Having your conduct honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.
Read Chapter 2
Clement Of Alexandria
AD 215
Above all, we are to keep in mind what was spoken sacredly: "Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles; that, whereas they speak against you as evil-doers, they may, by the good works which they behold, glorify God."
That they may arise and go forth from the darkness by the light of the good works of the fear of God, "that they may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven."
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 St. 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.
