The Pulpit Commentary — 1 Peter — Section 100

Ver. 21.-Chn$t'S Passion our peace and pattern. Christianity brings its highesh principles to bear on the lowliest duties. If it did not regulate these, what would there be for it to regulate? Life is made up of a great many little things and a very fow great ones. The clock only strikes twelve twice in the twenty-four hours. The apostle is engaged in exhorting a handful of Christian slaves to patience and submission, and he points to the solemn mystery of the cross, and bids them look to it amid their squalid miseries, and take pattern from the infinite meekness and unmurmuring submission seen there. The supreme truth of revelation is fitly used for so lowly a purpose. Further, note how here the two views of Christ's work which have been often held apart, and even made antagonistic, are united-suffering for us, and example to us. 1. THE SUFFERINGS OF CHRIST OUB GAIN. It is interesting to notice the change in the apostle's insight into the meaning of Christ's sufferings. At first, it was he espe- cially to whom they were a stumbling-block. 'fbe very intensity of his belief that his Master was" the Christ, the Son of the living God," made him recoil from the thought of his violent death as an inconceivable contradiction. "Be it far from thee, Lord. This shall not be unto thee!" expressed with characteristic vehemence at once his blind- ness and hiB love. Even after the Resurrection, Peter's earlier preaching, as recorded in the Acts, does not go beyond putting in contrast the two things-the death as man's crime, the risiDg again as God's seal. He does not seem, in these first days of transition, to have reached the harmouizing thought of the purpose of tho sufferings. But in this EpiBtle these sufferings have become the very keystone of the arch. 'l'he references to them are continual. 'l'be whole fabric of his theological and moral teach- iug is built on them. The black thunder-cloud has been discerned to be the source of all-refreshing rains and the cause of fruitfulness, and the inexplicible anomaly has been uufo:ded as the deepest truth on which faith and hope and soul-transforming love, the mother of all practical obedience, may fasten and feed. 'l'he one thought which has thus illuminated the darkness is the recognition of Christ's sufferings as for us. 'l'he world has admitted that the Sufferer had no sin of his own. Unless we see in them suffering on behalf of others, his life becomes the great indictment of God's providence. Only when we i;ee that be wail wounded for our transgressions do we understand the mystery of the cross. The text does not define the manner in which theso sufferings work on our l,el1alf. "For us" is not necessarily" instead of us." But there can be no doubt as to what ihat ma1,ncr was in the view of the apostle, "Hi11 own self bare our sins iQ on, 11, 1-25.J 'l'HE FIUST EPISTLE GENERAL OF PETER.