1 Peter 2:13-17

CRITICAL AND EXEGETICAL NOTES

1 Peter 2:13. Submit yourselves.—This belongs to the care Christians should take not to be in any sense an occasion of offence in Society (Romans 13:1). Ordinance of man.—Every human institution. A spiritual life can find expression in every form of governmental and social life. For the lord’s sake.—Lest reproach should come on Him, through reproach coming on you. King.—Here an abstract word for the person in chief authority. Then an emperor.

1 Peter 2:14.—Even an imperfect government aims to secure the general good. It is noticed that neither St. Peter nor St. Paul lay down any exceptions to the rule of complete obedience; and yet proper exceptions there must be.

1 Peter 2:15. With well-doing.—Not with disputations, but with the irresistible persuasion of a holy life. Ignorance.—For the calumnies of Christians were spread by those who hated them without knowing anything correctly about them. The word implies a stolid and wilful ignorance.

1 Peter 2:16. As free.—In regard to the ordering of personal life relations. Bound to meet all public obligations; free to shape their own life and conduct. Worldly maxims, social customs, common habits and opinions, have no binding force on Christians. In all this sphere the Christian is a “law unto himself.” Cloke of maliciousness.—“If under the pretence that they were asserting their Christian freedom they were rude, overbearing, insolent, regardless of the conventional courtesies of life,” this made the liberty a cloke of baseness.

1 Peter 2:17. Honour.—By showing each one the respect that is due to him. Love.—With more than the love of complacency; with the love of family. Fear.—The feeling which recognises a supreme claim.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— 1 Peter 2:13

Fitting the New Life into Old Relations.—When a man is born of God, and made conscious of a new life, with new interests, new motives, new desires, and new sympathies, he is often troubled by the difficulty of fitting his new self to the old associations. Those old associations he must keep. He cannot change his family circumstances, or his business, or his obligations, or his social conditions. He must find out how to fit his new life into them, so that it may ennoble them, and they may in no way hinder or injure it. The difficulty is seen very clearly in the case of Christians who had been heathen, and must still keep in heathen surroundings. Those heathen round them were keenly on the watch for grounds of accusation against them; quick to discern any inconsistencies. The Christians were bound to be careful not to give offence, and bring the Christian name into disrepute. In this paragraph one form of practical difficulty with which the Christians had to deal is indicated. Their new life could not fail to bring to them a sense of dignity; it might easily take a bad form, and become an assumption of superiority, which would spoil their every-day relations with men, and make them unwilling to submit to existing rule and authority. Their new life would give them a sense of freedom from all restraints, which might readily pass into resistance to, and rebellion against, the constituted authorities. Apostolic advice was specially needed under such circumstances, and St. Peter is fully in harmony with St. Paul in the advice that he gives. The particular case before St. Peter’s mind is that of Christian Jews driven from their own country and lifelong associations by persecution, and finding shelter for a time in foreign lands, where there were different systems of government, different customs, and people of different temperaments. There could not fail to be very much that grieved them, very much that tried them, and very much that provoked them. The serious question for them to answer was: How can the new life in Christ fit to these strange surroundings? How does it inspire us to think and to act? The kind of feeling which the presence of Christians in a community then excited is illustrated by the exclamation of the rabble that dragged Jason and certain of the brethren before the rulers of Thessalonica, “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also” (Acts 17:6). There evidently was a widespread suspicion that, wherever they went, Christians became elements of disorder.

I. Christians should loyally accept the governmental system of the country in which they dwell.—It may be monarchical, republican, colonial, or otherwise. There are different systems of government, and there must always be differences of opinion as to which is absolutely the best, and which is relatively the best for a particular nation, at a particular time in its history. A Christian has a perfect right to his own opinion, and is free to find wise occasions on which to express it; but so far as his practical conduct and daily life are concerned, he should loyally accept existing conditions, and take care to be no disturber of the peace. A question of casuistry arises here. Is it ever lawful for a Christian to resist the law? Assuming Hampden to have been a spiritual Christian, was he justified in refusing to pay the “ship-money”? The answer may be that no rule is without exceptions; and that cases may occur in which principle is involved, and loyalty to the absolute right, which is loyalty to God, demands resistance, even at the cost of being misunderstood, and of suffering. Still, the general rule is that Christians should make peaceable citizens, and in so doing they help to secure that general protection from evil-doers, and security for honest trade, which are the primary duties of social government, whatever form it may take.

