F. W. Boreham, the famous Australian preacher, had an
instructive experience in St. Paul's Cathedral. He and a friend were
looking at Holman Hunt's well known painting, "The Light Of The
World." The Savior stands before a closed door with a lantern in
His hand, and He is knocking. Boreham said to his friend, "I have
never been able to understand why Holman Hunt thought it
necessary to put a lantern in the Savior's hand on such a brilliant
moonlight night. The whole landscape stands out as vividly as at
noonday."
Just then a stranger interpreted. "You must forgive me," he said,
"But it happens that I knew Holman Hunt well, and I was with him
a good deal when he was working on the painting before you. If you
pardon my saying so, you have completely missed one of the main
ideas he had in mind. He intended you to gather from the tangle of
undergrowth on the ground around the door, that the house is
standing on the fringe of the wilderness. The Savior is about to
leave the open country, bathed in moonlight, and plunge into the
shadowed gloom of the thickly wooded wilds. It is in preparation
for His gloomy journey through the darksome recesses of the
wilderness that He has lighted His lantern. He is knocking at the
door not merely with the hope of being admitted, and supping with
the members of the household, but in order to unite them to
cooperate with Him in His mission by accompanying Him on His
otherwise lonely journey."
It is fascinating to have this commentary on that painting, for it
reveals the artist was aware of something that Christians tend to
forget. He was aware of the fact that Jesus wants to enter the
heart's door of the individual, not to love them and leave them, but
to love them, save them, and recruit them for the great task of
pushing back the darkness with the Gospel of light.
You would think that a Christian could never forget the purpose
of Christ and His commands to take up the cross and follow Him.
You would think that a Christian could never forget the cross, and
the great commission to take the good news of it into all the world.
But Peter says in verse 9 that Christians can even go to the point of
being forgetful concerning their own cleansing from sin. Jesus
implied the same when He instituted the Lord's Supper to be
observed in remembrance of Him, and to show forth His death until
He comes. The implication is that Christians would forget His
sacrifice for their sin without a constant reminder. In this passage
Peter's main concern is with the need to keep Christians reminded
of what they already know.
In verse 12 he says will not be negligent to keep them in
remembrance. In verse 13 he writes of stirring up their
remembrance as long as he lives, and in verse 15 he says he is
putting these things in writing that they might have them in
remembrance after he is gone. Peter is fighting a major disease of
the spiritual life. It is the disease of spiritual amnesia. The person
with amnesia has forgotten his identity. He is normal in every other
way, but he does not know who he is. Israel fell victim to this
disease time and time again. She forgot that she was the bride of
Jehovah, and the elect people of God.
Moses cried out in Deut. 32:18, "You were unmindful of the Rock
that begat you, and you forgot the God who gave you birth."
In Judges 3:7 we read, "And the people of Israel did what is evil in
the sight of the Lord, forgetting the Lord their God..."
Isaiah gave this as the reason for the sorrows of Israel in Isa. 17:10,
"For you have forgotten the God of your salvation, and have not
remembered the Rock of your refuge."
God speaks in Jer. 2:32, "..My people have forgotten me days
without number."
This is the common lament of the prophets. Israel has forgotten the
Lord her God. It is no wonder then that she bore no fruit.
Forgetfulness and fruitfulness are opposites. Peter says that if you
have all of these virtues, and cultivate them, you will bear fruit, but
if you lack them you will be like Israel of old, blind, nearsighted, and
forgetful of God's will and deliverance.
It is important for Christians, not only to recognize the great
potential they have to be fruitful, but also to be aware of the great
danger they face in being forgetful. Forgetfulness is the cause of so
much sorrow and folly. Why do people who have lived together for
years, and who have gone through joys and sorrows together, decide
to get a divorce, or do something that will lead to divorce? It is
basically because they forget. They forget their vows and
commitments. They forget the love they once had. They forget all of
the values they shared in the past, and they ideals they were aiming
for, and they look only at the present. Because it is unpleasant they
forget all their obligations and play the fool.
Why do young people who have been given everything grow up
and rebel, and seek to overthrow the source of their blessings? It is
because they forget. They forget the sacrifice and love of their
parents. They forget the motives and ideals of the past, and look
only at their desires of the moment.
Why do Christians forsake the will of God? Why do they get fed
up with the church? Why do they get irritable in relation to other
Christians, and sinful in relation to the world? It is because they
forget. They forget the love and sacrifice of Christ for sinners. They
forget that Christians are still sinners. They forget the call to
struggle against the forces of darkness, and to climb to the ideal of
Christlikeness. They look only at the present imperfections, and
they get discouraged and frustrated, and they give up. They lose the
vision of the great past and the glorious future.
Peter puts it in very plain language. He says they are blind, and
they cannot see afar off. Christians are so use to hearing the unsaved
referred to as the blind that it is quite a shock for Peter to refer to
Christians as blind. Peter is warning Christians of the dangerous
power of negative thinking. He has listed all of the positive virtues
the Christian must have to be a successful soldier of the cross, and a
fruit bearing servant of Christ. In this verse he shows to what depth
of failure a Christian can fall if he lacks these things. He can be
blind, nearsighted, and forgetful. Peter's purpose in this negative
language is positive, for he wants Christians to avoid this kind of
failure. Knowing this can happen should make us practice
preventative measures to ensure that the fruit of our lives is not
blighted by these diseases. I say diseases because, though we have
only mentioned spiritual amnesia, it appears that the key symptom
of the unhealthy Christian life is spiritual myopia.
