📖 1 Peter Intensive — Unit 5: Sojourner Conduct and Submission

Text: 1 Peter 2:11-17

Sojourners, Abstain from Fleshly Lusts

Having shown the church who they are — living stones, a holy nation, the people of God — Peter now turns to how they must live in a watching world. And he begins by reminding them again of their identity: "Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims" (1 Peter 2:11). We are back to the exile of Unit 1. The believer is a stranger here, a pilgrim passing through a land that is not his home. And because that is so, Peter pleads, "abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul." The desires of the flesh are not harmless pleasures; they are at war, waging a campaign against the very life of the soul. A traveler bound for a better country does not load himself down with the things that would trip and trap him on the way. The first mark of the pilgrim, then, is an inner battle: a steady refusal of the appetites that fight against God within him.

Notice that Peter does not begin with the believer’s behavior toward the watching world, but with the war inside him. A holy witness in society is impossible while the appetites rule within. He calls them "fleshly lusts" because they crave without limit and never keep the pleasure they promise, and he says they "war against the soul" because they are not harmless indulgences but an enemy campaigning for the ruin of our truest life. The pilgrim, therefore, guards his own heart first. He travels light, refusing to be weighed down by desires that would trip and trap him on the road home, for he knows the battle for a godly life among men is won or lost in this secret struggle against sinful craving.

Honorable Conduct Among the Gentiles

From the inner life Peter turns to the outer witness. "Having your conduct honorable among the Gentiles, that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation" (1 Peter 2:12). The scattered church lived under suspicion; outsiders spoke against them as if they were criminals. Peter's answer is not protest but a beautiful life. Let your conduct be so plainly good that the very people who slander you are silenced by what they see, and at last are brought to glorify God themselves. The "day of visitation" is the day God draws near, whether in saving grace or in judgment; and Peter's hope is that the good works of believers will help bring their accusers to that day on the side of grace. The church's behavior is its loudest sermon. A holy life preaches where words cannot reach.

Submit for the Lord's Sake

Now Peter applies this honorable conduct to the believer's place in society, beginning with government. "Therefore submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake, whether to the king as supreme, or to governors, as to those who are sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of those who do good" (1 Peter 2:13-14). The Christian is to be a good citizen, submitting to the governing authorities — and notice the reason: for the Lord's sake. We obey not because rulers are always wise or good, but because order is God's design and submission honors our Lord.

Here the lesson sets the record straight: the people of God have never been anarchists. The Lord Jesus Himself said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's" (Matthew 22:21). The apostle Paul taught that the governing authorities are sent by God and serve His purposes (Romans 13:1-7). And in the pastoral epistles believers are told to pray for kings and all who are in authority. So the Christian does not despise government or rise up against it; he submits, obeys good laws, pays what is owed, and prays for his rulers — all the while remembering that his ultimate King reigns above every earthly throne.

It must be added that this submission is real, but it is not without limit. The same apostles who taught believers to obey the authorities also stood before a council that forbade them to preach, and answered, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). Submission to government is the rule, and the believer keeps it gladly; yet it is submission for the Lord’s sake, and therefore it can never stretch to cover disobedience against the Lord Himself. The Christian honors the throne because he honors the God who set it up, and that very reverence marks the single boundary beyond which an earthly command must not be followed. Short of that line, the believer obeys, pays, and prays; at that line, he obeys God and bears the cost.

Doing Good Silences Foolish Critics

Peter states the purpose of all this plainly: "For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men" (1 Peter 2:15). Slander and ignorance are best answered not by argument but by goodness. When critics accuse the church of being lawless or dangerous, the steady record of believers obeying, serving, and doing good leaves the accusation with nothing to stand on. A good life closes the mouths of fools more surely than a clever reply ever could. It is, Peter says, the very will of God that we answer hostility this way.

There is great relief in this for the believer. He is not charged to win every argument or to silence every hostile tongue by force of speech; he is charged only to do good, and to leave the result with God. A reputation cannot always be defended by words, but it can be lived out, and what cannot be argued away can often be quietly lived down. The slandered Christian who keeps doing good will find that, in time, his plain goodness disarms the ignorance arrayed against him more surely than any rebuttal could. This is the will of God, and it sets the believer free from the exhausting need to answer every critic.

Free, Yet Servants of God

But Peter guards against a misunderstanding. Does the gospel's freedom mean believers may now do as they please? No. "As free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God" (1 Peter 2:16). The Christian is gloriously free — free from sin, free from the law's condemnation, free from fear. Yet that freedom is never a covering under which to hide evil. We are free, and at the very same time we are bondservants of God, slaves of the Master who bought us. True Christian liberty is not freedom to sin but freedom from sin in order to serve God gladly. The one who uses grace as an excuse for wrongdoing has not understood his freedom at all.

The world commonly imagines that to serve God is to lose one’s freedom, and to throw off God is to gain it. Peter teaches the very reverse. The man who casts off God to live as he pleases does not become free; he becomes the slave of his own appetites, driven by cravings he cannot master. But the man who becomes the bondservant of God is set free from the tyranny of sin and given a Master who is good. True liberty, then, is not the absence of a master but the having of the right one. The believer is never more free than when he is most fully the servant of God.

Honor All, Love the Brotherhood, Fear God, Honor the King

Peter gathers the whole matter into four short commands, a complete map of the believer's relationships: "Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king" (1 Peter 2:17). Honor all people — treat every human being, made in God's image, with dignity. Love the brotherhood — hold a special, warm love for fellow believers. Fear God — give Him reverent awe above all. Honor the king — respect the governing authority. And the order is not accidental. Fear God comes before honor the king. The believer honors the state and submits to it for the Lord's sake, but his highest reverence and allegiance belong to God alone. He honors the king; he fears God. So when an earthly command and God's command ever collide, the pilgrim knows which throne is supreme. Until then, he lives quietly and honorably, a good citizen of earth precisely because he is first a citizen of heaven.

It is worth seeing how complete these four commands are. To honor all people guards the believer from contempt toward anyone, for every person bears the image of God. To love the brotherhood gives the church its warmth, a love deeper than mere courtesy. To fear God anchors the whole of life in reverence for the One to whom we must give account. And to honor the king keeps the believer orderly and at peace in the place where God has set him. Take away any one of them and the Christian life tilts out of balance; held together, they form a believer who is humble before all, tender toward the church, reverent before God, and respectful toward the state.

Submit Exam & Check Pass Reset Unit