1 Pet 2.11-25

our visible testimony: citizens & servants

(1 Peter 2.11-25)

Jason Procopio

I had a conversation a few weeks ago with someone about culture and background. All human beings—Christian or not—are made in the image of God, and so naturally reflect some of his character. This means that in every human culture, there are things—certain values, certain practices—which naturally reflect the image of God. There are good things in every culture, so we shouldn’t be surprised when certain aspects of our culture actually line up with the way the Bible calls us to see the world and live our lives. 

But we also know that the image of God in every human being has been marred, corrupted by sin. So in every human culture, while there are good things that should be celebrated and preserved, there are other things which go against God’s will for us, and should be fought against. One of the key struggles of the Christian life is learning to discern which aspects of our culture are good and right and worth preserving, and which should be resisted.

Now there is a lot about the culture of France which is worth celebrating. The love of good food and art; the importance of history for our understanding of who we are as a nation; the importance of education; those three tentpole values of liberté, égalité, fraternité… All of these things are important and worth celebrating.

But there are other things which aren’t so helpful, and which God would call us to resist. I bring this up because in today’s text the apostle Peter is going to turn to a part of French culture which is deeply rooted in who we are as a nation, and that is our resistance to authority. When I moved here sixteen years ago I learned very quickly that the French have some problems with submitting to authority—problems which are rooted in our history, in our habits, and honestly which just run counter to the things all human beings feel naturally. No one wants someone else telling them what to do. Laws and rules are inherently restrictive, so there are things that we’d like to do which we may not be able to do, and we don’t like that. So it’s not just a problem for the French, it’s a problem for humanity.

But, the history of our country does make this difficulty a bit more pronounced than it is in other places.

Now to understand why Peter is going to turn to this, we have to remember what we saw last week, in chapter 2, verses 1-10.

Peter talked about this incredible grace we have received from God—just how incredible it is that we didn’t reject Christ. He transformed us, caused us to be born again. He has brought us out of darkness into his marvellous light; once we weren’t a people, but he has made us a people; once we had no mercy, but now he has given us mercy.

So, Peter says, GO TALK ABOUT THAT. Tell others just how good he is. Proclaim his excellencies to the world.

And then he tells us how to do it—and it’s surprising, because our “proclaiming God’s excellencies to the world” is far more than simply talking to others about Christ. We should do that, of course; but the people we speak to about Christ will inevitably have to see what we’re saying, lived out in practice.

So in v. 11 of chapter 2, Peter loops back on himself, and returns to what he said in chapter 1. He reminds us that we are sojourners and exiles, and as such we should be characterized by the way of life of our home. We belong to the kingdom of God, not to this world; and the defining characteristic of the kingdom of God is holiness. 

The Honorable Life of God’s People (v. 11-12) 

11 Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. 12 Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 

So we are sojourners and exiles on this earth, citizens of the kingdom of God. And as citizens of his kingdom, as sojourners and exiles here, we are called to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul. We all remember what it was like before we met Christ, and we remember the occasional pleasure that our sinful desires afforded us when we acted on them. Those desires still creep up from time to time. But those desires are not what define citizens of God’s kingdom; they wage war on our souls.

The Puritan John Owen put it perhaps most succinctly: “Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you.” Nothing would delight the enemy of our souls more than to see us convinced that what he is tempting us to do is actually good for us. That it is worth the risk. 

We saw this at length two weeks ago: we pray that God would protect us from temptation, and then we put ourselves in situations which make temptation harder to resist. We forget how serious this fight is—that it’s not just a question of living moral lives; it’s a war, waged against our souls.

So we are to live holy lives, and abstain from sinful desires. But it’s not just for ourselves that we do this. It’s not just to give us proof of our own salvation.

We wage war on our sin so that others might see it. We live holy lives for them, not just for ourselves.

