Silence the Foolish People
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2010 · 16 May 2010
What does an unbeliever look at when he hears about Christianity? What is it that will make a person pay attention when someone gives a testimony? What is it that will touch someone’s heart to find out more about Christ?
What a person remembers is maybe vaguely the essence of your testimony, but what draws him near to Jesus is the way you are everyday, the way you care about others, the way your keep your word, the way you treat your wife and kids, the way and the way you show that God is the most important part in your life.
Peter is teaching us how to live a life like that, he is teaching us how to do good in the eyes of the Lord, he is teaching us how to live according to the rules of the land whether we agree or not and in spite of being disliked and even persecuted by the surrounding people and those in charge.
Let us listen to 1 Peter 2:13-17, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, 14 or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good. 15 For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. 16 Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. 17 Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor.”
The key verse of this part of Scripture is really in verse 15, “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people.” God calls us to live a life that is above reproach, above criticism and above any shame.
How you live as a Christian is the greatest proof of the transforming power of the gospel. This is the source of strength of our witness. So when a person gives another the gospel, there is already a foundation shown in the life of that person.
And Peter teaches us this in three ways. He first said in verses 11-12 that we should recognize that we are aliens and strangers in this society. And now in verses 13-17 he says that even though we are aliens and strangers we are still citizens and therefore should conduct ourselves as such. And thirdly later on in verses 18-20 he tells us that we are servants of God.
So the way that we live will determine whether we will lead someone to Christ or whether we become fuel for criticism. There are many leaders in Christianity today that live in such a way that their function as a citizen is causing people to doubt the name of Christ.
We have discussed the idea that we are aliens who live in this world but know that they are just passing through and that the focus is not on the things of this world that are temporary but we look towards being with God for eternity. That’s why our real affection is on things above and not things on earth.
But now we need to understand that we for now are still citizens in this world. There is a danger that we become indifferent to this world where we still have to live. So Peter says in verse 13, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.”
Just a few weeks ago we read about the Hutaree Christian militant group in Adrian, Michigan who call themselves Christian warriors that were planning to kill policemen. This is an extreme example of people who call themselves Christians but defy civil laws and violate the standards of citizenship.
And they have done so in the name of Christianity and in the name of God. We know that the Quran allows Moslems to wage a holy war against infidels in certain instances and they do so in the name of their god. So we need to look at this carefully and see what the word of God says about this.
It is hard enough knowing that as a Christian we are at war with our own flesh. In addition we also know that we cannot love the things of this world because we are focused on God’s promises for us. On top of that we have to be a good citizen even in a society that is hostile towards you.
Let me give you a little background on the Christians Peter was writing to in that time. In the early church days there was already hatred against Jews and Christians were simply viewed as a sect of the Jews. They were falsely slandered for rebelling against Rome.
And they even accused Christians of cannibalism based on a misinterpretation of John 6:53, “So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” And the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:27 saying that if you drink the cup and eat the bread you are communing with the body and blood of Christ added to that misunderstanding.
The church in the early days experienced not only opposition from the world in general but also opposition from those that hated Christianity. So here Peter teaches us that the only way to deny those charges was to live a godly life to prove that these accusations were wrong.
The world today is still hostile against Christianity. Men still hate God and reject Christ. And the challenge to us as Christians is still to live a life that is above the standards of this world so that we can still influence people for Christ by the way we live and love. This is evangelism at its core.
So let us look again at the words of verse 13, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” Be subject means to submit yourselves, to be obedient to …to what? To every human institution. This is a command from God.
Why is that? Should we not defend ourselves if we are attacked by irresponsible, ignorant and evil accusers in the government? Why can we not retaliate? God here says no, because we do not answer to human government but only to God Himself.
God wants us to be humble, He wants us to demonstrate virtue, He wants us to show love to the community and He wants us to seek peace. We should obey all the laws and respect all authorities even if we think that they are wrong.
This attitude of submission and humility in the days of the early Christians was an attitude that was looked down upon, it characterized cowards and weaklings, and no man of strength would ever think of being submissive or humble.
And yet we can find this teaching frequently in the Old Testament. Look at Proverbs 24:21-22, “My son, fear the LORD and the king, and do not join with those who do otherwise, for disaster will arise suddenly from them, and who knows the ruin that will come from them both?”
Listen to Jeremiah 29:4-7, “Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.”
Here the Jews are living in captivity, in a pagan society, and God says to live your life by working and marrying etc. But seek the welfare of the city and on top of that pray to God for them!
