Freedom and Submission
Let’s open our Bibles to 1 Peter again. As we continue to make our way through this book we are looking at verses 13-25. One of the blessings I hope that you experience as we are taking this book morning and evening is that you’ll be able to see the flow of the book, you’ll be able to see how Peter is tying things together or moving from one teaching to a conclusion that comes in the next teaching, and you know we don’t always get that when we are preaching isolated passages from different parts of the Bible or even when we are, ya know, preaching just week by week sometimes we’ll forget, what was that about last week, but maybe it ties it a little bit more together as we make our way through.
So, 1 Peter 2:13-25. Hear now God’s Word.
“Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by Him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a coverup for evil, but living as servants of God. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For this you have been called because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might follow in His steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth. When He was reviled he did not revile in return; when he suffered h did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.”
I’m just going to ask you to turn back in your Bibles to Isaiah 53 and just keep your finger in Isaiah as we come to a little bit later on in the message as we do a little comparing of 1 Peter 2 and Isaiah 53. So, people of God in our study of 1 Peter I wonder if you’ve noticed something and that is this, that Peter keeps going back and forth between grace and godliness, between Gospel freedom and Gospel obedience. Paul of course in his writings is known for what we call his indicatives and his imperatives, so a similar kind of thing Paul focuses upon God’s grace, upon the Gospel, then gets to commands, but the way that Paul often does that is kind of by chunking those things together. In other words, Paul will wax on for a while about grace and then he’ll move on sort of in a chunk to talk about, okay out of grace this is how we ought to go about living. So, if you take the Book of Romans for example and Romans 1-11 Paul is laying out the Gospel. And then when you get to chapter 12 for the rest of the book he says now here are the implications of the gospel. Or you could take the book of Ephesians, in Ephesians 1-3 Paul is laying out gospel truth and when you get to chapter 4 through the rest of the book then Paul says okay, here’s what this means for your living. But what I notice in 1 Peter is this, that Peter rather than chunking those things together, Peter just kind of keeps going back and forth between them. Grace and godliness. Gospel freedom. Gospel obedience. And so, in chapter 1 Peter started off talking about our hope, but then he moves onto holiness and says, ya know, hope in Christ, this living hope that we have in God ought to lead us to holiness and sincere love. And I notice the same thing here in chapter 2.
So, Zach reminded us out of these early verses of chapter 2 what Peter has to say about who we are in Christ. We are a spiritual house built on the cornerstone of Christ. We are a chosen race, a royal priest of the holy nation and on and on Peter goes just highlighting this is who you are in Christ. And then in verse 12 at the end of the section we looked at this morning the result, here’s how you ought to go about living, keep your conduct among the gentiles honorable.
Well, when we come to verse 13, this passage tonight, Peter gets very specific about what that means. How are we to go about living, how are we to keep our conduct among the gentiles, those who are outside the church, those who are in the world, how are we to live honorably before them? And Peter’s answer is this, it’s by submitting, it’s by subjecting ourselves to those who are in authority over us. This is where our freedom in Christ is to lead, freedom leading to submission and we might think to ourselves, aren’t those two things totally contradictory. When you’re free you ought to submit, when you’re free you should subject yourself, and Peter says, yes exactly. You could even see it in verse 16. Just look at that one verse, “Live as people who are free, but don’t use your freedom as a coverup for evil, but use your freedom this way, serve the Lord.” You’re free. What does that mean? It means you serve. Well then, I’m not free. No, no, as Christians you’re free, but you’re supposed to serve and not only serve God, but all through this passage serve others.
What this passage does for us tonight is simply lay out our responsibilities toward the authorities that God has established for us, civil government, employers, how about office bearers that we install and ordain tonight, and all those that God has placed over us. I want to give you five tonight, five brief little lesions that come out of this passage about freedom and submission. Here’s number one, the most basic. We are to submit to the authorities that have been established by God. We are to submit to the authorities established by God. That is the basic command that is the basic structure of this text. You can see it at the very beginning. Verse 13 Peter says, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” You see it again verse 18, “Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect.” And next week we are going to see it again, chapter 3, verse 1, “Likewise wives be subject to your own husbands.”
