1 Peter 2:12

1 Peter 2:12. Having your manner of life among the Gentiles seemly. The negative abstention from impurities is now defined as involving a positive purity. The life of self restraint in the heart of corrupting heathen associations is to be a life so honest, or rather (with Wycliffe and the Rhemish) so good, so fair and honourable, that even the Gentiles may confess its attractiveness

that, wherein they speak against you as evildoers, they may by reason of your good works, witnessing (these as they do) glorify God. Their outer life, with all that in their behaviour which is open to the observation and judgment of others, is now specially dealt with, and they are counselled to make that a spectacle of good works which even prejudiced and hostile eyes shall be unable to contest. With this ‘speak against you ‘compare the ‘as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against' (Acts 18:22). The ‘that' expresses the object which is to be aimed at in keeping this seemliness of conduct. The A. V. (with Beza, the Bishops' Bible, etc.) wrongly renders ‘whereas.' Equally wrong is the ‘while' or the ‘since' of others. The word means ‘wherein' (as A. V. in margin), or ‘in the thing in which,' and the idea is that in the very matter in which they now find ground for speaking ill of you, they may yet find ground for the reverse. This matter, which is to be turned from a ground of accusation to a ground of honourable recognition, or (as it is here put) a ground of glorifying God, need not be identified particularly with the ‘good works' (Steiger), their ‘whole tenor of life' (de Wette), their Christian profession generally (Hofmann, Huther), or their abstinence from fleshly lusts. It points to whatever part of their Christian practice their Gentile neighbours seized as the occasion of slander. The term translated ‘witnessing' (which is used in classical Greek as the technical term for admission into the third and highest grade of the Eleusinian mysteries) occurs again in the New Testament only in 1 Peter 3:2, and in the nominal form in 2 Peter 1:16 (‘ eye-witnesses' of His majesty). It expresses here keen personal observation. The name applied to these believers, ‘evil-doers,' is of importance. It is that which is also given to Christ Himself by the chief priests (John 18:30), and outside Peter's Epistles it occurs nowhere else in the New Testament except in that instance. Neander (History of the Planting of Christianity, 2 p. 374, Bohn) is of opinion that the ‘Christians were now persecuted as Christians, and according to those popular opinions of which Nero took advantage were looked upon and treated as “ evil-doers”... malefici. ' Whether the name will bear the sense of state criminals here, however, is doubtful. The accusations thrown out against them as practising murder, magical arts, infanticide, cannibalism, and gross immorality belong to the later periods of which we read in the Apologists (e.g. Justin Martyr's Apol. i., Tertullian's Apol xvi.), and in writers of the age of Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 1 Peter 4:7, 1 Peter 5:1), and Augustine (De Civit. Dei, xviii. 53). At an earlier date we have the famous letter of the philosopher Pliny to the Emperor Trajan, in which he reports upon his examination of the followers of Christ in the very territories here addressed by Peter, admitting that nothing had been discovered in them worthy of death, but charging them with a stubbornness and inflexible obstinacy which he deemed worthy of punishment. Earlier still, we gather from the Roman historians Suetonius (Nero, ch. 16) and Tacitus (Annals, xv. 44) how they were spoken against as men of a ‘new and malignant superstition,' as ‘hateful for their enormities,' as ‘convicted of hating the human race.' And it is easy to see how at the very earliest period to which this Epistle may be referred, and before the state had directed its attention to them, their abstention from such familiar pleasures as the public spectacles, their non-observance of many heathen customs, their gatherings for fellowship and worship, would expose them to popular odium and to the misrepresentation of their pagan neighbours. Peter's exhortation is not to isolate themselves, but to be careful of their behaviour in the sight of the heathen till they found a ‘silent witness and ally' (Lillie) in the hearts of their calumniators themselves. It is generally recognised that Peter has in mind here his Lord's words upon the Mount (Matthew 5:16).

in the day of visitation. Definition of the time when the heathen will glorify the God whom they at present discredit in dishonouring His servants. What is this day? Some take it to be the day of judicial inquisition, the time when these Christians would have to stand examination at the hands of heathen officials (CEcum., Bengel at first, etc.). It is, however, manifestly God's day, and not man's, that is in view. Is it, then, His day of mercy, or His day of judgment? The word (either as noun or as verb) occurs not unfrequently of gracious visitation (e.g. the LXX. rendering of Genesis 20:1; Exodus 3:16; Exodus 4:31; 1 Samuel 2:21; Job 7:18; and in the New Testament, Luke 1:68; Luke 1:78; Acts 15:14). It is applied also to God's visitations in chastening or punishment (Jeremiah 9:24-25; Jeremiah 44:13; Jeremiah 46:25; Jeremiah 9:9; Psalms 59:6; Exodus 20:5). Hence a variety of interpretations. Some think the day is meant when the Christians themselves shall have to bear God's chastenings in the form of the persecution which even now overhung them, and when their patience shall turn out (as we know indeed from history it not seldom did turn in such cases) to the conversion of their adversaries. Others hold the reference to be to the temporal calamities by which God now sifts and judges the heathen, or to the final adjustments of the Last day. On the analogy of 1Cor. 5:20, it is also affirmed that what is in view is the practical, though unwitting, confession of God's glory which will be recognised at the last judgment in the fact that the goodness of the Christian life was the true cause of heathen slanders (Schott). It is most in harmony, however, with the context, with the analogy of Matthew 5:16, and especially with the declaration of James in the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15:14), to interpret it (with Hofmann, Huther, and the great majority of exegetes both ancient and modern) of the day (the day which had already dawned indeed) when God should bring His grace to these Gentiles, and lead them to recognize in the pure and unworldly lives of the subjects of their present calumnies a witness to the fact that ‘God was in them of a truth.'