Do you disagree with what the government is doing here or in Indonesia? What does God tell us to do? We need to live and plant gardens and marry your children and seek the welfare of our governments and pray to God for the welfare of these 2 governments and God says you will find peace.
The principle is this, if you are in a foreign land, try as hard as you can to seek the welfare of that country by following all their rules and praying for them so that you will be blessed while realizing that God has a plan for you that extends far beyond that land you presently live in.
There are many protests by Christians and acts of civil disobedience and many violations of the law to the point where some Christians refuse to pay taxes and even try to overthrow the government. God teaches us here that we are not to do that, and instead we are to submit ourselves.
We were taught in Romans 13:1, “Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” Every person means every person including you. Every person who resists authority opposes ultimately God Himself and there will be condemnation.
You might say, well they never experienced living in a world like ours in Indonesia where Christians are a minority that is abused. Well the situation at that time was similar or at times much worse. Do you know that during the time of Jesus there were many female children that were drowned if the parents did not want them, where sexual sin was rampant and where homosexuality was even practiced by the Caesars themselves?
Let’s look again at verse 13, ““Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution.” All submission is done for the sake of the Lord who created and instituted authority. And the basic issue is obedience. And learning obedience starts with being obedient to simple understandable laws of the land. After that we can learn to be obedient in those things from God that are hard to understand.
How can we be useful to God if we have not learned to be obedient to the local police or the local tax laws? As Indonesians at times we are so used to taking shortcuts in circumventing existing laws so that we are proud if we find a loophole in the law where we don’t have to obey it. But God is saying here that we should do obey all laws no matter if we know of a loophole or no matter how unfair it might seem to us.
You see this attitude of not obeying spills over into our daily life. The same way people like to obtain false passports with false identities, that same attitude of dishonesty is then applied to obeying God’s laws and commands. God’s commands are treated as if they don’t mean much and can be disobeyed at will with no fear of the consequences.
And the devil loves it when we take God’s laws and commands lightly. How many of us really follow everything that God is saying to us on Sunday? Before I became a Christian these messages came in one ear but left the other ear almost immediately. How many of you totally forget about God during this week?
God is kind and loving but He reminds us that there are always consequences for everything that we do. How does a person become estranged from God? This does not happen instantly, no this is a process that starts with taking the Word of God lightly, pretty soon you don’t read as much anymore and then you start praying less and less until the time comes that you find that you are far from the Lord.
Some say that they do not feel far away from God even if they do things against God’s will. The Holy Spirit will be you conscience and warn you of spiritual dangers, as it says in Romans 8:16, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”
But when you continually resist the Holy Spirit, your conscience will be dulled, like it says in Acts 7:51, “You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you.” And you can see that not many Jews are believers.
Civil government is an instrument instituted by God to be a representative of God and to test our obedience to God. The government does not own its citizens, or their properties, or their minds and bodies; no all this belongs to God their creator.
So we need to be humble and be subject to every human institution. We see the greatest example of this in Jesus Christ Himself. A little beyond today’s verses we read in 1 Peter 2:21, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.”
Jesus who is God was willing to be treated like the lowest slave under the most trying circumstances as we read in 1 Peter 2:23, “When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to Him who judges justly.”
Jesus was crucified under two authorities, the Jews and the Romans. He lived under their unjust rules all His life and yet He never attacked the government. He never attacked those who were in authority, He never led a protest, He never demonstrated, He never protested even when they violated their own laws at His trial.
We want to obey the authority because that’s what Jesus did and He is honored when He is recognized as the reason we become honest, loving and peace loving people. The reason we obey is that the Holy Spirit within us is teaching that and that by living righteously we set an example to unbelievers.
Only when the government asks you to do something that is opposed to what God asks you to do can you violate the government laws. If the law forbids me to preach, I would do it anyway. If they came to arrest me I would not resist, I would go with them.
This war is not a physical war but a spiritual war. Listen to 2 Corinthians 10:3-4, “For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. 4 For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds.”
Our weapons are living the Word of God. I wish that thousands would go out in the downtown areas and in all other areas in the world and live godly setting the example. I wish that millions would get on their knees and pray to a holy God so that He would give the power to overcome sin.
Help us to be faithful proclaimers of the truth that we may see this society change, not because the laws are changed through political means but because people are transformed through the power of the gospel. Help us Lord to become what You want us to be. Amen.