The Principle and Pattern of Submission — Part One

I want, this morning, to share my heart with you as I begin this. I’ve thought long and hard and prayed about it, and I feel that I must. It’s such a conviction in my spirit. I recognize that it is a conviction that is not shared by many. I realize that it puts me out on a limb in many ways. But it remains the conviction of my heart. And as I studied this week in preparation for these verses, I found myself once again at odds with so much around me. And as I’ve prayed, I have asked God that I would have a spirit in my own demeanor in communicating this to you that would in no sense represent judgment to anyone else who takes a different perspective from the one that I’m about to share—that would in no sense be hard or brittle or critical or uncompromising to the point where I have an unteachable spirit myself.

Not a Movement

Now, what am I going to talk about, huh? Well, let me tell you. It’s happened to me a couple of times in the last week or so: I’ve been speaking out to inanimate objects. This is a condition that other people have, I recognize. That’s nothing in and of itself, particularly. It depends what you’re speaking out about. Let me tell you.

The first one was, somebody gave me a magazine. A kind friend gave me a magazine. A Christian magazine—I’ll leave it at that. A wide-circulating, very influential Christian magazine. And as I was leafing through it, I came to an editorial comment, which ran to a page, which concerned what was referred to as “our movement.” “Our movement.” And the author, writing, as it were, in an all-embracing way for everyone who represents authentic Christianity, was concerned and was chiding me and others for the fact that “our movement” wasn’t doing too well. And the reason that “our movement” wasn’t doing too well was because people like me weren’t in “our movement.” And if “our movement” was going to be successful, then what would need to happen is that we would have to develop an agenda which would be a more successful agenda than the other movements which are going on around us.

I read the article, I laid it down on the table, and I just exclaimed—in the response in my heart and mind, I said, “I am not in a movement!” I just said that to the magazine. The magazine didn’t answer. Nobody answered. Nobody was around. But I told it. I said, “I am not in a movement!” The thought in my mind then was “Well, what are you in?” And I said, “I am in the church of Jesus Christ.”

Well, I hadn’t hardly recovered from that when I was watching TV. Although I have tuned many stations out of my television, I happened to see this one. And again I was chided by some who are my friends and one who is my countrywoman for the fact that somehow, again, I was not in “the coalition”—the coalition which is vital, now, for the establishing of a significant number of judges and politicians of the right gender and of the right persuasion in the right place at the right time if ever there is to be a future for “the coalition”; a coalition which will involve conservative Catholics, whoever they are, and also evangelicals firm in the faith. And I find myself again—I turned the television off, I stood up, and I said, “I am not in a coalition.” “What are you in?” “I am in the church of Jesus Christ.”

Now, as soon as I’d done that—this was the second time in a matter of days—I then sat down to assess how much of my reaction was born of personal prejudice; how much of my reaction was actually dead wrong; how much of it was just because I was dumb and missing the point; and how much, if any of it, was born from a deep conviction about biblical theology, was born of an understanding of the headship of Jesus Christ and his rule over the church, was born out of a conviction of what the Bible says concerning ministry, concerning the church, concerning what it means to be the church in our day and generation. Because if I’m wrong, then the Scriptures must correct me, and if I’m right, then I can’t keep silent any longer. And so I went back to the area of study—1 Peter chapter 2—and I read it. Verse 9: What does God say about the church? What does he say we are? He says,

You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

And then I rewrote 1 Peter 2:9–10 on the strength of the “coalition agenda” mentality which constantly flushes at me as a pastor in this church. And this is what I wrote. And again, I recognize the strength of motive, the conviction of people whose sandals I’m unworthy to unloose, but this is the flavor that I get. First Peter 2:9 could be written in this way: “But you are a democratic people, a political priesthood, a powerful nation, a people behaving for God, that you may enforce the agenda of one who called you from apathy into activity. Once you were not a coalition, but now you are the coalition of theological rainbows. Once you were apolitical, but now you are very political.”

A Different Strategy

Now, here is the problem that I face. I’m coming now, along with you this morning… And I want to put it to you that it is a problem we all face: that what Peter has to say here concerning the issue of the church provides no credence whatsoever for much that the church is embracing in our day—especially in the Western world. Not necessarily so in the Eastern Bloc. Certainly, the Berlin Wall did not come down as a result of political agitation. It came down as a result of prayer, if anything at all, right? In the silence and in the secret place, people prayed down the Berlin Wall that there might be an open door for the ministry of the gospel.

