2 Peter 2:4-10 For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness… s: — 1. Who are here to be understood by "the godly." He, and he only, can lay claim to so glorious a qualification who is actually in covenant with God, and that not only by external profession, but by real relation. In a word, he, and he only, ought to pass for godly, according to the unalterable rules of Christianity, who allows not himself in the omission of any known duty, or the commission of the least known sin. And this certainly will, and nothing less that I know of can, either secure a man from failing into temptation, or (which is yet a greater happiness) from falling by it. 2. The other thing to be inquired into is, what is here meant by "temptation"; a thing better known by its ill effects than by the best description. The Greek word signifies "trial," and so imports not so much the matter as the end of the dispensation. But (the common and most received use of the word having added something of malignity to its first and native signification) generally in Scripture it denotes not only a bare trial, but-such a one as is attended with a design to hurt or mischieve the people so tried. As for the sense in which the word ought to be taken here, it may be, and no doubt with great truth is, in the full latitude of it, applicable to both sorts of temptation: it being no less the prerogative of God's goodness and power to deliver men from such trials as afflict them, than from such as are designed to corrupt them. Nevertheless, I think it also as little to be doubted, that the text chiefly respects this latter signification, and accordingly speaks here most designedly of such a deliverance as breaks the snares and defeats the stratagems by which the great and mortal enemy of mankind is so infinitely busy, first to debauch, and then to destroy souls. And now, if it be inquired whether they are the righteous only whom God delivers from temptation, and that no such deliverances are ever vouchsafed by Him to any of the contrary character, I answer that I can find nothing in Scripture or reason to found such a doctrine upon, but that such deliverances both may be and sometimes are vouchsafed to persons far enough from being reckoned godly, either in the accounts of God or man. And first, that they may be so. we need no other reason to evince it than this, that God in these cases may very well restrain the actions, without working any change upon the will or affections. And in the next place, that such deliverances not only may be, but sometimes actually are afforded to persons represented under no note of piety or virtue, but much otherwise, those three memorable examples of Abimelech, Esau, and Balaam (Genesis 20., 33.; Numbers 22.) sufficiently demonstrate. So that we may rationally conclude that even wicked persons also are sometimes sharers in such deliverances; but still so, that this by all means ought to be observed Withal, that the said deliverances are dealt forth to these two different sorts of men upon very different grounds, viz., to the former upon the stock of covenant or promises; to the latter upon the stock of uncovenanted mercy, and the free overflowing egress of the Divine benignity, often exerting itself upon such as have no claim to it at all. I. To show HOW FAR GOD DELIVERS PERSONS TRULY PIOUS OUT OF TEMPTATION. 1. God delivers by way of prevention, or keeping off the temptation; which, of all other ways, is doubtless the surest, as the surest is unquestionably the best. For by this is set a mighty barrier between the soul and the earliest approaches of its mortal enemy. Unspeakable are the advantages vouchsafed to mankind by God's preventing grace, if we consider how apt a temptation is to diffuse, and how prone our nature is to receive an infection. For though the soul be not actually corrupted by a temptation, yet it is something to be sullied and blown upon by it, to have been in the dangerous familiarities of sin, and in the next approach and neighbourhood of destruction. Such being the nature of man, that it is hardly possible for hint to be near an ill thing and not the worse for it. 2. We are now to consider such persons as advanced a step further, and as they are actually entered into temptation; and so also God is at hand for their deliverance. For as it was God who suspended the natural force of that material fire from acting upon the bodies of the three children mentioned in Daniel 3., so it is God alone who must control the fury of this spiritual flame from seizing upon the soul, having always so much fuel and fit matter there for it to prey upon. And for an eternal monument of His goodness, He has not left us without some such heroic instances as these upon record in His Word, that so the saints may receive double courage and confidence, having their deliverance not only sealed and secured to them by promise, but also that promise ratified and made good to them by precedents and examples, like so many stars appearing, both to direct and to comfort the benighted traveller. 3. And lastly, we are to consider the persons hitherto spoken of as not only entered into temptation, but also as in some measure prevailed upon by it. But that I may give some light to this weighty case of conscience, how far a person truly godly may, without ceasing to be so, be prevailed upon by temptation, I will here set down the several degrees and advances by which a temptation or sinful proposal gradually wins the soul, and those all of them comprised in James 1:14, 15. 1. The first of which we may call seduction. 2. The second degree of temptation may be called enticement or allurement. 