having good behavior among the nations, so in that of which they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good works and glorify God in the day of visitation.
ExplanationCommentary
Verse 12. In the day of visitation. God is said to visit his people, sometimes by afflictions and punishments, and sometimes by graces and favours. Some think Saint Peter here, by the day of visitation, means the approaching destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, and that the sense is, that the heathen Romans seeing your peaceable dispositions and pious conversations, may have a favourable opinion of the Christian religion, and be converted. Others, that you and they to whom the gospel is preached, may glorify God when he visits them with graces and favours, whether exterior or interior. Witham.—Be careful not to give occasion to scandal. Detraction is the life of the world, and piety is most exposed to its shafts, because it most condemns the maxims of its followers.