Peter Exhorts the Persecuted Believers Volume 23

 We Believers are to Submit to Human Statutes

1 Peter 2:13-16 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. KJV Note: NKJV=New King James Version

The Apsotle Peter just finished telling us that we must subdue our old fleshly appetites by submitting and surrendering our entire selves to the leading and guiding of God the Holy Spirit who at all ⌚ times and always leads us into Biblical truth, as it is written, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. However, when He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will tell you things to come. He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine. Therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you." (John 16:12-15) (NKJV). Now we find the Apostle Peter declaring to us that we must submit ourselves to all the statutes of man 👨, even those made by evil and wicked rulers, for at the time ⌚ of Peter penning this letter to the scattered Jewish born brothers and sisters 'in Christ', Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus was the Roman Emperor and he was one of the most vile, vicious, and violent haters of God notorious for his monstrous vice and fantastic luxury (was said to have started a fire that destroyed much of Rome in 64 A.D.). Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus hated all of the children 🧒 of God who had been born again by our Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle Peter wrote these words to those other Jewish converts to our Lord Jesus Christ of whom many did not make it out of Judea and Jerusalem because they were murdered or martyred by Nero and the evil human instruments under his command, "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." (1 Peter 2:13-16) (KJV). We must always remember that no ruler or any people are in authority except God has allowed them to be, for He is ultimately the One who allows them into that position of authority and at any time ⌚ can and does remove them from their authoritarian positions. Therefore, when we submit to these human rulers, we are simply doing so for the 'Lord's sake' alone because He and His will is our only authority. The desire to please our Lord Jesus Christ never should cause us to seek the overthrow of human Governments at any level, for Christ did not come the first time to accomplish that, but He came to save sinners from their sin and from the wages of their sin which is eternal seperation from Him in hell and the lake of fire. Because Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus thought himself to be a god, the worship of the Romans during his time ⌚ of ruling was heavy into all of the occult practices and their alliance was clearly with God's enemy the devil 😈. This is why those Jewish Christians were so persecuted back then and why those of us of every era and generation since the Cross of Christ are likewise because everything is always spiritual warfare between those who truly belong to Jesus Christ our Lord and those who do not but are children of satan (1 John 3:8). Those who are still on the side of satan are so because of their ignorance, not their intellectual ignorance, for some are of the highest level of human intelligence on the planet 🌏, but their ignorance is that they don't know God (as we know Him personally through Christ) and that blinds them to all that is right, good, and holy in the site of God, as it is written, "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God. These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:12-14) (NKJV). There are the men/women who are foolish and ignorant who are the natural ones being spoken of by Paul above and this same Apostle Peter described them in detail in his second letter with these words, "But these, like natural brute beasts made to be caught and destroyed, speak evil of the things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption, and will receive the wages of unrighteousness, as those who count it pleasure to carouse in the daytime. They are spots and blemishes, carousing in their own deceptions while they feast with you, having eyes full of adultery and that cannot cease from sin, enticing unstable souls. They have a heart trained in covetous practices, and are accursed children." (2 Peter 2:12-14) (NKJV), but there are spiritual men/women who are taught truth by the Spirit of God.

