1 Peter 2:13-17

April 19, 2020

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

The sermon starts around 16:35 in the audio file.

Or, You Are Always Submitting

God, thank God, does not give the gift of contrarianism to every member of His body. Contrarianism, turns out, is not even a spiritual gift, though some of us would like to think so. There are times, though, when you want a contrarian on your side, if you can actually get close enough without him pushing you away, and that’s because being contrary to vice is a virtue.

Courage is good, and a willingness to stand for what is right against a mob is good. Courage is connected with truth, and a being contrarian toward lies and liars, deception and illegal acts, even to feelings-driven fear, has its place.

Not all our sheep walk around looking at things backwards, but we’ve got a good number of them. In some sense this was probably inevitable, because like attracts like, birds of a feather like to fight with each other, and I myself am native to contrarian country. I was voted most argumentative of my class as a senior in high school. So I can tell you first hand that it’s hard always being right, seeing how everyone else needs to be fixed. And, I can report, I have often been wrong.

There is, as you know, sin in all of us, and sin has always told us that we are right, that we have rights, and that we get to define right. The deceit of the serpent was not only in getting Adam and Eve to disobey, it was getting them to believe that they could be the judge. “Knowing good and evil” wasn’t an intellectual deficiency, it was a dilemma over jurisdiction. Satan was telling them, in other words, that God was out of His lane.

The history of mankind since then has been a long attempt at usurping the Judge’s seat, and every lesser throne underneath. The world God made is full of hierarchies and domains and authorities, and they have been competing and clashing and killing over it (James 4:1-2). Debates about sphere sovereignty will continue until Christ returns and reigns on earth. Wives will want to rule their husbands (Genesis 3:17), children will want to resist their bedtimes, and men will want to tell their governors to stick it.

Now there are times (—and see how our inner lawyer is always on call—) of exceptions. Some patriarchs are jerks, fathers don’t always know best, idiots get elected or inherit a seat, and godly courage is the demand of the day. When men have power over other men, it often leads to hurt (Ecclesiastes 8:9). Jesus not only knows that it happens, He submitted Himself to death in order to save His people out of their own deadly failure to submit. Talk about rulers executing orders (and ordering an execution) that were out of their lane.

What are we supposed to do? The default as Christians is to submit to Jesus, follow His example of submitting while suffering, even if unjustly. The default as Christians is resistance…to sin, especially sin in our responses to crooked authority. Beloved, that is what God’s Word declares. When Peter urges the sojourners to wage war against the passions of their flesh (1 Peter 2:11), that doesn’t just mean to resist lustful second looks at an immodest ad on a website, it also means to resist knee-jerk anger at authorities.

Appealing to authorities is not the same as refusing to submit to authorities. And, as the Bible clearly reveals, we must obey God rather than man under certain circumstances (Acts 5:29), and it is possible to make the laws of man more important in your priorities than the Lordship of Jesus (Mark 7:6-13). But the Bible also clearly reveals God’s will for how to make a good argument. God Himself, for the sake of honoring Jesus as Lord, leaves no doubt as to the behavior He expects from us. On this point we don’t need wisdom, we don’t need to pray about it, we need to submit. Submission is right, and, by God’s grace, submission is powerful.

Hear the word of the Lord again.

“Be subject for the Lord’s [...]