1 Peter 2:22 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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1 Peter 2:22

Comments

But Peter can’t leave it there. If I am talking about Christ as an example, he seems to say, I must say more. In this and the following verses you will recognise quotations from Isaiah 53 and there are in all five quotations.Peter could say this after the closest scrutiny of the Lord during the three years of his training as a disciple. Christ was the centre of attention of the disciples, because the whole reason for their existence as a group that travelled together and ministered to the people was that the Lord was among them. He was their teacher, their master, their example, and their Lord. He was the head and they were the body. Since they had given up all to follow him, it was natural that they should reflect upon the step they had taken and ask themselves what they had lost and what they had gained. What they had lost was a life that was due to be taken from them anyway; what they had gained was Christ, but just how perfect was he? During this period they saw him tested as few others are tested, with questions put to him by the most skilful of opponents, men who had spent years studying the traditions available to them and debated among themselves the most difficult questions and the answers to them. Yet he answered them perfectly without hesitation so that they were amazed and had to admit that he had solved in a matter of seconds questions which had troubled them for years. The disciples saw him attacked by those who hated him and wished to murder him; they saw him face injustice with total equanimity and without fear or threatening in return; they saw his kindness and compassion to the needy which never wavered but was constant; they saw the hardest of cases dealt with and those who were beyond the help of man he healed at a word; they saw his patience in teaching them, even though they were so slow to understand his lessons, and his certainty that they would learn eventually; they noted his absolute mastery of every situation so that nothing ever took him by surprise; they saw his power over nature as the most frightening of natural phenomena were subject to him; and in all these varied circumstances, they never saw him sin. He never made use of deception to escape from trouble. He was committed to the truth above all else, even above his own personal safety and certainly above all inconvenience and personal suffering. The disciples at times wanted to hide what they had done or said out of shame, but the Lord never needed to do so. There was no situation so difficult that it weakened his commitment to truth, or forced him to sacrifice one to the other. When Peter considered this, he was filled with admiration. He knew that he had not searched the Lord’s heart to the ultimate degree, but he knew that what he had seen of Christ’s character and behaviour was enough to make him confident that the Lord was pure gold all the way through.

Application

Here you get confirmation of the promise of God, that he will bless you on account of anything you have to undergo out of a sense of duty to obey him. He was perfect. We are far from perfect; we are full of sin and failure. We may not deserve what the employer meets out to us, but we are still full of sin and failure. He had none. ‘Who did no sin’ – not one departure from the law of God – ‘neither was guile’ – ‘trickery’ is the Greek, deception in any form, trickery, slickness – ‘found in his mouth.’ He was perfect and yet he accepted the suffering for our sakes.

Questions

We don't think so much these days of Christ being an example to us on Calvary's cross, and there’s a reason for that. The theological liberals don't want to talk about the atoning death of Christ, how he suffered and died for sinners in the place to purchase their salvation. So they start to emphasise things like his example of passive resistance on Calvary's cross, and because they talk about the example of Christ on the cross, we tend to react away from that, wrongly, and talk more exclusively about the atoning work of Christ. But both are true. Chief in the work of Christ is his atoning death for sinners, but his example to his people is also there. We should long even now to resemble him more and more. In what respects is Christ an example to us? Not in everything he did, for many things we are unable to imitate and he does not intend that we should. As Calvin says, it would be absurd to think that we could imitate his miracles and healings. It is in his patience in suffering as a righteous man that Peter means us to imitate, and it is in this sense that Christ told his disciples to follow him. Therefore Scripture records the many times when our Lord experienced the unreasonable hostility of men and we should pay particular attention to these for they were record for precisely this purpose.

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1 Peter 2:22 Commentary and Bible Study