Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well. For so is the will of God, that with well doing ye may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men: as free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God. Honour all men. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honour the king (1 Peter 2:13-17).
So far, our studies in this seventeenth chapter of John have convinced us that the fundamental thing about the Christian is that he is one who is sanctified, sanctified by God; and to be sanctified means to be separated from the world and from sin and separated unto God. That is the scriptural teaching everywhere about the Christian, and we are reminded of that very forcibly in 1 Peter 2:13-17, and indeed, in the whole chapter, which we shall be looking at together. The Christian is a new creation: in the world but not of it; he is a man still, and yet he is not as he was. His fundamental postulate is, ‘I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me’ (Gal 2:20) – that is the essential meaning of sanctification – so that the Christian is different in every respect from the non-Christian. And there is nothing more important, as I understand the New Testament teaching, and especially the teaching of the apostles, than that we should always be conscious of this, and that our entire lives may be governed by that realisation.
Now when I say that the Christian is one who is different in every respect, I use my words advisedly – ‘... if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new’ (2 Cor 5:17). And that word ‘all’ is as inclusive and as comprehensive as a word can be; everything is new and everything is different if we are truly Christian. And we all of us betray whether we are Christian or not, by everything we do and say, and by what we are. Our Lord taught on one occasion, you remember, that we shall all be judged by every idle word that we have uttered, and ‘idle’ means not premeditated, our casual words, our casual actions (see Matthew 12:36). The fact is that we are all along betraying what we are by our reaction to things, by our conduct and by our behaviour, and it is very interesting indeed to observe this. Our spirituality, ultimately, should be estimated and measured by the consistency of the whole of our life and living. There are people who, as it were, have to put on their Christianity for the time being, but if you see them in their casual moments, in their ordinary daily lives, you might perhaps not even suspect that they are Christians at all – they are living in compartments. But the more spiritual, the more sanctified we become, the more are we characterised by a wholeness and consistency, and it shows itself in all we do, and in our reaction to everything.
In the same way, and this has a particularly powerful emphasis in the New Testament, our thinking is governed by a new principle. Our whole outlook is new, we do not see things as we used to see them, nor do we see them as the natural man sees them. We were once governed by the world and its outlook, but that is no longer true of us. Notice how Peter puts that in verse 10: ‘Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.’ In other words, as the result of regeneration, as the result of the operation of the Spirit of God upon them, and as a result of the fact that they are now partakers of the divine nature and have been born from above and of the Spirit, Christians must of necessity see things in an entirely new way. Their whole perspective is different, everything takes on a new colour. In particular, of course, we can put it like this: Christians are those whose outlook on all matters is to be controlled and governed entirely by the teaching of the Scriptures. They do not revert to the world in any respect at all. They must not merely say, ‘I do not take the worldly view about certain practices,’ the scriptural teaching is that they must not take the worldly view about anything. Not only do they not take the worldly view about things that are bad, they do not take the worldly view about things that are good either. Their outlook upon life is a totality, and it is entirely determined by the teaching of the Bible; they are men and women of one Book, and their whole outlook conforms to this.
Now this is clearly a very important principle, and it applies not only to the individual but also to the church and to the message and preaching of the church. These, too, are to be determined and controlled by nothing but the word of God. Our forefathers had to fight for this. As a result, today the state does not govern the preaching of the church and it must never be allowed to do so. There is no power on earth or among men which can be allowed to determine the message of the Christian church. The message of the preacher should be God-given and Spirit-inspired, and he must be controlled entirely and exclusively by the word as it comes to him and is brought to him by the Holy Spirit of God. We, therefore, are not controlled and governed by times and seasons or by circumstances. The tragedy of the Christian church has been that for so long she has indulged in what is called ‘topical preaching’, messages determined by the things that are happening around and about her, rather than the message which comes from God – the burden of the Lord; our preaching must always be out of the word, from the word, Spirit-inspired and Spirit-led.
