God And Government - Part 2

Here's what we're studying today. We're studying 15 through 17, part two of this series. What I want to do today is a review of last week's lesson, which is 13 and 14, God's the role of government in God's economy. Next we'll look at, I want to throw this in, how we are able to fulfill these commands in 15 through 17. There's like eight of them. There's a lot of them there.

And how we are able to do that. And it turns out we have some special tools as born again ones in Christ. Then thirdly, we'll look at these believers that are scattered up there that Peter's writing to, we'll look at their background, what was happening to them at that time up there in Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia, where Peter says he's writing to them, and what was happening with them in relation to their unbelieving neighbors as a background kind of thing. Then we'll look at the verses, the definitions, and the doctrines in verses 15, 16, and 17.

And then we'll tie it together at the end here this morning. There was a lot in there. I was like, oh, this is going to be an easy week. with 15, 16, 17. It didn't look too bad until you get into it and you're like, whoa, there's a lot in there. So, but we'll motor through it. So I hope it makes sense. I hope I've done this, kind of layered it so it makes sense because there's a lot in there.

Okay, the verses for today is And I'll start with the first part of verse 13, up there you see, is submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every human institution, and he goes on whether they're governments or kings. And then in verse 15 he says, for such is the will of God that by doing right you might silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God. Honor all people, love all people, love the brotherhood, I'm sorry, fear God, and honor the king. So that verse 13, the command to submit yourselves, it follows right into verse 15. You could say, submit yourselves to the Lord's sake, to every human institution, for such is the will of God. You could skip right to that.

It's all tied in together, those commands. So review of last week's verses 13 and 14 is that God has all authority in the universe and on earth and he has shared some of this authority with earthly governments. You'll remember from last week. Those governments have God's ordained power to punish or terrorize evil and criminality in general. And that's what I call purpose one. There's two purposes.

It's interesting to note that there's nothing in scripture regarding government's job to rehabilitate criminals, but only punish them. We as born again ones, are to submit ourselves to human authorities regardless of the quality of the governing authority, no matter if it's good or bad. We are to submit ourselves, as it says in verse 13 up there. Submission to authorities should impel the government to purpose to, here's purpose to, that governments should have praise and commendation to us born-again ones who do good and who live quiet and peaceable lives and don't get in trouble, basically. Last week we concentrated on government's responsibility. to punish criminality, as we saw. This week, we look at our responsibility as individual believers to that government.

And our responsibility in verses 13 through 17, as it says, is to do right. In verse 15, to act as free men. Verse 16, but don't use our freedom as a cloak for evil but as bond slaves of God in verse 16. Verse 17, love the brotherhood, honor all people, fear God, and honor the king. I want to submit from up there from verse 13 that we covered last week.

So those are all the there's four imperative commands there on the right hand side in verse 17 and the rest I don't think that they're well yeah they should be imperatives they might not be but there's a lot of commands there is what we're saying here how do we accomplish all these commands first we keep in mind that the Christian is not of this world he's been transferred into the kingdom of Christ We are heavenly citizens and our only relation to the world is as emissaries of Christ and His heavenly kingdom is what we want to keep in mind when we're looking at all these commands. The kingdoms of this earth are given to Satan under the temporary permissive will of God for his purposes in this age. The Christian is related to the world only as he or she is related to this world through Christ, right? We are not of this world, just as Christ is not of this world. There's a verse that I'm quoting. I'm not sure what it is, if anyone has it off the top of their head. It's probably John. I am not of this world. So we are truly strangers. and sojourners here on this planet. And our association is with Him up there in heaven, isn't it?

And I adapted this from Luz Bera-Shaver's book, which I just finished during this lockdown. Got a lot of chance to read this great book, Grace and the Exposition of God's Marvels. So there's our commands. Let's keep in mind that we are not under the law system. where Christ is the end of the law to all who believe, Romans 10-4. Romans 6-14, we're not under law but under grace. We are under pure grace, aren't we?

This is from this Schaeffer book. I made a little visual of it here, which I really like. I knew it, but I I was really thinking about that and I like this formula that he gives. The law formula says to do this and you will be blessed. Contrast that with the grace formula, is what Schaeffer says. The grace formula says that you're blessed with every spiritual blessing at the get-go. Since you are blessed with every spiritual blessing, then he gives commands in grace formula. So since you are blessed with every spiritual blessings, this do because you are blessed.

