Submission to Civil Authority, Pt. 1
1 Peter 2:13a-b
Let me encourage you to open your Bible, if you will, right now to 1 Peter chapter 2...1 Peter chapter 2. And I want us to look together at verses 13 through 17...1 Peter 2:13 through 17. Actually this text that we're looking at under the title, "Silencing the Critics," flows from verse 11 all the way down through verse 20. But for our message tonight, we'll just be looking at verses 13 through 17. So let me read them to you.
Peter writes, "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all men; love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king." Now this great text of Scripture basically has at its heart the statement in verse 15 that it is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.
The point of the whole section of exhortation is that we as Christians are to live in such a way that by our exemplary lives we stop the mouths of those who criticize our faith. We are to live a life that is above criticism, a life that is above reproach, a life that is above shame. In fact, I have noted to you on numbers of occasions, and I note it again tonight, how you live as a Christian is the greatest apologetic for the evidence of the transforming power of the gospel. There is really no greater way for people to see the transforming power of the gospel than to see the life of a transformed person. It then is the greatest apologetic. It is the foundation of all of our witness. The powerful witness comes when a person gives someone the gospel who has already laid a foundation of having shown that person a transformed life.
Peter here then is saying that it's essential that you live your lives in such a way that your testimony becomes believable. That the transforming power of Christ is made evident not only by what you say but by what you are.
Now as we endeavor to live our lives in the world there are three perspectives that Peter gives us here. He says you must view your life in three ways. Number one, you must see yourself as an alien to this society. In verses 11 and 12 he noted that we are aliens and strangers and we have to see ourselves in that way. Then in verse 13 to 17 he says even though you are aliens you are still citizens, even though you live in another dimension, you still are here in this world and you must conduct yourselves in a proper way as citizens. Thirdly, in verses 18 to 20, he discusses the matter that we are servants.
So Peter sees the Christian as an alien, as a citizen and as a servant. And each of those perspectives relates to how the watching world views us. As the world sees us they must see us as aliens. As they see us they must see us as citizens, and they must recognize us as servants.
The bottom line is that the way you live will determine whether you lead someone to Christ or whether you fuel the fires of criticism. This is obvious, I think, to everybody...everybody. The Christian culture in America is suffering greatly right now because of the tremendous rebuke that has occurred to Christianity because so many leaders in Christianity have demonstrated that their lives are not above reproach and they have literally fueled the fires of criticism. They have opened the mouths of the critics rather than silencing them.
I also believe that not only are there people who obviously are not living supernatural lives and who have said to the word, "Christ transforms," but lived a very non-transformed life and thus undercut their testimony, but there also are in Christianity today people who are living in the world in such a way that even their function as citizens is causing a reproach to fall on the name of Christ. You can lose the credibility of your testimony by failing to live a supernatural life which is alien to this world, which demonstrates the power of Christ. And I believe you can lose the foundation of your testimony by a failure to live as a citizen should live under the rule of Christ.
So it's very important that we discuss not only that alien idea which we have already discussed, but that we also look to this matter of being citizens. So that's what we want to look at tonight. The two go together, and you can make the connection rather readily in your own mind, but they go together something along these lines. We are aliens in the world, that is we live at a different level. We live a heavenly kind of life. We live the life of God. We live in a supernatural plain, you know that, we are unearthly, if you will. We are heavenly. We are to be disentangled with the world system. In fact, we are to set our affections on things above and not on things on the earth. We submit to a greater authority than any earthly authority in the sense that we move under the power of a living God as expressed in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Now the inherent danger in that is obvious. If we get too carried away with our alien identity, we can become utterly indifferent to the world in which we have to live. And so our alienation from the system is balanced by the demand of proper citizenship. Yes, we live a supernatural life. Yes, we live a discipline that is inward and private, energized by the Holy Spirit. Yes, we conduct ourselves with a deportment that is outward and public and also energized by the Holy Spirit so that we are different than the world around us. Our alienation is demonstrated by the fact that we abstain from fleshly lusts, according to verse 11. And according to verse 12, in that we do good deeds.
