Well, it was a million seller in 1983 - a song by John Cougar Mellencamp. The opening line was this: "I fight authority; authority always wins." Mellencamp didn't know how deeply theological that line actually is. There is, in the heart of every sinner, rebellion against authority. It still lurks in all of our hearts, sadly. You see it in an infant who can't speak yet, but who stiffens his body up in anger because he's not getting his own way. You see it in the mall when you see a four-yearold with his hands on his hips arguing with a man many times his age, many times his size.
I Fight Authority
You see it in a five-year-old in school who refuses to do something that his teacher is asking him to do. You see it in a teenager who confuses independence with rebellion. You see it in a husband and wife who think that they can break all of God's rules and still have a good marriage. You see it in a worker who chafes against his boss, who hates to be told what to do. You see it in an old man who still finds particular pleasure in cheating on his taxes. You see it every day as we hate traffic laws, hate parking regulations, hate to be told what to do.
"I fight authority" That actually should be a humble confession of all of us somehow, some way. We still chafe against it. But there's a second part of the phrase, "But authority always wins." You could argue that the Biblical story is an authority story. It starts with a rebellion against authority, and it marches to a moment where every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord! It's all about authority. Praise God! Praise God! Praise God! Authority will win! And so it makes sense that, as Peter now wants to apply his paradigm for Christian living, the first issue he talks about is this issue of authority; because if we give away authority, everything else goes.
And he's going to look at civil authority, and he's going to look at authority in the workplace; he's going to look at authority in the home because he understands, as a pastor, what a struggle this is for us and how we would like to claim submission to the authority of God while being free to rebel against human authority, that insidious division, that delusion that so often can be in our hearts. Now remember the paradigm; we talked about this last week for those of you who were here, and this is new for those of you who weren't.
Peter reduces this way of living that God has called us to in this fallen world, to these three directives. Number one: live like an alien. Don't live like this is all there is. Don't live like this is your destination. Don't live giving yourself to see how comfortable and pleasurable this moment can be because this is a passage; this is a journey; this isn't home. You're going to go home. Instead of living with a destination mentality, you must live with the preparation mentality. Everything that's happening now is preparation for 'then.' This is intended to be a passage.
This is intended to be uncomfortable and difficult. That's to make you long for home. Second directive: fight like a soldier. Because there is a war that's still being fought on the turf of your heart; it's a war being fought for control of your soul. Peter says it's a war of passion. What is a passion? A passion is a powerfully motivating, emotionally-laden desire. There's a war for what desire or for desire of what will rule your heart; desire for something in this creation that you've attached your identity and meaning and purpose to; or desire to live in a way that pleases God attaching your identity, your meaning, and purpose, your inner sense of well-being, to Him.
And as long as sin still lives inside of you, that war still goes on. Third directive: behave like a representative. Know that everyone who is God's child has been given an ambassadorial calling. You are positioned, where ever you are, whatever you're doing, in all the situations, and relationships, locations, circumstances of everyday life, as God's representative. Your manner of living is meant to be an apologetic, an argument for the truthfulness of the Gospel. Your life doesn't belong to you anymore.
You have been invited, conscripted, drafted into the bigger work of the Kingdom of God. Live like an alien; fight like a soldier; behave like a representative. Now the first application of that way of living is found in those emboldened verses on page 6 of your 'Order of Worship.' Look at the first sentence or first phrase: "Be subject, for the Lord's sake, to every human institution." What a mouthful! "Be subject" - here's what it means: willingly submit to the human authority that God has placed in your life.
Forced Submission Is Not Submission
If you're being forced to submit, the fact that you're being forced to submit, demonstrates you're not submitting. Peter is calling for us to look at authority as a good thing, authority as a blessing, authority as a protection; that is alien to the way that human beings tend to think. We tend to look at authority as a hassle, authority as slavery, authority as an obstruction, authority as a difficulty, even maybe authority as a curse, and that's not the Biblical model. As long as sin still lives inside of me, I need restraint; I need to be protected from me; I need laws around me that guide and direct me; I need people who enforce those laws.
