If you’re reading this, then you’re old
enough to have realized that in life we often have to do things we don’t
like. We often have to work with, or
associate with people we don’t like.
What do we do as people of faith when life’s circumstances remind us of
this realization? Peter tells us that as
Christians, we should be motivated to submit “for the sake of the Lord”, even
if the person they are submitting to is found to be offensive. We live in a time when not only the people we
must submit to, but also the very idea of submission itself is less than
appealing. All our emphasis on personal
liberties and being an
individual has taken us to a place where we chafe at the idea of submitting to
anyone. And yet, submit we must. We submit when we see those blue lights come
on in our rear-view mirror, when we mail in that check to the IRS, or when the
boss calls to tell us he needs us to come in to work. If submission is a reality that we can’t
escape, maybe we should consider not whether to submit, but how we submit. It’s not that we will suddenly be happy about
that speeding ticket, or rejoice as we pay our taxes, or love the idea of going
into work. However, perhaps we can
endure all those things, and even grow to the point that we can do them with a
positive attitude, if we think of them not as submitting to a police officer,
or the government, or our boss, but if we see them as submitting to Jesus.
Peter desperately wants us to understand
that it’s how we respond in those less than enjoyable moments that serve as the
greatest witness to our faith, or our lack thereof. Detractors of the Christian faith are all
around us, and our conduct can become either a testimony to our faith, or
evidence that Christians are not all that different from anyone else. Good deeds silence those who reject the
gospel, and undercut their arguments against it. I’m reminded of a story I read not too long
ago about an atheist in Texas. This man was
suing to have all Christian symbols removed from the county courthouse. He did not want to see a nativity scene at
Christmas, and if going to court was what it took to remove it, so be it. Before too long however, the man would not be
seeing anything, including a nativity scene.
For some time the man had been suffering from a condition that would
eventually leave him blind. While some
Christians might see this as divine justice (and sadly some of those Christians
are the ones with the largest microphones), a group of Christians in this Texas
town chose not to delight in the man’s plight, but rather to help him as Jesus
had instructed them. Soon the man
received a check from local Christians to help cover his medical expenses.
I’m not sure if those Christians had
spent a lot of time reading I Peter, but I think Peter would have been very
proud to see how they reacted toward one who was supposed to be their
“enemy”. Peter is trying to tell us that
rather than using our freedom for ourselves, or to do evil, we should use it to
become servants of God. That group of
Christians became servants of God by helping an atheist pay his medical bills,
because everyone is made in the image of God, even atheists. In a time where there is an emphasis on
personal liberty, and on our “rights”, we should be asking the question, what
do we do with our liberty? How do we use
our rights not to bless ourselves, but to bless others? Do we respect everyone, from the top of our
social ladder all the way down to the bottom?
According to Peter, we should show as much deference to every human
being, as we do to the most powerful among us.
He tells us to honor the emperor, which the Roman government would have
been glad to hear. But he also says
honor everyone. Rather than dragging the
emperor down, and risking sounding treasonous, Peter instead elevates the rest
of humanity. Rather than viewing society
as a ladder, the apostle insists that we should see it as an even plane where
everyone is honored and respected, and God alone is feared and worshiped.
How does that happen? It sound great, but how can we control our
emotions, keep our pride in check, and treat every person with the dignity they
deserve? The passage points to the fact
that the answer lies in following the one who did it the best, who did it
perfectly, Jesus Christ. When the verse
refers to Jesus as our example, it uses the Greek word hypogrammos, the word for a pattern that a child would trace. So, in patterning our life after Jesus, we
learn to suffer for others because Christ suffered for us. In following Jesus we come to an
understanding that just like him, we do not receive the crown of glory without
the crown of thorns. Martin Hengel
would say, “’Following’ means in the first place unconditional sharing of the master’s destiny, which
does not stop even at deprivation and suffering in the train of the master, and
is possible only on the basis of complete trust on the part of the person who
‘follows’; he has placed his destiny and his future in his master’s
hands.” That is exactly what Peter
encourages us to do, to believe that we share in the destiny of our
master. While that may include suffering
for a time, it ultimately leads to that far richer fate of eternal life in the
presence of God.
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