And so we are in a kind of unique environment here, confronted by a day and generation that is alien to Christ, that is disinterested in God, that is disarming that which this nation was built upon. And so believers have a rightful sense of concern, so they have a rightful sense of responsibility—that as individual members of our society, that as our involvement in the nation, as our involvement in school boards, in our taking of our place in different things confronts us, we want to seize those responsibilities, and so we should. However, we need to face this fact: that Peter was living in an environment that was far more degenerate and far more threatening to the Christian church than even the one we face today. And what does he say to do? First Peter 2:13: “Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every authority instituted among men.”

“But Peter, don’t you realize who Nero is? Don’t you realize that Nero is a megalomaniac? Don’t you realize that Nero is avowedly against the church of Jesus Christ? Don’t you know, Peter, that you may end up on a cross?”

We cannot have an apostolic gospel which remains foundational and timeless at the point we choose and then remove it at any point of inconvenience to us.

Peter’s writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and he goes on and develops the principle in the fourteenth verse and on through there. What is his strategy? It’s very different! Very different from what’s around us. Where, I ask myself, are the flyers that he was sending out endorsing the pro-Jesus candidate for Bithynia? Where do I find, in 1 Peter 1–5, the call to the demonstration on behalf of the Christian candidates in Cappadocia? Where is it? Where is the apostolic mandate for much of the activity which is absolutely thundering in upon the church in our generation?

And I want to suggest to you that it is absolutely nowhere. It is not even in the Bible. Is it simply that Peter was unfortunate in that he lived in the first century? If he’d been fortunate enough to live in the twentieth century, then he would have discovered the nature of real kingdom business! Then he would have known what it is to be the church! Then all the cobwebs of the silly stuff in the early centuries would have blown away, and suddenly the picture would have become clear for him! It cannot be, loved ones. We cannot, you see, have an apostolic gospel which remains foundational and timeless at the point we choose and then remove it at any point of inconvenience to us.

When Peter—and turn for a moment to Acts chapter 12 here—was nudged by an angel in the jail… Acts 12:4: He was arrested. He was put in prison. He was handed over to be guarded, notice, by sixteen soldiers—“four squads of four soldiers each.” And Herod, who has a kind of dramatic turn to him, intended to bring him out for public trial after the Passover. Verse 5: “So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.” Verse 6: “… sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains, and sentries [standing] guard at the entrance. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appear[s] … a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. ‘Quick, get up!’ he said, and the chains fell off Peter’s wrists.” You read the exciting story on, and you discover that when he finally comes to and realizes he’s not dreaming, he’s whipping it down the Jerusalem streets, and he’s heading back to find the church.

Now, I want to ask you this morning: What was the impetus that led to his release? Was it as a result of crowds gathering in the Jerusalem streets, marshalling their forces against the fact of the unjust imprisonment of Peter? Was it? No, it was not. It was a result of the church doing the stupidest thing the world could ever imagine: getting down on its knees and asking God to release the mighty apostle from the custody of the sixteen soldiers. The world looked on and said, “Ridiculous!” Heaven looked on and said, “You got it right!” And the church in the twentieth century will never know angels nudging and releasing from jail as long as the church in the twentieth century uses the world’s methodology to achieve a divine agenda.

“The Weapons We Fight With”

Here’s my conviction. We said last Sunday, in looking at 11 and 12, that the church as you trace it through history has swung between either being isolated from or absorbed by the society in which it finds itself: times of monasticism, the pillar saints, people going away and wearing hair shirts and lying on beds of nails and believing that that was the answer. Then there have been other times when the church has been so whitewashed that it is indistinguishable from the environment around it.

I may be completely wrong, but I believe we are living in a period of absorption. I do not believe that the absorption is a moral absorption. I’m not suggesting for a moment that the church is somehow giving up its deep convictions concerning truth, but rather, the absorption is at the level of strategy. At the level of strategy. I believe that one of the great delusions which the Evil One has perpetrated upon the church towards the end of the twentieth century in Western culture is simply this: that we can beat the world at its own game; that we can, taking the same methodology around us, build the kingdom for Jesus Christ. And so influential is that notion, and so all-pervasive is it, that for somebody to do what I’m doing right now—I can tell by some of your faces—is to put myself… I’m about as welcome in many environments saying what I’m saying as Yasser Arafat would be welcome at your next-door neighbor’s boy’s bar mitzvah. You are an absolute idiot to say this, because the airwaves are full of it, the magazines are consumed by it, and the church is away on it. It’s nuts on it!