There’s a string of relationships that Peter is laying out for us that have this basic call of submission and it’s important, I think tonight that we see that this is not a balanced discussion on Peter’s part. Doing something a little different than Paul does. When Paul is talking about these kinds of relationships he talks about both sides and so Paul can talk to wives and then he’ll go on to talk to husbands. Or he talks to children and then he talks to parents. He talks to servant, and he talks to masters. Paul touches on both sides of those relationships, and Peter yes, as we are going to see next week, he’ll talk to wives and then he will talk to husbands, but when it comes to citizens and servants it is mainly just about a relationship to authorities. He’s not saying to authorities in this text, authorities here’s what you must do, he’s really saying to citizens and servants, now let’s just focus there, this is how you are to respond to those in authority over you. Friends, why does he do that? Well perhaps he does this because very few in the church of his time had authoritative rules. Very few people with positions of power and so he does not need to speak to that side of the relationship equation as much as the other side of the relationship equation. But I think Peter does this also because he wants us to live like Christ, serving, submitting, giving ourselves over and so he says first of all there in verse 13, how should citizens respond to government. He says, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake.” He mentions first of all the emperor as supreme. In Peter’s day this was Nero. We’ll learn a little bit more about him in a minute. But subject yourself to the emperor, to governors as those who have been sent by God to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good, maybe a regional authority like Pontius Pilate. But notice also Peter says here every human institution, all levels of government, local law enforcement, the major, the state trooper, the department of motor vehicles, all those who have been set up as authorities, be subject to them. It’s a very basic command. It’s simply saying to us tonight, be a good citizen, obey the law, respect authority.
You know Peter had just gotten done addressing the church as sojourners and exiles, verse 11. And it might be very easy to hear that and say, well I’m a stranger, I’m part of another kingdom, I don’t belong here, I don’t have to obey. I mean these authorities; I’m not part of this world after all. And of course, we know that’s not true. Peter simply says, be subject to every human institution, to the emperor, to governors, and then he speaks to servants, verse 18, “Servants be subject to your master with all respect.” What Peter is talking about here with servants is probably household servants or household slaves. This is probably many in the early church. Many members of the church had these kind of roles to fulfill. These are not slaves as we might think about them from the American experience. Slavery was something a little bit different. These people would have generally been well treated, compensated, well educated, may have been managers within a household, musicians, teachers, doctors, and yet their service was not voluntary, they were probably born into it, occasionally, only occasionally could buy their way out of it and being a minority in the society of the church had very little chance of bringing an end to any kind of institution of slavery or servitude. And you see these Christians were in a sense were stuck. They’re asking the question how are we supposed to relate to our masters, to those who are over us and Peter says, “Well you’re to be subject to them, you’re to respect them, you’re to give willing obedience to them.” The closest application we might think about today might be an employee/employer relationship.
And people of God, Peter’s simple point is this and this first point that as believers even though we serve another king we are called to submit to the authority structures that God has built into society. It’s the same kind of teaching that we find in the fifth commandment when God tells us we are to honor our father and our mother. You can take a look sometime at what the shorter catechism says about that, but it’s clear that God isn’t just talking about parents in that command, but God is really talking about all the authorities that God has placed over us and we are to honor them. This is what we did tonight isn’t it, when we pledge to our officers, we’re asked the question, do you promise to yield to them all that honor, encouragement, and obedience in the Lord to which their office according to the Word of God and the constitution of this church entitles them. We said yes, we can honor them, encourage them, obey them in the Lord we are going to subject ourselves to them, submit to them.