This is another name for nearsightedness. It is a condition in
which the rays from distant objects are brought to a focus before
reaching the retina, and so it is blurred. A Christian with spiritual
myopia is all caught up with an entangled with what is under his
nose, but he has lost the vision of the distant past and the upcoming
future in God's plan. He is forgetful of the cross, and blind to the
glory of the future. He is cut off from the root of the past, and the
fruit of the future. He lives the limited and useless life of a dead
stump, for he forgets his cleansing from sin, and the purpose for
which he was saved.
Myopia is caused by a constant absorption of the eye in small
things such as dim print and thin threads. The Christian who
specializes in the trivial, and gets so wrapped up in the petty projects
of the present that he forgets the end toward which he is to be
moving, becomes a very narrow and unfruitful Christian. The
Christian must have a great vision that sweeps the skies of God's
purpose like a giant telescope. Peter says if you lack these virtues
you are blind, and can see only what is near at hand, and so it
follows that if you have them, you can see far.
John Henry Jowett likens each of these virtues to a lens on a
telescope. Each one gives you more powerful vision. He writes,
"Every supplied grace enlarges the spiritual vision. Every
refinement of the disposition is the acquirement of an extra lens.
And now I think of it, my text is like a vast drawn-out-telescope,
with lens after lens added, ever contributing to the intensity and
extension of its range." The mature and fruitful Christian is one
with a powerful vision of the glory of God, and His ideal for man.
Christians with myopia are nearsighted saints who see only the
muddy mess of man's making, and they cannot see the stars of God's
making. Nearsighted is a curse, and it is far more prevalent than we
realize.
William L. Stidger, a famous preacher and author of numerous
books, tells about his battle with the American jitters. A less
dignified name he says is ants in the pants. In a ceaseless flurry of
one thing after another he became restless, irritable, angry, jealous,
suspicious, and finely even went to pieces in a nervous breakdown.
Even a rest in California seemed to do no good. Then, just by
accident, a friend invited him to go to the top of Mt. Hamilton one
night to visit the Lick Observatory. They allowed him to look
through the high-powered telescope, and for the first time in his life
he saw the stars in plane behind plane. He writes, "With the human
eye we see only stars in a single plane. But there I saw front yards
full of stars, backyards, and meadows and fields of stars, rivers of
stars, forests of stars, long mountain ranges of stars-stars behind
stars." His friend told the astronomer of his illness, and he said,
"This is the best cure for nerves I know."
And it was for him, for all the things he worried about became
trivial after he had seen the stars. That vast vision expanded his
horizon, and made him break away from the limits of
nearsightedness. Its the same story over and over in multitudes of
problems and diseases. People are self-centered, narrow minded,
and live with such limited vision that they can't keep from being
small, sick, blind, and unfruitful. It is all the more tragic when it
happens to a Christian, for he has all these resources to cure myopia
and expand his vision.
A few years ago a group of people aroused by the miseries of
preventable blindness organized the Society For The Conservation
Of Vision. This is what the church is to be on the spiritual level, and
the Apostle Peter has given us the principles on which we are to
operate. We are to go beyond the conservation of vision, however,
into the field of the expansion of vision. Vision and fruit are closely
linked in this passage so that we can say, the greater the vision, the
greater the fruitfulness. The more nearsighted one is, the less fruit
he will bear. Where there is no vision the people perish says Prov.
29:18. They perish because without vision there is no growth or
fruit. Lack of vision is like lack of momentum on a bicycle. Once
that is lost there is nothing to do but fall. Peter says this is what will
happen to the nearsighted saint, but for the one who adds these
lenses of virtue to the telescope of his character, there will be vision,
fruit, and perfect assurance that they will never fall.
We need to examine our vision constantly using Peter's list as a
chart. Test the eye sight of your soul by this standard. See where
you are weak, and strengthen that area of your Christian life. If you
do not have long range vision, and so have long range goals, you will
tend to become frustrated by short range failure.
Abraham Rosenback said in his autobiography that on Feb. 14,
1493 Columbus prepared a complete account of his marvelous
voyage. He wrote on a stout piece of parchment, wrapped it
carefully in a piece of waterproof cloth, then placed it in a iron
bound barrel, and threw it into the raging ocean. He said, "If I
thought there was one chance in a million of finding it, I would take
my power boat...and cruise in the neighborhood of the Azores
forever."
What brings a man to a point where his birthday and book can
have this kind of influence? It is certainly not nearsightedness, but
rather, long range vision. The poet Edwin Markham was asked if he
thought Columbus was called of God to do what he did. He replied,
"Yes! I have read every book available, including the diary of
Columbus, and it is clear to me that Columbus looked upon himself
as a servant of God in that eventful voyage. Markham concluded a
long poem about Columbus with these words:
Now let this startling thing be said;
If land had not been on ahead,
So mighty had been his gallant dare,
God's glad hand would have put it there.
When asked what he meant by these lines he said, "I mean that
God in His heavens, the stars and planets in their courses, the sun
and moon and stars, the seasons in their cycles, all history, time and
eternity, and the very angels in heaven are always on the side of the
daring, the audacious, the courageous- the man or woman who
catches his vision, feels that he is God's servant, and goes ahead
regardless of obstacles!"
Columbus was a man of vision, and that is why he was a man of
fruitfulness. Those who were blind and nearsighted and forgetful of
the adventures of the past, and of the potential of the future did
nothing by which to be remembered. All of this is relevant to Peter's
words here. We shall either take the high road of adventure by
adding these virtues to our lives, and thereby gain a vision that pulls
us even higher, or we will be content to take the low road of safety
and security in messing with the mediocre, and thus, be nearsighted
Christians. We will be blind to God's best both past and present,
and fruitless as a tumbleweed in the future. May God help us to
climb with Christ and catch the vision that will compel us, like
Columbus, to launch out in search of new worlds to discover in the
realm of spirituality, and thereby avoid being nearsighted
Christians.