What are we to do? Let me say this: when the church in any generation lays down the weapons provided by its commander in chief, it must inevitably take up other weapons. For it knows that it must fight. It knows that it’s in a battle. It knows that the powers of darkness range against it. So when it lays down what it has been given, which is uniquely the church’s… It’s not unique to a coalition. It’s not unique to a movement. It’s not unique to an agenda. It’s unique to the church of Jesus Christ. When it lays down those weapons, it can do nothing else except take some others up.

Two Corinthians 10:3. Two Corinthians 10:3: “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.” Paul could say that. We can’t. “The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world.” Paul could say that. We can’t. “On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds.” I put it to you this morning, loved ones, that either we believe that, or we don’t believe it. And our belief in it will be displayed in our behavior. It’s not simply a cerebral conviction. It is going to have implications for the church.

You see, what has the church done in environments where it doesn’t have democratic freedom such as is ours? Is democratic freedom such a tremendous privilege after all? This is the final heresy. Is it? Well, of course it is! Freedom is a great privilege, but it is not a great privilege when it leads us to the conviction that we don’t need to do what our commander in chief said we need to do. But when we have no democratic freedom, when we’re up against a wall, when we’re shackled in the jails, when our pastors are taken away and dragged into custody, when the church is guarded and surrounded by secret police, then what are we going to do? We can only do one thing: do what we’re supposed to do—pray. But as long as we don’t have to do what we’re supposed to do, then there’s a myriad bunch of other things that we can all do. And that, I suggest to you, is what is going on.

Ephesians 6: What are the weapons of our warfare? These are timeless weapons given to the church. Ephesians 6:17–18: “Take the helmet of salvation,” which is the final piece of the armor, “and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” Here’s our sword: the proclamation of the Word of God. “And pray in the Spirit.” Don’t “say prayers.” “Pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests. [And] with this in mind, be alert and always keep on praying for all the saints.” Verse 19: “Pray also for me.”

Now, what word stands out there? “Pray”! Now, you’re sensible people. Assess the church in the West. Assess the average program and calendar of a church’s activity. And here’s the question: Do you think it is a tenable argument that the church is laying down its weapons? Do you think it is possible to argue that we are laying down the weapons? The average church that would proclaim truth has a ten-minute sermon, a twelve-minute sermon, and if the guy goes any longer, they’ll shoot him or remove him or do something with him. The average church, you can go through its program: there is no prayer within it at all. And so, when it lays down the weapons it’s been given, it needs must take up other weapons.

Isn’t one of your favorite stories in the Old Testament the story of David and Goliath? Goliath confronting the [Israelites], out there shouting every morning, banging on his metal armor—presumably like King Kong—and saying, “Hey! Send out your best! I’ll eat you up!” And the army stood out there every day, and nobody raised a finger against him. And finally, a shepherd boy comes along. That’s a joke in itself! A shepherd boy against a giant over nine feet tall? “Oh, well, if we’ve got to use a shepherd boy, then presumably what we need to do is clad him up in some armor. Because after all, a shepherd boy’s never going to make it on his own, is he?”

And so we put him in Saul’s armor. What a horrific, nonsensical sight that must have been as David stumbled and bumbled around the tent of Saul with all this stuff clanging on him. And they said, “It’ll take a little while to work into it, David, you know? Are you feeling good?”

And he shouted through with, “No, I’m not! Just get me out of this stuff! Get me out of here!”

They take all the armor off again and say, “Well, you can’t go like this. What are you going to do?”

“Well, here’s the deal. I’m going to have five small stones. I’m going to have a sling; I use it every day. And I’m going to go get him. And what’s more, I’m going to chop his head off. And you know why? Because he is defying the armies of the living God. He’s defying God in heaven. God himself will fight for me.” You see, he would never know that God was fighting for him as long as he took all the other armor that gave him the notion that he was fighting himself!

My thesis this morning is this, loved ones—an unpopular thesis: the church of Jesus Christ is clad in the armor of Saul and is unable to respond to the cries of Goliath. And it is not because all power in heaven and earth has not been given. It has.[1] It’s not because weaponry has not been provided. It has. It is because man in his wisdom has determined that these old-fashioned notions and these silly old ideas—that through the foolishness of preaching[2] and through the praying of God’s people we can pull down empires for God—simply do not work anymore. And once having concluded that they do not work, we must therefore find something which does.