3. The third degree is, when after such possession had of the thoughts and fancy, the temptation comes to make its way into the consent of the will, and to gain that great fort also, so that the mind begins to propose, and accordingly to contrive the commission of the sin proposed to it. 4. The fourth degree of prevalence which a temptation gets over the soul is, the actual eruption of .it in the perpetration or commission of the sin suggested to it. 5. The fifth and last degree, completing the victory which temptation obtains over a man is, when sin comes to that pitch as to reign, and so by consequence put out of all possibility either of resistance or escape. Having thus reckoned up the several degrees of temptation, and set before you the fatal round of the devil's methods for destroying souls, let us now in the next place inquire how far God vouchsafes to deliver the pious and sincere out of them. in answer to which, I first of all affirm, that God's methods in this case are very various, and not to be declared by any one universal assertion. Sometimes by a total and entire deliverance, He delivers them from every degree and encroachment of a temptation. Sometimes He lets them fall into the first degree of it, and receive it into their thoughts; but then delivers them from the second, which is to cherish and continue it there, by frequent pleasing reflections upon it. Sometimes He gives way to this too, but then hinders it from coming to a full purpose and consent of will. Sometimes He lets it go thus far also, and suffers sin to conceive by such a purpose or consent: but then, by a kind of spiritual abortion, stifles it in the very birth, and so keeps it from breaking forth into actual commission. And lastly, for reasons best known to His most wise providence, He sometimes permits a temptation to grow so powerful as to have strength to bring forth and to defile the soul with one or more gross actual eruptions. But then, in the last place, by a mighty overpowering grace, He very often, as some assert, or always, as others affirm, keeps it from an absolute, entire, and final conquest. So that sin never comes to such a height as to reign in the godly, to bear sway, and become habitual. But though its endeavours are not always extinguished, nor its sallyings out wholly stopped, yet its dominion is broken. It may sometimes bruise and wound, but it shall never kill.Now the foregoing particulars, upon a due improvement of them, will naturally teach us these two great and important lessons. 1. Concerning the singular goodness as well as wisdom of our great Lawgiver, even in the strictest and severest precepts of our religion. Certainly it is a much greater mercy and tenderness to the souls of men to represent the first movings of the heart towards any forbidden object as unlawful in themselves, and destructive in their consequence, and thereby to incite the soul to a vigorous resistance of them while they may be mastered, and with tea times less trouble extinguished, than after they are once actually committed, they can be repented of. No doubt sin is both more easily and effectually kept from beginning than, being once begun, it can be stopped from going on. 2. The other great lesson is concerning the most effectual method of dealing with the tempter and his temptations; and that is, to follow the method of their dealing with us. A temptation never begins where it intends to make an end. II. TO SHOW WHAT IS THE PRIME MOTIVE, OR GRAND IMPULSIVE CAUSE, INDUCING GOD TO DELIVER PERSONS TRULY PIOUS OUT OF TEMPTATION. NOW this is twofold: 1. The free mercy of God; and 2. The prevailing intercession of Christ. III. TO SHOW WHY AND UPON WHAT GROUNDS DELIVERANCE OUT OF TEMPTATION IS TO BE REPUTED SO GREAT A MERCY AND SO TRANSCENDENT A PRIVILEGE. In order to which, as all deliverance, in the very nature and notion of it, imports a relation to some evil from which a man is delivered; so in this deliverance out of temptation, the surpassing greatness of it, and the sovereign mercy shown in it, will appear from those intolerable evils and mischiefs which are always intended by, and naturally consequents upon, a prevailing temptation. Four things more especially are designed and driven at by the tempter in all his temptations. 1. To begin with the greatest, and that which is always first intended, though last accomplished, the utter loss and damnation of the soul. For this is the grand mark which the tempter shoots at, this being the beloved prize which he contends so hard for. 2. In the second place, loss of a man's peace with God and his own conscience, and the weakening, if not extinguishing, all his former hopes of salvation. It confounds and casts a man infinitely backwards as to his spiritual accounts. It degrades him from his assurance; renders his title to heaven dubious and perplexed; draws a great and discouraging blot over all his evidences, and even shakes in pieces that confidence which was formerly the very life and support of his soul, with new, terrible, and amazing objections. 3. The third consequence of a prevailing temptation is the exposing of a man to the temporal judgments of God in some signal and severe affliction. For though in much mercy God may, as we have shown, save such a one from eternal death, yet it rarely happens that He frees him both from destruction and from discipline too; but that some time or other He gives him a taste of the bitter cup, and teaches him what his sin has deserved, by what at present it makes him feel. 4. The fourth and last mischievous consequence of a prevailing temptation is the disgrace, scandal, and reproach which it naturally brings upon our Christian profession. The three former consequences terminated within the compass of the sinner's own person; but this last spreads and diffuses the mischief much further: nothing in nature casting so deep a stain upon the face of Christianity as the blots which fall upon it from the lewd and scandalous behaviour of Christians. (R. South, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: For if God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment; |
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