V. 12: Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. 

What he’s getting at here is that no matter what they say, human beings of every stripe know the difference between right and wrong. Each of us has a natural, moral compass, put in us by God, which reflects his own character. So when people see us obeying God’s commandments, no matter what they say, no matter how much they want to, they will, at some point or another, recognize that it is right. And when Christ returns, they will be forced to admit that fact, and glorify God for what he had done in us, even despite themselves. 

That is what Peter is getting at here. When unbelievers see us conduct ourselves honorably by obeying the whole Word of God, no matter what they’d like to say about us, their words are hollow and groundless. 

So that’s the basis of everything he’s about to say in the next several passages: we are to live honorable lives in the world, as a visible testimony to the grace of God. And Peter’s going to give four examples of what this looks like in practice in the rest of this chapter, and in chapter 3. The examples he gives are quite specific, and may have had to do with the personal struggles of the specific Christians to whom he is writing. But they are no less pertinent for us. 

Peter is going to give us examples of the public testimony of Christians in the social order: how Christians are to keep their conduct in the world honorable as a) citizens; b) slaves; c) wives; and d) husbands. This is where we’ll be for the next two weeks. 

Citizens/Authority (v. 13-17)

So the first example Peter gives is of how we are to keep our conduct in this world honorable is as citizens—and like I said, this is going to be a hard sell for some of us here. He tells us to submit to the human authorities under which we find ourselves.

13 Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. 16 Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor. 

So the first thing we need to recognize here is that in these verses, Peter is speaking specifically of submission to just authority. Peter assumes the authorities are (globally) doing their jobs. He says in v. 14 that we are to submit to governors AS SENT BY GOD to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. 

Now of course evil and good are sometimes defined differently according to who we are. This is a pagan society (Greco-Roman). Their notions of good won’t always align with God’s law, but often it will. Peter is assuming that the governors in question are at least globally lining up with God’s definitions of good and evil: they are punishing those who commit murder, for example, and praising those who help their neighbors. 

Obviously there can be massive debates about this, because some laws set up in our society run counter to God’s laws (specifically concerning those things which the law allows us to do, which God tells us not to do). 

But let’s be honest: most of the laws against which we tend to want to rebel are not sinful laws. 

Obey traffic laws. Don’t download illegal movies. Don’t incite violence in the streets. These are laws which exist to protect others, not to harm you. So we should submit to them, as long as they do not oblige us to sin against God. And you would be hard-pressed to find a law, in France today, which actively forces you to sin. There are laws which allow you to sin, but very few, if any, which force you to sin.

So Peter is saying that as long as they aren’t asking us to sin, we should submit to their rule, even when they demand things of us that the Bible doesn’t.

Now of course this specific passage could not have come at a better time than in Covid Season. During the confinement, we weren’t allowed to gather. Just a few days ago, Macron announced the curfew which, I’m well aware, will have a big impact on the way many of you live your lives. It changes very little for me—when you have kids you have an automatic curfew built into life—but I know it’s a hard blow for many of you, who are young, who are single, or who are married without kids. 

So this is an absolutely stellar case study. How are you to respond to these measures which the government has put in place, which drastically impacts the lives of many of you? How will we respond as a church if, for example, the curfew proves to be insufficient, and we go back to not being able to gather here?

We can talk about our response to measures like these another time. For now, Peter is calling us here, not first to think practically, but to think about our own hearts. In v. 16 he talks about the freedom we have in Christ—and then he pushes us to think about the way we react to this freedom in our society.

V. 16:

Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God.

We are free—absolutely. Christ is our only ultimate authority. But receiving this freedom in Christ will necessarily have an effect on us. If we are free, what type of people will we be? If we are free in Christ, it’s purely by grace—all we have and all we are, he did in us and for us. So how does this grace cause us to see the world—and our environment, and our society—differently?

Here again, the Covid situation is a good case study. There has never been a period—in my lifetime at least—in which more was asked of Christians to make the life of the church work. It was hard.

But if Covid had landed even ten or fifteen years ago, it would have been impossible. We would have been stuck alone, on our couches, with just our computer or TV screens showing services of a church we’re not even part of, with maybe a friend on the telephone.