So, the character of our lives shows our alienation. We are different than the world. We are in the world, not of the world. But the result of that could be an indifference to the society around us, an utter disregard for the authority around us. And so Peter is quick to add immediately in verse 13, "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution." The fact that you are citizens of heaven, that you live at a different level, that you live on a higher plain, that you answer to a higher authority does not mean that you can treat with indifference the institutions that are here on earth. We who feel we are above the system need to learn how to live within the system. So that leads Peter into the discussion of verses 13 to 17 and the matter how we are to conduct ourselves as citizens.
Now there is really no question in my mind but that the providence of God has brought us to this passage for just such a time as this. I can't think of a more fitting week for us to be teaching on this subject since we have just witnessed a large number of Christian people and a large number of church people and I guess a large number of religious people who have defied civil law. They have violated the standards of citizenship. They have violated the law civilly and they have no honored the authority over them. We have watched that happened. They have done that in the name of God. They have done that in the name of Christianity. And so we need to look carefully at that particular issue and see precisely what the Word of God has to say.
Now as we think about this, I want you to note again that it is obvious in the background to this epistle that the people to whom Peter writes are being greatly criticized. It is hard enough when you know your life is an unearthly life and you live in the heavenlies and you answer to a higher authority than any earthly one, it is hard enough to be a good citizen. But that is compounded when the society in which you live is totally hostile to you. In fact, when it is even militantly persecuting you which, no doubt, was the case to those to whom Peter wrote. In fact, it was a rather common thing to call them evildoers, as they are so identified in verse 12, they are slandered as evildoers. That's a term of derision, apparently it was used of Christians categorically. Instead of calling them Christians they called them evildoers.
Over the first couple of centuries of the church's life it was pretty common for them to be living not only in an earthly society but in a very hostile society that was militantly anti-Christian. I have read, as you have, back in some of the records of early church history, some of the attacks and some of the accusations against the church that are representative of how they were treated. First of all, there was a basic anti-semitism in the ancient world. They resented Jews. They hated Jews. And Christians were viewed as simply a sect of the Jews. And so they received a rather anti-semitic sort of hostility. There was a sort of repulsive view of the Jews and the Christians among them. Apeon(?) writes, "In the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes the Jews every year offered up a fattened Gentile as a sacrifice on a fixed day in a certain feast, ate his entrails and swore eternal hostility of the Gentiles," end quote. Nothing could be further from the truth but that was simply one of the slanders that was against the Christians and against the Jews.
They were also accused of insurrection. They were accused of rebelling against Rome and all human authority. Literally that was the base reason why the Romans engaged themselves in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ Himself because it was brought to them the fact that He provided a tremendous threat against Rome, which, of course, was not true. And over the first two centuries of the church's life, those accusations of hostility against earthly governments continued to mount, even though they were not true.
The early church was also accused of atheism and there was a great hostility against them for that. It's hard to imagine, isn't it, that the church could be accused of atheism? But it was true because anyone who refused to worship the many gods of the pagan nations, including Caesar in the Roman Empire was an atheist. So if you didn't worship Caesar, no matter who else you worshiped you were considered atheistic.
The early church was also accused of cannibalism. They were supposed to be having feasts. In fact, the pagans...one pagan writer wrote of thiestian(??) feasts, Thiestes(?) was a man, by the way, who organized banquets where the delicacy was human flesh. And so when they accused them of thiestian feasts, they were accusing the Christian church of engaging in cannibalism. And they based it on the words of Jesus, "Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no part in Me." And the words of the Apostle Paul who again said that when you commune with the cup and the bread you are communing with the body and blood of Christ.
They also accused the Christians of killing and eating children at their feasts. Furthermore, they accused them of immorality and even of incest. They were accused of oedipean(?) intercourse. We all know about Oedipus. Oedipus was adopted as a child, grew up. You remember the story of Oedipus. He grew up, saw a delightful lady, married her and found out eventually that he had married his mother. Freud gave them both a lot of publicity as he propagated his theories of sexual development with particular reference to incestuous tendencies. But long before Freud people were having trouble in this area and the pagans were accusing the Christians of incestuous behavior. The Christians called the women "sisters," and the men of the church had very close relationship with these sisters, so the pagans in their ignorance put two and two together and came up with six.