The law is given to children. There's that Paul's in Romans talks about how the law is a tutor or a schoolmarm for people under the law and to bring them to Christ. So it's addressed to children, basically. And then the grace and the New Testament and the things of Christ are addressed as to adult sons. We are adult sons in Christ. It's like the dog is is disagreeing for some reason. More background on this.

Under the Law Covenant, you only had your flesh and your will to accomplish what was written under the Law. There was no permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the Law Age. They didn't have the Spirit of Christ with them, nor the Holy Spirit. So it was all the old man, all addressed to flesh.

But under the grace, under pure grace in this church age, the commands are, one, much higher than they are under the law, because they include thoughts and motivations of the heart, which the law didn't really get into. It just said, you know, do this. But under grace, all of our thinking is sort of under these commands of grace. So these imperative commands that we're looking at today, they're superhuman, and we really can't accomplish them. They're heavily obligations. However, God provides supernatural sufficiency to carry out commands given in the New Testament.

So that's just what I wanted to set as a background for what we're studying today. And now we'll get on to verse 15. As you can see up at the top, I have those two purposes that I presented last week. Purpose one is authorities given to the governments by God to punish or to bear terror to evil. That was last week. Today we're more looking at purpose two, that government's other command from God or their other role is to commend or praise those who do right, Christians who do the right, and that's what we're looking at today. Today's lesson has us on the positive side of 13 through 17. Last week was the negative side. The negative side was punishment or death. And that's what I call the negative side.

So how do we do right by government? Well, I think we submit to authorities as free ones, as it says in verse 16 there and verse 13. And to honor the king, as it says up there in verse 17, we render unto Caesar what is due Caesar and we pay tributes and taxes and just generally live a quiet and peaceful lives. Is how we live right by government.

Now let's go into some background of what these believers up there in the north that Peter was addressing, and I assume that he probably knew these believers. Perhaps these believers who were scattered were in his church in Jerusalem and knew him, but then when the persecution came under Nero, scattered and they went up north. So I bet he knows many of them and maybe he got some word that they were suffering up there. So that's why he wrote this letter. But the background of why they were suffering is interesting to look at.

So the Gentile pagans of the day would accuse Christians of lack of allegiance to the Roman authorities. They would snitch on them basically for seeming to be ignoring Roman laws and customs, sort of what's going on today. People snitching on people who are going to the beach or, you know, not wearing their mask, right? A lot of that going on in this current situation. But maybe a lot more mild than it was back then.

The Jews would observe, the Jews up there would observe Jewish Christians, and these are the Christians who are being referred to in this Peter letter, they would observe them as mosaic lawbreakers, and they couldn't understand how Jewish believers could count themselves among Gentile believers, because they were thinking, We're Jews, we should be separate from Gentiles. But yet these Jewish Christians that we're seeing are associating with Gentiles, Gentile believers. Here's how William Kelly describes this situation in his commentary.

He says, It was an early and common reproach among Gentiles that Christians must be atheists because they had turned from their idols, they had no images of gold, silver, stone, wood, nor were there any pictures of man's device were seen in their assemblies when they gathered. The Jews, however, knew well that this was because a living and true God had won them from such vanities to serve him. Yet those Jews were bitterly jealous themselves that Christians did not become proselytites of the law, instead believing on his risen son, Jesus the Deliverer, and waiting for his coming again from the heavens. And they were still more furious that any of the stock of Abraham, the Jewish believers, should have the same faith and hope of those uncircumcised Gentiles.

So that was sort of that two-pronged pressure that these believers that Peter was addressing up there were experiencing. And we experience that today too in our situation knowing. I say here that Peter's purpose then in this section, 13 through 17, is to have these Christians submit to the authorities to live rightly so that they silence these heathen critics. And so that they could, they were getting criticized and by submitting, putting themselves under the authorities instead of ignoring all their laws, that they would escape criticism in this way. Okay, let's look at verse 15 here. Now we're into the exposition and definitions here with verse 15. Verse 15 says, if you're submitting yourselves to governments, this is for such as the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

The phrase that you may silence is the Greek, the Greek word here is strong, it's to muzzle, like when they muzzled an ox. but that, I guess, leather around the ox's snout. And I don't know if ox, oxes made sounds, but they were muzzled. At least they couldn't eat with the muzzle on. We says, this Greek word is to reduce to silence. How's my internet connection doing so far? Is it, can everyone hear me?

