1 Peter 2

They can only teach you what to believe, Christ teaches how to believe. 2. Christ gives us a taste of the word; ministers may set the food of the word before you, and carve it out to you, but it is only Christ causes you to taste it (1 Peter 2:3): If so be you have tasted, the L…

The life that I live in the flesh, is by the faith of the Son of God. 2. There is appetite (1 Peter 2:7). As new born babes, desire the sincere milk of the word.

Theodosius thought it a greater honor to be a servant of Christ than the head of an empire. Servire est Regnare — Christ's servants are called vessels of honor (2 Timothy 2:21), and a royal nation (1 Peter 2:9). Serving of Christ ennobles us with dignity: it's a greater honor to…

Why does a man lay out cost on ground, manure and water it, but that it may grow? The sincere milk of the Word is that we may grow thereby (1 Peter 2:2). The table of the Lord is on purpose for our spiritual nourishment and increase of grace.

It is true they cannot add to his glory, but they may exalt it; they cannot raise him in heaven, but they may raise him in the esteem of others. God has adopted the saints into his family, and made them a royal priesthood that they should show forth the praises of him who has ca…

The word preached is a savor of death; it is not healing, but hardening. In fact, Christ himself is accidentally a rock of offense (1 Peter 2:7). The wicked stumble at a Savior, and suck death from the tree of life.

The Word's teaching, and the Spirit's leading agree together. Fourth Sign: If we are adopted we have an entire love to all God's children (1 Peter 2:17). Love the brotherhood.

Resp. If we can resolve two queries: 1. Have we high appreciations of Jesus Christ? (1 Peter 2:7). To you that believe he is precious, Christ is [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], all made up of beauties and delights; our praises fall short of his worth, and is like spreading canvas u…

Quest. Well then, how shall we know it is a true faith? Resp. By the noble effects: 1. Faith is a Christ-prizing grace, it puts a high valuation upon Christ (1 Peter 2:7). To you that believe he is precious.

Those stones which are cut out for a building are first hewn and squared. The godly are called, [reconstructed: in non-Latin alphabet], living stones (1 Peter 2:5). And God does first hew and polish them by affliction, that they may be fit for the heavenly building.

Deny not Caesar his civil right, nor God his religious worship: let your loyalty be mixed with piety; here he showed the wisdom of the serpent. And would you see Christ's innocency? (1 Peter 2:22): There was no guile found in his mouth; who when he was reviled, reviled not again…

8. If God be our Father, let us love all that are his children; (Psalm 133:1) How pleasant is it for brothers to dwell together in unity. It is compared to ointment (verse 2) for the sweet fragrance of it: (1 Peter 2:17) Love the brotherhood. Idem est motus animae in imaginem &…

A man may have gifts to admiration, he may speak as an angel dropped out of heaven, yet may be carnal in spiritual things, his services do not come from a renewed principle, nor is he carried upon the wings of delight in duty. A sanctified soul worships God in the Spirit (1 Pete…

We should go to the word for a medicine to cure us; as Naaman the Syrian went to Jordan to be healed of his leprosy. (1 Peter 2:2) Desire the sincere milk of the word, that you may grow thereby. Come to the word to be changed into the similitude of it.

Kings place judges, as cherubims about the throne, for distribution of justice. These political fathers are to be honored: Honor the King (1 Peter 2:17). And this honor is to be shown by a civil respect to their persons, and a cheerful submission to their laws, so far as they ag…

Error is as damnable as vice. (1 Peter 2:1) There shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, denying the Lord, that bought them. (3.) That infect souls, namely by their scandalous lives.

When people do not mind what God speaks to them in his Word, God does as little mind what they say to him in prayer. 2. If you would have the Word preached effectual, come with a holy appetite to the Word (1 Peter 2:2). The thirsting soul is the thriving soul.

He knows all the several ranks and classes of men in the state of grace, and according to their ranks, with what sort of temptations to encounter them. For men's temptations are various and manifold (1 Peter 2:6), even as the gifts and operations of the Spirit are (1 Corinthians…

Thirdly, they bring blessings upon a place, by their example: for, when men shall see godly persons, walking before them in the fear of God, and making conscience of all manner of sin, it is a special means to cause others to turn from their wicked ways, to newness of life. And…

Pilgrims take but little delight in their journeys, because they think themselves not at home. This is Saint Peters argument: Dearly beloved, as strangers and pilgrims abstain from fleshly lusts which fight against the soul, 1 Peter 2.11. For, too much delight in fleshly pleasur…

Shall not Flowers be sweeter than Weeds? You must be A peculiar People, 1 Peter 2.9. Not only peculiar in regard of dignity, but deportment.

After the Sop the Devil enters. 4. Christ himself works for hurt to desperate sinners; he is [...], a stone of stumbling, and a rock of offense, 1 Peter 2.7. He is so accidentally and occasionally, through the pravity of men's hearts; instead of believing in him, they are offend…

Yes, undoubtedly. And yet this is the spiritual madness that takes place everywhere among men: for God has prepared for us two houses, one is this our body which we bear about us, which is a house of clay, as Job says (Job 4:19), "We dwell in houses of clay whose foundation is d…

Christ is a treasure, but a hid treasure. But a gracious soul has the veil taken off, he sees the amazing excellencies of Christ (1 Peter 2:7). To you that believe he is precious, his merits, graces, benefits are precious: a righteous man has Christ's eye-salve to see his tried…

Isaiah 53:7: 'He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter.' This pattern the Apostle sets before you for your imitation — 1 Peter 2:21-23: 'For even hereunto are you called, because Christ also suffered for us, lea…