So, then, we turn to the word, and the word speaks and takes hold of us, and we find that it teaches very plainly and clearly that our sanctification is something that applies to the whole of our lives and to every facet and aspect of our activities as human beings in this world. This is the glory of the Scriptures; no human relationship, no eventuality can possibly meet us, but that we find instruction concerning it somewhere in the word. And the word gives us very particular and definite instruction and teaching with regard to our relationship to the state, our relationship to the world in which we are bound to live and the country to which we are bound to belong; the word of God does not leave us without guidance.
This is something that many people seem never to have realised. They regard the Bible as if it had but the one theme of personal salvation: that is an utter travesty of the truth. The great primary and central theme is, of necessity, personal salvation, but the Bible does not stop at that. It gives teaching and instruction for this personal, saved life, as it is lived in this world, in its relationship, as we see in 1 Peter 2, with kings, with authorities and powers, with masters and servants – every conceivable relationship in life. It is an essential part of our sanctification to realise that we are to be governed by the word and its teaching in every relationship, and there is no exception whatsoever.
Therefore, I want to call your attention in particular, at this point, to the way in which our sanctification is shown, and is encouraged and developed, with respect to this whole matter of our relationship to the country to which we belong, the state under which we happen to be living. There are two main principles here. The first is that we must realise clearly that the church, the gospel, has only one message to the world and for the world. We must always start there. The Scriptures speak directly to individuals, not to nations or states; I cannot see that there is any message at all in the New Testament for nations as such. There is of course, in that respect, a difference between the Old Testament and the New; the church in the Old Testament was a particular nation, a particular state. But that is no longer the case, because, as Peter writes in this chapter, there is now a new nation: ‘But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation’ (1 Pet 2:9). The words in Exodus 19 that were spoken to the children of Israel only are here spoken by the apostle Peter under divine inspiration and applied to this new nation, the church. In Matthew 22:43 our Lord himself said that the kingdom should be taken from the Jews and given to another nation, and this other nation is clearly the Christian church, which consists of men and women called out of every nation under heaven. Consequently, we have this new situation, that the New Testament does not address its remarks and its teaching to nations and to states, but primarily to individuals. It is a personal message calling men and women out of different nations into a new nation, this new kingdom in the Lord Jesus Christ.
If that is so, then there are certain deductions which we must draw quite inevitably, one of which is that there can be no scriptural authority for calling this nation, or any other country at the present time, to an ‘act of rededication’; such a thing seems to me to be quite inconceivable and meaningless and indeed antiscriptural. As the New Testament speaks not to nations, but to individuals, it has no ‘call to rededication’ to a nation as such, because as I want to try to show you, that is something of which the nation is incapable.
In the same way, therefore, I would argue that we cannot be party to any call to people, ‘whatever their religion’, to pray God’s blessing upon our country. For, as I understand the New Testament and its teaching, that again is a non-Christian statement. The church does not call upon all people ‘whatever their religion’ to pray for God’s blessing upon our country, and for this good reason: that as Christians we say there is only one faith. We do not recognise any other religion, indeed, we say that all other religions are false: ‘There is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved’ (Acts 4:12), save that of the Lord Jesus Christ. So we send our missionaries to every country, whether Hindu, or Moslem or Confucian, because we say and believe that those religions are not true – there is only ‘one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus’ (1 Tim 2:5). We assert that these people are worshipping God in a false manner and we send our missionaries to teach and train and enlighten them. We know that there is only one way to God in the Lord Jesus Christ, for, ‘No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him’ (Jn 1:18); and again, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me’ (Jn 14:6) – so, as Christians, if we believe these things, we clearly and obviously cannot appeal to people of ‘any religion whatsoever’ to pray God’s blessing upon us as a nation and as a people. It is tremendously important that our thinking should be governed by the Scriptures lest we contradict ourselves; lest, on the one hand, we send missionaries to convert people to the Christian faith, but then, at the same time, treat them as if they were on an equality with us in the matter of our approach to God.