They also accused the early church of damaging trade. They accused the early church of wrecking homes. They said that the sword that fell between man and wife when one came to follow Jesus Christ devastated the home. They accused them of fostering slave rebellion because when a slave came to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, he had a new life, he had a new dignity in Christ. And they thought that hostile to keeping slaves in their place.
They accused them of hating men because they were opposed to the systems of the world. They accused them again of disloyalty to ruling powers and to Caesar because they would worship only Jesus Christ and would never bow the allegiance to any other being.
The church in the early years was not only in the world but in the hostility of a very hateful world. And to Peter there was only one way to deny the charges. The only way to deny the charges was to live a godly life, to live a virtuous life which basically shut the mouths of the critics by taking away any legitimate accusation. They wanted to live a life that was so rich in spiritual quality that there was nothing that they could use to slander Christians.
May I suggest to you that the world is still hostile against Christianity? Men still hate God. They still reject Jesus Christ. Maybe the form of it has changed a little bit. They may be a little bit more tolerant of the religious system of Christianity but they are no more tolerant of the truth of righteousness than they've ever been. And the challenge to the Christian is still to be alien and yet citizen, to be different, that is to say we live a life that is above and out of the world, and yet live in the world. And that challenge is great. We are to live in such a way that in spite of all of the false accusations and all of the hatred and all of the hostility, we might still turn the hearts of people to Christ by the evident transformation of our lives.
So what Peter really has in mind here, if I may remind you of what I said last time, is a two-fold reason for this. And basically the underlying thing is he wants to silence the critics and bring them to faith in Christ. It's evangelistic. It is an evangelistic purpose.
Now let's look at the text. First of all I want you to notice the command in verse 13...the command. "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution." Let's just take the first part, "submit yourselves," that's the command. A simple command...submit yourselves.
Now why does he have to say that? As I said a moment ago, because the natural thing when we think of ourselves as above the world as heavenly citizens and when we are attacked by irresponsible, ignorant, unfounded, evil accusers, the natural result is to rise up in self-defense and maybe even to retaliate, maybe even to think that I have no part in this world and this world has no part with me, I will ignore with indifference all of its systems.
But God does not want such behavior from us. He doesn't want us to think that we can act in any way that we want because we're not answerable to human institutions. In fact, He wants us to demonstrate self-restraint, to demonstrate virtue, to demonstrate a concern about community, to seek peace in the community, to do all we can to prevent trouble, to live in such a way in peace and good will that we deprive our enemies of the grounds for all their false accusations. The Christian way to muzzle the critics is to obey all the laws and respect all the authorities. If you want a classic illustration of that, read the record of John Wesley. And read how John Wesley through prayer and the proclamation of the Word on the streets and to all who would hear turned the tide toward the Christian faith. There were all kinds of abuses in the time of John Wesley, all kinds of sins within society. John Wesley's protest against that was always a spiritual one, using the Word of God and prayer. Read that, refresh yourself on the tremendous impact that that had.
The command is simple, "submit yourselves," from the Greek word hupotasso, it literally is a military term meaning to arrange in military fashion under the commander. It's talking about being subject. The best translation would be, "Put yourselves in an attitude of submission...put yourselves in an attitude of submission." By the way, that is distinctively Christian because attitudes of submission and humility in ancient times were looked upon as those things which characterized cowards and weaklings. And no man of strength would ever think of submitting himself or being humble.
So God's people were to live in a humble, submissive way in the midst of a hostile, godless, Christless, sinful, wicked, accusing, slandering society. In fact, God's people had often been accused of insurrection, would continue to be accused of insurrection but were never called by God to engage in it, never.
Let me take you to the Old Testament for just a moment to kind of support the principle that we noted as the command, "submit yourselves". In Proverbs chapter 24 and verse 21 it says this, "My son, fear the Lord and the king." That's interesting. "Fear the Lord and the king." And listen to this, "Do not associate with those who are given to change for their calamity will rise suddenly and who knows the ruin that comes from both of them?" Do not associate with those who are given to change, the rebels, the insurrectionists.
