J. Rawson Lumby

"Servants, be in subjection to your masters, with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. For this is acceptable, if for conscience toward God a man endureth griefs, suffering wrongfully. For what glory is it, if, when ye sin, and are buffeted for it, ye shall take it patiently? but if, when ye do well and suffer for it, ye shall take it patiently, this is acceptable with God. For hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously; who His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were going astray like sheep, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls."—1 Peter ii. 18-25.

The Gospel history shows very clearly that during our Lord's lifetime His followers were drawn largely from the ranks of the poor. It was fitting that He who had been proclaimed in prophecy as "the Servant of the Lord" should enter the world in humble estate; and, from the lowly position of the virgin-mother and her husband, the life of Jesus for thirty years must have been spent in comparative poverty and amid poor surroundings. The major part of His chosen disciples were fisherfolk and such-like. And though we read of the wife of Herod's steward among the women who ministered unto Him and of the richer Joseph of ArimathÆa as a secret disciple, these are marked exceptions. To the poor His Gospel was preached, and among the poor it first made its way. The question of the chief priests, "Hath any of the rulers believed on Him, or the Pharisees?" (John vii. 48), tells its own tale, as does also the significant record, "The common people heard Him gladly" (Mark xii. 37).

It need not therefore much surprise us if St. Peter, now that he begins to classify his counsels, addresses himself first to "household servants": Servants, be in subjection to your masters, with all fear. We have, however, to bear in mind, as we consider the Apostle's exhortation, that most of those whom he addresses were slaves. They had no power of withdrawing themselves, though their service should prove burdensome and grievous. St. Paul, in writing to the same class, nearly always employs the word which means "bondservants." Yet his counsel agrees with St. Peter's. Thus he exhorts that their service be "with fear and trembling" (Eph. vi. 5); in Col. iii. 22, "Obey in all things them that are your masters." And to Timothy and Titus it is given as a part of their charge to "exhort servants to be in subjection to their own masters and to be well-pleasing to them in all things" (1 Tim. vi. 1; Titus ii. 9).

When St. Peter and St. Paul wrote, this slave population was everywhere very numerous. Gibbon calculates that in the reign of Claudius the slaves were at least equal in number to the free inhabitants of the Roman world; Robertson places the estimate much higher. These formed, then, a very large share of the public to which the first preachers had to appeal, and we can understand the importance to the Christian cause of the behaviour of these humble, but doubtless most numerous, members of the society. Their lives would be a daily sermon in the houses of their masters. Hence the very earnest exhortations addressed to them that by their conduct they should adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things; that they should count their masters worthy of all honour; that the name of God and of the doctrine be not blasphemed; that they should be in subjection with all fear. Everything in the New Testament concerning slaves goes to show that they were a most important factor in the early Christian societies.

Men wonder nowadays that there is so little said by any of the Apostles about freeing slaves from their bondage. The best men in those times and long before appear to have regarded slavery as one of the institutions with which they were bound to rest content. It flourished everywhere; it was countenanced in the Scriptures of the older dispensation. Eleazar was Abraham's slave, and the Law in many passages contemplates the possession by Israelites of persons who were bought with their money. Hence we find no remonstrance against slave-holding in the New Testament writings, only advice to those who were in such bondage to cultivate a spirit which would render it less galling and to strive that by their behaviour the cause of Christ might be advanced. St. Paul represents the ideas of his age when, writing to the Corinthians, he says, "Wast thou called being a bondservant? Care not for it; but if thou canst be made free, use it rather" (1 Cor. vii. 21). Freedom was worth having, but any heroic effort to get rid of the yoke is not encouraged in the Epistles. Yet it must have been a lot which called for the exercise of much moral strength to make it bearable. Even from the house of the Christian Philemon the slave Onesimus found cause to run away. But St. Paul in his letter admits no right on the slave's part to take this course. With the Apostle there is no question that the first duty is to go back to his master. All that he urges is that the common profession of Christianity by slave and master ought to, and doubtless would, alleviate the conditions of servitude. There were in Christianity, as time has shown, germs which would fructify, a spirit which some day would strike on the chains of slaves. But the vision of such a time had not dawned either for St. Paul or St. Peter. Christ has overcome the world in many other matters beside slavery. It is only that Christians are so tardy in awaking to the fulness of His lessons.

So in apostolic days the rights and claims of slave-masters were looked upon as indisputable. Be subject, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. There is to be no resistance, no lapse in duty. About service rendered to good masters there might be little apprehension, but even here St. Paul finds occasion for warning. "They that have believing masters," he says, "let them not despise them because they are brethren" (1 Tim. vi. 2). Christian freedom was not without its dangers in many forms, especially to minds wherein liberty was a strange idea. But froward masters are to be faithfully served likewise, and care is to be taken withal to remove every occasion for their frowardness. The apostolic lesson is to make suffering endurable, noble, acceptable to God, by seeing that it be always undeserved. How strange a doctrine this in the eyes of the world! The rule of purely human conduct would be just the opposite. If wrong be undeserved, rebel at once. Christianity supplies a motive for the contrary course: conscience toward God. The world's spirit is not His spirit, and to have praise with Him should be the Christian's single aim. Men can at times be patient when rebuke is deserved, but the world sees that that deserves no credit. "What thank have ye?" they cry. But they give no praise for the bearing of unmerited rebuke.

