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"Loyal Citizenship for the
Lord's Sake" Text Comments Peter has given us in vv. 11-12 a general introduction to this next section of the letter and we have looked at that introduction in some detail. Now we enter the main section itself which is like a number of other passages in the NT letters. Here, different groups of Christians are given instruction as to their particular duty to God and man. This form of ethical instruction in which duties are adapted to particular classes of people (citizens, husbands, wives, parents, children, etc.) was, by this time a convention in both Stoic philosophy and Jewish ethical writing. The Christian writers simply adapted a conventional form for their own use, modifying the ethical teaching to conform to Christian theology and adding the appropriate Christian motivation. v.13 The NIV's "submit yourselves to every authority instituted among men" is doubtful. The word translated "authority" is the word that everywhere else in the NT means "creation" or "creature." The simple reading would be "be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human creature" or, in colloquial English, "be subject to every human being." What we have, then, is a statement that introduces not just the next four verses but the next several paragraphs. In each case Peter urges Christians in specific circumstances to be subject to someone. You will see this at 2:18 and 3:1. The Christian life, he is saying, must not be a life of self-assertion or the exploitation of others, but of the voluntary submission of oneself to others. Passing from the general to the particular in the middle of v. 13, Peter begins by saying that this principle of submission should mark the Christian's behavior toward the state. The word "king" in this context -- "supreme authority" -- is taken by almost all commentators as a reference to the Roman emperor. The issue of a believer's attitude toward human government is raised a number of times in the NT and that is an indication that the subject was already controversial and ripe for confusion. Christians had very soon been subjected to pressure and then outright persecution by the government. Peter had himself been arrested on more than one occasion on account of his work as an apostle of Jesus Christ. There had been persecutions of Christians as a class in various cities of the empire, often, at this early stage, at the instigation of Jews. More to the point, these Christians themselves were suffering persecution, though we are unable to say from exactly what quarter. It seems to be a persecution of a local variety, rather than some form of imperial oppression, still it may well be that the government was giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the church or, at least, providing no protection for Christians. But there was a further problem. The faith of Christians in God as the supreme ruler tended to make Christians look down on merely human governments. The sense they had of themselves as aliens and pilgrims in this world tended to make them consider the political interests of the empire unimportant and irrelevant to them. And, the high ethical life to which they had given themselves tended to make them look with disgust on the immoral, corrupt, and cruel regimes that they encountered in the Roman world. Peter refers to this in v. 16 where he imagines a Christian thinking that the freedom he has in Christ liberates him from the need to be subject to an unbelieving government. Peter's argument, as you can see, is very like the argument that Paul gives in his letters. Governments are from God. They serve to protect and foster public order, punishing wrongdoers and rewarding good conduct. Christians are obliged to give them obedience and respect, for, in doing so, they are honoring God who appointed these governments. You are aware, as well, that there is another side to this story. A government once told Peter not to preach Christ and he told that government, point blank, that he had to obey God rather than man. There are limitations on the loyalty of Christians to government, just as there are many cases when governments do the reverse of punishing wickedness and rewarding virtue. The martyrs are the grim demonstration of that. Still that is not Peter's point here. And it is to his teaching here that we are to attend this morning. Here he tells a community of Christians, a community that may well have had reasons to regard the government as an enemy, to show it respect nevertheless and render it obedience. It doesn't mean that one must approve of what the government does in every case or even most cases. Assyria and Babylon were also referred to as God's "servants" in the OT and served God's purpose by punishing the wicked, but they did that in such a way that was evil itself and subsequently were themselves punished by God. One could appreciate the role Assyria and Babylon played without approving of their conduct and certainly without joining up with them. In the same way, the government of the Roman world ensured public order and that is no small thing. Paul, in 1 Timothy 2, speaks of the great importance to the church of Christians being able to live peaceful and quiet lives. In the twentieth century we have many times over learned the bitter truth that no government is much worse than bad government. Now it may well be that there are some here this morning whose heart sank to hear the text read. This is not an issue that