Concerning the Government

1 Peter 2:13-17

Immanuel – 6/20/21

We all once lived beneath the crushing weight of condemnation for our own sins. Such a weight was driving us down deeper into the darkness, driving forever down, into an eternity of darkness. But He who was eternally foreknown, the Holy One of God, entered into our darkness and took our weight of condemnation upon His shoulders. It crushed Him, spilling His most precious blood, driving Him into the blackness of death.

But such a weight could not hold the Lord of Heaven and Earth! When from death He arose, shattering to pieces that great burden, so also did humanities hope arise. Now by His grace, when we cry out to Him for salvation, He comes to shatter our crushing burden.

Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. -1 Peter 1:8-9

Freed from darkness, freed from condemnation, freed from death, freed from the crippling weight of condemnation. You are free! Now you can walk, you can run, in a whole new identity as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who called you out of darkness and into His marvelous light.

The One who bore our condemnation for sin, who called us into the light, and who gave us a new identity – He has become our Lord, our King that we so deeply love. Whatever He asks of us, should we not happily do it?

That is where Peter takes us today as we move into part 2 of his letter.

Purpose

How are exiles to relate to governments of men?

What does it mean to be free and yet submit?

Read 1 Peter 2:11-17

Verses 11 and 12, which we focused on last week, serve as a massive transition in Peter’s letter. All that came before can be thought of as part one, all that follows is something like part 2.

In part 1, Peter focuses on glorious gospel truths, theological understandings of God and His purposes (even in suffering), and the nature of our identity in Christ. All of these become the why to the how. In other words, before Peter focuses on how we should live, he focuses on why we live; for it was God who caused us to be born again to a living hope.

Now in verses 13-17 we are firmly in part 2, and Peter begins to unfurl gospel implications for how we should live in a hostile world. If this world is not our home, and we are exiles within it, how are we to live during our exile?

Already, in verse 12, Peter has said that we should keep our conduct among the Gentiles (or unbelievers) honorable. In verse 13, we get the first specific and practical way we are to go about doing that.

Read vs 13

Human Institutions

The first imperative: be subject to every human institution. This could also read, submit yourselves to every human institution, or be submissive towards every human institution. Certainly Peter begins to unfold this by talking about submission to the government, but every human institution is so much larger than the government.

Every human institution includes arrangements between masters and servants, marriage, and the church; Peter takes us to each one of these as we progress through chapter 3. But every human institution also includes parents and children, your job, school, police, the military, and even the authorities within a hospital. If there is a human institution that you interact with, submit yourself to the authorities within it.

Notice how Peter does not tell us to do this for our sake, although under good circumstances it will be good for us to submit ourselves to human institutions. Rather, Peter tells us to live submissively for the Lord’s sake. We submit ourselves to human authority for the sake of Jesus.

You see, God does not ask us to be submissive arbitrarily; and it isn’t just humans that are to live submissively. God has even given sinless angels institutions of authority. For example, in Jude verse 9, Michael is called an archangel; meaning a whole host of angels must submit to Michael’s authority.

And then there is submission even in the divine. Submission is intrinsic to the Trinity, as God the Son submits to God the Father, and the Holy Spirit submits to both. In no way are any of them limited by their submission to one another; rather, they experience the maximum freedom and joy and unity that spills forth from their eagerness to submit to one another.

The greatest demonstration of this Divine submission was hours before the cross, when the Son said to His Father,

“Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” -Mark 14:36

Then, in pure love and trust and obedience, Jesus subjected Himself to His Father’s authority; and bore the wrath of God in the place of sinners such as us. If you have ever felt that submission was a difficult concept, it has never been so hard as when Jesus was facing down God’s wrath for sin.

Peter is going to dive deeper into Jesus’ submission after writing about masters and servants. But here we see that we submit to human institutions for the sake of the Lord. If we are followers of Jesus, if we are to truly live as a holy nation with a holy King, then we submit ourselves to human institution because our King has asked us to do so.

But the first human institution that Peter says we must live in submission to is the government.

Read vs 13-14

Emperors and governors, and every governmental official that rightly has authority over you, to these we must submit. For most in this room I suspect that being a good, law-abiding citizen is common sense. But things were different when Peter sent this letter out to the exiles of the Dispersion.

