, from all anguish and earthly grief, to the Father in heaven, Whose is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory; and in prayer the Almighty God comes down into the human heart with His superabounding grace, with His all-availing power, with His rich blessing. And hence, lest the world disunite us from God, we are told by the Apostle to ‘watch unto prayer,’ to ‘pray without ceasing.’ We are to learn to pray as our Saviour prayed. In early youth He was in the Lord’s house; in the wilderness He conquered by the might of prayer; in Gethsemane He entered upon the death-struggle with prayer; and on the cross He prayed with perfect confidence in God. This example is the answer to all those pleas which would set aside prayer as needless because of the joyful certainty of present union with God. If He despised not this help, ought we? With prayer are connected sobriety and watchfulness, that we do not sacrifice our spiritual life to the good things and joys of this world. We are not to be possessed intemperately with either the joys or the cares of life, so that we lose the true end of our being and forget the transitory nature of all earthly blessings. Thankfully may we remember that the sighing and longing of the contrite heart for higher good, and its felt dissatisfaction with the mere earthly, is the beginning of true prayer. Hold fast to this prayer. Let us ask that we may be rooted and grounded in love.

II. Next we are to exercise fervent brotherly love.—Though the Apostle puts prayer in the first place, yet he says, ‘Above all things have fervent charity,’ for the communion with God which we seek in prayer can only be had by the sure dwelling in love; for ‘God is love.’ His love to us procured our salvation, and by this are we bound not to seek our own things, but think of the welfare of our brethren. God’s love to us binds us to mutual affection. Now this brotherly love is fervent. It does not glow like a faint and dying spark, which the lightest breath of indifference or disinclination may extinguish. It does not flame and flicker like a mere earthly affection, and consume itself by its own wild intensity; rather does it burn and glow with a mild and beneficial warmth. All the storms of inimical resistance and all the waters of trouble fail to quench it; nor does it consume away to ashes, but receives fresh fuel from the inextinguishable flame of Divine love. It is penetrated with the consciousness that by the infinite love of Christ to us an infinite debt of love is laid upon us. It can never do enough; and when it has done all in its power, it is still far from satisfied. And this holy, fervent charity is such as willingly covers the multitude of sins. It cannot easily forget how much God has forgiven us for Christ’s sake. It does not eagerly seek to see how little can be forgiven; it does not rejoice in passing judgment on a brother’s errors, but would fain cover with the mantle of love. It strives to heal the wounds of offence, to abolish hatred and ill-will and overcome prejudice. And so the fervent love in the heart prepares by its mild sway for the coming of His kingdom, ‘the end of all things.’

III. Next we notice that brotherly love is to prove itself by brotherly help.—‘Use hospitality to one another without grudging,’ etc. That ‘fervent charity’ is to display itself in several ways of usefulness is the teaching of these words, and that the particular as well as the general fulfilment of this requirement of love is a preparation for the completion of the Divine kingdom is manifest from our Lord’s own words recorded by St. Matthew (Matthew 25:35). The only-begotten Son of God came down from heaven, offered a sacrifice for sins, and has returned to His Father’s right hand to receive into His eternal kingdom those who prove by their brotherly love that His work and grace have not been in vain. Such as wash one another’s feet will He alone joyfully receive at the last great Supper of the Lamb. True hospitality does not expend itself only on those who are able to return it; it thinks of the poor and the destitute, the oppressed and the suffering. When St. Paul wrote, the greater number of the Christians were poor; and amid the enmity of Jew and Gentile alike, there was great need of this exhortation that those who were able should not grudge needful hospitality to their poorer brethren. How much men ought to take this command to heart, and to act in accordance with this precept!

IV. Finally, in our calling in the world and in the Church we are to be good stewards of God.—He who holds any office in the Church of God must exercise it so as to edify the Church of God; and all living Christians, all parents, teachers, and ministers of God, ‘are to speak as the oracles of God,’ to use the ability that God has given to build up His Church, to seek in all these things the glory of God, remembering that each may do his share to bring about that completion of God’s kingdom for which we now especially pray.

Let us pray, and God will hear; let us exercise fervent charity, and God will love us; let us be hospitable, and God will be gracious; let us be faithful stewards, and God will reward us with ‘ten cities.’

Illustration

‘In the kingdom of grace, as in the kingdom of nature, God turns everything to account. He gave it a beginning by His own direct and almighty power; and He could just as easily, by the same power, carry it on to its final completion. But this is not His manner of doing. He expects it, by virtue of that principle of life which He has communicated to it, to carry itself on now, not independently of Him, but in reliance upon Him and receiving from Him, just as nature is dependent on Him for the continuance of its vital and vitalising force. But still, in so far as instrumentality is concerned, the work is its own, not His. God did not give us the faculty for nothing. He gave it for use; He gave it that it might come out in its appropriate life, thereby always becoming more faculty, while it continues to yield more fruit.’