matters very much to you. This is not where you live. You can't imagine any encouragement for your soul in a consideration of the relationship between church and state. Well, perhaps. But, quite apart from the fact that this too is the Word of God and, therefore, to be reverenced by us, there is a great deal here of very practical importance. It is true, of course, and we should not forget this, -- we must not forget this -- that vast numbers of our brethren around the world are living right here in these verses. The state is the great threat to their lives and welfare and happiness. It is not a small matter to them to hear Peter speak of their obligations to respect the government as from the Lord. It is a matter of the most intense interest and highest importance and difficulty. The Chases had lunch last Lord's Day with a man who spent the last year in prison in China for his Christian faith, a man who bears the marks of a government's hostility to Christians. There are multitudes of Christians, as I speak, in jails around the world, for whom Peter's words here must leap off the page and cause them to reel until hard thought brings them to see the light and the truth in what Peter was saying -- Peter, a man who, after all, had been in jail himself for his faith and would eventually be put to death by the legal act of the very government Peter here orders his readers to respect and obey. Our situation is not yet nearly so grave, but evangelical Christians in the United States have been thinking and speaking about government and the church's relationship to it over these last twenty years in a way American Christians never thought or spoke before. But, even for us, the practical implications of Peter's teaching can be far-reaching and immediately relevant. I have been in correspondence with a young man who is looking for a ministry in our denomination. He is a graduate of one of our Reformed seminaries and the son of one of our churches back east. He has been telling me about the views of people and churches that he has met when candidating for various pulpits in our own Presbyterian Church in America. Recently he candidated at a church that was marked by some very definite views on controversial topics. One of the elders in this PCA church told him outright that he lies on his income tax return because does not owe the government the truth and the government has no right to take so much of his income in taxes. Here is a very practical question of Christian ethics and it is addressed squarely by Peter's remarks here and other teaching in the NT. Jesus paid his taxes even though some of that tax revenue, after it had made its way into the imperial treasury, would eventually make its way back to Judea to pay for the occupation of his homeland or would be used to build a temple to Diana in Ephesus. Paul, in Romans 13:6, orders the Christians in Rome to pay their taxes to the corrupt and cruel government of Nero, probably the very king that Peter is referring to in verses 13 and 17 of our text. But there is something more here for all of us, more general, more personal, more intensely practical. It concerns the way in which our Christian faith alters our perspective on life, our attitude toward the world. For Peter is not, in the first place, concerned to answer specific questions Christians might have regarding their relationship to the government and their obligation to obey the civil authority. He is interested rather in our outlook on life. Government is but one of the contexts in which he works this out. Employment and marriage will be two others. What he wants from us, what the Holy Spirit wants from us, is an attitude toward life in this world, toward relationships of various kinds, toward other human beings, that is profoundly, obviously, powerfully shaped and determined by the kind of spiritual detachment appropriate to people who are strangers and pilgrims in this world and who are living not for anything they will obtain in this world but for the glory of God -- what he has just said in the verses preceding the text we have read. Christians can fail to live in keeping with their faith in different ways. Even in their attitude to human government and civil authority we can detect real faith or the lack of it. In the churches in which I was raised and in the days of my upbringing we failed at this, we failed to have the mind of Christ regarding government as Peter is describing it here, but in a different way. In our day we were all patriots and felt deeply that American patriotism was a Christian duty. You know what patriotism is. Patriotism is a zealous loyalty to one's country and support of one's country, especially in matters involving other countries. It is a nationalistic fervor, a heartfelt preference for one's own country over other countries. Well, there is nothing like that in the Bible. Believe me, Peter never organized patriotic worship services in the churches of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia. He never spent his time trying to convince others that "Rome is the greatest empire in the world" and was never caught saying "My empire right or wrong" or "Rome: love it or leave it"; or, even, later in Rome when about to be crucified upside down, "I regret that I have but one life to lose for Rome"; nor did he ever sing the Hank Williams Jr. song: Rome may have stumbled, but she ain't never fell; We thought about our nation and our government in those days in ways that now seem very quaint. It seemed