Look at Jeremiah chapter 29, beginning in verse 4 of Jeremiah 29. "Thus says the Lord of host, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon." This is most interesting. This is a message to the Jews in Babylonian captivity. They were in a pagan land. They are under a pagan ruler. They are under Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, he is a pagan to the core. He is so pagan, as you well know, that he rises up, as it were, shake his fist in the face of Almighty God. The people who were taken into captivity were really to be brainwashed by the Babylonian culture and the Babylonian system. But look what God says. "Thus says the Lord God, the God of Israel, Lord of host to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon, build houses and live in them, plant gardens, eat their produce. Take wives, become the fathers of sons and daughters. Take wives for your sons, give your daughters to husbands that they may bear sons and daughters and multiply there and do not decrease."
What does He say? Live your life. Live your life. Get a house, live in it. Plant a garden, eat the fruit. Marry your children to one another, carry on with life.
Verse 7, now remember, they are in a hostile, pagan society. "And seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile." And the next statement is most interesting, and it assumes that there are problems and it says, "Pray to the Lord on its behalf." Did you ever feel like an exile in Los Angeles? Does it irritate you the decisions that are made in this city by the authorities of this city? You are in exile here. What should we do? Get a house, live in it, plant a garden, eat the produce, marry your children to each other and seek the welfare of the city...anything you can do to seek the welfare of the city and pray to the Lord on its behalf for in its welfare you will have welfare. Or better translated, "In its peace you will have peace." Seek the peace of the city for in its peace you will know peace. Become the agent of disruption and you will know disruption. That's the implication.
Boy, that's a very direct statement. "For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, Do not let your prophets who are in your midst and your diviners deceive you, do not listen to the dreams which they dream, for they prophesy falsely to you in My name, I have not sent them, declares the Lord. For thus says the Lord, when seventy years have been completed for Babylon, I will visit you and fulfill My good word to you to bring you back to this place, for I know the plans that I have for you, declares the Lord. Plans for welfare and not for calamity, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and come and pray to Me and I will listen to you, you will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. And I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord. I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile." This is a marvelous principle and a marvelous analogy. The principle is this...you're in a foreign land, do everything you can to seek the welfare of that land for your own benefit, realizing that God has a plan for you that is far beyond the land in which you presently live. Understood?
You are citizens of another place. And as long as you have to be here, live here, buy a house, or build a house, plant a garden, eat the fruit, marry your children off and do everything you can to seek for the welfare of your city and pray for the city. And know this, that God has a better place for you, a better place.
There have been many protests, many acts of civil disobedience, many violations of the law, many revolutions, many insurrections, and many subversive attempts to overthrow governments, are you ready for this?, in the name of Christianity. That's tragic. We are never commanded to do that. The command is simple, submit yourselves...submit yourselves.
Go with me for a moment to Romans chapter 13...Romans chapter 13 verse 1, "Let every person be in subjection to the governing authorities." You see any exceptions there? You say, "Well that means except our government." No it doesn't. "Well that means except me." No it doesn't. "Every person in subjection to the governing authorities for there is no authority except from God and those which exist are established by God. Therefore he who resists authority has opposed the ordinance of God and they who have opposed will receive condemnation upon themselves." That is very straightforward.
Paul said the same thing that Peter did. "Yeah," you say, "but Paul didn't live in a world like ours." Yes he did. He lived in a world dominated by slavery, incredible abuse. He lived in a world dominated by the abuse of women. He lived in a world where there was the murder of children. We have records of the fact that particularly female children were drowned because the parents turned their thumbs down and said I don't want the child. They lived in a world where sexual sin was rampant and homosexuality was so rampant that many of the Caesars themselves were homosexuals. They lived in a wretched, rotten, vile, ungodly, wicked society just like we do. And yet they were told to be subject to the authorities, to be subject to the powers that be because they were ordained by God. And Jesus Himself said in Matthew 22:21, "Render to Caesar...what?...the things that are Caesar's."
The command is very simple. Submit yourselves...submit yourselves. To put it in the words of the Lord to Jeremiah, "Seek the welfare of your city." Seek peace in your city for that shall bring you peace.