Then we move on from that to the following proposition. The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Christian church, has but one message to the world, which is to warn men and women of the wrath to come, to proclaim to them that they are moving in the direction of the Day of Judgement, and to call upon them to realise that they have immortal souls for which they will have to answer in the presence of God. The church calls them, therefore, to repentance and to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Surely, as Christians we must take this position: if a man is not a Christian he is fundamentally wrong. He may be a good man, a moral man, he may be a good citizen in general. But we are not primarily interested in him as such, we are interested in him as a soul, and we know that no man can truly be the citizen he should be until he is a Christian; he is failing at some point or other. The message is that we become good and noble and true citizens to the extent that we are loyal and obedient servants to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Men and women who are not Christians in this nation today cannot rededicate themselves to God. They must repent, they must come before God on bended knee and recognise that they have sinned against him and that they have forgotten him. They must be born again. I cannot call them to any act of rededication or reconsecration because they must go down before they can rise; they must repent before they can be received; they must believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as their only Saviour, Redeemer and Lord. The Christian message does not vary because of circumstances; and that is the unchanging message of the Christian church to the world and to men and women in this nation who are not Christians.
But that is only the beginning. Having said that the church has only one message for the world, I now go on to ask, what, then, is the relationship of the Christian to the state and to these other things? We have seen the position of the non-Christian, but what is that of the Christian? And here it seems to me that the teaching of this verse in 1 Peter, as indeed the teaching of the entire Scriptures, can be summarised under a number of very definite propositions. The first is that we must start with our basic position as Christians. Peter says, ‘Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims...’(1 Pet 2:11) – that is the basic position. Our relationship to the world is determined and governed by that definition. As Christians we are but strangers and pilgrims, travellers and sojourners in this world of time.
Or again, the apostle Paul puts it still more specifically in Philippians 3:20 where he says, ‘Our conversation [our citizenship] is in heaven,’ or, if you prefer it, ‘we are a colony of heaven’. That is our fatherland, the state to which we belong: our citizenship is in heaven. And you notice how the apostle rejoices in the fact that he, who was once such a zealous, narrow-minded Jew, can now say: ‘there is neither Jew nor Greek’ (Gal 3:28), and, indeed, still more specifically, ‘where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all and in all’ (Col 3:11). Then in Ephesians 2 he rejoices in the fact that the middle wall of partition which hitherto had divided the Jews from the Gentiles has been broken down. It was once there in the Temple itself but it has now been demolished.
How, then, do we interpret these statements (and they are but a selection from a number of similar statements which I might have put to you)? It seems to me that we must put it like this: as Christians, our first and highest loyalty must always, inevitably, be to God and his Christ; that must come even before our loyalty to country and to king or queen. Our loyalty to God and Christ comes before our loyalty to any nationality; we are primarily the people of God, we are his special possession. He has taken hold of us and brought us out of these various natural relationships into this special, personal relationship to himself. Therefore in all my thinking I must start with that – that is the thing which is to control me and govern me, and I must never think or do anything which violates that preliminary, fundamental postulate.
Then, of course, that position works itself out in this way. We have been delivered – as G K Chesterton put it – ‘that we might be delivered from pride and from blind prejudice’. I do not want to elaborate all this now, because I am anxious to give you a number of headings. But I think we must all know that the great cause of warfare and turmoil, and difficult and troublesome times, is pride, whether between individuals or between nations. Indeed, there can be little doubt but that the most prolific cause of war, in both the ancient and the modern world is a narrow nationalism. The tragedy is, of course, that we all recognise that in others, but are not always so ready to see it in ourselves. I am sure that in general all of us are prepared to denounce narrow nationalism, but how difficult it is to ‘see ourselves as others see us’. Yet the New Testament, bringing us fundamentally into our relationship to God, makes it impossible for any Christian to say ‘my country right or wrong’. Christians cannot say that because to do so would be to deny their own faith. They have been delivered from every natural pride, indeed, they regard all such things as their greatest enemy, the biggest obstacle to their true growth in grace, and to their sanctification. They are anxious, therefore, that they may be delivered from hatred, from despising others, and from glorying in the flesh in any shape or form – they see that all these things are antagonistic to the Spirit of Christ and of God.