to us then that American institutions were clearly the pinnacle of human political development. We couldn't believe that intelligent people in other countries did not immediately recognize our superiority. Now, of course, we look at those same institutions with a more jaundiced eye. What difference a few years can make. Is there anyone, anywhere who thinks that the American Congress or the American courts are the true solution to the problems of the world? Like Assyria, Babylon, and Rome before her, America has served a purpose in the Lord's plan, and, if Christ should tarry, she too will in all likelihood also fall under the divine judgment and be destroyed. We American Christians, years ago, violated the teaching of Peter not by a lack of respect but by too much respect, not by too low a view of our institutions of government but by too high a view of them. In those days we despised tax protesters, because they were all liberals who didn't want to fund the defense budget. Now, strange to see, it is our people who are arguing against paying the taxes owed because of the illegitimacy of our government. Peter has nothing to say that comes near to amounting to patriotism, nor does any other biblical author. The only patriotism the Bible knows is the love and the zeal that God's people have and are to have for the kingdom of God, the church of Christ. What Peter says about the Christian's duty to the government applies equally to the American Christian, the Russian Christian, the Sudanese Christian, the Chinese Christian, and the Iraqi Christian. There are many American Christians who still today take offense at this. They are sure they can find something in the Bible that justifies a zealotry for their nation and its institutions, but I challenge them to find it. Peter's view of government is much less romantic and much more theological and practical. God has established governments to keep the peace, they foster order. That is very important. Nations and their institutions are not, however, in Peter's teaching, to be objects of our trust or of our devotion. Of course not. America is no more our home as Christians today than Rome, or Pontus, or Galatia was the home of those Christians. Peter began his letter, you remember, "To God's elect, strangers in the world" and, just before taking up this matter of government, he said it again in 2:11. Christians are aliens and strangers in the world. In other words, what Peter is telling us here is that the nation in which we live, the government under which we live is but part of the environment in which Christians are to live their lives and show their mettle. Christians are to have a genuine, spiritual detachment from the things that belong only to this world so that they can be entirely devoted to that which lasts and counts forever. And the things that do belong to this world -- whether government or employment or whatever -- important in their own ways of course, are chiefly important for the Christian as environments in which they are to walk with God, demonstrate the reality of the gospel, and commend Christ and his salvation to others. The way a Christian is to live is to be the demonstration of higher things -- neither a craven fear of government nor a repudiation of it -- but as another of the contexts in which they might live before men a life of probity, sobriety, goodness, and respect and consideration for all other human beings. Governments themselves are of relatively minor importance. They serve the function of the public good, but they come and go, and they belong only to this world which is passing away. Nothing they do or can do effects the eternal destiny of men. But, they provide a way for Christians to demonstrate their faith and give glory to God, another context in which Christians can demonstrate their mettle and the character of their faith. It is for pagans to whine about taxes; it is for Christians to show respect and to pay what is due -- however onerous the burden -- because taxes and money are not the things that matter to someone who is on his way to another country and who there will be wealthy beyond our power to describe! Taxes are things about which Christians may demonstrate a cheerful unconcern. Just this week I finished a new biography of Oswald Chambers. Before this I had known Chambers only through the little collection of excerpts from his writings, edited posthumously by his wife, My Utmost for His Highest. Born in Scotland in the home of a pastor, attributing either his conversion or the formal beginning of his serious Christian discipleship to a sermon he heard preached by Charles Spurgeon, educated in London and, later, Edinburgh, where he often listened to the preaching of Alexander Whyte, an itinerant preacher and teacher for most of his adult life, with stints in both Japan and the United States, director of a small Bible College in London, and, finally, spending the last three and a half years of his life in Egypt during the First World War, where he provided physical and spiritual care to the troops stationed near Cairo or convalescing in the nearby hospitals after action in the Mediterranean theater of the war under the auspices of the YMCA. He died in Cairo, in November of 1917 from complications following surgery for appendicitis. He was 43. He was known and loved at his death by the company of people whom he had influenced for Christ and for good, though the circle of his influence was then relatively small. But through his writings, collected