It's a little bit choppy today. It's choppy? Badly? It's okay. It says actually your bandwidth is low. There's an error message that says Malloy's network bandwidth is low. Anyway, but you're doing fine. Keep going, you're fine. Yeah, okay. Maybe after this slide I'll go into the other room. That might be good. OK. I don't know. I wouldn't do it. You're fine. You're doing OK, Andrew. You're doing fine. OK. All right. Because I just got a I just got a little message coming up on my computer, too.

So the word ignorance here. is the Greek word for it's agnosticia or something in the Greek, but it's where we get our word for agnostic. It means a lack of reason, a lack of knowledge, reason, reflection, and intelligence about the things of God. And it's not lack of acquaintance, meaning that these foolish men here. They probably heard the gospel. They probably knew about God. They were familiar with God's things, but they had no understanding of it because they ignored it. Hence, you get the word ignorance there.

Here's how Darby puts the predicament of these believers up there in Galatia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, Asia. The mind of men hostile to his name sought to bring disgrace upon it by attributing Christians the evil conduct which they themselves followed without remorse, while at the same time complaining that they did not go with them in the same excesses and disorder. So on the one hand, they would try and slander these believers. On the other hand, if the believers stayed away from these evil practices, maybe being involved with the... they had all such weird temple rites in the pagan world, didn't they? Drunkenness and temple prostitutes and things like that.

So if the believers up there withdrew themselves from all those evil things, then the unbelievers would complain that they weren't joining them along in their excesses, right? An excellent verse that I think kind of goes along with this, that crisis, these believers up there that Peter was addressing, should be following this advice, let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven. So I think that's what Peter is trying, going for and what he's telling these believers.

Same thing that Christ, the idea that Christ has in Matthew 5.16 here. So Andrew, this is Bob. you're quoting from the Sermon on the Mount, which, you know, I think, you know, often it's criticized because it's all kingdom age stuff, but there's a lot of principles of God that really are exemplified in the sermon. And you just perfect verse for that as believers walking in the new life that the Lord has given us.

Yeah. Right. And yeah, that's, um, That's not Mosaic Law stuff, it's Kingdom Law stuff. But yeah, a lot of things carry over. At least Christ, his mind and his will is the same for us in this Grace Age than it was in the Kingdom Age. So yeah, there's a lot of good stuff there that we can extract.

Verse 16, act as free men and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bond slaves of God. So act as free men here. Who is free is the question I have and the answer is we are in Christ. We have freedom from the sin nature and we have freedom from slavery to sin. Here again, I'm going to quote Christ himself in John 8, and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free or set you free.

The Jews answered him, we are Abraham's descendants. We have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say you will become free? And Jesus answered them again. And so, truly, truly, I say to you, anyone who commits sin is a slave of sin. The slave does not remain in the house forever. The son does remain forever. So, if the son makes you free, you will be free indeed.

And this passage in John is, yes, it's before his death, right? And Jesus was under the law. But still, John, the Gospel of John is, you can see how Christ is setting up what's going to happen after he dies and all this, this freedom that we have and the freedom from the sin nature. So to Bob's point, again, this is, I think, apropos to what we're studying today.

Yeah, I mean, Andrew, if you build on that just a little bit, if the sun makes you free, you'll be free indeed. I mean, that freedom is positional in terms of being blessed with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places. But in a sense, how confusing that is for the body of Christ today, isn't it? I mean, we're talking about the application of that to our condition. Our position has made us free. But are we living with that freedom?

I mean, I'm just raising that as a curiosity. Yeah. And good, good point, because that's what I was trying to get at. It's almost as Christ himself here before he died, before Paul came along and explained all this stuff and Peter. Christ, if you look at it, he's talking about positional truth there. So he's way ahead of the game and he's giving people who are listening to him things to come. But yeah, it's positional truth here that he's talking about in that we are placed in him and he's giving them that information before they had any clue what that was going to look like.

