Sermon: A Life Submitted: Civic Responsibility 1 Peter 2:13-16

Sermon can be heard at First Baptist Church of Rocklin

“Submit to every human authority because of the Lord, whether to the Emperor as the supreme authority or to governors as those sent out by him to punish those who do what is evil and to praise those who do what is good.  For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good.  As God's slaves, live as free people, but don't use your freedom as a way to conceal evil.”  (HCSB)

This morning we are continuing this theme of a life submitted.  Peter is going to move us through different areas of our lives with this idea in mind.  We are to live a life in obedience to Christ, representing Him in our lives, to be an ambassador to those around us.  We live in a time when the world seems to be in constant upheaval.  In our own country I think we are tittering on the brink of significant change.

Meanwhile the church has becomes less and less relative to people lives.  I think that is happing for several reasons.  I think we have advocated our moral center in our own lives and have compromised with sin.  There isn’t much difference today from the average Christian and the average citizen who doesn’t believe.  I truly believe we have to get back to a Christ centered, Christ exulting lifestyle.  We need to live the gospel, share the gospel, and make the gospel the center of our lives. 

What does that look like and what impact does gospel have on the culture around us?  I hope to answer these questions.   Before we can start to unpack these verses we have to understand who we are.  Peter makes it a point many times in these one and half chapters to make this point clear. 

Who Are We?

Who are we? Peter tells us we are ‘temporary residents dispersed’ in verse one and again in 2 Peter 2:11 he says we are to live “as strangers and temporary residents”.  Peter is adamant about the point, we are not of this world.  Paul tells of all those who went before us in Hebrews 11:13 “they were foreigners and temporary residents on the earth.”  So this isn’t just a thought of Peter but all the apostles believed and taught that life here was temporary.  It was Jesus who planted this thought when he said, “If I go away and prepare a place for you, I will come back and receive you to Myself, so that where I am you may be also.”  (John 14:3 HCSB)

We are to clearly live our lives here as temporary residence.  This is not our home.  Secondly we have to understand who we really are—we are heirs to a kingdom.  “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, "Abba, Father!" The Spirit Himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God's children, and if children, also heirs--heirs of God and coheirs with Christ--seeing that we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”

(Romans 8:15-17 HCSB)

“Look at how great a love the Father has given us that we should be called God's children. And we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it didn't know Him. Dear friends, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet been revealed. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him because we will see Him as He is.” (1 John 3:1-2 HCSB)

Oh church I wish we would fully understand who we are in Christ, O how I wish for God to open our hearts and our minds and fill us with this knowledge! We are God’s people, a holy nation and royal priesthood, a people of His possession!  Once we were not a people but now we have received mercy and we are His people.  We know Him and He knows us.  Yet we live powerless lives, ineffective lives, lives that are meaningless in reaching the world for Christ!  Where is our passion, where is our zeal, where is our joy, our rejoicing!  How do we fix this?  It starts with submitting ourselves. 

Submit

The Christian life is one of submission; we are to be subjected to Christ.  Christ submitted Himself to the Father, “He emptied Himself by assuming the form of a slave, taking on the likeness of men. And when He had come as a man in His external form, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death-- even to death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:7-8 HCSB) we in turn submit to Christ in everything.  We also submit to one another in fear of Christ.  So with this in mind it is easy to see Peter saying we are to submit to every human authority. 

-Every Authority

Verses 13-14, tells me several things.  Firstly, government has a purpose.  The purpose of government in these verses is to punish evil and praise good.  Its primary function is to maintain law and order. 

To establish rule for the betterment of all who are under its authority.  Paul tells us in Romans 13, “Everyone must submit to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist are instituted by God. So then, the one who resists the authority is opposing God's command, and those who oppose it will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have its approval. For government is God's servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, because it does not carry the sword for no reason. For government is God's servant, an avenger that brings wrath on the one who does wrong.”  (Romans 13:1-4 HCSB)

God’s Will

Secondly government is instituted by God Himself, for His will and purpose. I can hear some of your thought right now.  What are we to do when government opposes God’s will?  What is our responsibility when government is evil. 

The Bible has many examples of resisting the authorities without violence or disrespecting the established authority.  Daniel and his fellow believers refused to bow to the golden image of the King.  They did so peacefully and survived the fiery furnace.  Daniel refused to stop praying and survived the lion’s den. 

Peter and the apostles were arrested and ordered not to teach about Christ, which they refused and accepted their punishment.  Paul also lived a life in submission to Roman authority up to his death.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a pastor in Germany during the rise of the Nazi party.  He saw firsthand the evils of government and came to this conclusion. “The demand for responsible action in history is a demand no Christian can ignore. We are, accordingly, faced with the following dilemma: when assaulted by evil, we must oppose it directly. We have no other option. The failure to act is simply to condone evil.”  As Christians we have the responsibility to oppose evil.  But the question is how.  

