The last few weeks we have been talking about sanctification as described in Peter’s first epistle. Though Peter doesn’t refer to it as sanctification per se, he does state his thesis as “Be holy, even as I am holy.” Holiness is sanctification. Sanctification means to be set apart for a sacred purpose. The Apostle Paul said in 1Thess. 4:3 “For this is God's will, your sanctification.” Hebrews says as well in chapter 12:14, “Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord.”
So sanctification is the purpose for which we live now that we are saved. However, just to be clear, it’s not a means of justification. In other words, it’s not a bunch of things we do in order to be justified before God. We are justified by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ. But sanctification is the response of one who has been saved, who has been given new life, transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of God. We are to be holy, even as He is holy. And as holy people, we serve God as priests to God in His temple, offering our lives as a holy sacrifice unto Him.
Holiness then is the way we are to live. We live by faith. And holy living requires faith. Holy living is the works of faith. As James says, you show your faith by your works. It take a lot of faith to live holy, because it goes against our nature. It often goes against human reason. It takes faith, for instance, to do right when the world says it makes more sense to do wrong. It takes faith to let the Lord be the judge and your defense when being ridiculed for your faith. And so a lot of things that we see in this section are counter intuitive to human reason. But it’s walking by the Spirit and not in the flesh. It’s walking by faith and not by sight. It’s acting like God wants us to act, instead of how we would like to act.
So the title of my message then is Sanctification through Submission. Submission is not a very popular word today in our culture. Our culture believes in standing up for your rights. Our culture admires independence. It’s popular today to be an activist, to rebel, to resist. To claim what you think you deserve. But as we will see today, sanctification comes by way of submission.
I want us to look today at six steps to submission, on the path to sanctification. Sanctification is a process between justification and glorification. In between is the process of becoming holy as God is holy. And the first step Peter gives us can be categorized by the word separate. As I said a minute ago, sanctification means set apart. Peter said in verse 9 that we are a chosen race, a royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God’s OWN POSSESSION, called out of darkness into His light.
So in light of our calling, though we are in the world, we are not to be of the world. Much in the way a ship may be in the water, but it’s not of the water. The boat may be in the water, but the water is not in the boat.
Peter likens this separation to us being aliens and strangers in the world. Vs.11, “Beloved, I urge you as aliens and strangers to abstain from fleshly lusts which wage war against the soul.” Abstain, or separate yourselves from the lusts, or love of the world. We shouldn’t love the things the world loves. Consider your calling, as strangers and aliens in the world, and don’t participate in the lusts of it.
John said in 1John 2:15 “Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.” As citizens of another kingdom we don’t participate in the works of darkness as the world does. Peter says the lusts of this world wage war against the soul. War is destructive. And the lusts of this world are destructive. They promise to satisfy, to make you happy, but instead they destroy and deceive and make you enslaved all over again.
The lusts of the world attack your mind and bring it back under subjection to sin, and sin destroys. I’ve said it before, the spiritual battleground is in your mind. The soul; that is the mind, the heart, the seat of our emotions and will is the battleground between the Spirit and the flesh. We are to walk after the Spirit, and not by the flesh. So control of the soul is the source of addiction, captivity. And all sin is addictive. And all sin destroys. So the first step is to separate yourself from the world. You’ve been set free from sin and washed by Christ’s blood, continue in that holiness by abstaining, fleeing, moving away from those sins which would seek to enslave you again.
Secondly, the next step Peter says, we are to be superior. That doesn’t mean to be snobby or conceited. It’s means our behavior is held to a higher standard than that of the world. Peter says in vs12 “Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.”
What Peter is getting at here is don’t respond to slander, to accusations, to insults, or to injury from the world with a tit for tat. Don’t stoop to their level. Don’t answer insult with insult. But here is the counter intuitive will of God - do good to those who mistreat you. Jesus said in Luke 6:27-30 "But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back.”