I quoted Galatians 5.1 here.

It was for freedom that Christ set us free. Therefore, keep standing firm, again, positional in truth, and do not be subject again to the yoke of slavery. And we're looking at how we are free in Christ and then how we are able then as free men in Christ, free men and free women to act as free individuals.

All those without Christ, however, are not free. They are slaves to their sins, plural, and the sin nature, aren't they? They're slaves to both of those. So let's look at, and I'm kind of on a tangent here in verse 16, but it's kind of important to look at, I think, is who is not free?

And freedom in scripture is never described as do as you please or the ability to act independently. The desires and needs of the sin nature are always too great to be independent of it. Also, freedom is not freedom from service. And this is from Merriman and Macaulay when they talk about freedom. They say freedom is a change of masters. So going from one master to the other and not being free of any masters, but it's just a change of masters, which Merriman and Macaulay say that. I haven't heard any other commentator say that. So that was kind of unique to them, I think. But it's good, right?

True freedom, ironically, is when we live as slaves to Christ. I'm quoting Dr. Richeson there. Richeson also gives the following examples of philosophers in the pagan world who seem to know intuitively that every man, this is interesting, was a slave. And here's his quotes that he brings to support that. Seneca, no man, no one is free who is a slave to his body. Cicero, we are all servants of the law. We are servants of the law. that we may be able to be free.

And then Plutarch, every bad man is a slave. And it's interesting, these men are unbelievers. They probably don't know any of the things that we do, biblical things, but look what they say about the nature of man. It's pretty interesting that these Greek philosophers intuitively knew that. Okay, still on verse 16.

We are free in Christ, only do not abuse it. Do not use freedom as a covering for evil. And I didn't quote the actual Greek word here, but the Greek word for covering is a veil. or better a cloak using your freedom from the law and sin nature. You shouldn't use your freedom as a pretext for doing evil is the idea. And maybe in today's world, maybe When I think of cloak, I think of stealth. Maybe stealth technology, military stealth technology, is the same kind of thing as a cloak. So doing sin stealthily, perhaps, we don't want to do that.

Instead, use your freedom to serve God. Now, being a bond slave of Christ here, use your freedom as a bond slave of Christ. Here in verse 16 is the Greek word doulos, and it's serving God but doing it in love because of your love of God. So, due to moronomy, Chapter 15 gives this picture where it says, it shall come about if he says to you, and that's a Hebrew slave serving another Hebrew or Jewish person, they would serve for a period of six years, and then they would need to be released of their service in year seven.

So if that slave, that Hebrew slaves, says, I will not go out from you. You know, don't release me because he loves you and your household and he fares well with you. Then you should take an owl and pierce it through his ear into the door, which is brutal, but that's what they did. And he shall be your servant forever. You shall also do likewise with your maidservants. So these were slaves who were still going to be servants but they were doing it, the motivation was now love and that's the idea of this word doulos in the Greek as a bond slave. It's kind of doing it freely in love and not as a compulsion.

Okay, verse 17. We're on to verse 17. In verse 17, there's four commands, four imperative commands. One is to honor all people. And the word honor is tama'o, which is giving the proper estimate of a person and recognizing the value of a person. Fixing a value on someone. It's a imperative number one. Oh, it's imperative number one. It's the first of four. And it's an aorist active imperative. We'll see later there's some present active imperatives, but this one's an aorist active imperative.

How are all people valuable? And this is what I take to mean all people, believers and unbelievers alike. So how we relate to all people in the world and how are they valuable? Well, I have Genesis 127 here to support that, that people are valuable. humankind is valuable. So God created mankind in his own image, it says. In the image of God, he created them, male and female, he created them. So if God himself created all people and they're made in his image, I would say they're pretty valuable.

Here's a verse from Romans 5, 6 and 8. I'm skipping from 6 and going to 8, but Paul says, for while we're still helpless, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. But God demonstrates his own love toward us, that while we're yet sinners, Christ died for us. So the value that God places on mankind sinners is that he sent his son, right, to die for them.