It’s hard. Absolutely. It takes a lot more effort on our part. But it’s possible. 

So how many of us, during the time of the confinement, took the time to thank God for our government? To thank him for putting us in a country in which we have a government which is studying the situation and doing its best to protect its citizens (no matter whether we agree or disagree with the way they go about protecting us)? How many of us thanked God for letting us live in a place with high-speed Internet connection on our phones?! For giving us tools with which we couldn’t just talk to other believers far away, but actually see their faces as we do so?

How many of us, rather than being upset with the government for placing on us this incredibly restrictive curfew, are thankful that God put us in a place in which the leaders were concerned for the welfare of its citizens?

That’s the heart of the subject. Peter isn’t trying to get us to see what is technically possible. He’s not talking about submission to authority in order for us to find the loopholes, and see what excuses we could find to not do what they ask us to do. 

Peter’s encouraging us to submit to the government for the sake of people OUTSIDE the church. That they might see our response to the government’s rule over us and recognize that we are submitting, even while we claim God is our ultimate authority. 

In the Greco-Roman world, the emperor was all-powerful. He was a god. He had ultimate authority. 

But then here come these Christians claiming their only ultimate authority is Jesus Christ. This was a clear and legitimate threat to Roman society, because when you live under the rule of a leader, and you claim that that leader is not the real authority over your life, what does everyone expect you to do? They expect you to rebel. They expect you to show by your conduct that you don’t have to obey the emperor, because God is your authority.

And Christians were slandered because of this expectation. “They don’t listen to the emperor. They sow discontent in the people. They encourage people to disobey the emperor. They won’t pay their taxes.”

So how surprising must it have been to see these Christians, in that context, who claim Christ as their ultimate authority, submitting to the emperor ANYWAY? What would that do for these people who would slander the Christians? It would silence them. All it took was a little digging to see that the slander was wrong. 

How shocking must it have been to observe this group of people who claimed to be citizens of another country, citizens of the kingdom of God, and to realize that their being citizens of the kingdom of God actually made them better citizens of Rome? They cared for the well-being of the cities in which they found themselves. They claimed to be free, but they didn’t use their freedom as an excuse to do evil. Rather, in their freedom, as servants of one God, and one God alone, they were good citizens.

And it was clear to anyone who cared to look that the criticism was unfounded. There was nothing to be said.

You see—verbal testimony (telling others what we believe) is important, but must be accompanied by action. We claim that God set us free from sin, free to holiness.

So what do people see when they look at us? Do they see that holiness worked out in practice? Do they see goodness reflected in the way we live our lives in our cities? They should.

Concretely this means that if there are restrictions sent down by the government, we recognize the reasons why those restrictions are in place (even if we disagree with them), we recognize the government as having been put in place by God to protect and care for its citizens, and we submit to the restrictions. We make sure we’re home between 9:00 pm and 6:00 am. We wear our masks. We limit the number of people we gather with. We maintain social distancing.

Even if we have the impression these measures are massive, in the grand scheme of things they cost us very little; the value of the public testimony of the church far outweighs the inconvenience our obedience brings.

Now at this point, Peter changes gears ever so slightly. He’s been talking about our submission to just authority. But what happens when we are under authority which is unjust? How are we to respond to a situation in which we are ruled over by someone who is not well-meaning, but cruel?

To see this, Peter turns to an incredibly delicate subject: that of the submission of slaves to their masters.

Slaves/Masters (v. 18-20)

18 Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. 

Now our Bibles often translate this first word as “servants”. Let’s not sugar-coat it: the word translated as “servants” here literally means “slaves.” 

Now, it should be said that the Roman institution of slavery was not precisely the same as the kind of slavery we had in my country for two hundred years. Slaves in Rome were generally paid for their work, and they could save up enough to buy their freedom over time. (This is the kind of servant Jesus spoke about in Matthew 25, in his parable of the talents—these slaves were often entrusted with enormous amounts of responsibility. A slave who had saved up enough to be released was a free man, and often continued to work for his former master, even going so far as adopting the family name for themselves.

