“Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility: for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.”—1 Peter v. 5.
The passage: Peter tells the younger to submit to the elder, tells everyone to be subject to one another, to be clothed with humility, because God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble.
There is a common complaint today that reverence is dying out, that Isaiah’s words are coming true: the young behaving proudly against the old, the base against the honourable. The feeling of respect is gone, and each person stands only on his own powers and his own rights.
I suppose we all recognize some truth in this charge against our age, and also see hopeful signs that things may not be as bad as claimed, or that some good counteracts the evil. We have perhaps asked whether the growth of personal independence is itself a good that compensates for what is lost with it.
But this comfort is checked by another thought: is personal independence really characteristic of us? Is it not fading along with the reverence it supposedly displaces? Are men not becoming lazier, casting themselves on hope of some accident or outside help rather than earning their bread by their own effort? We are told the sturdy manliness of the English peasant is disappearing just as surely as his deference to his betters.
I don’t think much good comes of weighing arguments that the old days were better against arguments that we are greater and happier than our ancestors. Anyone with ordinary skill can marshal an overwhelming case either way; a practised speaker can arrange facts and authorities so that no doubt remains in the mind of anyone already inclined to agree with him.
I. But a sentence like “all of you be subject one to another,” taken as a real command, is something more than speculation about the decline of reverence in an age or country. It speaks to me. It describes a temper that ought to govern society and would preserve it — but a temper to be cultivated first in myself, since it cannot spread through a mass except as it is formed in one heart at a time. What use is it to argue about whether signs of respect between classes are increasing or decreasing, or whether they mean anything at all? We can go straight to the thing itself: what do our outward tokens of respect answer to in us, and what do they not answer to? Is our respect merely a product of circumstance and custom, dependent on external convention, taught us by other men’s rules — or does it come from a deeper source, kept alive by the Spirit of God renewing it continually?
These are the truly important questions, and everything else depends on them. A reverence grounded merely on social arrangement, on settled custom and tradition, will not survive any real shock — such things are not old or deep enough to sustain a feeling this profound; they depend on it far more than it depends on them, and speak to it only because they witness to something deeper, without which their charm vanishes. Nor can the Bible or Christianity be brought in afterward to prop up such failing customs. The Bible and Christianity keep forcing on us the truth that nothing stands without a foundation, that any social structure must be built on rock to survive storms, and that passion for external forms, however strong it looks, is not to be relied on — for yesterday’s idol may not be today’s, and anything that draws its substance from the worshipper’s mind is subject to that mind’s changes, which always claims the right to unmake what it made. This is where the Apostle brings us. He recognizes the relation of younger to elder as deep, carrying real duties and calling for subjection, and connects to it other relations equally real though less acknowledged. But he has no hope his admonitions will be more than empty maxims — approved and disobeyed — unless the principle beneath them is grasped. “All of you be subject one to another”: this reverence is not ultimately grounded on differences of position or age. Unless each man feels this toward every other man — feels grandeur and awe even toward one with no outward mark of superiority, indeed with every outward mark of inferiority; feels (in Peter’s own strong word) a subjection owed to such a man, a real deference due him — he will not sustain the other kind of respect either; it will certainly perish.
The old idea that royalty is mysterious, and loses respect once it discards mystery, rests on a real truth. It becomes a great falsehood when the mystery degenerates into a trade secret, kept up by vulgar tricks meant to preserve an impression of something sacred that those performing the tricks don’t themselves believe in. St. Peter does not deny this counterfeited mystery, but points us to a deeper and more awesome one: the mystery in the being of man himself. Every person we meet is its shrine; even a beggar carries something no archangel can fully see into, something no words can describe or human standard measure. Try to see him this way — not as one with the rags that cover him, but as one of the race for which the Son of God died, bearing the nature Christ took in the virgin’s womb, offered on the Cross, and now dwells in at God’s right hand. Try to think of him as having a whole inner world unknown to you and to himself, more wonderful than the outward world, nearer to the source from which this visible one draws its light and heat.