II. Christians always have a power at command for the silencing of those who slander them.—“The ignorance of foolish men” means baseless, senseless slanders. Men in positions of authority are always subject to the malign influence of the slanderer. Christians in a heathen city could not fail to attract attention by their very difference from others. Slanders start with next to nothing, and grow until shamefully wicked things can be said, all utterly baseless, but too easily believed, because men find such strange pleasure in hearing of the failure of the good. Very seldom, indeed, can a slander be followed through, fought, and conquered. But the Christian can always live it down. He can be calm, he can be silent, he can keep on his life of purity and charity, and that will tell in the long run. Slanders have no staying power; well-doing has. The good man, if he will be persistent, is sure of victory, for God is on the side of the good.

III. Christians are free to sustain all gracious relations.—An old divine, dealing with the saying that “a Christian is a man who may do what he likes,” replied, “That is quite true, only a Christian is a man with a new set of likes.” The Christian is free unto righteousness; free to do everything right, and kind, and worthy. But the Christian is not free to do wrong. He is under the strictest obligations not to do anything unworthy of the name he bears. What sort of things a Christian is free to do is indicated in 1 Peter 2:17.

1. Treat every man respectfully and considerately, as he would wish them to treat him. To a Christian man, every man, no matter how poor or ignorant he may be, is to be honoured for the image of God in him.
2. Keep up all that is becoming to the family relation within the Church of God.
3. Let the cherished, reverent sense of God put serious and careful tone on all the conduct and association of life.
4. Set good example of good manners in the social and national life. Good manners recognise what is due to persons placed in positions of trust and responsibility.

SUGGESTIVE NOTES AND SERMON SKETCHES

1 Peter 2:16. Our Freedom in Christ.—There is not another word in human language with power to thrill human hearts like this word “liberty.” The victim of revolution exclaimed, “Oh, liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name!” And we may say, “Oh, liberty! what deeds of philanthrophy and heroism have been wrought under thy inspiration!” There must be some sentiment, common to humanity, to which this word makes its appeal. It must be this: throughout humanity there is an inward consciousness of bondage under sin. Every offer of outward liberty—liberty of circumstance—is caught up by men, in the hope, more or less distinctly cherished, that its final issue will be liberty of soul. The religion of the Lord Jesus Christ has its chief end “to set at liberty them that are bruised.” It proclaims “liberty to the captives.”

I. Freedom in Christ is freedom of the soul.—Men want

(1) freedom of circumstances;
(2) freedom of thought; or
(3) freedom to do wrong—the wrong that they wish to do. But freedom in Christ is no freedom such as these. It is the freedom of the soul. The sinner is the real slave. The drunkard, the worldling, the sensual, the passionate, the dishonest, the selfish, the proud, the unforgiving, the uncharitable, the unbelieving, are slaves. Christ comes, past all the fetters of human circumstance, right into the soul of man. He comes to strike off rings and chains from the wrists and anklets of the soul. This is the priceless boon. The only freedom worth having is liberty to do always the things that please God. And in that sense God has made us free in Christ Jesus. We are free to grow up into the likeness of God’s dear Son; our souls are free in righteousness. The Son has made us free, and we are free indeed.

II. Freedom in Christ is freedom by the truth.—Falsehood binds to a practical life of sin. The root of all evil is a lie. Truth works out into goodness and righteousness; untruth always works out into unrighteousness and misery. Nothing can stand but the truth. Nobody can endure who is not true. Every opinion has some practical issue; it works toward something. If it be false and unworthy, it will surely tie the soul down to a life of indulgence and wrong-doing. If it be true and noble, it as surely leaves the soul free to fulfil, in the earthly spheres, the righteousness for which it was made. The truth ever makes free. Every lesser phase of truth, whether it be political, or social, or scientific, or moral, is a liberation of men. But it is that truth brought to light by Christ, taught by Him, and embodied in His life, which is the great liberator. It frees hand, and conscience, and heart, to know that God is the heavenly Father, and the Saviour of men by sacrifice. It frees us for seeking after righteousness to apprehend the truth, that this world is not the real world, and that a time is coming when the whole humanity shall be glorified.