And again, the same word is used of the temple work (that other was for Moses' Tabernacle) (1 Kings 6:36) by Solomon, which how transcendent a structure it was, you have all read or heard. An infinitely surpassing art then has the Spirit himself (who is the immediate worker in t…

1. The dear interest he hath in it. The people of God are called a peculiar people, 1 Pet. 2. 9. The World lies in Common, and is as so much waste ground; but the Church is Gods Vineyard and Enclosure, therefore he will hedge it in with protection: Cant. 8. 1. My Vineyard which…

We may take in another branch of the doctrine here, when he says, We esteemed him not; and it is this, that even believers are in so far as unrenewed, inclined and not without culpable accession to this same sin of undervaluing of Jesus Christ. It's indeed true that the Apostle…

A 2nd place is that of (Galatians 3:13): Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, by being made a curse for us, as it is written, cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree; the sorrows and griefs that Isaiah says here he should bear, are there expounded by the Apostle, to…

The point might have also use for confirmation, but we do not follow these. 2. Surely he has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows, that is our griefs and sorrows who are his elect, his people, his seed, who flee to him for refuge, and are justified by his knowledge, or by f…

These words, and all this Chapter, look liker a piece of the history of the Gospel than a prophecy of the Old Testament; the sufferings of the Messiah being so directly pointed at in them. We show that this first part of the fourth verse holds forth the cause of his sufferings,…

It's in general the Messiah, who was then to come, he who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered and was crucified, who died and was buried and rose the third day. Even he, who having the nature of God and our nature united in one Person, he his o…

2. We are so justified by Christ as Christ was made sin for us, now our sins became really Christ's, not that he was made the sinner inherently, that were blasphemous to be thought or spoken of; But he was reckoned the sinner, and was substitute in the room of sinners, as if he…

But thirdly, seeing by nature you are under God's wrath and curse, and in a state of enmity with him, it mainly serves to exhort you to flee to Jesus Christ and not to rest till you [reconstructed: get] the quarrel taken away; it might be in reason thought that folks would be so…

And upon this follows the believing soul's triumph: O! but there is much need to be thoroughly acquainted with the mutual relations that are between Christ and believing sinners, with the ground of their approaching to him, and with the good they are to expect through him. Use 4…

And as it looks to the second table of the law more immediately, it implies that he was sincere and upright, that there was no deceit, no violence or dissembling in his carriage. So that whether we look to him as God's public servant in the ministry, or to him in his private wal…

Now we may see all these in Christ's sacrifice. For 1. He himself is the sacrifice (Hebrews 7:26; Hebrews 9:26; Hebrews 10:10), and frequently elsewhere in that epistle, and (1 Peter 2:24): Who his own self bore our sins, in his own body on the tree; and when he had offered up h…

Second, when He is said to bear their iniquities; it imports a burdensome bearing, or His bearing of it with a weight, and that there was a weight in it, as it's said, verses 3 and 4: He was a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; surely he has born our griefs, and carried…

(2 Corinthians 5:21) For he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. (1 Peter 2:24) Who his own self bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we being dead to sin, should live to righteousness: by whose stripes…

He is redeemed from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4). He is dead to sins, and lives to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). He is redeemed from his vain conversation (1 Peter 1:18).

2. Because that blood is said to sanctify and purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God, which cannot be said of God, but clearly holds forth, that Christ having offered himself without spot to God, through the eternal Spirit, those for whom he offers himself,…

Such kind of souls are they that he has the charge of. He is the great Shepheard and Bishop of souls, 1 Peter 2. ult. and the sick, and the broken, they are his sheep, his charge, his Diocese, as Ezekiel has it, chapter 34:16 And to tend such as these, he looks for ever upon it…

The Lamb of God will not lie in a den of lions, and if we break out into harsh and unsavory distempers afterward, we shall damp the life of God in us, the life of Christ will be dead in us. And therefore if you desire to entertain Christ into your hearts; then lay aside all hars…

It is a hard saying, they thought it incredible (verse 52), they would think it a savage brutishness to fall upon him in that manner, and therefore our Savior so confesses, that it is no part of his meaning, that they should eat and drink his real body and blood: but he means th…

He is the great enemy to God and man (1 Peter 5:8): "Your adversary the Devil like a roaring lion walks about, etc." The Flesh is an enemy, indeed our greatest enemy, for it wars against the soul (1 Peter 2:11): "Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul." If you in…

Therefore we ought not to call them back again, nor superstitiously bind ourselves to them: as some went about to do in times past, being ignorant of this liberty. Now although the Gospel does not make us subject to the Judicial laws of Moses, yet notwithstanding it does not exe…

Of this sort there are very many also at this day which profess the Gospel with us: who being delivered from the tyranny of the Pope by the doctrine of the Gospel, do dream that the Christian liberty is a dissolute and a carnal liberty to do whatever they like. These (as Peter s…

Therefore the natural vices that were in us before we received faith, do still remain in us after that we have received faith: except that now they are subdued to the spirit, which has the upper hand, to keep them under that they rule not: and yet not without great conflict. Thi…

Job, that said in his affliction, "Though the Lord kill me I will still trust in him" (Job 13:15, verse 26), says also that God wrote bitter things against him and made him to possess the sins of his youth. It is a token that a man is dead in his sins, when he does not grow, or…

The reason. To this are we called (1 Peter 2:21): for we are called to resign all revenge to God, and therefore of ourselves to be bearers and sufferers (Matthew 5:39). Resist not evil.