Nero was Caesar, emperor of the greatest human institution the world had ever seen; but he was a madman, a beast. Listen to how Romans described their own emperor.

Pliny the Elder wrote that Nero was “the destroyer of the human race” and “the poison of the world.”

Apollonius of Tyana even gave Nero a nickname: the beast. He wrote, “In my travels, which have been wider than ever man yet accomplished, I have seen many wild beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, that is commonly called a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it be crooked of claw, and armed with horrible fangs…And of wild beasts you cannot say that they were ever known to eat their own mother, but Nero has gorged himself on this diet.”

Good Citizens

When Peter penned this letter from Rome, this beast sat on the throne of the most powerful government and military on earth. Nero had not yet begun his persecution of Christians. But in a few short years he would, and it would lead to the deaths of both Peter and Paul; and countless others whose names history has not recorded.

Christians in Peter’s day struggles with the idea of being good citizens, because their supreme leader was a madman. So Peter makes it abundantly clear that they are to submit themselves even to Nero. Submitting ourselves, therefore, to President Biden and Governor Cuomo – or whoever the people have elected – should be easy in comparison.

For whoever has risen to power, they have not arrived there as an accident. God Himself has given them their authority. Look again at verse 14 in our passage. Peter writes that our governing authorities have been sent by God.

When Paul writes to the Romans, the very Christians that would face the full fury of Nero’s persecutions, he goes even further than what Peter says.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgement. -Romans 13:1-2

Let us not resist the authorities, not in how we live as citizens and not in our hearts. You were called to something greater, so put away all malice and deceit and hypocrisy and envy and slander (1 Peter 2:1). Instead let us honor and obey the leaders God has appointed.

God has given you a government, and the leaders that administer it, in order to punish those who break the law. Thank God that lawlessness is not allowed to rule. Certain parts of our country show us that lawlessness is an undesirable outcome.

The government may also praise those that do good; or, at the very least, the government will allow doers of good to go on living their lives peacefully and harmoniously. There is also a powerful implication underneath this purpose for government. The government is to praise people for their moral behavior; not their wealth, not their status, not because of political favors. Moral behavior alone should be the praise of governing bodies. When a government begins to praise people for anything other than moral behavior, that government is corrupt.

Therefore, a government that fails to punish the lawbreaker and celebrate the law-abiding has failed to uphold its God-given purposes.

This, of course means, that if we want to be exiles living submissively to this institution of man, we must go about obeying the law and doing good. And Peter is quick to bring a previous idea into this next exhortation. Look back at verse 12 again.

Read vs 12

Compare it to our passage.

Read vs 15

Silencing the ignorance of foolish people is clearly a reference to verse 12, foolish people that have slandered you as evildoers – or as lawbreakers.

In Peter’s time, emperor worship was the law of the land. Anyone that did not worship Nero as god was therefore a lawbreaker. Countless Christians were persecuted because of this. But before the courts, Christians were also called malicious, cannibalistic, and a whole host of other things.

They were rightly accused of not worshipping Nero, but all of the other accusations would have been silenced as the lives of believers were examined more thoroughly. Such a system is the will of God, just as verse 16 says. Yes, we do good works because it honors our King. But we also do good works to silence our accusers and avoid the wrath of our government.

I want to note that this is a wise principle, not an equation. And we have to look no further than our Savior.

After Jesus was ruthlessly accused by the lawyer of the chief priests – and the chief priests themselves – Pilate made them all leave and questioned Jesus alone. But Pilate could discern nothing that Jesus had done wrong; so he went outside and announced to the waiting crowds, “I find no guilt in Him (John 18:38).”

Even though the accusations were silenced, the greatest injustice – in the murdering of the Son of God – was still committed.

Peter is not unaware of this. In verse 15 he is not trying to say that if you follow the law, you will never face injustice. Injustice may still come. But, Peter is saying that false accusations will most often be revealed as the lies that they are. For this is a principle of wisdom.

With his mouth the godless man would destroy his neighbor, but by knowledge the righteous are delivered. -Proverbs 11:9

God has set it up this way. This is the will of God. And even if the righteous are unjustly punished, as Jesus was, as Peter will be, God will not forget. His justice is better, and it is coming.

A false witness will not go unpunished, and he who breathes out lies will perish.