Dietrich would use his gift for writing and speaking mainly to oppose the Nazi government and the mistreatment of the Jewish people and everyone who opposed the rule of Hitler.  He also assisted in an assassination attempt on Hitler in the hopes of saving lives.  He continued to oppose the evil of the Nazi’s up to his death, which is believed to be one of the last execution orders given by Hitler himself.   

As Christians I believe we are to obey the rules of the land and were the government promotes evil or violation of God’s rules, we are to peacefully oppose them.  And were there extremes cases of evil, each will have to decide what is appropriate for them.  In Dietrich case he desperately struggled with the decision to assist in the taking of Hitler’s life.  I believe we are to work within the framework of law and order.  Peter even tells why.   

          -Silence

Peter tells us in verse 15 this “For it is God's will that you silence the ignorance of foolish people by doing good” I find this verse fascinating for this reason, look at it carefully.  God’s purpose for us to do “good”, to live under the authority of the government, to be good citizens, is to silence the ignorance of foolish people.

People around us are ignorant to the ways of God.  Paul reminds us, Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. (Ephesians 4:17-18 HCSB)

For God's wrath is revealed from heaven against all godlessness and unrighteousness of people who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth, since what can be known about God is evident among them, because God has shown it to them. For His invisible attributes, that is, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen since the creation of the world, being understood through what He has made. As a result, people are without excuse. For though they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God or show gratitude. Instead, their thinking became nonsense, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools  (Romans 1:18-22 HCSB)

How we live matters!  We are being used by God to teach, to show, to set an example, to make Christ known to the world by the way we live our lives.

We can only do this if we keep in our heart Christ.  Remembering always we belong to Him.

Slave

We are God’s slaves, we belong to him.  A slave lives to please his master.  This word slave has a negative meaning in our culture. 

In fact most of our translations use the word ‘servant’ instead and by doing so they miss the meaning of the word.  But in Peters day under the Roman Empire, there was an estimated 60,000,000 million slaves.  Slaves were used in every aspect of life.  So the reader of this letter fully understood what Peter meant. 

Peter has already reminded them they we redeemed, bought by the precious blood of Christ.  We are not our own, we were purchased from an empty way of life into an inheritance. Christ saved us from our sins, he purchased us to rescues us from death, He redeemed us to free us from our foolish ignorance, and gave a new life, living hope in Him.  Once we were far away and now we have been brought close.       

          -Live Free

We are free, free indeed.  Peter tells his readers to live in freedom.  We are to rejoice in our freedom, we are no longer slaves to sin.  No longer prisoners of our flesh, but we are made alive in Christ.  We are free from fear of judgment, free from condemnation, free from the guilt, free to worship the living God, free to enter the throne room with boldness.  Free to pray to the living God and know He hears us, free from death, we are free, free, free!  

          -But Don’t

Peter warns us , “but don’t use your freedom to conceal evil.”  As Christians we are free to choose to sin or not to sin.  We are not to use our freedom to do what we want.  We are to glorify God in everything; we are not to do anything that would bring shame to our Lord.  Paul reminds us “Don't you know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20 HCSB)

DA Carson says, "People do not drift towards Holiness.  Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate towards godiness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.  We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith." 

Why Does it Matter?

Why does it matter? I set out in this message to answer the question, “What does it look like to live the gospel and what impact does gospel have on the culture around us?   I think it is clear that living a life submitted to authority is mandated by scripture and it is the will of God to do so.  A life submitted to Christ will have a profound impact on the culture around us, in that through us and the way we live Christ is made known.  Here is why this matters so much, the way we live in our culture and why we have to be different, why it really matters.  Lives are at stake. 

To suppress the truth about God and to exchange his glory for our own will have dire consequences.  We live in a culture that actively doing this very thing.  We as Christians are actively participating with them, in fact it is often hard to tell Christians apart from the world.  Because I think we have become too comfortable and we have lost sight at the big picture. 

If you one night you had a vision of your family dying in a fiery crash the next day.  By this vision you were convinced, no you knew they were going to die a horrible death.  How many of you would help them pack up their car the next day and wish them a safe trip?  Or would you beg and pled with them not to go and to stay home where it was safe. 

Yet this is what we are doing in our culture.  We see the signs, we know in our hearts what is coming.  We are only getting a taste of what is yet to come.  Yet we continue to ignore these realities and bid our friends and neighbors, brothers and sister, mom and dad’s, grand children, children, to live in ignorance and foolishness, when there is coming wrath and judgment! 

This is a weighty, this should be heart wrenching to all of us, we should be pleading for their very lives, broken before the Lord.  Praying that God opens their eyes before it is too late.  Praying that God uses us to reach them, praying that God breaks us from our comfort and our safety to be made a fool for Christ in the hopes of bringing light to those who are blind and knowledge of Christ to those who are ignorant.  O lord help us live a life submitted to you and to make you known in our country and to the world!     

“Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the Emperor.”

1 Peter 2:17 HCSB