That's blessing! If you acknowledge, humbly, that you're still a sinner, then you must also acknowledge the blessing of authority. "For the Lord's sake" - what is that little phrase in there for? Because Peter cannot understand any kind of separation between human authority and the authority of God. Here's Peter's model: to submit to human authority is to submit to the authority of God. You can't say, "I love God's authority, but I hate human authority." That doesn't work. I'm going to ask you to do something that I don't normally ask you to do.
I'm going to ask you to get out those church Bibles that are there near you and turn to page 948. There are moments where we just have to see how Scripture expounds and interprets Scripture. Page 948, Romans 13, verse one: "Let every person be subject to the governing authorities (now fasten your seatbelt) for there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God." You cannot separate the sovereign authority of God from the exercise of human authority; that is alien to a Biblical worldview.
Let's keep reading: "Therefore whoever resists the authorities resists what God has appointed." Now here's the model - God expedites His divine authority through the establishment of human authority. Human authority is actually the physical, visual, earthbound representation of the authority of God; you can't separate those. And so in every sphere of life, whether it's government or family or church or the workplace, God has established authority. You just can't escape it, and to rebel against human authority is to rebel against God.
Now I know what you're going to ask - "What about unjust authority?" Look at 1 Peter 2:18. We're going to skip ahead here for a moment and look at this at greater length. "Servants, be subject to your master with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust." Wow. God even expedites His authority, exercises His sovereign will, through the vehicle of flawed, imperfect, sometimes unjust human authority. It is not my right to say, "Because this authority is defective, because it's less-than-perfect, then I do not have to obey it."
If you do that, the whole house of cards comes down. Why? Because this side of eternity, human authority will never be perfectly just. Every authority is unjust in some way, is flawed in the way he exercises authority. And Peter's concern, as it is with Paul, is that in the quest for autonomy, the quest for selfrule that's still in all of our hearts, we're all looking for escape clauses, some reason we can say, "Ahh! I don't have to obey this time." Now I would make one further qualification: clearly, if in obeying human authority, I'm ultimately submitting myself to God, there are times when a human authority will ask me to do something that's in direct rebellion to the call of God.
In that moment, I resist human authority, and I follow the authority of God. You have Biblical examples of that: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They were commanded to commit idolatry, and out of greater allegiance to God, they resisted human authority. But hear this, those instances are very rare. That's why Peter says even when it's flawed authority, even when it's unjust, you are called to honor, respect, and submit. Now I would ask you, in the places where you live and work every day, I want to ask you as your pastor: do you love authority?
Do You Love Authority?
Do you? Are you glad for an employer that tells you what to do? Are you glad for the civil laws around you? Do you love speed limits because you recognize they protect you from you? Do you love authority? I never had one of my children come to me and say, "Dad, one of the things I love most about you is your exercise of authority. If you would just tell me what to do more, that would be so helpful. I need more law in my life because I'm a danger to me." But I had many arguments. If you're a parent, you're exhausted over authority arguments.
It's an amazing thing how even the littlest command is an occasion for a debate. "No Dad, that's not exactly what you said. What you said was. . ." If a child is debating your vocabulary, they're not doing that because they love authority; they are looking for some kind of escape, some kind of logic, some kind of way out. And that's why we have to hear the all-inclusive nature of this call. You must submit to every human government. The word 'institution' could be translated that way. Everywhere God has established government, your calling is to joyfully, willingly, as an act of worship, submit.
Is that your heart? Be honest this evening: is it? Are you a reformed theologian, quite comfortable in your belief in the sovereignty of God, yet on Tuesday, you will chafe against how that sovereignty is exercised by a local authority who tells you to do something you hadn't planned to do? A contradiction. Notice what he says next: "Whether it be to the Emperor as supreme or to governors as sent by him." Again, Peter is just wanting us to know the range. In this cultural image, the Emperor would be the highest ruler; the governor would be the most local ruler.