The world counts such conduct weakness, and is still far from comprehending the Divineness of the virtue of yielding patiently to wrong. God has long been teaching the lesson, but it has been slowly learnt. He chose the milder, timid Jacob rather than the fiery Esau. Both had faults in multitude. With the world Esau is oft the favourite. At a later day He stamps with approval the noble mercy of David in sparing Saul, while round Daniel and his companions in Babylon there gathers something of a halo of New Testament sanctity by reason of the noble confession which they made under persecution. These are chapters in the Divine lesson-book. Such lives marked stages in the preparation for the Servant of the Lord. Men, if they would have hearkened, were being trained to estimate such a character at God's value. Now Christ's example is before us, and we are bidden to follow it.

For hereunto were ye called. Strange invitation to be dictated by love, a call to suffering! And yet the Master at first promises nothing else to His followers: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me" (Matt. xvi. 24). And what can a Christian wish for but to be like Christ? And the very reason given ought to make us love the cross. We are called unto suffering because Jesus suffered for us, leaving us an example that we should follow His steps. He has trodden the hard road, the winepress of the wrath of God, alone and for men. At this point the Apostle begins to apply to Christ Isaiah's description of the suffering "Servant of the Lord," "who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth" (Isa. liii.). But soon the memory of the scenes he had witnessed is present with him; and his words, though holding to the spirit of Isaiah's picture, become a description of what he himself had seen and heard when Jesus was taken and crucified: Who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously. How the brief words sum up and recall the dark history—Caiaphas, Pilate, and Herod; the mockery, the scourging, the railing crowd, the dying Jesus, and the parting prayer, "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit."

So far the Apostle speaks of the example of Christ, which, though far above and beyond us, we are exhorted and called on to follow. And there are many who will go with him thus far who value our Lord's work only for its lofty example. Indeed, it is characteristic of those who deny the mediatorial office of Christ to be loudest in magnifying the grandeur of His character. To His good works, His love for men, His spotless life, His noble lessons, they accord untiring praise, as though thereby they would atone for denying Him that office which is more glorious still. But St. Peter stops at no such half-way house. He knows in whom he has believed, knows Him for the Son of the living God, a Teacher with whom were the words of eternal life. So in pregnant words he sets forth the doctrine of the Atonement as the end of Christ's suffering: Who His own self bare our sins in His own body upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live unto righteousness. He bare our sins. The words tell of something beyond our powers to comprehend; but some light is shed on them by a kindred passage (Matt. viii. 17), where the Evangelist applies to the work of Jesus those other words from Isa. liii., "Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses." The narrative in the Gospel has just recorded how Jesus wrought many miracles. First a leper was healed, then the centurion's servant, next Simon's wife's mother, and afterwards many sick and demoniacs beside. There is no record here of the effect produced on Jesus Himself by these exhibitions of miraculous power, but from other passages in the Gospels we do find that He was conscious in Himself of a demand on His power when such cures were wrought. Thus we are told, at the cure of the woman with the issue, that Jesus perceived in Himself that the power proceeding from Him had gone forth (Mark v. 30); and again when many were cured, that "power came forth from Him and healed them all" (Luke vi. 19). Of the woman Jesus says expressly, "Thy faith hath made thee whole"; and the manifestation of eagerness to touch Jesus is a sign of the faith of the others whom the Divine power blessed with health.

The Bible recognises everywhere the analogy between sin and sickness. May we not trace some analogy between the Lord's works of healing and that mightier deliverance from sin won by Christ upon the cross, an analogy which may help, if but a little, to give meaning to the bearing by Christ of human sins? A power went forth when the sick were healed; and through that imparted power they were restored to health, faith being the pathway which brought the Divine virtue to their aid. Thus Jesus bore their diseases and took them away. Look through this figure on the work of our redemption. Christ has borne the burden of sin. He has died for sin that men may die from sin, that sin may be slain in us, the fell disease healed by the power of His suffering. We cannot comprehend what was done for the sick when Christ was on earth, nor what is wrought for sinners by His grace in heaven. Those alone who reap the blessing know its certainty; and they can but say, as the blind man whose sight was restored, "One thing I know: that, whereas I was blind, now I see" (John ix. 25).

To this teaching, that Christ's suffering wrought man's rescue, St. Peter adds emphasis by another quotation from that chapter of Isaiah which he has so much in mind: by whose stripes ye were healed. Christ was stricken, and God grants to His sufferings a power to heal the souls of those whom He loves because they strive to love Him. Healing through wounds! Soundness through that which speaks only of injury! Mysterious dispensation! But long ago it had been foreshadowed, and shown also how little connexion there was to be, except through faith, between the remedy and the disease. Those who were bitten of the serpents in the wilderness gazed on the brazen serpent, and were healed. In the dead brass was no virtue, but God was pleased to make of it a speaking sacrament; so has it pleased Him to give healing of sins to those who by faith appropriate the sacrifice on Calvary. Christ has claimed the type for Himself: "I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Myself" (John xii. 32).

And now, as is so often his wont, St. Peter varies the figure. The wounded sinner finding cure becomes the wandering sheep that has been brought back into the fold: For ye were going astray like sheep, but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls. But the message, the teaching, the love, is all the same. He who before was the great Exemplar, whose footsteps we should follow, is now the Shepherd, the Good Shepherd, who goes before His sheep. This Shepherd has been a Sufferer, too. He has given Himself up as a prey to the wolves that His flock might be saved. Now, with a voice of love, He calls His sheep by name; and hearing, they follow Him.

But He is more than this. Brought within the fold, the sheep still need His care; and it is freely given. He is the Bishop, the Overseer, the Watchman for His people's safety, who, having gathered them within the fold, tends them with constant watchfulness. The figure passes over thus into the reality in the Apostle's closing words. The cure which the great Healer desires to accomplish is in the souls of men. For them His care is bestowed, first to bring them safe out of the way of evil, then for ever to keep them under the sheltering care of His abundant love.