Now that really goes against our nature, doesn’t it? Somebody steps on our toes, somebody treats us unfairly, what do we do? Our nature tells us to let them have a piece of our mind, doesn’t it? We aren’t going to let someone get away with treating us like that. So we take our own revenge. But Romans says, “‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.”
Peter says rather than retaliate, our goal should be that by seeing our good works they might turn to the Lord and be saved. Overcome slander by superior behavior and deeds, so that they might give glory to God when Jesus comes back for His saints. That means that they will be converted as a result of our actions when they mistreat us. You know, according to Fox’s Book of Martyrs, one of the amazing things about martyrdom was that many times the people witnessing the way the martyrs went to their death immediately responded by committing their lives to Christ as well, even knowing that it insured their own death. And they did so because of the incredible testimony of those saints while being persecuted. Our greatest testimony is often how we act, our behavior. It’s not necessarily because we witnessed verbally to someone at some point, but through the testimony of our behavior and our good deeds, in spite of the attacks from the world.
The third step to submission is simply to submit. Submit is not something that comes naturally, as I said earlier. In fact, the whole principle of submission is looked upon even by many in the church as something patriarchal, or legalistic, or even masochistic. But in fact, submission is a key doctrine of the church that the Bible teaches is essential to God’s will.
Peter says starting in vs13, “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.”
First of all, notice that he says submit for the Lord’s sake. That’s the key. Submit as unto the Lord. Our rationalization of whether or not we have to submit is that we compare people to our own personal standards and then if they don’t match up, if we deem they are not worthy, then we believe we are justified in opting out.
But God says submit to them as unto Him. And first on the list is to submit to the government. When Peter wrote this, Nero was Emperor in Rome. Nero is one of the most evil dictators the world has ever seen. He married a castrated teenage boy in a public ceremony. He burned Jerusalem and blamed it on the Christians. He tied Christians to poles and lit them on fire in order to light up his garden parties. He was ultimately responsible for beheading both Peter and Paul. And yet Peter says under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, submit to the king and to the governor.
Peter’s going to say in the next chapter “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word, they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.” That kind of knocks a lot of the objections of women to staying with our husbands right out the window, doesn’t it? Compare your husband to Nero.
So we submit to the government, we don’t resist. We submit, we don’t rebel. We don’t stage a revolution. I’m sorry if I offend the founding fathers. We submit. God has not given us license to rebel. We submit for the Lord’s sake. Submit as unto the Lord. The ruler may be a crack pot. He may be a jerk. He may be an atheist. But we submit to them not because of their merits, but because their authority comes from the Lord.
Notice that we have a Lord that we obey, and He has told us to submit. Lord in this verse is kyrious in the Greek, which means, he to whom a person or thing belongs, about which he has power of deciding; master, lord; the possessor and disposer of a thing, the owner; one who has control of the person, the master. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for argument, does it? If Jesus is actually your Lord and Savior, not just your puppet, then you will obey Him because you belong to Him. Your will is not your own. Ultimately, we are to submit to the Lord.
The fourth step of submission is silence. We silence the objections or criticisms of the gospel by doing right. Peter says that when we submit, even to foolish men, we silence them by doing what is right. Vs.15, “For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.” Notice most importantly that Peter says this is the will of God. Submission is not negotiable. The opposite of submission is rebellion, and if you are to submit as unto the Lord, then when you rebel you are rebelling against the Lord. You’re not rebelling agains the human authority, you’re rebelling against the Lord.
Doing right. I hope that needs little clarification. Peter’s whole epistle here is really about how to live right. How to live holy lives. How to act like Christ. I went to a Bible college once that had pithy sayings by the founder on the wall in every classroom. One of them was “do right until the stars fall.” Just that simple. Do right. No matter what the world is doing, what everyone else does, Do Right. Another saying related to that was, “it’s never right to do wrong in order to get a chance to do right.”
Well, when we submit, when we do right, we silence the critics of the gospel. We silence the critics of the church. The biggest complaint of each generation is that the church is full of hypocrites. We say one thing in church and do another outside of church. Peter says, do right outside of church. Do right in the world. Do right when everyone around you is doing wrong. Your right actions will silence the critics, and convict the world of their sin. That’s God’s will.
