As we look at Peter’s first letter to people in various places we see how he was encouraging them, preparing them for a most important, earth-shattering event was to take place. The Jerusalem temple and the Jewish religion as known for centuries, would be destroyed and replaced by a new creation (Mat 21:33-46). This would impact them and many Jews where they lived.
Here we look at the next section of chapter 2 beginning at 2:11-12:
Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles (pagans)
, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.
Here Peter calls on his readers to be excellent people as they live before an observing pagan society. They are to be different, just if they were foreigners and exiles who stand out in contrast to those who live participating in sinful desires. By calling them foreigners and exiles he is not suggesting anything like the escapist mentality seen in songs like this:
This world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through . . . . . . . And I Can’t Feel At Home anymore.’.
NO. The Holy Spirit is calling us today to live exemplary lives before a watching world. While God has put us here in this world, this is our home now. Paul wrote about being at home here in the body as useful for others though to be with Christ is far better. (Phil 1:22-25). At home here we are to be the ‘light of the world’ and the ‘salt of the earth’. Dispensationalism is a gross error and demon inspired with its ‘get me outta here’ mentality. This terrible doctrine has made countless Christians powerless and failures. That idea is far from the prayer of Jesus we find in John 17:15-18.
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.
Did you notice that Peter wrote ‘that they may glorify God on the day of visitation’? The original Greek strongly implies Peter was referring to the (second) Coming of Jesus! Compare this phrase to a similar used by Jesus in Luke 19:44. All the more reason for these people to be full of good deeds if Jesus was coming to visit his audience! (NASB footnote explains ‘I.e. Christ’s coming again in judgment’.)
Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, 14 or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. 15 For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. 16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. 17 Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.
Here Peter in these five verses continues to focus on their having exemplary behaviour because of ‘the Lord’s sake’. There are human institutions that are there in the Roman world to prevent lawlessness and chaos. Note he says these are sent by him’ (God)! This was at a time when believers were subject to persecution. It is always doing the will of God to do right. At least we today should be thankful to God if these powers maintain good law and order.
Clearly, Peter believed that believers were free under the gospel of the kingdom. But such freedom must not mean we are free to do evil but free to be doing right. They then, and we today, are to see ourselves as ‘bondslaves of God’—what a fantastic privilege—we are not bondslaves of men!
Why ‘honour all people’? Supremely because all bear the image of God. We don’t have to honour their deeds or character. But we are to love our brothers and sisters in Christ.
‘Fear God’ is such a short command but so significant. It is the loss of the fear of God in people today that has led to the disappearance of morality. If there is no fear of God we have lost the basis for decency, goodness. Anything goes. Whatever I can get away with. If there is no fear of God, there can be no love of God. There is no higher authority than God. As Matthew Henry commented, ‘It is the fear, not so much of punishment as of his disapprobation; not so much the dread of suffering as the dread of doing wrong.’ It is the fear I felt lest while nursing in amy arms my newborn child she should slip out of my arms.
Honour the king, Peter enjoins his hearers. For us, we may be very devout in private but if our actions seen by people in society regarding lawful authority are defective and not proper it will be seen as of little value.
Ian Thomson 