And so from the highest authority to the most local authority, there is no expression, the entire range of authority that God has established, I am called to submit to. I spent a good portion of my ministry in hours and hours and hours of counseling people who, in some way, had made a mess of their lives. And it hit me again and again that the base of that mess, now a superstructure of layers of difficulty that seemed almost impossible to unpack, was rebellion to authority, thinking "I know better," wanting to write my own rules, wanting to be a little self-sovereign, looking at what God has called me to as being restrictive and obstructive, rather than seeing the most supreme authority to the lowest, most present authority as being a blessing of God who knows us and knows how much we need our thoughts, desires, and actions to be restrained.
"Or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and to praise those who do good..." Classic Biblical definition of the function of government. What's the function of government? "To punish evil and to reward good." Now again, as long as sin exists, as long as there is this desire for self-rule in us, that function of government is needed--it's punishment, and therefore, restraint of evil and its reward of good. If you're in a position of authority, that's your paradigm. Parents, hear this: that's what God has called you to do with your children.
Your children do not belong to you. Your children are not your indentured servants to use however you may use and command however you may command them for the purposes of your pleasure and comfort. They're not to be cloned as trophies to your glory. They're not to be verbally or physically abused at moments when they've made your life troublesome! You have, as a parent, as an authority, a holy position where you stand in the lives of those children and you represent God Himself. You are the localization of His authority.
Do you get that? And so, you must teach your children - not the danger of crossing you (no, no, no, no, no, that's a distortion) - the danger of doing what God says is evil because they need protection because there is foolishness in the heart of a child, and they need that protection and instruction and correction. And you are there to praise and reward what is good. Now, what is your exercise of authority in the lives of your children? Is it more about they learn the rules; they learn the culture; they learn what makes you angry, what irritates you, and they learn to negotiate your anger?
Catching Children Doing Right
That's neither Biblical nor parenting. Or are you a parent, you're much more skilled at catching your children doing what is wrong than catching them doing what is right? Are you more apt to point to what is wrong than apt to encourage and motivate and praise and reward what is good, so that child develops this bi-factorial morality of fear of evil and the delight of good? That's what is supposed to happen, that as you work with a child, his heart begins to change, and he more and more finds evil distasteful; and he more and more finds good beautiful.
That's a sweet thing; that's how God wants them to live. And when you do that, that child will begin to recognize the rebellion that's in him, and you'll have wonderful opportunities to point him to the help and rescue and forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ who alone can produce in him a heart of submission. That's the model; that's how authority is to be exercised. Now, notice verse 15: "For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people."
Now Peter is going to pick up the theme that even this issue, even the way that you respond to the authorities in your life, you must consider as Gospel work, because you are positioned as one of God's ambassadors; you're positioned as one of God's representatives; you are living as God's representative before a watching world. Now think of the "ignorance of foolish people." What is he talking about here? You can't hear those words (well, you shouldn't hear those words) without hearing this Psalm, "The fool has said in his heart (what?) 'There is no God.'"
Ultimate foolishness is this: there is no authority greater than my authority; there is no need for me to submit to anything. God doesn't exist; I'm the top of the heap; I have the right to do whatever I want to do. And not just by theological argumentation, but by the way that you live your life is an argument against that foolishness because you demonstrate the protection and the blessing, the joy of living submissively underneath authority. When I graduated from seminary, God didn't call me immediately to pastoral ministry.
He called me to spend my winters in an electronic distribution center at a table with eight other men, and we would pack boxes of electronic equipment all day long. It was an exercise in depravity. It was a shocking experience for this na‹ve seminary student. And I became the sport at the table. I was mocked. I was called 'Bishop.' And the argument of the table was that my life was total slavery, that I had no freedom whatsoever. And the guys would say to me, "We feel sorry for you. What an awful life you have to live."