So everyone's very valuable is the idea here. If we look at that word honor, see, tama'o. I say tama'o. Some of you may say tama'o. Tama'o, tama'o. Either way, you know what I'm getting at, I'm getting at a joke. Yes, thank you. I got it, Amber. Yeah, okay, good. It's kind of hard, you know, over Zoom to give a proper joke, so we'll see. Okay, so honor, as William R. Newell describes it, I like this, I like how he defines honor.

It's an attitude of reverence to God, to those God places in authority over us. As also towards those who stand in any place of earthly dignity, or those who have been given wealth, outstanding ability, or have risen to honorable position among their peers, to all men, for they are in the image of God as we see up there in Genesis 127. Newell says leave to the base the despising of others. I think this is interesting because as you see Newell says that hey as believers you know give up Give people their due if they have wealth or outstanding ability or have risen to honorable positions among their peers, maybe, you know, celebrities.

Hey, they did a good job and we should honor them and we shouldn't, I guess, I'm guilty of that. I'm guilty of our politicians of criticizing them harshly. in my mind, or maybe even verbally, but I really shouldn't do that, should I? I should, you know, they were elected to an office and they deserve my honor, even though I don't agree with them.

So it's, I think it's sort of interesting. I think that's a good definition of that honor all people, you know, don't, don't parse it out. Um, it could be that that's all they have in this world. And I think if we honor them, have that attitude of, um, praising them for who they are, uh, they'll, I think that'll be a good witness, uh, for God. If we're, um, if we just do that honoring.

So Andrew, what about the Lord Jesus Christ who turned the tables over at the tabernacle? Was he honoring those people? No, no, he was quite mad, wasn't he? Yeah, that's an interesting thing. They were debasing, though, the temple, weren't they? So I guess we'd have to parse that as if they are doing sin, but if they're just If they're not sinning, I think we can honor them.

What would you say, Bob? We might honor the person, but not maybe his message. Because there's many people that their message is evil or sinful. And we're not approving of their message, but we honor them as a person that has been created by God. Honor here has the idea of respecting the office of the individual. And the individual may be committing acts that are sinful. And our Lord Jesus, when he overturned the money changers, was revealing the sin.

Interesting. Yeah. And Bob's right. I mean, especially with the abortion issue. Yeah, we can ignore that. But we do have. You know, a couple weeks ago, I was of the mindset of we should get rid of the government and start afresh, right? And start all over and drive everyone out and start from scratch with the Constitution. But then we have, I think what we can do is go to our representatives and we can Because we live in a representative government, we can petition our government through our representatives, so we can put pressure on government to do certain things, but not go directly, not have another revolution, but just lean on these representatives to do the right thing and give them honor. try and get rid of these things that our government does that are clearly sinful, right?

So, love the brotherhood. The second imperative here is agape love. Agapeo is the verb here and it's the affection, goodwill, benevolence towards those who are in Christ, our fellow brothers in Christ. It's the same unselfish love as what's described in 1 Corinthians 13, that kind of love. It's a present active imperative, so do it in the present. You are actively doing it and it's a command, right? Here's again from Christ himself, a new commandment I give you. That you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men know that you are my disciples if you love one another. So that's Christ giving the same command to love one another. Love the brethren.

Paul here in Galatians 5 says, for you were called to freedom, brethren, only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love, serve one another, serve the brothers. Same idea we have in loving the brotherhood as Peter gives up in verse 17 up there. Note the parallel that Paul has with Peter. How Paul says in his verse, verse 513, he says, do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh. And that's exactly what we were talking about in verse 16, right? That Peter was saying. I just thought that parallel was very interesting.

Fear God. is a third imperative command. Fear is pho-ba-ong. It's a reverential respect and awe. The other definition of fear, and I don't know if it's a homonym, meaning that fear has two meanings. Maybe homonym is the right term, maybe not. But the other meaning for fear is terror and dread. So it's either reverential respect and awe or terror and dread.

And when we fear God, we do the first reverential respect. It's our third imperative of verse 17 and it's a present middle imperative. So the middle voice says that we are interested in fearing God for ourselves. We are concerned with the action, the outcome of the action. And it's the middle voice has us intimately involved with the fear of God, with the reverential respect and awe of God.