Here is what the Expositor's Bible Commentary had to say of 1 Peter 2:13-16, "The Apostle now turns to one illustration of Christian behavior wherein the converts might be tempted to think themselves absolved from some portion of their duty. They were living under heathen rulers. Did their freedom in Christ release them from obligations to the civil powers? The question was sure to arise. St. Peter supplies both a rule and a reason: 'Be subject to every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake.' Christians, just as other men, hold their place in the commonweal. All that the state requires citizens to do in aid of good government, order, the support of institutions and the like, will fall upon them, as upon others. Whether the demands made upon them in this wise be always for ends of which they would approve; they are not to discuss so long as their rulers provide duly for the social order and welfare. This is the apostolic rule. The reason is men are to submit thus for the Lord’s sake. The powers that be are ordained of God, and He would have obedience yielded to them. The Bible knows nothing about forms of government; these are to be ordered as men at various times and under various conditions deem most helpful. But the Bible doctrine is that God uses all powers of the world for His own purposes and to work out His will. Of Pharaoh, who had deliberately despised God’s messages through Moses, the Divine voice declared that he would long ago have been cut off from the earth, but was made to stand that he might show God’s power, and that His name might be declared throughout all the earth; (Exodus 9:15-16) and of the Assyrian at a later day (Isaiah 10:10; Isaiah 10:12) God tells how he was used as the rod of the Divine anger, but that the fruit of his stout heart and the glory of his high looks would surely be punished. God employs for His ends instruments with which He is not always well pleased. These can inflict His penalties, yea, even may be made to advance His glory. Pilate was assured by Christ Himself that the power which he was about to exercise was only by Divine permission: 'Thou wouldest have no power against Me except it were given thee from above'; (John 19:11) and St. Paul enforces obedience to authorities equally with St. Peter: 'He that resisteth the power withstandeth the ordinance of God." (Romans 13:2) Be subject, therefore, 'whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as sent by him for vengeance on evil-doers and for praise for them that do well.' The order under which these converts were living was superintended by some officer appointed by the Roman emperor, and to this the form of the Apostle’s words applies. The king is the Caesar; the governor is the procurator or subordinate official by whom the imperial power was represented in the provinces. When St. Peter wrote, Nero ruled in Rome, and was represented abroad by ministers often of a like character. How extreme must after this be the case of those who would claim freedom to resist the rulers under whom they live. God has allowed them to stand, He is using them for His own purposes, they may be the ministers of His vengeance, and to Him alone does vengeance belong, He intends them also to recognize the merit of the doers of good. It may be that they do not fulfill God’s intent in either wise, yet while He suffers them to keep their power the Christian’s duty is obedience to every civil enactment, for anarchy would be a curse both to him and to others, bringing in its train more hurt than help. When Christians shall be found among those who abide by the law of the lands wherein they dwell, even should their faith not be accepted by their rulers, their good citizenship will hardly fail to disarm hatred and abate persecution. And so they are to range themselves ever on the side of order. 'For so is the will of God, that by well-doing ye should put to silence the ignorance of foolish men.' For this end believers are to abide in the world, that through them the world may be renewed. The opponents of their faith suffer, says the Apostle, from lack of knowledge. As he says in another place, 'they rail in matters whereof they are ignorant.' (2 Peter 2:12) Had men known, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory; and did they know, they would not persecute His followers. But knowledge will not come without a preacher. Such preachers of the excellence of their faith shall the law-abiding Christians in each community be made. They shall publish the lessons of their own experience; they shall win favor by their example. The world will recognize that these men have a secret which others do not possess, will find that they yield obedience to earthly rulers because they are above all things servants of God. It was through convicting them of their ignorance that Jesus put the Sadducees to silence. 'Ye do err,' was His argument, 'not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.' (Matthew 22:34) And when men are made sensible of such ignorance, they are silenced forever. (1 Corinthians 15:34) This word 'silenced' is very expressive both in the Gospel and here. It implies that a bridle or muzzle is put upon the mouth of ignorance, so that it may either be guided into a better way, or, if not so, be checked from doing harm. For some there are who not only will be ignorant, but foolish also, whom no teaching will profit. But even these will in the end be silenced. So, as says the brother Apostle, 'be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.' (Rom_12:21) The first part of the Apostle’s exhortation in our verse had in view, it may be more especially the Gentile converts. Their past life had been one of evil-doing in the sight of God; those whom they had left, and who were most likely to be their adversaries, were still walking in the same ways, and were to be won over and conquered for Christ. He now turns more directly to those who had been Jews. These were no longer bound to the observance of the ceremonial law, and we know from the New Testament as well as from Church history that with this release there were exhibited in the lives of many such excesses as made them a disgrace to the Christian name. We find much about these in the Second Epistle. St. Peter would not keep the Jewish converts under the burden of the Law, but he warns them against their besetting danger: 'as free, and not using your freedom for a cloak of wickedness, but as bondservants of God.' There were bad Jews, even as there have been bad Christians. These would welcome a rule which set them at liberty from the Mosaic observances, to which their adherence aforetime had been in outward seeming rather than in earnest zeal. To these St. Peter preaches that to lay aside Judaism is not to embrace Christianity. The Leader of the new faith had ever taught a different lesson. He came not to destroy the Law, but to fulfill it, and to set forth God’s will in a nobler aspect. Those who would follow Him must take up the Cross. His service is a yoke which restrains from all evil. Those who come to Christ come as bondservants of God, free only because they are bound to the observance of the noblest law. They must lay aside the flesh, with its affections and lusts, and not vindicate their freedom by using it as an occasion to riot and self-indulgence."

If you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...


Sincerely in Christ,


Clifford D. Tate, Sr.


Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reade, Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…