Lesson number two. Our submission to authorities is an act of submission to God himself. I want you to notice all the references that Peter gives us here to serving the Lord. He says for example in verse 13, “Be subject”, notice those next words, “For the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” Or verse 14, “Subject yourself to governors as sent by Him.” And I think this is not a reference to the emperors sent by the emperor but sent by God. Verse 16, “Live as people who are free as servants of God.” Or verse 19, “When you are subject to your master, even the unjust ones, this is a gracious thing when mindful of God.” What Peter is doing is simply reminding us tonight that we are people who live under God’s gaze or as we put it sometimes, we live coram deo. Right, we are people who live before the face of God, and we are to live always in the light of His presence and we are to live for His pleasure. Peter reminds us of this in a couple of other ways in this passage. When he tells us verse 14 that government has been set by God to punish evil and to praise those who do good. Now that says something, doesn’t it about limited government, the government just cannot do whatever it wants, it does not have carte blanch authority just to do whatever it likes to do. But it’s also a reminder that government has been sent by God, and this is what Paul says in Romans 13:4, that God has been sent to punish evil, to help those who do good, the govern authority is God’s servant for our good. God has established government and then Peter also gives us a Godly mission in submitting to authorities.
Tells us verse 15 that this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. You know the early Christians, they were accused of many different things, of cannibalism. You know what these Christians do, they get together, and they eat the flesh of their Lord. Sick. They were accused of sedition because the early Christian church wouldn’t worship Cesar, and they’re called upon to bow down to Cesar. Peter says you’re to live your lives in such a way, live such good lives that the only thing that others can talk about is how good of a citizen you are, that you would silence the ignorance of foolish men. As people observe you and they see how you are living and they have nothing to say about you, but only good.
Friends, I love how Peter summarizes this in verse 17. These little short statements, but so much packed into them, honor everyone, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the emperor. Reminder here that our submission differs according to the authority that we are submitting to, right, that we are to honor some and we love others. We don’t treat every authority in the same way. What we give our parents is not what we give the police, right, there’s different ways of honoring the authority of different members of society. And notice whom we are to honor. Peter says we are to honor everyone and then he comes at the end and says, honor the emperor. We are to honor everyone, those who are different than us, those who do not like us, those who disagree with us, those who have a different social standing or a different ethnic background or religious affiliation, we are to honor everyone and then we’re also to honor the emperor. Now what a revolutionary thought Peter has here when he says honor everyone and gives the same to the emperor, honor the emperor. Because yes, in the early church when Christians are being asked to bow down and to confess that Cesar is Lord, Peter doesn’t way worship the emperor but honor the emperor. You just give him the same thing that you give to everyone, nothing more, just the same. You see that same kind of implication when Peter tells us there’s only one that we are to fear and that is God. We fear God while honoring the emperor and we ought never to get those two things mixed up. There is only one that ultimately deserves our allegiance and that is the Lord himself.
Third point, submission and doing good may lead to suffering for us. This is where Peter takes us in the rest of this passage. And you see, especially in verses 19 to 21, Peter says there’s nothing commendable when we suffer for doing wrong. He says if you sin and are beaten for it, and you endure what credit is that, say I’m suffering, well yes, you’re suffering because you’ve broken the law and when you endure that what credit is that. But when we suffer for doing good it is a gracious thing, he says in verse 19. It is a grace thing. God gives His grace to us in the midst of suffering. We’ve mentioned it a number of times in the sermon series that this was a letter that was written to suffering Christians. They’re called elect exiles in the first chapter and the first verse. Well, the suffering that these Christians endured was horrendous. It wasn’t just something minor, it was something rather awful. The early Roman historian Tacitus who lived between 56 and 120 so he is living, ya know he’s a contemporary of the Apostle Paul and Peter, wrote about the persecutions that the early church faced. In A.D. 64 the city of Rome caught fire and most believe that Nero was the one who set it to flame, but in A.D. 64 he blamed the Christians for it, and there was a systemic persecution that began of the early Christian church and this was what the early church historian Tacitus says, he says a vast multitude were convicted not so much on the charge of burning the city as of hating the human race. Christians, they hate the human race. And he says in their very deaths they were made the subjects of sport, for they were covered with the hides of wild beasts and worried to death by dogs. In other words, they were going around wearing the hide of an animal and dogs loved to attack them because they would smell the hide. They’re nailed to crosses, they were set fire to, and when the day waned, burned to serve for the evening light, became human candles to light up the palace and light up the city. Peter says suffering unjustly is one of the ways that we demonstrate that we have been set free by Christ because you see when we respond in kind to unjust suffering it shows that we are slaves to the one who has treated us unjustly, we are in bondage to the one who has hurt us. It doesn’t mean that Christians always have to just accept injustice, or we cannot execute or exercise the recourse that is ours in the court and before the law. But Peter says suffering comes along with submission sometimes for believers and it means that we are not to repay evil with evil.
