“Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Peter 1.6.)
Introduction. This verse to a worldly man looks amazingly like a contradiction. Even to a Christian, it is a paradox. Can there be in the same heart great rejoicing, and yet a temporary heaviness? Certainly there can! This is far from being the greatest paradox of the Christian life. Not only is the Christian’s condition a paradox. He is a paradox himself: corrupt and yet purified, mortal and yet immortal, fallen yet exalted far above principalities and powers.
(1) The Christian’s Heaviness. I never understood this verse until a day or two ago. Commentaries, I’m afraid, have got it wrong. And notice that your friends often say by quoting this verse when you are in trouble, “There is a need for this affliction.” That is a correct scriptural statement. But it comes not out of this text at all. This text says something better. Not only is there a need for the temptation, but for the heaviness in it. Imagine a man of strong faith. He is slandered, or endures persecution, or maybe even gets condemned to death for the gospel, and you say to him, “There is a need for it all. The blood of the martyrs must be the seed of the church.” And suppose that he agrees with you, is unmoved by the slander, rejoices for persecution, and even kisses the stake he is to be burned on. Seek to have faith and love like that man! But our text is not for him. It is for a feebler grade of Christian who needs to go through a season of heaviness and weeping. I myself am such a man. Why is heaviness necessary? Our Lord and Saviour passed through much heaviness. We must too if we would be like him. Sometimes we are given to suffer heaviness to keep our pride down or to bring us thirsting after our Lord. And there are lessons that cannot be learned any other way but through heaviness. Some sights in the valley cannot be seen from on top of the Alps! Men will never become great in divinity until they become great in suffering. “Ah!” says Luther, “affliction is the best book in my library.” Finally, heaviness is necessary to anyone who would afterwards comfort others. A great many Christians could come by more sympathy by a journey through a furnace! God makes his sons of thunder anywhere; but his sons of consolation he makes in the fire.
(2) The Christian’s Great Rejoicing. “Wherein ye greatly rejoice.” What is the cause of this rejoicing? In this passage the apostle is speaking of election. To be “elect according to the foreknowledge of God,” when meditated upon, can cause any infirmity to be as nothing. He is speaking also of “the blood of Jesus.” All my guilt and sin taken away, and shall I not greatly rejoice? Shall my depression cause me to break my harp, or shall it just hang on the willows for awhile? But the great cheering comfort from the apostle concerns our inheritance. Tell a dying Christian about the milk and the honey and the Lamb, and see his eyes light up! And the reason chiefly intended here for our rejoicing is in the 15th verse. We are kept by the power of God! I don’t know what a man does in affliction who does not believe this doctrine. What would we do in the day of darkness if left to keep ourselves? The Lord shall keep us safe through anything!
Selection from Conclusion. “There are some of you here to whom this precious passage has not a word to say. Our heaviness, O worldling, ‘our heaviness is but for a season.’ Your heaviness is to come; and it shall be a heaviness intolerable, because hopelessly everlasting…I beseech you, look at this matter. Search and see…whether it be well for you to venture into an eternal state as you are; and may God give you grace, that you may feel your need of a Saviour.”
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