Christians are those who see themselves as sinners. Our Lord starts off the Sermon on the Mount by saying, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’ (Matt 5:3) – and those who are poor in spirit are people who do not take any pride in themselves, in what they are or what they have done. They are not always beating the big drum about their own achievements and their greatness and superiority to others – they are the very antithesis of that. Christians see themselves as sinners with nothing to boast of, they know that what they need above everything else is the new nature, the rebirth; they thank God for it, and they give their primary, fundamental loyalty to God. And because they rejoice above everything else in the fact that they are now citizens of the heavenly kingdom, they have been emancipated from that tendency to pride, self-satisfaction and conceit, from hatred and from despising of others. They are totally unlike the Pharisee in our Lord’s story, for the Pharisee thanked God that he was not like other people, because he had done this and that, while the other man had done nothing. And what Christians think about themselves as individuals, applies also to the way they regard their nation. Their thinking is consistent and it is worked out in the whole of life and in every relationship.
Then I go one step further. Because Christians glory in the Lord, because this is their fundamental loyalty, they feel the bond of unity, fellowship and brotherhood with those who belong to Christ in any nation whatsoever. They feel this deeply and in a more real sense than they feel any natural ties or bonds. Now this is strong doctrine, but our Lord put it like this: ‘He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me’ (Matt 10:37). Indeed, in one Gospel it says that we must hate father and mother for his sake – that is how our Lord puts it about the individual. We are to feel a relationship to him and a bond to him closer and dearer and more intimate and valuable than even the dearest earthly tie. If that, then, is to be true of us with regard to our closest and our dearest, how much more is it to be true of us in our relationship to those who are bound to us by general ties of nationality and country? Christians, therefore – and this is a test of the Christian – should feel more closely bound to a Christian from any country under the sun than they do to anyone who is not a Christian in their own country. Their loyalty to Christ comes before loyalty to country; their relationship to Christ and to all who are in Christ is bigger and more vital than the other relationship which belongs only to nature and to the flesh. These are some of the implications of this doctrine, and you see why I emphasised at the beginning that a Christian is a man whose outlook is governed everywhere by the teaching of Scripture.
‘But,’ someone may say, ‘what about the apostle Paul in Romans 9,10 and 11? Does he not there glory as a Jew, and does he not seem to put nationality into the first position?’ The answer is, of course, that when the Apostle writes as he does about the Jews, he is referring to them as God’s own people, not as Jews qua Jews, and not in any nationalistic sense. He writes as he does about them because they were God’s chosen people, who were meant to be witnesses of God and of the coming Messiah, but who had failed to recognise him. Thus Paul’s interest in them is a spiritual interest and not a mere national or natural one.
All these things show that our fundamental position, our basic loyalty, is to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ. But let me add that this does not mean that all these other relationships are abolished. This is a most important point – the balance of Scripture is most wonderful. Why did the apostle Peter write these words in the verses we are considering? Why do you think the apostle Paul does the same thing? There can be no doubt as to the answer. The early Christians, listening to the high doctrine which I have been expounding, were led into error by the devil, and were saying that because we are Christians we have nothing to do with these lands and nations to which we belong. Indeed, some of them, who were slaves, were saying that because they had become Christians they had no loyalty any longer to their masters, but could do as they pleased.
‘Certainly not!’ says the Scripture; that is an entirely false deduction. We are not to assume that all these other relationships have been abrogated, for they have not. We teach, on the basis of Scripture, that all the fundamental ordinances of God still stand. In other words, it is God who has divided the nations and placed their boundaries and brought them into being. It is he who has appointed legislators and decreed that there should be kings and governments and authorities and powers – these are all ordained of God. It is the scriptural teaching that there shall be magistrates. Even though the magistrates may not be Christians, while I am a Christian, I must nevertheless obey them, and the laws of the land, because Scripture tells me to do so. We are to conform to all these things. Peter even tells these servants to be subject to their masters, not only to the good and gentle but also to the ‘froward’ or harsh (2:18).