Try to think so! But can the effort succeed? Can we force ourselves into so strange a feeling? Isn’t sympathy with people utterly unlike ourselves a rare gift given to a few — more often women than men — and isn’t it better called pity than reverence?
- St. Peter answers these questions in the second part of the text: “Be clothed with humility.” He knew, better than anyone, that neither position nor example alone can make a man humble. He was a fisherman, and proud. He walked with Christ three years, and was still proud. Low as he was, he aspired to be high — he might be scorned by Judæans as a Galilean, or by Romans as a Jew, but perhaps he would yet set his foot on both their necks and hold some great place, if not the highest, in his Master’s kingdom. It seemed a lofty ambition, yet it was not lofty enough — he was meant for far more than he dreamed, a fuller apprehension of a glory already his. But to reach this he first had to know what he was in himself. His self-confidence was tested and failed: he who claimed he would go to prison and death could not even speak the truth before a servant girl. What darkness closed over him then, blotting out past and future — yet what light was breaking through that darkness, illuminating past, present, and future together! In himself he was the weakest of creatures, unable to blame any weakness or heartlessness in another that he had not found in himself. But had he no strength at all — was his boast of going to prison and death mere dream? There stood One in that house before Caiaphas, soon to face the Roman governor, then Calvary. Why had Peter once felt strength that had now deserted him? A question full of wonder, unanswered then, though Christ had just said, “I am the vine, ye are the branches; abide in me.” A question the Resurrection, the words after it, and the Ascension only begin to answer — one only the promised Comforter could fully unfold. Under that teaching Peter learned that to set up himself was folly, misery, degradation; that to trust in Christ was to stand in his true place, to claim fellowship with the real source of his life and power, to share a mysterious kingdom, to hold mighty trusts, to enter the reality behind his dreams — to leave all and yet possess all. But to trust in Christ was to trust the One who said, “Come unto me, for I am meek and lowly of heart.” To trust Him was to be clothed with humility. Peter had none of his own; whenever he imagined he did, he grew prouder than ever. But he learned that pride was always near, his besetting sin, and that he could only be freed from it by turning to the One who was as much friend and life-giver to the humblest lamb of the flock as to Peter himself, one of its chief shepherds.
Phrases like “Put on Christ,” “Having the mind of Christ,” “Be clothed with humility,” often dismissed as mere figures of speech or Eastern idiom, were in fact the most exact expression the Apostle could find for his own inward experience. I believe they remain the most accurate words we can use, and the more we know ourselves, the more we will find in them the deepest reality, meeting needs nothing else can meet.
This leads into the third clause: “For God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble.” “How can I be rid of this pride, so natural, so ingrained?” — this must have been Peter’s frequent question, as it is ours. He found the answer at last, terrible and everlasting: pride was not merely breaking a rule but resisting God himself — the God who chose to dwell in man as His temple, to surround His creatures with His own power, to guide and move them by His own inspiration. Every act of pride was nothing less than fighting against God, refusing His rule; and all humility was simply yielding to that government — letting the Spirit of Christ possess the spirit He had redeemed and claimed as His own. It was a bold thing to speak of clothing oneself with Christ’s righteousness, of putting on His qualities. Bold, yes — but if this is our true humanity, meant for us and no other, and everything we’ve substituted for it has been assumed against God’s will, then He Himself will clothe us with our right mind; He is clothing us day by day. For what is all the discipline of life but this — urging us not to set ourselves above the Son of God, to be content to stoop as the Lord of heaven and earth stooped? And once a man accepts that he is not meant to be what his Master and King refused to be — that it is no condescension to stand level with those to whom the Prince of earthly kings made Himself level — then “God giveth grace.” All the powers of the universe conspire with him rather than resist his wild ambition. The Creator’s loving power is no longer a mere weight upon the poor atom it sustains; that atom may be sure this power and love will be with him in height and depth, life and death, quickening him with immortal energy, fitting him more and more to serve God’s gracious purposes through all the ages to come.