However, for all of those differences, this does not mean that in the context of Roman slavery, there was no abuse. Peter speaks of the possibility of being under the rule of an “unjust” master; of enduring sorrows and suffering unjustly. For all the possibly good masters there may have been, there were also bad masters, who were cruel to their slaves, who beat them and abused them.

So that’s the context—a slave who is absolutely stuck with his master (he can’t quit his job, he is his master’s legal property), and who must remain with him until he can become free, no matter how cruel or unjust his master may be.

Now of course the Bible has a lot to say on this subject—it begins all the way back in Genesis 1-2, when God creates human beings in his own image, and gives all men and women, regardless of who they are, equal value and dignity before God. It is an affront to imagine that one human being could be the property of another.

But a lot of people have been disappointed and even angered by the fact that the biblical authors very rarely come at the subject of slavery directly. There is no treatise in the Bible on the problem of slavery; no sweeping call for the institution of slavery to be abolished.

That’s not the authors’ goal—they are not writing in order to right every wrong against humanity. They know that as people grow in their understanding of who they are—human beings made in the image of God—these problems will be at least partially resolved. 

Their goal is to tell the people to whom they are writing, at that specific point in time, how they are to live in light of the gospel, in whatever situation they find themselves.

So the question is, what does living in light of the gospel look like in a context where you are stuck under submission to unjust authority? 

V. 18 again: Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. 

Now again, this is not a situation in which the master is ordering his servant to sin. It is rather a situation in which a servant does what he is supposed to do, and is abused anyway. How should he respond?

Peter says he is to be subject to his master with all respect. This is similar to Jesus’s commandment, should one be struck on his right cheek, to turn the left as well. It means not reacting in anger, not rendering evil for evil, but rather responding to evil with good.

Now if that seems unfair to you, you’re absolutely right. It is unfair. It’s not fair to ask someone who suffers unjustly to not seek justice for that abuse. 

Please do not misunderstand me: I am not saying a person who is abused should let themselves continue to be abused. There’s a difference between responding like this, for this reason, and letting yourself continue to be abused. But in most situations, it is possible—incredibly difficult, yes, but possible and necessary—to be respectful and loving and humble toward an abuser, while at the same time seeking protection from that abuse. 

But again, Peter’s not talking about the logistics of how to get out of abuse (that’s an important conversation, but that’s not his goal here). He’s talking about our heart. He’s talking about how the gospel shapes our attitude when we’re abused: how our reaction to abuse actually testifies to the goodness and grace of God. And this is a biblical principle that applies not only to servants, but to any Christian who suffers unjustly at the hands of someone else.

So why should someone in this situation, who is suffering unjustly at the hands of someone else, seek to respond with respect and humility rather than anger and vengeance? V. 19: 

19 For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 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.

Now this seems horribly illogical at first. Why would God consider it a good thing to suffer unjustly for doing good? Peter answers that question starting in v. 21:  

21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. 24 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. 25 For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 

Christ submitted to the government, and even to his persecutors, because he trusted God. 

First of all, he trusted that a) God is good. He knew that God would use his suffering and sacrifice to bring about the salvation of his people—he knew that God had a plan for his suffering. 

Now of course we rarely see the same thing this clearly in our own lives (we rarely know specifically why God allows us to suffer unjustly), but let’s just take a second to consider God’s plan for Christ’s suffering. 

In sending Christ to earth and not just allowing, but planning, for him to suffer as he did, it wasn’t just suffering for the sake of suffering. It wasn’t just an example to follow. God was pursuing very concrete results. 

Peter tells us (v. 24): He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. 

Because of the unjust suffering of Christ, our sins have been put to death. They are no longer hanging over our heads. They no longer condemn us, and they no longer have power over us. Because of Christ’s suffering, our sins were nailed to the tree with him, so that we might no longer live according to our sinful desires, but that we might realize that the sinner I was before is dead now, and now I am free to live to righteousness. (And just so we’re clear: the instinct we have to respond to unjust suffering with vengeance is one of those sins which Christ bore on the cross.)