Some of the first Christians were obviously arguing about these things. Some had been brought up under paganism. They were married people, but now that they had become Christians, some of the married men tended to leave their wives because they were unconverted. But the teaching of Scripture is that a man is not bound to leave his wife because he is a Christian and she is not. In other words, these natural human relationships are not abolished, instead, the teaching is, clearly, that we must look upon them in a new way. We do not become anarchists because we are Christians. We do not say that we refuse to recognise any law or authority or power at all – that is as wrong as to remain in the other natural position, which we have already criticised and dealt with. The apostle Paul uses a phrase which seems to me to sum up the true Christian position perfectly – we are to ‘use this world as not abusing it’ (1 Cor 7:31). In other words, all our conduct is to be controlled by this new point of view, and if we are only governed by this, we shall never go astray.
Take, then, our relationship to the Queen and to the government and to the various authorities in this country, how are we to carry it out? Well, this is how Scripture puts it – ‘Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers, and for the praise of them that do well’ (1 Pet 2:13–14). It is, in other words, for the Lord’s sake that we do these things; we do not do it simply because it is our country or our Queen or our government. Everything we do, we do for the Lord’s sake, and you will find the same teaching with respect to our duties to masters and servants and so on. Our reason for submitting ourselves to human ordinances is entirely different from that of the non-Christian; he does it with his worldly, carnal, fleshly motive, whereas we do everything for the Lord’s sake. We obey the Queen, we submit to the government, in order that we may tell forth his praise who has called us out of darkness into his most marvellous light. We do all these things as an opportunity of showing what God has done to us and for us in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is something that governs us everywhere.
But I must go on to add that if we should ever reach a point at which any authority that is above us should ask us to disobey God, then we must refuse, because our primary and fundamental loyalty is to God and not to any human authority. Let me quote the words of the apostle Peter in Acts 4:19: ‘Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye ...’ The authorities were trying to prohibit him and his fellow apostles from preaching the Lord Jesus Christ and that is his reply. In Acts 5:29 he puts it like this: ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.’ And our forefathers have had occasion in times past to utter the same words. Thank God, we have no occasion to utter them in our country at this present time, but our gospel is for all times and should a time ever come in our country when we have to face the choice of obeying God or obeying the most august human authority, we, as Christian people, must always obey God, whatever the cost. So let us at this moment give honour to those men and women in other lands and countries who are doing this very thing at this very hour. Let us not forget the doctrine. We live in this way because of our fundamental postulate that now we look at nothing as the world looks at it. Rather, we look at everything through spiritual eyes, because we are controlled by the fact that our ultimate loyalty is to God and to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, finally, we can put it like this: we obey all these ordinances of man for the Lord’s sake. Let us remember that we do everything in the fear of the Lord. The Christian should never do anything in a worldly spirit. He should not honour the Queen in a worldly spirit; he should not do anything as the world does it, for he does everything in the fear of God, as one in whom the Holy Spirit dwells. His conception of citizenship and of loyalty is determined not by the mind and outlook and spirit of the world, but by the Spirit that is of God.
So the Christian, you see, is a unique person. He is not merely a new man, but also a new creation. He both thinks in a different way, and does everything in a different way. May God grant that in all we think, and in all we do, we may always make it evident that we are these ‘peculiar’, special, spiritual people. ‘Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims’ – it is we alone who realise that that is the truth. The world never stops to think about that, but we know that we are sojourners and pilgrims in this world. So, ‘abstain from fleshly lusts’ – in every form – ‘which war against the soul; having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation’ (vv. 11-12). The Christian is always different and he is different in everything.
1 This sermon was preached in 1953, on the Sunday before the Queen’s coronation.