Peter could then carry his own hard-won experience over into his message to the Church, scattered then and scattered through all time: “All of you be subject one to another.” So he asserted the true condition of a society while deflating the self-importance of its individual members — exalting each even as he humbled him. One dwells among you whom Principalities and Powers confess as Lord. God wills that you all should be like Him, sharing His glory — and His glory was to be the servant of all, bearing the sins of all, dying the death of all. Be sure He dwells in every one of these poor creatures of flesh and blood, who will one day be shown as His brethren. Be subject to Him in them. In every person there is something sacred, something to learn from, something to obey. Take an extreme case, since such a law admits no exceptions: even a fool or reprobate, someone it is right to restrain and punish, may speak words that strike you to the heart. The lips may be foul, but the source beneath them is divine, oracular; be wary of rejecting the message, lest you reject something that has come from the mouth of God. And reverence the shrine as well as the utterance. The man may treat himself as a beast, may be making himself one — but do not endorse his own blasphemy against himself. Reverence him, so that he may learn to reverence himself. Reverence him enough to refuse to indulge his follies or sins — deal with them severely, use whatever discipline the case demands — but remember that these are his enemies and destroyers, not himself.
V. Generally, applied to a society, this rule of mutual subjection means respecting the opinions, habits, individual peculiarities, and inherited convictions of everyone we deal with; assuming that each has something we need, and being careful not to rob him of anything God has given him. This respect does not come from caring more for him than for Truth — it is part of our homage to Truth. There is a danger of making a person less true, of estranging him from Truth, out of our eagerness to attach him to ourselves. So this same mutual subjection must also make us resolute to maintain whatever truth we have grasped, courageous in asserting it, forceful in denouncing habits of mind that we know, from our own experience, work against the love of truth.
And so this submission to man, which is really submission to God, will keep us from all servility — from the kind of deference to individual or popular judgment that is incompatible with true manliness, because it is incompatible with true reverence.
I believe, brethren, nothing is so fatal to the respect of younger for elder, or to noble and chivalrous duty and obedience, as that counterfeit homage — vulgar and contemptible rather than venerable — which so easily creeps over us, an especial disgrace of our time. The worship of men who have scraped together money by fair means or foul, and the worship of “public opinion,” are possible only because reverence for man as man is so weak among us. Cultivate that reverence properly, and all due deference to age, rank, and office becomes possible and honourable. Without it, such deference becomes degrading pretense, coloured by the baseness of our ordinary habits.
How shameful, then, for churchmen to complain that they and their offices no longer receive the respect once paid them — that the rich scorn them privately and the poor openly, that religion is despised in the person of its representatives! How dare we make such complaints, or let others make them for us? This amounts to saying that the Church is not built on the very principle our Lord declared and proved it stands on — that the greatest of all is the servant of all. If that is the law of its existence, we are far more to blame for any lack of reverence around us than anyone else could be. We must have failed in that reverence, that subjection to all men, which is our calling to display. We must have failed to show the rich how petty is what sets them apart from the poor, and how glorious is what they share with them. We must have fallen into a subjection that is not human but slavish, not humble but self-seeking, not of Christ but of Antichrist. Before blaming the English people for despising us, let us make sure we have not earned their contempt through qualities offensive to true English freedom and manliness; before saying they have lost their Christianity, let us ask honestly whether we have not lost ours.
We boast that our Church rests on no merely human foundation, that we do not make the Apostle whose words we have considered today, whose festival falls tomorrow, into the Rock of our trust. That is well worth celebrating — if we truly hold instead to Him whom Peter confessed as the Son of the living God, if the precious cornerstone Peter wrote of and lived to testify to is what actually binds us together as a holy Temple. But we are not really confessing Jesus as the Son of God, nor treating Him as our cornerstone, if we fail to learn the lesson Peter has taught us today — if we seek to be called Rabbi, Rabbi, rather than showing who our Master is by being subject to one another as He was. For it was by subjection that He proved Himself on earth to be the Son who dwelt with the Father before all worlds; His subjection to the Cross was His exaltation above every name. He showed filial subjection to be essential to that perfect union of will and being which He has with the Father in the Blessed Spirit — and we are told it shall be so at the end as it was at the beginning. For it is written that when all things are put under the Son’s feet, the Son Himself will be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.