Now go back to the text of 1 Peter 2 and let me take you to a second point. The first point is the command, the second point is the motive. The second point is the motive. And he says it as clearly as it could be said, "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake." Why are we doing this? Because of the Lord, literally. Because of the Lord. For the Lord's sake. Because it is the way you honor Him, it is the way you respond to Him.
How is that? Well I can give you a couple of ways. First of all, to submit yourselves for the Lord's sake means to submit yourself because He demands it. So you are doing it in obedience to Him. It is to obey Him. Since there is no authority except God and those authorities which exist are all established by God, Romans 13, we just read, that when you respond submissively to the authority, you are doing it for the sake of the Lord who instituted the authority.
When a leader in this society says do this...you do it. When the police say get up and move over here...you get up and move over there because that's what the Bible tells you to do. Why do you do it? Because of the Lord. Because of the Lord why? Because the Lord has called us to obey the authorities because the authorities are ordained by God and it's a matter of obedience...it's a matter of obedience. It's simply that. We are obeying what God has said for us to do. And somebody comes along and says, "Well how are we going to accomplish our goal if we obey the police?" Are we so foolish as to believe that if we disobey the police, which disobeys the Word of God, we can accomplish something for the kingdom of God? What kind of weapons do we want to use? Carnal ones?
But, you see, typically we fall weakly into those kinds of things. Listen to Jeremiah 24:4, "Then the word of the Lord came to me saying, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, like these good figs so I will regard as good the captives of Judah whom I have sent out of this place into the land of the Chaldeans. For I will set My eyes on them for good and I will bring them into this land again and I will build them up and not overthrow them and I will plant them and not pluck them up. And I will give them a heart to know Me for I am the Lord and they will be My people and I will be their God for they will return to Me with their whole heart."
In other words, God says in spite of you being in the land of the Chaldeans where we understand they buried live babies in walls in jars when they built new buildings, in that kind of pagan culture would have all kinds of bad situations, He says as long as you're there don't you ever forget why you're there and don't you ever forget My hand is upon you and I will restore you to the place where I want you to be. I'm in charge of you.
You do not accomplish in society anything for God when you violate what God has designed for your conduct in society. That is to stoop to the wrong methodology. That is the end justifies the means and the end can never be attained. For it is God who is in control. So responding submissively to the authority is responding to God's ordained rule.
Robert Culver writing in his book, a very helpful book on a biblical view of civil government, says, "God alone has sovereign rights. Democratic theory is no less unscriptural than divine right monarchy. By whatever means men come to positions of rulership, by dynastic decent, aristocratic family connection, plutocratic material resources or by democratic election there is no power but of God. Furthermore, civil government is an instrument, not an end. Men are proximate ends but only God is ultimate end. The state owns neither its citizens nor their properties, minds, bodies or children. All of these belong to their creator, God, who has never given to the state rights of eminent domain."
What I want you to understand is that God controls and owns it all. And what we want to do is recognize that and recognize that He has ordained government to keep the peace in society and He has commanded us to submit to that. And you do not accomplish the divine end by violating the divine law.
There's a second reason why I believe, or a second motive why I believe we are to submit and that is not only to obey the Lord but to imitate the Lord. Not only to obey Him but to imitate Him. Would you notice please in verse 21, it says of this same text, 1 Peter 2, that Christ left us an example. And then in verse 23 it shows us what that example was. "When He was reviled, He did not revile in return. While He was suffering He uttered no threats. He just kept entrusting Himself to Him who judges righteously."
Jesus when He was on earth was murdered by the coming together of two authorities...the Jewish authority and the Roman authority. He lived under their unjust and unrighteous rule for His life, yet He never attacked the government. He never attacked the rulers. He never attacked those in authority. He never led a protest. He never led civil disobedience. He never led a demonstration against Roman abuses. He never led a demonstration against the sins of Jewish leaders. He never led a demonstration against the sins of Gentile leaders. He never even protested when they violated every law of justice in His own trial. He spoke only of the Kingdom of God. He called sinners to repent, come to Him and enter His Kingdom. And He simply kept entrusting Himself to the God who judges righteously and He knew God would do right because God was sovereign and the whole world was in His control.