That leads us to this fourth point, that when suffering for good we are called instead to follow the example of Jesus. Look how Peter puts it in verse 21. “For this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you might follow in His steps.” There are two things in that verse that Peter says about the sufferings of Christ. First of all, he suffered for us. We’ll come back to that in our last point, but the second thing that he says is that Christ suffered leaving us an example and the word that Peter uses here for an example implies tracing something so be an example is to try to become like the original as much as you can to trace yourself or to trace something in order to duplicate it. I was thinking about some of the lessons that I see Sherry takes home from kindergarten and she’s teaching students how to write and they come home with these papers and there’s three lines, right, there’s a thick line and another thick line and a dotted line in between, and there are letters so maybe they’re making a small a and it’s on the paper and what do the students have to do, well they take their pen or their pencil and they write right over top of those solid lines trying to trace the letter as best as they can, trying to be like the original. Peter says Christ set an example for us, we are to follow Him, we are to as much as possibly be like the original, to be like Christ, the way that Christ suffered is the way that we must suffer. And the other image he uses here is that we would follow in His footsteps. It’s a different picture but kind of the same principal, isn’t it, that we’ll go where He goes, His way of suffering is our way of suffering. Well, how did He suffer? Peter lays out for us both what Christ did not do and what Christ did. What did Christ not do. Well, He gives us a number of things here. Verse 22, He says he committed no sin. In His suffering Christ never broke the law of God. In His suffering He never disobeyed the father, He never failed to love God above all and to love others as himself. There was also never any deceit Peter says, in his mouth there was never falsehood, never lies, no disrespect, no disregard, no dishonor of the governing authorities, no lashing out on the part of Christ. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. When He was insulted, He did not throw insults back and then when He suffered, He did not threaten. What he did do, Peter tells us, is that He continued in trusting himself to him who judges justly. In the midst of His suffering He entrusted himself to his father. He put His life into the hands of God, He lived believing God would take care of things, He turned the other cheek trusting that God would bring justice one day. Father I am yours, father you are in control, father you are sovereign. Trusted himself to God who would judge.
You know Peter isn’t talking of course just in the theoretical here is he, because Peter was an eyewitness to all these things. He had events in mind. Maybe he was thinking about the Garden of Yosemite when it was actually Peter who himself wielded the sword, like Jesus will take care of this and Jesus said now put the sword away. Should I not drink the cup that the father has given me, that’s not the way of Peter. Maybe he was thinking of his trial before Herod. When Herod questioned Him and Jesus made no answer. Or maybe it’s thinking about the insults on the way to the cross when they hung a purple robe on Christ, they hailed Him as king, they punched Him in the face, they spit on Him and scourged Him, or maybe the crowds that passed by the cross mocking Christ, calling Him to come down off the cross if he is the Christ while wagging their heads at Him. Maybe you heard the words of one of those other criminals or a criminal that was hung with Christ who railed at Him, “If you are the Christ then save yourself and us.” Since the whole journey from Gethsemane to Gabbatha, the Stone Pavement, to Golgotha. He patiently endured, He did not retaliate, He did not break out in anger or resentment. Peter says Christ suffered for you, leaving us an example that we should do as He did. How do you react when you’re passed over for advancement at work because you won’t show the clients a good time like your boss wants you to. What do you do? What do you do when your church rental space is taken away because of your position on key moral issues like happened in the UK to our friends in Leeds. What do you do? What’s your response when you realize that your classmates have been cutting you down behind your back because you spoke up in class about your views on dating? What do you do or how do you handle response to your spouse when you’re constantly resisted for efforts to read the Bible together more as a family? What do you do, you entrust yourself to God. You say, God here I am, God I know you’re in charge, I know you’re in control, I know you have these things in your hands, and you let Him right the wrongs and you show kindness in the face of hostility, and you strive to respond like Christ.