He tells us (v. 24) that by his wounds we have been healed. 

We’re not just not sinners anymore; we have been born again. We have been brought from death to life. We have been called out of darkness into his marvelous light. We’re not sinners anymore; we have been transformed into something else: citizens of the kingdom of God, his children, growing in the likeness of his Son.

He tells us (v. 25) that you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. 

Before, we wandered the world unprotected. Whatever ravages sin wanted to inflict upon us, sin could inflict upon us, and did—whether we knew it or not.

But now, because of Christ’s suffering, we have returned to our Shepherd, the Overseer of our souls. Now he watches over us. He protects us from everything which could harm us in any permanent way. He protects us from leaving him forever. He protects us from losing our salvation. He picks us up, and he carries us and he shields us. We were straying like sheep, but now we are safe in him.

Now like I said, it’s rare that we ever know this clearly why God allows us to suffer unjustly. We’re not God, and God doesn’t always reveal his plan to us in detail. (In fact he rarely does.)

But we, like Christ, trust that God has a plan. That he doesn’t allow suffering for the sake of suffering. That God is not cruel. That God works all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1.11). That all things work together for the good of those who love him, who are called according to his purpose (Romans 8.28). That through our suffering, he is molding us into the image of his Son.

So Christ trusted that God is good, and that his plan is good. And secondly, he trusted that God would judge justly. He knew that no sin goes unpunished, and that God would exercise perfect judgment on his behalf…so he didn’t have to.

The hardest thing to deal with when we’re suffering unjustly is the emotion of it—anger, indignation, outrage. We’re torn in two directions: on the one hand, we can’t help but feel angry; on the other hand, we feel guilty because somewhere along the line we’ve gotten the idea that Christians aren’t supposed to get angry. So not only are we angry at the injustice; we are riddled with guilt over our anger.

In those moments we need to remember a few things.

God is angry too. God hates sin, he hates injustice, and he is angry too.

God's anger is never wasted. He never just holds it in—because his anger is always perfectly just, and thus is always directed at its object.

God’s anger is always poured out on sin. Now, sometimes God waits. He is infinitely patient; he knows just the right time in which to pour out his anger. But his anger never stays with him; if punishment is deserved, he renders that punishment. 

His anger is always poured out on sin. But here’s what we need to remember: God’s wrath against sin is poured out in one of two ways: either by punishing the sinner for an eternity in hell, or by punishing Christ in place of the sinner who turns to him in faith.

In either case, what frees us from anger is not the idea that anger is bad—because in the case of unjust suffering, it’s not bad. Anger in such a situation is right and just.

What frees us from anger is the knowledge that God pours out his anger against that sin committed against us…so we don’t have to. That’s a burden we no longer have to carry.

When we hold on to that anger, we are putting on our own shoulders a burden only God can bear. He’s the only one who can pour out just and righteous wrath on sin. He’s the only one who can render an appropriate punishment for that sin—a punishment which is far worse than anything we could ever give.

So we can let it go. 

We can look at the suffering of Christ, who suffered for us, and follow in his steps. We can be reviled, without reviling in return. We can suffer without threatening. We can continue to entrust ourselves to him who judges justly.

Conclusion

Brothers and sisters, this is why theology is so important: why it is so important to know what the Bible says about our God. Even such down-to-earth matters as submission to authority ultimately have their roots in the way we see God. We can never react rightly, in the most concrete and practical situations, if we don’t understand who God is and who we are.

So knowing that God has saved us, and that in him we are free, we live as people who are free, not using our freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. For that reason, we submit for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, to the government God has sent to us to protect us, to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good.

And knowing that God is good, and that his plan is good, and that he judges justly, we entrust ourselves to him. We look to the sufferings of Christ, who trusted God in this way, and we follow in his example. We humbly endure our sorrows, and we show respect (not mindless obedience, but respect) even to those who unjustly cause us suffering. For it is a gracious thing when, mindful of God, we endure our sorrows as Christ endured his.