And I say to you this morning, on the authority of God’s Word, that if that is right, then Peter was wrong. If that is right, then the apostles completely missed it. If that is right, then we might have expected that Jesus gathered the apostles around him and gave them a strategy, a political agenda, a methodology for overturning civil government, for disruption, and a strategy for making sure that this man was here and there.

Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I am not suggesting for one moment that we become Amish. I’m not suggesting that the pendulum swings from absorption to isolation. Of course we must be about the business of fulfilling our responsibility as citizens. Of course we ought to be editors of newspapers. Of course if God has given a tongue in our heads and we can make sense and tell the truth, there may be a place for us in the house of Congress. Of course if we can exercise judicial wisdom, there may be a place for us in the judiciary of our land. That is taken for granted. What I’m addressing with you this morning is this: when all of that is said and done, that’s not where the confidence of the church lies. That’s not our strategy. It rather is that we would come before God on our knees for a world that disdains him and that we would seek to be obedient to his Word. We will never see angels open prison doors, because, frankly, we don’t need to. We’ll open them ourselves.

You remember the story in Acts chapter 3 of the healing of the man at the Gate Beautiful? Tremendous story. Peter looks at the man—the beggar—and he says to him in verse 6, “‘Silver [and] gold I do not have, but what I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk.’ Taking him by the … hand he [picked] him up,” and he didn’t just walk; he was leaping and dancing and doing his thing all through Jerusalem. The story’s told, apocryphal or otherwise, of Aquinas being shown round the Vatican years and years after this. And the pope, quoting from Acts 3:6 and showing Aquinas the fantastic glittering array of wealth, says to Aquinas, “There you are. No longer does the church need to say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’” And Aquinas turned and said, “And no longer is the church able to say, ‘In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk.’”

Do you realize that in this Western culture, we may be living in the most phenomenal backwater that church history has ever seen? Do you realize that the moving of the Spirit of God in places far beyond Great Britain and the continental United States is far more significant? Far more conversions. Far more impetus of the gospel in African countries, even in the heart of China with all its deprivation. Over there in Nepal in secret and hidden places, the church of Jesus Christ is going on. And is it going on as a result of these strategies? No! Do we really believe that we long for revival in this land?

Do we really believe that we want God to come by his Spirit and move? Do we want that God would convict men and women of sin and of their need of Christ—that that would be the thing that the church was heard for? Then, loved ones, we’re going to have to go back to our Bibles, and go to them on our knees, and realize that we are a very, very different people from what the world even understands. We are, as he says in verse 11, “aliens and strangers.” We are those who must “abstain from sinful desires, which war against” our souls. We are those whose “good lives,” verse 12, “among the pagans”—the quality and the clarity and the crystal-clear dimension of our living—should be such that though they accuse us of doing wrong, they may see what? They may see our good deeds. And they may do what? They may “glorify God on the day he visits us.”

A Different Way: Submission

Now, that principle in verses 11 and 12 is then worked out in relation to submission in verse 13 and following—submission in relation to civil government, submission in the realm of personal employment. And if you scan down the paragraph, you will notice that Jesus provides for us the ultimate example. And in the example of Jesus Christ, we are provided with zero impetus for political agitation.

Let me just give you a verse or two, and then I’m going to wrap this up. I have shared more of my heart and less of my Bible than I intended to. But let me turn you to Romans 13:1: “Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities.” Now notice this next statement: “For there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment [up]on themselves.”

Back in 1 Peter 2:14, Peter is saying, in concurrence with Paul’s statement there in Romans 13—a seminal statement concerning civil government and the place of the individual concerning it—in verse 14, Peter points out that God has established authority. He has established from creation a system of civil government so that virtue might be encouraged and vice might be punished. What he is saying here in verse 14 is that the preservation and the order of society as we know it is directly related to wrongdoing being punished and well-doing being praised. And don’t ever forget that Peter is writing in an age of tyranny. And he’s saying, “Even though we live in the most tyrannical environment, loved ones,” he says, “this is what I want you to do: rank yourselves under”—hupotassō, the word for “submit” there—“rank yourselves under the authorities.” That’s the manner of our expression. And the motive of our expression is in that little phrase, “for the Lord’s sake.” If we’re going to commend Jesus Christ as Lord, if we’re not going to bring reproach upon his name, then we are going to make sure that we’re not involved in unruly behavior. Therefore, we’re going to display obedience. Therefore, we’re going to live in a totally different way.