And then our final point, when suffering for good, we must rely on the power of Christ and the Gospel. You see because Peter not only here describes Jesus’ suffering as our example to follow, but Peter here also describes the sufferings of Christ as our substitute and reminds us that His sufferings provide the grace and power, we need to follow Him. One commentator called this last bit here the gravitational center of this passage. It’s got gravitational power, it pulls us in, maybe not the theme of the passage, but it draws us to the power of the passage and notice what Peter says here, he said in verse 21, “Christ has suffered for you”, and then he gets explicit verse 24 when he says, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.” This is where I want to you kind of flip back to Isaiah 53 and just see how Peter in this point of our text relies so much upon what Isaiah said in that 53rd chapter describing the suffering servant, our Lord Jesus. So, Peter can say there was no deceit that was found in the mouth of Christ, and you can see what he does, he’s quoting, he’s referring back to Isaiah 53:9, “Although he had done no violence and there was no deceit in his mouth.” Peter says he himself bore our sins in his body on the tree. You look at Isaiah 53:12, “Yet he bore the sin of many and makes intercession for the transgressors.” Where Peter says, “By his wounds you are healed”, and of course that comes right out of Isaiah 53:5, “Wounded for your transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, on Him the chastisement that brought us peace and with his stripes we are healed”, and then Peter says, “For you were straying like sheep.” He pulls that right out of Isaiah 53:6, “All we like sheep have gone astray.”
Friends, why do you think Peter here leans so heavily upon Isaiah 53? Reference after reference after reference after reference. I think for this reason because there’s no passage that is more glorious in highlighting the suffering of Christ in our place than that 53rd chapter. “Pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, bearing our sins, the innocent for the guilty, and all of this for our peace so that by His wounds we might find healing.” What Peter is doing is simply reminding us tonight that we have grace to respond as Jesus did. There is power for us to respond in suffering as Christ responded. We don’t have to respond in a worldly way, we can respond as Christ responded because notice what Peter says, he bore our sins in his body on the tree for this reason, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. What Peter is saying to us tonight is at the cross not only are your sins forgiven, yes, and amen, but that is not all that the cross is about. Far too often that is where we stop, right? I’m forgiven, I’m cleansed, I’m washed at the cross and Peter says absolutely but notice what the cross means actually for your living now, for your obedience today He died so that you might die to sin and live to righteousness. He died so that you might obey God. He died so that you might follow in the footsteps of Christ.
You don’t have power in yourself to do that, I don’t have power in myself to do that, but the cross and the gospel gives us the power to do that, to live as Christ lived, and to submit before and to sometimes suffer at the hands of others who are in authority because we see our submission as unto the Lord. I think that’s why Peter closes this text the way that he does. When he reminds us of who Jesus is for us. He says you were straying like sheep, but now you’ve returned to whom, to the shepherd and to the overseer of your soul. He could have said all kinds of things about Jesus there, but you’ve returned to the shepherd and the overseer of your soul, the shepherd, the one who sought you when you were going astray and has brought you home, the one who walks with you even when you’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death and remember these Christian, they’re being lit up like candles and in fact, Peter himself at the hands of the same emperor Nero that he calls Christians to be subject to is going to be martyred, crucified upside down by this emperor and he says be subject to Him. And this is the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep and He is also our overseer, our sovereign. He is the one that we ultimately submit to, but he is also the one who protects us and keeps us, the one who holds us fast. You see it’s to this Jesus we submit. To this Jesus, we put ourselves into the hands of so that we can do by His power or the power of the gospel we can do what we’re called to do, to be subject to use our freedom to submit to those whom God has placed over us. Let’s bow together in prayer.
Lord Jesus, we do praise you that you are our shepherd and you are the overseer of our soul. You’re the one who takes care of us, you’re the one who protects us, you’re the one who will keep us ‘til the end so we pray Father that you would give us grace and power to live according to this text, that we would live honorably among the gentiles, particularly in how we go about submitting to those who are an authority over us. We pray this all in Jesus’ name. Amen.
