Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

When Seth asked me to preach, and assigned me our text in I Peter, he probably didn’t realize (and I didn’t recall until I looked it up) that he was asking me to preach from a text that I don’t particularly like or enjoy.

In fact, if I made a list of my top ten least favorite passages in the Bible, this one would undoubtedly be high on that list.

I don’t mean that these passages are not inspired Scripture; I believe they are.

I think this one is!

I mean only that they can raise serious ethical questions, and must be handled by interpreters today like one might handle a destabilized nuclear reactor.

Used appropriately, it could power the life of a whole town.

But one wrong slip, trip, or fall, and thousands could be harmed by its destructive force.

As a result, this sermon is going to “feel” a little different from how I normally preach.

Those of you accustomed to my regular attempts to passionately exposit Scripture and apply it to our lives as a Word from God will recognize the differences immediately.

I’m going to ask you to think with me a lot more in this message.

And to wrestle with some serious questions.

Questions to which I’m not going to provide easy answers.

But before we dive in, we need to understand a little bit of what is going on in the background into which Peter writes.

It has been scarcely three decades since the infant Christian faith burst onto the scene of world history.

And far less time than that has passed since Christianity came to be regarded as more than just a small sect within Judaism.

At every turn, new questions are being asked about what it means to live as a follower of Jesus in the first century Roman world.

We don’t know precisely how the believers Peter speaks to came to know the story of Jesus.

But we do know that they were mostly Gentiles, and mostly converts from the fringes of society and the bottom rungs of the social ladder.

And we know that they are people who have begun to suffer even further shame and reproach for their commitment to Christ.

So what does Peter say to these suffering believers?

Peter’s response, and our text, comes in three parts.

In verses 13-17 Peter speaks generally about the importance of his readers submitting to the governing authorities of his day, especially the Emperor (Nero).

In verses 18-20 he then addresses specifically the slaves who are among the readers, and exhorts them to submit to their owners.

And finally, in verses 21-25, he grounds his exhortations in a beautiful re-telling of the Gospel story that emphasizes how Christ suffered unjustly on the cross, and bore our own sins and sufferings in himself.

2:13-17 - Christians should submit to governing authorities because civil obedience gives the Gospel a good name.

Peter exhorts these impoverished believers, who live in a society increasingly hostile to the Christian faith and message, to recognize that God is sovereign over their rulers.

The emperor Nero, and the governors he sent, were harsh tyrannical dictators.

Peter urges submission to them.

To do anything else would likely have brought only death to the burgeoning Christian movement.

If becoming a Christian in the first century came to mean becoming a poor citizen of Rome, it would only hinder the growth of the Christian faith.

So Peter urges submission.

This poses special challenges to us today.

We are no longer in the same boat as Peter’s readers.

The Christian faith in North America is not an infantile struggling minority whose very existence is being threatened.

So how do we bring a word like Peter’s from the ancient world into our modern one?

If the Christian call is obedience, then what does this say about the claim, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness,” which the American Declaration of Independence makes?

What of the Revolutionary War?

Is July 4th a celebration of a sinful act, of a nation living by its very existence in a sinful state of rebellion against authorities instituted by God Himself?

Many Christians through the ages would answer yes.

And how should we respond to these biblical injunctions in relation to our own current government?

Is a protest, like the recent “teacher protest” in downtown OKC, an inherent act of sin against Peter’s command to “be subject” to the Emperor as supreme?

We have to wrestle with the fact that the circumstances of Peter’s readers are vastly different from our own.

And we have to ask the difficult questions of what that means for how we bring such a text into our own present context.

One author explains well;

What we see here, then, is a change of circumstances that leads to a change of how we are to apply the Petrine injunction.

So the questions we asked in the preceding paragraphs are important as we seek to apply this text to our world.

To answer these kinds of questions involves more than simple yes and no answers.

It requires an awareness of the relations of Roman citizens and noncitizens to the emperor and a solid grasp of what relationship such groups have to our specific form of government.

Such issues are not simple, but neither are they so beyond our reach that we should despair of trying to resolve them.

Instead, we recognize that application is in some sense immediate for many people, and we seek to be as faithful to the will and revelation of God as we can.

In my judgment, the change of circumstances that can be found in moving from a Roman emperor like Nero to life under a British prime minister or an American president is so cataclysmic that major changes in the ethical directives must also be made.

That is, “living under the order” no longer means “submission” in the way it did in the first century.

What we do now is to live decently and as good citizens, but we can still be good citizens in vehement protests and civil disobedience in a way that was completely outside the capacity for first-century citizens (and noncitizens).

We ought to respect our leaders, but we do not for a minute think we have to obey their every wish—out of a fear of serious punishment.