III. Freedom in Christ is freedom in the Spirit.—“Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty. That Holy Spirit works within us, in the secrets of our spiritual natures. He moulds, and restrains, and impels, and purifies, and quickens our inclination, and passion, and affection, and imagination, and intellect, and habit, plucking all the self-bondages, all the society bondages, all the sin-bondages, away. He who is quite perfectly in the sway of God the Holy Ghost—if there be such an one among us—is free from all the enticements and allurements of evil—free to follow God fully. Distinguish between liberty and independence; between freedom and licence: and then we may readily recognise those reasonable abridgments and restraints under which Christian freedom is set. The Christian man will not only find necessary limitations of his freedom, he will also voluntarily abridge his liberty, and put himself under restraints. Cultured and sensitive conscience, in respect of right and wrong, is sure to set limitations. But Christian interest in others, positions of influence on others, and, above all, the sacrificings of Christian love and charity, lead us constantly to refuse to do what, in a strict sense, we have full liberty to do. We must take heed “lest our liberty become a stumbling-block to them that are weak.”

Liberty.—A brief sketch of history suffices for indicating the power which the cry for “liberty” has universally exerted. The hope of liberty called out of Egypt a tribe of slaves, and in seeking freedom they became one of the foremost nations of the earth. Liberty rallied the down-trodden sons of Israel round the banners of a delivering Barak, or Gideon, or Jephthah. Liberty fired the nation with a magnificent heroism, and led to the casting off of a foreign yoke, in the days of Judas Maccabeus. The freedom of the holy sepulchre from the hands of the infidel flung the noblest of Europe’s sons, in splendid and enthusiastic self-sacrifice, on the shores of Asia, in the time of the Crusades. Freedom from a hated tyrant’s power made a handful of Swiss mountaineers mightier than an empire of soldiers, in the legendary days of William Tell. Freedom to worship God sent the Pilgrim Fathers over the then almost trackless Atlantic, seeking new lands and homes. “Liberty, equality, fraternity”—grand words—have served for a sign that should arouse nations into hideous passions of revolution. Freedom for a million English slaves woke the response of the noblest English hearts in our fathers’ time. And still, if men would move the hearts of their fellows, they raise some cry of civil or religious liberty. False or true, worthy or unworthy, a host will surely follow him who offers a boon that is esteemed so priceless.

1 Peter 2:17. Honour.—To “honour,” as the word signifies, is to estimate the value of anything, and to proportion our regards to the ascertained value. Apply this rule to man. Estimate his value by his Creator’s love, and by his Redeemer’s sufferings; by his own capacity of religion, of morals, of intellectual advancements, of pleasure, of pain, by his relation to a life and to a death to come; and you will then feel that to honour a man is to respect him under these views and relations; to be anxious for his welfare; to contemplate him, not only with benevolence, but even with awe and fear, lest a prize so glorious should be lost, lest a being so capable should be wretched for ever.—Richard Watson.

1 Peter 2:1. Honour all Men.—The royal law of Christ rests not on the crumbling basis of varying ordinances, nor on the tottering foundation of disputable traditions, but on the foundation of broad, eternal truths, on the foundation of Christ Himself. For we cannot understand either why or how we should honour all men unless we know what this meaneth: “The Word became flesh.”

I. “Honour all men.”—There is a strange universality about the precept. All but the brutish understand the duty of giving honour where honour is due; all but the vile honour those whose lives are beautiful with the beauty of holiness, and noble with the nobleness of God. But are we to honour the mean, the base, the despicable, the depraved? Yes, we honour the majesty of their nature even in its fall. We honour the man in the men. As Michael Angelo sees in the rough block of marble the winged angel, struggling to be free; as Flaxman walking in the slums, sees the beauties and possibilities of the “human face divine” even under the dirt and squalor of the gutter-child;—even so with pity and reverence the true Christian sees, even in the lowest, the marred work of Him who breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life.