and published by his wife through the years following his death, his influence became much more widespread. It was an extraordinary life. Chambers was a man of deep devotion to Christ and to Christ's cause, a man of simple and, so, powerful faith. He wasn't the deepest thinker in the world, but his words still today communicate the passion that ought to fill the heart of anyone who has been given the immeasurable privilege of knowing Jesus Christ. Now how does the life of Oswald Chambers bear on Peter's exhortation regarding submission to the King? In just this way. What I found in the life of his great man was exactly the spirit that Peter is after in these few verses we have read. If I could characterize it I would do so this way. Chambers was a grand example of that cheerful unconcern with worldly principles and powers, institutions and issues. Chambers was a pilgrim. The world was simply the place he walked through with God. The nations of the world were simply peoples to be loved and served in Christ's name. The character of his life was determined not by the fact that he was a citizen of Great Britain but by the fact that he was an inhabitant of the kingdom of God and a servant of its King. He was profligate in charity and hospitality. He lived his life on the contributions of others and gave what he had to everyone. He never owned a home or an automobile. "Give to all who ask and the Lord will take care of you" was his motto. And he who had nothing was generous, some said, to a fault. And the great theme of his life was that of complete dependence upon the Lord enabling a complete consecration of one's life to the Lord. "Be absolutely His" was a characteristic encouragement he would include in letters to friends. Well that is Peter's idea, really, here. "Be absolutely His!" "Christ's!" Whether you are thinking about government, employment, even marriage. "Be absolutely His!" Politics, governments, nations, they come and go. They are not the meaning of life. They have a role to play that may be of some importance in its own way. Keeping the peace, preserving order, punishing evil, etc. But, mainly, they are just another context in which and before which Christians can live out their life of trust in God and serving God. This brief, shining moment in which we are given to love, to walk with, to serve our great Redeemer all by faith; that is the key, that is what is decisive, that is what is to determine a Christian's attitude to all that is in this world. The man, the woman who feels that governments are oppressing him or keeping him from enjoying his freedom in Christ is a man or woman who really doesn't understand the freedom Christ gives or how impotent governments are to touch that freedom or to place a wedge between the believer and everything that he has in Christ and everything that he or she has been called to do for the Lord. You get a tax bill. It is larger than you thought. So what! Is God no longer on his throne? Can you no longer live the Christian life? Is God unable to provide because the IRS has emptied his treasury? The thought is blasphemous and repugnant to a serious Christian. Let human governments, or bosses, or, later, even boorish, unspiritual husbands, do their worst! Such a thing is just one among a great many things that provide the context of a Christian life, one of the places where we can find the Lord by submitting to others, where we can forsake the world by exulting instead in the blessings that faith alone can know. And it is exactly the same if it is not a tax bill, but rather a knock on the door that will lead you to prison for your loyalty to Christ. In the darkest dungeon you remain the freest man on earth and the heir to the greatest fortune that can be conceived. At the last, all the cruelest, the most unjust government can do to a Christian is to give him another opportunity to trust the Lord and prove him faithful, to serve the Lord and raise a witness to his name and power. They have no real power over them. All they can do is kill them and send them to heaven. But Christians must have this attitude about life and make it a matter of believing it to be so every day they live, in regard to small matters as in regard to great. This cheerful unconcern, this spiritual detachment from the world so as to be completely attached to Christ and his cause is what Peter is after and it matters not whether we are speaking of the Christian and the state, or workers and their bosses, or marriage, or health, or money, or anything else. Mrs. Chambers was still a young woman when her husband died. It was, as you can imagine, a terrible loss for her. She was free to do many things with her life, except use her freedom as a cover-up for evil. She spent the rest of her long life -- she died in 1966 -- blessing the world with the publication of her husband's writings. Chambers was buried in a cemetery in Cairo, Egypt. Of all places. But that was where the Lord had taken him and put him to use. But, then, what difference does is make. He was a Christian in every significant way. He was British in the ways that matter least and most temporarily. His Father in heaven owns the entire earth, is the Creator of all nations and peoples. His children can rest and await the resurrection anywhere in his dominions. And that is a way to put the point. It should matter very little to you where you are buried, so long as that cemetery is found alongside the pilgrim road. |
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