Here's Proverbs. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge or wisdom. Fools despise wisdom and instruction. And it's interesting again there that in this Proverbs verse we're talking about fools despising wisdom and instruction. And Peter is talking about fools who are ignorant, right? Up in verse 15. So that little parallelism is interesting.

Here's our friend and former colleague from Holly Hills, Brad Mattinson. I quote him because I like this quote that he gives about fear of God. Anyone who has ever swam or been near a great whale knows what fear is. It's strange and unnerving. It's fascinating to think. This huge whale has no malice towards me, no desire to eat me or doesn't show any fear in front of me that it will want to attack me. But the very hugeness of it is in some way frightening. I sometimes wonder if this is the awe and respect that is due God. I like that because being in the water, I've never done it, but being in the water scuba diving with a whale would be terrifying, truly terrifying. But you would have that you might have terror and dread, fear, but you'd also have this reverential respect and awe of this great creature that's swimming next to you. So I just thought that was an interesting little comment from Brad.

Honor the king. This is our last and final imperative command. And it sums up our government, our responsibility under government authority, and that is to honor the king. Honor, again, same word, tamo'o or tame'o. This is the fourth imperative. It's present active imperative. We are brought back here to verse 13, and that's submit to those in authority. governors, kings, et cetera.

If we as citizens do right or do good by government, we should... Let's see what I'm saying here. Let me back up. If we as citizens do right, good by government... Oh, here's how we do right and good by government is what I'm trying to say. I worded this kind of softly.

But we should keep the attitude and mindset of submission to governing authorities in verse 13. And we honor that governing authority in verse 17. As a result, by us submitting and honoring governing authority, government should, by its authority derived from God, offer its praise and commendation to us. So if we go back and remember purpose one of government, which is to punish evil doers, that's government's responsibility.

Purpose two of government is to praise and honor, to praise and commend those who do right. Our responsibility is to submit, to do right, and honor authority to win hearts and minds for Christ Jesus. with the caveats that Bob gave us earlier when they're actually doing the doing evil work and they certainly can.

So that sums that up here. Any questions, comments? It's a tough go, as Bob was mentioning, in today's world to see that many times government is not doing what's right. We don't always see, and we see, at least in the public sphere, Christians are not normally praised. They're normally put down, which Christ also told us that's going to happen. So it's an interesting balance between suffering for Christ, and then we're going to be honored by our actions. It's hard to see that in the spectrum of the public sphere.

I was just saying, you know, we've got to be reminded where our citizenship is. We're not of this world. And we can respect the offices for what they stand for. And basically, there is a speed limit that if we go too fast, we get a ticket. I mean, there are those kinds of things that really relate to the day in and day out existence. But but anyway, I think it takes another nature to kind of ignore things like I mentioned earlier and just let them go to rest.

It's tough. It's very hard. Yeah. In the spirit, even to to accept abortion as a government rule for the land anyway. Well, I was just thinking in parallel to that, Bob, is we have a lot of things here on the earth that are not correct. And in the face of who we are in Christ, we have the perspective to see that. Whereas the world around us does not and wants to get along with one another and even doing evil in order to get along with one another to them is what is considered good.

I think one of the things the Sanhedrin emphasized to Peter was, you know, you be quiet. You can leave, but you don't say anything. And he said to the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders under the system that was in existence over them, you judge if it is right or wrong. We've got to obey God.

And they went out and they spoke publicly about what they had seen and heard about Christ. It brings up what I brought up last week is if you think about it, was the American revolution casting off the government of King George III, you know, was that We had a revolution or should have those colonists bared under the king like that. It's an interesting proposition. Yes, especially in this day and age when the government is doing evil things, releasing criminals, not punishing clearly people who should be punished, right? interesting stuff.

Let me pray and then we'll go to the next service. Heavenly Father, we bow before you today in humility, but we know that we are in Christ and we have our first and primary responsibility is to you and your word. And we thank you for our government. Even though it does evil things, we pray that you'll work through and clear up some of the some of the problems our government has and that it'll go better for us in this country, Lord. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.