II. As life goes on, it is more and more our temptation to honour no man.—All our faith in human nature sometimes seems to be shaken to its foundations. Nor can we be surprised, our human nature being what it is, if even good and great men have succumbed at times to the fatal temptation of despairing of humanity. “Most men are bad;” there is the summary of the Greek philosopher, who deliberately left it as the maxim of his wisdom.

III. Though there is so much weight of authority and evidence to support this despairing view, it would be fatal to us; fatal to the hope by which we are saved, and which is as a vernal breeze amid poisonous fogs; fatal to the glad enthusiasm which leaps up like a fountain amid the briny waves and corrupted currents of the world. In spite of all the facts and evidence, we would say, with a living writer: “I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its faculties, in the fulness of its mercy, in the joy of its love.” Has it never struck you how marvellous is the fact that words so noble, so far-reaching as these—“Honour all men”—should be uttered by a poor Jew, a Galilean fisherman? Had this rule been followed, what a different world we should have seen in the past! Every great crime of governments and of nations has been a crime against the inherent rights of the human race—slavery, despotism, priestcraft, etc. “Honour all men”—their inherent dignity, the infinite possibilities of their nature, their freedom of conscience, the awful price of their redemption, their immediate accountability to God. While this honour leads us to deep reverence for all human goodness, let it inspire us also with such hope and compassion as shall feel none to be too low, too fallen, for our pity or our help. Let us see humanity in Christ, and it will be indeed transfigured with heavenly lustre.—Archdeacon Farrar.

The Sum of Our Duty.—These words have very briefly, and yet not obscured by briefness, but withal very plainly, the sum of our duty towards God and men; to men, both in general—honour all men; and in special relations, in their Christian or religious relations—love the brotherhood; and in a chief civil relation—honour the king. And our whole duty to God, comprised under the name of His fear, is set in the middle betwixt these, as the common spring of all duty to men, and of all due observance of it, and the sovereign rule by which it is to be regulated.—Leighton.

The Image of God in Man.—The fact that there are in every man traces of the image of God, after which he has been created, and infinitely undeveloped capacities which might issue in the restoration of that image to its original brightness, was in itself a reason for treating all, even the vilest and most degraded, with some measure of respect.—Dean Plumptre.

Honour Due to All Men.—Among the inestimable blessings of Christianity, not the least is the new sentiment with which it teaches man to look upon his fellow-beings—the new relation which it establishes between man and man. There is nothing of which men know so little as themselves. They understand incomparably more of the surrounding creation of matter, or of its laws, than of that spiritual principle to which matter was made to be the minister, and without which the outward universe would be worthless. Men have as yet no just respect for themselves, and of consequence no just respect for others. Nothing can make man a true lover of man but the discovery of something interesting and great in human nature. We must see and feel that a human being is something important, and of immeasurable importance. To show the grounds on which the obligation to honour all men rests, I might take a minute survey of that human nature which is common to all, and set forth its claims to reverence. But there is one principle of the soul which makes all men essentially equal, which places all on a level as to means of happiness. It is the sense of duty, the power of discerning and doing right, the moral and religious principle, the inward monitor which speaks in the name of God. This is the great gift of God. We can conceive no greater. It is this moral power which makes all essentially equal, which annihilates all the distinctions of this world. The idea of Right is the primary and the highest revelation of God to the human mind, and all outward revelations are founded on, and addressed to it. We little understand the solemnity of the moral principle in every human mind. We think not how awful are its functions. We forget that it is the germ of immortality. There is a foundation in the human soul for the honour enjoined in the text towards all men. By Christianity this duty is enforced by new and more solemn considerations. This whole religion is a testimony to the worth of man in the sight of God, to the importance of human nature, to the infinite purposes for which we were framed. True, Christianity speaks of man as a sinner—it deals with human sin; but it does not speak of this as indissolubly bound up with the soul, as entering into the essence of human nature, but as a temporary stain, which it calls on us to wash away. It gives none of those dark views of our race which would make us shrink from it as from a nest of venomous reptiles. The very strength of his temptations is one of the indications of his greatness. The sentiment of honour or respect for human beings is essential to the Christian character. A more faithful culture of it would do much to carry forward the Church and the world. I attach to this sentiment such importance that I measure by its progress the progress of Society. The various forms in which this principle is to be exercised or manifested, may be enlarged on. Honour man from the beginning to the end of his earthly course. Honour the child: on this principle all good education rests. Honour the poor; this sentiment of respect is essential to improving the connexion between the more and less prosperous conditions of Society. Perhaps none of us have yet heard or can comprehend the tone of voice in which a man, thoroughly impressed with this sentiment, would speak to a fellow-creature. It is a language hardly known on earth. The great revelation which man now needs is a revelation of man to himself. The faith which is most wanted is a faith in what we and our fellow-beings may become; a faith in the Divine germ or principle in every soul. Happy are they who have begun to penetrate that mystery of our spiritual nature, and in whom it has awakened feelings of awe towards themselves, and of deep interest and honour towards their fellow-creatures.—W. E. Channing, D.D.

ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 2

1 Peter 2:14. Living Stones.—Figuratively, like plants, connected with and nourished by their roots. Stones still in the quarry are said to be living. The epithet means the firmness of that thing signified by the name of a stone, for nothing is firmer than stones growing in a quarry, as cleaving fast to a rock by the root.—Burder.

Seeming Life of Radiant Stones.—Of course a living stone means a human being. The figure takes its origin from the seeming life of radiant stones, whose gleams and flashes have the seeming, at times, of will and life. A man is said in the Bible to be more precious than the gold of Ophir; and of a woman it is said, “Her price is far above rubies.” These were common comparisons. There is something in the glow of precious stones that peculiarly fits them to serve for such spiritual figures. There is about them a subtle light—a brilliancy—that burns without fire; that consumes nothing, and requires no supply; that for ever shines without oil; that is ever-living, unwasting, unchanged by any of the natural elements. A diamond that glows in the sunlight flashes yet more beautifully in the night. No mould can get root upon it; no rust can tarnish it; no decay can waste it. The jewels that were buried two thousand years ago, if now dug up from royal and priestly tombs, would come forth as fair and fresh as they were when the proud wearer first carried them in his diadem—fit emblems by which to represent spiritual qualities, and the beauty and imperishableness of Christian virtue. And a company of holy men, resting upon the Lord Jesus Christ, may well be compared to a palace built upon broad foundations, and sparkling to the very summit with living stones which throw back to the sun a differing flash through every hour of his rise or fall through the long day.—H. W. Beecher.

Stones Left Unused.—Travellers sometimes find in lonely quarries, long abandoned, or once worked by a vanished race, great blocks, squared and dressed, that seem to have been meant for palace or shrine. But there they lie, neglected and forgotten, and the building for which they were hewn has been reared without them. Beware, lest God’s grand temple should be built without you, and you be left to desolation and decay.—A. Maclaren, D.D.

1 Peter 2:13. Political Morality.—The teaching of the New Testament, as exhibited in this passage, imparts a new vitality to political economy. It forms a marvellous contrast to the ordinary teaching of Judaism—that civil obedience was not due to heathen governors except on compulsion. The Christian’s devotion to Jesus Christ is to be enthusiastic. All ordinary duties are His, and this consideration is to breathe a new spirit into the discharge of them. It makes the Christian, as circumstances require it, either the faithful public servant or the hero. It may be objected that the state is put forward rather in a negative than in a positive aspect. I ask, How, under existing circumstances, could it possibly have been otherwise? It was at this period so corrupt that to have taught a devotion to it would have been inconsistent with pure public morality. One cannot conceive of a holy man being fired with an ardent patriotism for such a condition of political society as that involved in the Roman empire during the first century of our era. Enthusiastic loyalty to the Roman emperors of that period was impossible. If, on the other hand, the writers of the New Testament had given a formal precept to Christians, enforcing on them the duty of becoming political reformers, this would have at once aroused the mighty power of the empire to crush the Christian Church. As there was nothing in the existing state of society to kindle a spark of enthusiasm in the discharge of duty, the New Testament asks the Christian to discharge his duties to the Lord Christ.—Row.