In the second chapter of the Apostle Peter’s letter to the churches in Asia Minor, he takes up the theme of holiness and spiritual growth. This is in line with Peter’s emphasis on Christian holiness in contradistinction to the unholiness and defilement of the world as an overarching theme throughout both his letters. In this particular chapter, he expresses a sincere desire for these churches to grow, not only in numbers but particularly in terms of their sanctification (see 1 Peter 2:2-5 and 9-12). As central to their holiness, the apostle emphasizes the necessity to build their lives and churches upon the cornerstone which is Jesus Christ, the Lord of all creation whom has been foolishly rejected by the unregenerate (1 Peter 2:6-8).
In 1 Peter 2:13-17 (NKJV), the apostle then writes:
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. For this is the will of God, that by doing good you may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men— as free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God. Honor all people. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the king.
When, in verses 15 to 16, Peter admonishes believers to “put to silence the ignorance of foolish men” as a people who are “free, yet not using liberty as a cloak for vice, but as bondservants of God”, he champions a notion of liberty which was radically at odds with the prevailing ideas of Peter’s time, and also radically at odds with the prevailing humanist notions of liberty in our own age. After all, modernity was largely built upon the Enlightenment’s false notion of liberty sanctioned by the social contract theories of Locke, Hobbes, and Rousseau. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, for example, defined the natural liberty of man as that “preference each man gives to himself in accordance with his natural state”[1] (the social contract theory can be defined as the idea that the foundation of the state is the implicit consent of all free individuals to living in that state).
For Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau, who laid the foundations of the liberal notion of liberty prevalent in our time, the concept itself entailed egocentric self-servitude free from all external constraints. A similar notion of liberty also fundamentally underlay the prevailing hedonistic (Epicurean) conceptualizations of liberty in the time of Peter. It is, and has always been, based upon lies and deceptions, however.
True Liberty Can Only Be Found in Christ
Liberty from God’s authority was first promised to our progenitors by the snake in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3:5), and we know all too well that the consequence of falling for that deception was both spiritual and physical death. Yet this devilish strategy of deception still seems to have borne fruit throughout human history, as it sadly continues to do today. However, the great irony of this deception is that it always leads to the very opposite of true liberty—in fact it results in slavery every single time. For example, among the most notable fruits of the Enlightenment was the rise of state-absolutism and Marxism in the nineteenth century. The Dutch Reformed anti-Enlightenment philosopher Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer aptly described the logical and historical process as follows:
In Hobbes’ Leviathan and Rousseau’s Social Contract … there is liberty and equality. There is a social convention and by virtue of it a state, whose unity and strength are dependent upon the omnipotence of the general will. And how is this so-called will formed and constituted? The ideas of the individual citizens are channeled from the smaller spheres and manifested in the centralized legislative and executive power, whose functioning is dependent upon quenching all resistance against it. And thus we have the absolutism of the state. And for its law all true justice must heed … We also have the all-interfering state. Nothing falls outside of the general will which is its arbitrary domain. It proceeds to rule even over conscience.[2]
In other words, forsaking the supremacy and authority of divine law and Christ’s Lordship in favor of the supremacy of man conflicts with our inescapable created reality and inevitably leads to a kind of epistemic and moral anarchy from which centralized government tyranny alone offers liberation. This is but one example of how a false man-made liberty, better described as licentiousness, leads to enslavement. Another well-known example is the mass enslavement caused by the addiction to pornography or the guilt and depression that always accompany perpetrating an abortion—all brought about by the so-called “liberation” of the sexual revolution in the 20th century.
The reality of human experience therefore confirms the claim of 1 Peter 2:15-16, namely that man-made claims of liberty are but foolish deceptions and do not conform to true liberty, which is only found in Christ. In fact, the text emphasizes that true liberty is only found in the service of God. Not to serve God in liberty necessarily entails serving someone or something else in slavery. In other words, the implications of the first commandment of God’s Law applies to all people throughout all times and in all contexts without exception: if you are not serving God alone as He commands (Exodus 20:3; Deuteronomy 5:6), you are going to be enslaved in the service of some kind of idol.
Significantly, 1 Peter 2:14 and 17-19 also teaches the necessity of obedience to legitimate authority—whether that be obedience to government authorities or employers—and that even to the point of enduring suffering. However, importantly, the text emphasizes that this obedience must always and ever be “for the Lord’s sake” (I Peter 2:13). Is it not ironic how often confessing Christians will emphasize that a wife’s obedience to her husband is conditional upon him ruling his house in accordance with God’s will, yet at the same time speak of submission to civil government as if this would supposedly be an unconditional Christian duty? This amounts to a severe misinterpretation and misapplication of Scripture. It must be emphasized, especially in our day and age characterized by the continuing expansion of the reach of the centralized state, that obedience to a government is always conditional upon that government’s obedience to God’s Law.
Our text, after all, not only emphasizes the necessity of a subject’s obedience to government, but also government’s responsibility before God in terms of punishing evildoers and honoring those who do good (1 Peter 2:14; see also Romans 13:3-4). And since good and evil is defined by God’s Law, we are only to be obedient to government inasmuch as it does not infringe upon the principles of God’s commandments: obedience to God always trumps obedience to any human authority. Whenever and inasmuch as government forsakes God’s commandments, however, we owe it no allegiance and we have, in fact, a duty to resist its blasphemous attempts to usurp God’s authority (Daniel 6:7-10; Acts 5:29).
Understanding this conditional nature of obedience is also central to understanding 1 Peter 2’s explanation of true liberty. We are liberated by serving God so that we do not owe obedience to any authority which raises itself up against the omnipotence of God. True liberty is defined by Scripture and confirmed by our experience of created reality. True liberty is only found in submission to Christ’s Lordship (John 8:36), while submission to any and all arbitrary, man-made authority always amounts to some form of slavery. 1 Peter 2 therefore proclaims the true liberty of the children of God who are, by virtue of our liberty in Christ, truly set free from all submission and slavery to Satan, sin, death and the arbitrary authority of godless men.
[1] Jean Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social, ou, Principes du droit politique (Amsterdam: M.M. Rey, 1762), 69: “de la preferance que chacin se donne et par consequent de la nature de l’homme.”
[2] Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer, Ongeloof en revolutie: Eene reeks historische voorlezingen (Leiden: Luchtmans, 1847), 242: “[In] den Leviathan van Hobbes en het Contrat Social van Rousseau … er is vrijheid en gelijkheid. Er is dus een Maatschappelijk Verdrag; er is dus een Staat, welks eenheid en kracht berust op het alvermogen van den algemeenen wil. En hoe wordt nu die wil, zoo het heet, gevormd en geconstateerd? Uit de boezem van de kleinere kringen wordt het goedvinden van individuële burgers, als ware ‘t kanaalsgewijze, naar een middenpunt gebracht, om aldaar zoo wel de Wetgewende macht als het Uitvoerend Bewind, met verbreking van tegenstand, in beweging te brengen. Dus is er eene almacht van de Staat. Voor zijn regt behoort al wat regt heet te zwijgen … Er is albemoeijing van den Staat. Geen onderwerp dat niet binnen het bereik van den algemeenen wil valt, is niet mede onder de zorgen der willekeur behoort. Ook over de belangen het geweten strekt zij haren scepter uit.”
Dr. Schlebusch is a historian, philosopher, and theologian from South Africa. He holds two BA degrees (theology and Latin) and a Master’s degree in philosophy from the University of the Free State. In 2018, he graduated with a PhD from the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