The next step to submission is to be a servant. A servant, or a slave, is the key word. Wow, this is just going from bad to worse, isn’t it? Well, let’s try to understand God’s perspective on being a servant. Sanctification is becoming like Jesus, isn’t it? What did Jesus do? Paul tells us in Phil. 2:5-8 “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Jesus was equal with God but submitted to the Father. Then He took the form of a bond servant and became a man like us. And after that He even humbled himself to submit to death on a cross. And yet we resist the idea of being a servant? Is a servant greater than His master? Is it ok for Jesus to be a servant, but we are not?
Peter says you are free, you’ve been set free from the captivity of sin and the devil. He says in verse 16 “As free men, do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.” A bond slave is one who was set free by their master, and yet who chose to stay in that servant relationship because he loved his master. That’s what Peter is saying we are to be like. Like freed slaves who willingly choose to serve their master for the rest of their life, because they love the Lord.
So we love the Lord more than our freedom. We choose to serve the Lord. And Peter gives the negative here; which is don’t use your “freedom” that you received by grace as a covering for continuing in sin. Jude speaks of such people in the church in vs 4 saying, “For certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.” He doesn’t mean that they deny that Jesus is the Christ, but they deny Him Lordship over their lives. They have never truly renounced their sin and made Jesus Lord of their lives, to live for Him, to serve Him, and as such they are still in captivity to sin.
Peter recaps if you will who we are to submit to with a servant’s heart; “Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” To honor is to give preference to. To put them first. That is the attitude of servanthood. Honor, love, and fear or reverence are all the attitude of a bondslave of the Lord.
That attitude we are to have then is respect to those in authority over us. Notice vs 18, “Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.” Peter has been indicating this principle all along. It’s not a reciprocal relationship that he’s talking about. It’s not when they are deserving of your respect. It’s irregardless of whether or not they are good, or honorable, or deserve anything. Notice the word translated unreasonable literally means perverse. Peter isn’t giving us a way out, is he? Give honor to perverse people. Actually, the original says give fear to perverse people. Give reverential fear, that’s what honor means there. A holy fear as unto the Lord.
By definition, grace came to you when you didn’t deserve anything. And we are to be gracious even as God is gracious. Look at the next verse and I want you to notice the word grace in that verse. 19, “For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.” The word favor there is charis, which means grace. Notice also the word “finds” is in italics, which means it’s inferred, its not in the original language. So if we read it again we might read; For this is grace, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.”
I find hope in that rendering that God is going to be gracious to those who suffer unjustly. God sees, and God will reward each man according to his deeds, whether good or bad. So trust your soul to a faithful, gracious Master who will render justice on that day.
And in that context, Peter gives us the last step to submission, which is suffer. Suffering is the refining fire which produces holiness. Suffering is a necessary part of sanctification. Peter says suffering finds favor with God. Again the word means literally grace. Suffering finds grace with God. What may have been intended to you as evil, what may have caused you to suffer, God will use for good. Rom. 8:28 “And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to [His] purpose.”
Jospeh when he was unjustly mistreated by his brothers and sold into captivity, later found himself in a position as the second in command of Egypt. And one day his brothers came to beg bread during a famine, not recognizing him at first. When he finally revealed himself to them, they expected him to take revenge upon them. But what did Joseph say? “You meant it for evil, but God used it for good.” And Joseph’s response was to do good for his brothers, and feed them and exalt them to a status of favor in the kingdom.
Peter says, vs.20 “For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer [for it] you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God.”
There it is again, when you do what is right. Do what is right. This is God’s will. This kind of behavior finds grace with God. Suffer in submission, as unto the Lord. The Lord sees. The Lord will take vengeance. The Lord will one day judge justly. In the meantime, let us be gracious to others, even as God was gracious to us even when we were in rebellion against Him, in hope that by seeing our good works, they will be converted and bring glory to God in the day of His visitation.
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