Though we must be careful, I think it can be appropriate to draw some general applications about a general submission to government authorities.

It is still true that disobedience to human governments could bring a bad name upon Christianity within them.

Thus, some of Peter’s evangelistic concerns remain at play.

And God is still sovereign over every human government.

Obedience to human government is still appropriate, except when obedience to human government would cause disobedience to God himself and his laws.

But it is always true that when the laws of God contradict the laws of men, “We must obey God rather than men” ().

civil obedience gives the Gospel a good name.

2:18—20 - Even slaves should submit to their masters, good or unjust, because God both sees their plight and rewards their unjust suffering.

Many of those to whom Peter writes were living as slaves under the Roman system of slavery.

They almost surely had endured some of the gross abuses that were the common lot of slaves in that day (see for example, ).

Among his readers would be those who had been beaten, flogged, ripped from their families, sold as property, and probably even sexually abused.

They may have seen some of their friends or relatives executed summarily and unjustly before their very eyes.

Peter writes to them to be, “subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust.”

Perhaps even more painful is Peter’s statement in verse 20, “For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure?”

It is easy to understand and sympathize with the claims of those who say that behind Peter’s words lies the unchallenged presupposition that sometimes a slave simply deserved a good beating.

How do we handle such an injunction today?

Many today use such texts as objections against the Christian faith and message, claiming that the Christian Bible encourages and enables abuse and human trafficking.

And sadly, we must admit that historically, such texts were used commonly by Christian slave-owners in American history to justify their sinful slave-trade.

They could point to this passage and claim that God had endorsed slavery.

What do we do with such questions?

The truth is, we must recognize the context into which Peter is speaking.

Calls for widespread slave revolt would have brought a bad name upon the infant faith.

Peter’s heart is one of apologetic.

He wants the slaves to whom he writes to give a good name to the Christian faith by being the best slaves they can be.

By their amazingly obedient and respectful behavior, they silence those in their day who object to Christian faith (2:15).

David deSilva explains well;

Peter joins several other New Testament voices in calling believers to dispel the prejudice against them through moral, virtuous living (see also 1 Thess 4:11–12; 1 Tim 3:7; 6:1; Tit 2:5, 8).

This includes, in large measure, making every possible concession to the norms of the non-Christian society in order to show that Christians can fit in with conventional morality (save for specific points of conflict, like idolatry) and thus avoid conflict over matters nonessential to the Christian confession.

This should lead us to take great care in our application of New Testament codes of conduct for slaves, wives, the governed and so on, lest we take what was a concession to first-century culture and read it as a mandate for twenty-first-century Christianity.

Converted slaves and wives would come into unavoidable conflict in the domestic sphere if the master or husband had not also become a Christian.

Those within the household were expected to follow the religion of the head of the household (usually, but not always a male) as part of their recognition of the respect due the head.

The Christian’s avoidance of idolatry would automatically bring tension as the wife or slave refused to participate in the domestic rites that involved invocations of the household gods.

For the slave it might also entail refusing commands that would compromise morality (for, indeed, slaves could also become the sexual playthings of the masters and mistresses of the household).

Peter wants to ensure that if a slave must suffer in the household, it will not be for any perception of laziness or disrespect, but only for the sake of his or her commitment to Christ and the way of life Christ enjoins (1 Pet 2:18–25).

Similarly, the Christian wife will so embody the cultural “ideal” of submissiveness, modesty and quietness that this will outweigh any displeasure incurred on account of her unwillingness to yield in matters religious (1 Pet 3:1–6).

The instructions given to Christian slaves become the advice given to Christians in general (cf. 1 Pet 2:18–25 with 3:13–22; 4:12–16).

The expectation throughout is that Christians can overcome the prejudice against them by showing that discipleship does not make people subversive of the social order.

In fact, it makes them better subjects (in every sphere, both public and domestic).

Once they are divorced from their original context, it is easy to see how these texts could become manifestos for maintaining the status quo, even under oppressive and unjust conditions.

Such uses, however, lose sight of the author’s goal for giving these instructions (as well as the arenas in which he calls for “civil disobedience”) and make the prophetic Spirit a cipher for domination systems.

Peter tells slaves to be the best slaves they can in this situation; a few decades later John denounces the domination system—the great whore—built on the backs of slaves (Rev 18:11–13).

We need great discernment to know how God would have us speak at any specific time and in any specific situation.

I think slavery is an inherently evil institution, and that Peter’s admonition and attitude should not be taken as a universal ethical ideal.

Slavery remains a great evil today that has not gone away; it has only gone underground.

By some estimates, there are currently 35 million human beings abused as labor and sex slaves throughout the world, including an embarrassingly large number here in North America.