-Proverbs 19:9

“No weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed, and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgement. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.” -Isaiah 54:17

What a great hope this is for all those places of the world where injustice reigns; where the rich get what they want and the poor are ground into the dust. What a hope for Christians that have been thrown in prisons, had their families separated, had their goods taken from them, had their heads removed! God Himself remembers, and He will vindicate His servants!

No matter where you live, and no matter what your government looks like, hope like this is your freedom!

Read vs 16

Free Servants

You are free! You are free from the condemnation of sin! You are free from the reign of sin in your life! You are free from the fear of death! You are free to know and love God! You are free to love your neighbor! You are free to enjoy all the good gifts of God! You are free!

Now the Lord is Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

-2 Corinthians 3:17

The Spirit of the Lord has come to dwell within us. We are free!

But what a paradox we are given. Look at how verse 16 works. We are free, so long as we are servants of God. Our freedom, as sons and daughters of God, can never become an excuse to break the law. Only a fool thinks that is freedom. God has created our freedom to have form; meaning, freedom has boundaries.

A fish is completely free to enjoy life within the confines of the lake. It may get the notion that it is not really free until it can explore the land, but for the fish to leave the water is for the fish to truly understand that freedom has limitations.

Our freedom has boundaries. We are free to live as we please, so far as it does not violate our relationship to God. Just as Augustine said, “Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God can do nothing to offend the One who is Beloved.”

Because we love Christ, though we have not seen Him, we bind ourselves to Him – body and soul. And it is this love that drives us to live obediently to God, enjoying all of the freedoms that He has lavished upon us. And one of the things that God requires of us is to subject ourselves to the government.

As Paul so eloquently expressed:

Thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves to righteousness. -Romans 6:17-18

Verse 17 then takes all of these concepts and sums them up.

Read vs 17

Notice the ascending order here. Honor everyone. Be courteous and respectful of every person you meet. Treat them with dignity.

Love the brotherhood. There is a higher calling to your brothers and sisters in Christ. Love them. Give yourself to them. As Peter said back in 1:22, “love one another earnestly from a pure heart.”

Fear God. Live in awe of God, knowing that your soul is entirely in His hands. Devote yourself to Him. Love Him and worship Him. The beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord (Proverbs 9:10). Make sure your heart belongs to Him above all others.

Honor the emperor. This now falls down to the lowest class, like the honoring you are to give everyone. Peter is being very intentional here. The Caesars demanded worship, and Nero especially set himself up to be a god. See Peter giving ascending honor as he goes through the categories of relationship: honor, love, fear; but he sharply descends to the lowest category when he comes to Caesar. As if to say, Caesar is just a man, honorably regard him as such.

And in this we get a hint of the boundaries that God has set around the government’s authority. As Peter is subtly and pointedly expressing here; the government cannot command your worship, for that would be idolatry. And we see this theme all over the Bible. Any human institution that compels you to disobey God, you are free to disobey. Do not submit to a government that commands you to sin against God.

When Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew people to kill their firstborn sons, they disobeyed (Exodus 1:17). When Darius sent out a decree forbidding prayer to God, Daniel prayed anyway – and he was thrown to the lions (Daniel 6). When Peter was arrested by Jerusalem’s religious leaders and commanded to no longer preach the name of Jesus, Peter boldly continued proclaiming the gospel (Acts 5:17-42).

Peter himself knew what it was to disobey the governing authorities, because he has a higher authority; just as we have a higher authority. No matter what the institutions of man may say, Christ is King, and Him we serve. We will not bow our knee to gender revolution, we will not condone the slaughter of the unborn, and we will not deem church as non-essential. Christ is King!

For Peter, and for many of the first readers of this letter, they would not worship the beast that was Caesar. They were crucified, beheaded, torn apart by wild animals; and the whole time they were totally and gloriously free. The sword only increased their freedom.

Brothers and sisters, you are free; so live as servants to the King who won you that freedom! God has given us a wonderful government in America. Even if there are many things we disagree with, and many sinful things at work within it, we must still subject ourselves to the government. A rebellious attitude comes straight from the first rebel, he who unsuccessfully tried to ascend to the throne of God: Lucifer.

Let us freely go about living quiet and respectable lives – abounding in good works – so that when the accusations come against us, they will quickly be silenced. Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. And honor president Biden.