Our apostle passes next to a most glowing description of the Christian priesthood, and again the leading idea of holiness flashes from his pen, “Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.” Again, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.” Here is our title of nobility, beloved, and who of us would exchange it for an earldom, or a dukedom or a kingdom? Not I at least.
The Jews of old received spiritual blessing very largely, and even temporal blessing also, through the mediation of an outward priesthood. And the family of priests were chosen and ordained of God Himself. “No man taketh this honor unto himself but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.”
But under the Christian dispensation all God’s saved people are priests as well as kings, and the sacrifices which they offer are spiritual sacrifices, the body as a living sacrifice to be consumed like a whole burnt offering in His service, “the fruit of the lips giving thanks to His name,” and the doing good and communicating, that is to say, a life rich in faith and good works, such are the sacrifices with which God is well pleased. But to be a Christian priest in the sense here described must involve and does involve the idea of entire sanctification. Peter’s words will not allow us to doubt that the priesthood of believers is a “holy priesthood.”
Afterwards, the chief of the apostles exhorts his readers to take ill treatment patiently when they have to suffer, not for doing wrong but for doing well, and reminds us of the example of Christ, “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth; who when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously; who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness,” winding up with a terse expression of the great doctrine of the atonement “by whose stripes ye were healed.”
Paul would have us “dead to sin” by reckoning. Peter would have us “dead to sins” by making no response to the suggestions of Satan or the temptations which he may present to us. To be dead either to sin within us or to sins without us, implies holiness of heart, that is, entire sanctification. Praise the Lord for the perfect agreement of His two great apostles in regard to this glorious doctrine.
Still further, Peter speaks of the “holy women” of old, and exhorts Christian women to be like them, particularly in adorning themselves not with gay attire, but with inward and spiritual graces. And in his second epistle, he alludes to “holy men of God,” speaking through the Old Testament as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. And here we have the best possible definition of inspiration, in regard to which volumes have been written, and very different views expressed by equally learned and candid men. But what can be more satisfactory to the humble, Christian mind than just to feel that when he reads his Bible, he is perusing the words of “holy men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” Such a mind will find no difficulty about inspiration.
In the last chapter of his second epistle, Peter rebukes the unbelief of the scoffers, who then believed, and whose successors still believe that the present order of the material universe will continue for an indefinite period, if not, indeed, forever. He assures us that the Lord has not forgotten, that He is not slack concerning His promises, but that the very reason why the sinful world has been spared so long is because of God’s long suffering and mercy, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” And, then, having declared that the heavens and the earth which are now, are reserved unto fire, that the day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night, that the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up, he exclaims with most appropriate words, “Seeing then, that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness,” and this in order “that ye may be found of Him in peace, without spot and blameless.”
Praise the Lord for the doctrine of entire sanctification as taught by the apostle of the circumcision. Amen.