1 Peter 2:18-25 Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the fraudulent.… The example of Christ — is it not an effort beyond humanity? Can the example of purity and perfection be urged upon frail creatures, whose passions and infirmities place them forever beyond the hope of such attainments? In the first place, then, let it be remarked that imitation is not attainment — that our professing to follow an example is a plain confession of our inferiority to what we propose — and that men might be engaged, as they are in science, in a perpetual progress of improvement, useful and consoling, though they can never flatter themselves with the hope of arriving at a point beyond which there is no further improvement, But it may be said the example of Christ, a model of sinless purity, is unfit for beings who neither possess His nature nor hope for His perfections. Here let us mark the plain distinction between the office of the Divine legislator and the duties of the man: the latter all are called on to fulfil, the former none but He could execute, Even in the most exalted parts of His character — those that seem most remote from human agency — there are many things the spirit of which may be transfused into our conduct, and make "the disciple not unworthy of his Master," It is not for us to march in triumph to Jerusalem, while those that went before and those that followed cried, saying, "Hosanna"; but it is for us to mark the progress of His grace in our hearts and those of His faithful followers. We cannot, like Him, raise the dead to life, banish the infirmities of nature by a word, and heal disease by a touch; but we can watch in patience by the bed of sickness, and by patience, and gentleness and spiritual consolation turn the visitation into a blessing. But it is not alone to the public character of Christ that we are to look for objects of imitation; they may be found in every part of life, for all the declivities of life He humbled Himself to tread. (C. R. Maturin.) Parallel Verses KJV: Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward. |
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