Daily Meditations on the Bible / We stand with Israel
… honor the emperor.
At first, when I looked at today’s text I thought, “Great! I get a day off!” After all, in our country, we have no emperor. Nothing to see here, right?
Wrong. There is a lot to see.
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:17 (d) — Honor”
… fear God …
Are you afraid of God? Should you be? Peter seems to think so.
It seems to me that if God can create and sustain the universe if he created life as we know it, and if he became man and died for our sins, he is a bit beyond our comprehension. We can’t outthink God. We shouldn’t even try.
And let’s talk about power. How much power does God have?
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:17 (c) — An Appropriate Kind of Fear”
… love the family of believers …
Peter’s theme is submission. He wants us to “submit … for the Lord’s sake.” We are to put ourselves under others in importance. By doing this we lift others up. They become more important in our eyes.
This feels counter-intuitive to our egos. The part of us that stands apart from God does not want to submit. We glory in our independence and our power. We enjoy taking control of our lives and living large. At least as long as things go well.
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:17 (b) — Family Love”
Show proper respect to everyone…
As we turn to verse 17 in our letter from Peter, he begins with a deep well. On the surface, his words seem simple enough. As we gaze into them, we discover that we cannot see the bottom.
“Everyone” is a lot of people! Does he really mean every person?
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:17 (a) — Respect”
Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.
If I put on my “ignorant” and “foolish people” glasses1, it is easy to see this verse as a contradiction. After all, Peter says, “Live as free people…” and then in the same sentence he says, “live as God’s slaves.” Which is it, Peter? Free or slave?
How are we to understand this apparent dichotomy?
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:16 — Ultimate Freedom”
For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.
There are some words in the ancient texts that give translators trouble. If you look in the NIV it might say something different than the King James Version. Sometimes out of thirty or more English translations you might find as many as ten different English equivalents. “Ignorance” is not one of those troublesome words.
Except for one or two exceptions, every English translation uses the word “ignorant” to express the Greek, “agnōsia.” In English, the word “ignorant” is often confused with “stupid.” These are two very different words. The word “ignorant” means a lack of knowledge. The cure to ignorance is knowledge.
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:15 — Doing Good”
Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.
We have spent two days talking about the first seven words of verse 13. In “The Meaning of Submit” and “For His Sake” we looked at what it means to submit, or “put under,” and why this is important to Christians. Now we look at the rest of this verse and the next.
We live in a time where everything is seemingly being turned upside down. The year of this writing is 2020. If you are reading this at some future date, you will know how 2020 turned out. For the rest of us, reading this in the middle of this unusual year, we are still wondering what will happen.
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:13-14 — Human Authority”
Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake…
Peter is asking us to do something none of us want to do. Now he tells us why we should want to: Because of Jesus.
How does that work?
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:13 (b) — For His Sake”
Submit…
The word “triggered” has taken on new meaning in the English lexicon. It has always been around, of course, and used in the practical sense of activating something with a trigger. During the war, if a booby trap was set off you would say it had been “triggered.” These days the word is often used to describe a strong adverse emotional reaction to something. For example, “The student in the front row was triggered when the instructor mentioned that they had voted for the president.”
Words that set off an emotional reaction are “trigger words.” One of the oldest trigger words in the English language is the word, “submit.”
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:13 (a) — The Meaning of Submit”
Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
This is another challenging text. Peter is starting a section of his letter that describes how to live among unbelievers. As I think about what he is teaching us, it feels like we are sitting in on a master’s class for Christian living.
In today’s passage, we are talking about neighbors or coworkers who accuse us of doing wrong. (Peter assumes we are innocent!) Has this ever happened to you? It has for me. It can be a terrifying experience. In an instant, everything you thought was solid ground can be swept away.
Continue reading “1 Peter 2:12 — Smeared”