Now, we’ll come to this next time—if there is a next time. And we’ll go back, and we’ll listen to Jesus espousing the exact same principle: “If somebody asks you to go a mile, and it’s a command, go a second mile. If somebody asks you for your jacket, give them your coat. It’s a command for the jacket, give them the coat. If someone slaps you on the one side of your face, turn the other side and let ’em slap that side too.”[3] What in the world is he saying there? He’s saying this: that if you go the second mile, you will show that you’re doing this not simply because of the command that is given but because of the willingness of your heart.

And what Peter is saying is the same thing. “I want you,” he says, “to submit to authority—you’ve got to do it—but to submit in such a phenomenal way that people will know you must be doing it for some other reason.” And the answer is dead clear: “We are submitting to you for the Lord’s sake, and for no other reason”—so as not to bring reproach upon your name; so as not to cause chaos in our environment, because the Lord knows there’s enough chaos caused by enough anarchy without the Christian church trying it as well.

Let me finish with another illustration—Acts chapter 16 again. Isn’t this the same display of submission that we find in Paul and Silas in the jail? Acts chapter 16: They get thrown in jail. They don’t just get thrown in jail; verse 22 tells us that they were “stripped” and they were “beaten.” They were “severely flogged,” and “they were thrown into [the] prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully.” And “upon receiving such orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.”

Now, here is apostolic example: so they start this revival meeting right there in the jail; they start singing all the songs they can remember. They didn’t immediately grab for a printing press and stick it out through the walls, saying, “Could you please get some leaflets around? Get a demonstration going out here! It’s only way we’ll ever get out! You need to get a crowd down here! We need a crowd! We’ll never do it without a crowd, you know? God’s in the business of crowds.” Oh yeah? How much crowd was left around the cross when the greatest event of victory the world has ever seen took place? That’s right.

No, they sang! They sang! And in verse 28, after the earthquake and the chains falling all over the floor, the jailer wakes up, and when he sees

the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. [And] Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We[’re] all here!”

[And] the jailer called for lights, [and he] rushed in and [he] fell trembling before Paul and Silas. [And then he] brought them out and asked, “[Men], what must I do to be saved?”[4]

I put it to you that the twentieth-century church would go at it absolutely differently. The first priority would be to make sure that there was a Christian jailer in that jail and a Christian magistrate who would be able to make sure that they didn’t get beaten for preaching the gospel. That wasn’t God’s way. They were in an alien, pagan, degenerate, foul environment. They got the tar beaten out of them, thrown in a jail. And at the bottom of their misery, they sang praise to God. And God intervened from heaven and sent an earthquake and broke up their little whimsy-timsy chains—and, to cap it all off, gave them the privilege of leading the jailer to faith in Jesus Christ and then having a baptism service.

It is to revival that we need to look, not to the politicizing of our world, for that never was the pattern the apostles left to us.

The crossroads which faces the church in our generation is as clear to me as night is from day: do it God’s way, or do it man’s way. God’s way: to purpose, to power, to renewal, and to victory. Man’s way: to superficial, interim, passing, transient success, and potentially to the bypassing of the Spirit of God off the very land which was founded upon the convictions of the truth of the gospel.

It’s not a nice thing for us to face, loved ones. I face it for my own country. There is a very real chance that Islam will control Britain if Jesus Christ does not come back or the church is not revived. And there is no saying what will control America if Jesus Christ does not return or the church is not revived. But it is to revival that we need to look, not to the politicizing of our world, for that never was the pattern the apostles left to us.

You are thoughtful people—a wee bit more thoughtful this morning than some mornings. Consider these things to see whether they’re so.[5] Wrestle with them. Search your Bibles. The only word that you should listen carefully to is the very Word of God, which is pressing upon my heart in these matters.

I invite you to bow with me in prayer.

As we bow in prayer and respond to this Word this morning, let us just ask God to, by his Spirit, take truth and write it in all of our hearts. Let us make sure that the prejudices of men, or of man, do not so overwhelm us that we’re unable to think issues through under the guidance of the Spirit and the Word of God.

Father, I pray that as we respond to your Word, it may be to your Word alone—that the truth of your Word may bite into our lives, transform our thinking, make us radically different, no matter what the environment says. And we want to give you the glory that’s due to your name. We want to give to you from the riches that you have provided for us. And so we bring our morning offering. We want to do it with glad and generous hearts. And we do so now in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] See Matthew 28:18.

[2] See 1 Corinthians 1:21.

[3] Matthew 5:39–41 (paraphrased).

[4] Acts 16:27–20 (NIV 1984).

[5] See Acts 17:11.