Well, on a Monday, one of the men that was right across the table from me came in and I, trying to be friendly, asked him how his weekend was. He said, "My weekend was terrible!" I said, "Well, why?" He said, "Well, I was out with my girlfriend at a restaurant that I thought would be okay," and I didn't really know what that meant until he said, "and my wife showed up." And he said, "There was just a screaming match in the middle of that restaurant." And he said, "You know, it was just a dumb thing to do; I need to be more careful."
I said, "Wait a minute. Which one of us is free? I never have to be afraid of where I'm going to go with Luella. I never have to remember my story to make sure that I tell the same story. I never have to look over my shoulder. I never have to think about whom I'm angering by being with this woman. I'm free! You're bound!" And, you see, it's by your submission to God's authority that God leads you to those kinds of moments. Now, that leads us to the final thing that's said here. "Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God."
Submission Is Freedom
Hear this: Peter would argue that this life of submission is, in fact, a life of freedom. Now what is he saying? You have been given freedom in Christ, freedom from the weight of the law, freedom from bondage to sin, freedom from slavery to the world. But that freedom isn't freedom from authority, because that would never be freedom. Adam and Eve, when they stepped outside of God's authority, didn't achieve freedom! Immediately, there was acrimony between them; they didn't act like free, joyous people.
Immediately, they were driven out of the garden, a loss of the freedom that they had there. First generation, you have sibling homicide. A few chapters down the road, you have God looking at the chaos of the brokenness of the world and saying, "It's enough!" and sending a global flood to wipe the world clean. It doesn't look like freedom. Hear this: Human autonomy never results in freedom - it's a delusion. And so Peter says: real freedom is found in being a servant of God. When you say, "Not my will, but yours be done," you are now living exactly as you were meant to live!
That's the way life works. If you own a boat, you don't have the freedom to drive that down Route 95. It wasn't created for that; that will never work. If you're an engineer, you can't choose to drive that train off the tracks; that won't work. And in the same way, human beings were wired, were put together, to live inside of authority, and when you try to live outside of that, you're a train in a meadow; you're a boat on I-95! It never results in freedom! Peter ends as Peter often does - this is not an academic, intellectual man, this is a guy, and he writes that way, and so he ends with very clear directions.
What does it mean to live this way? "Honor everyone." You treat everyone with respect. "Love the brotherhood." Treat your brothers and sisters with particular love. "Fear God." Live every day in an awe of His presence and His authority. "Honor the king." Be thankful for government. Now, what should you do with these words this evening? Well, I would ask you as your pastor to confess: you're not there yet. You don't always love authority. There are places where you want your own way. You want to be supreme.
There are occasions where you don't love God's law, and you don't love the way God's authority is exercised in human authority. And so you need to say once again, "Father, I need Your help. There is still inside of me the heart of a rebel." And you need to locate where your hope is to be found. Your hope is to be found in Jesus who submitted Himself to His Father's authority. In submitting Himself to His Father's authority, He submitted Himself to human authority, even to human injustice, being willing to be wrongly condemned, being willing to be tortured, being willing to have the vilest of human authority exercised against Him so that, in His submission, our hearts could be transformed, so that there will be a day for all of us when we stand in that company, no longer wanting our own way, and we confess Him as Lord!
And we do that for millions and millions of years. That submission of heart must start this evening. And so you run to your Savior. You run to your substitute and say, "I need Your forgiveness. I need Your grace. I need my heart to be transformed. Oh, Lord, there are times when I get it right, but there are times when I get it so wrong. Oh, won't You, once again, deliver me from me by Your grace?" If you've never ever prayed that prayer, I would encourage you to do that for the first time this evening.
Life is only found when you abandon your Lordship and place your hands, your life in His. Let's pray: Thank you, Lord, for these powerful truths from Your Word. We would confess the roots of rebellion are still in our hearts. We chafe against those moments when we must submit, when we're told what to do. And we want to believe that we're submissive to You while being rebellious to human authority. Lord, give us hearts that find joy in submitting to the authorities that You have established in our lives, knowing that that authority is rooted in Your authority. May we see that as a blessing and a grace. In Jesus's name, Amen.
