Four Rules to Live By
Guidelines from 1 Peter 2:17 that should govern our relationships in this world.
As you live out your Christian life in New York City, navigating your many relationships and obligations at church and in the world, sometimes you may feel like a clown at the circus who’s trying to juggle a dozen rubber balls on a unicycle, maybe with a few knives and flaming torches thrown in as well!
In four small sentences (found in 1 Peter 2:17), the Apostle Peter provides us with some basic guidelines that give us a clear path forward. If you will embrace these four guidelines, it will simplify your life and align you more closely with God’s purpose for your day-to-day life. It will also make us a more God-honoring, spiritually healthy church.
When Peter wrote these four sentences, he wrote them as commands. He also wrote them in a customary way. This means that he gave these statements as instructions (or commands from God) for how you should live and make decisions on a regular basis (the customary aspect).
Peter also arranged these four instructions as a chiasm. The chiasm arrangement looks like this:
> Honor all people.
>>>Love the brotherhood.
>>>Fear God.
> Honor the king.
This means that the first and fourth instructions are parallel in some way and the second and third (or middle) instructions are parallel, too. It also means that the middle two receive some extra emphasis and should “stand out” a bit more than the outer two. In this case, the outer two statements give guidelines for your relationships in the world at large, while the inner two statements give guidelines for your spiritual, Christian relationships.
This observation indicates that you should give top priority to your spiritual, Christian relationships and that by doing so, you will be able to handle your other relationships properly. In other words, if you give priority to the outer two commands (your relationships in this world), then your spiritual, Christian relationships will suffer. On the flip side, if you give proper attention to your Christian, spiritual relationships, then you will be well prepared to handle your relationships in the world.
Honor all people.
The word honor means to show respect and to place a high value on something. The word all means “all” and refers to all people or everyone. As such, this means that you should show respect and give high value to every person you encounter regardless of their distinguishing characteristics, such as: ethnicity, social class, financial status, skin tone, gender, age, handicap or disability, political affiliation, education level, nationality, marital status, outward appearance, and religious beliefs.
Every person descends from the same set of parents (Gen 3:20) and has the same blood as every other person (Acts 17:26). Consequently, there is no such thing as a superior gender, a superior race, or a superior lifestyle. All people are equally worthy of respect and value in the sight of God. As God’s children, we should share this view with our heavenly Father who made us all.
What’s more, every person is made in the image of God (Gen 1:27). That’s why the second most important command (“love your neighbor as yourself”) is essentially equal in importance to the first most important command (“love God with all your heart, soul, and mind”) (Matt 22:37-40). We show our love and respect for God by showing compassion and honor to our fellow human beings, no matter who they are.
Love the brotherhood.
This instruction is related to the first in that it is a subset of the first. As we show respect and give high and equal value to every person we meet, we should especially show love to our fellow Christians. We should not show love for one another to the exclusion of nonbelievers. Instead, we should show love and strong support for members of the Christian community in a heightened way that goes “above and beyond” our love to everyone else.
The word brotherhood refers to all Christians in the world as a fellowship, emphasizing our common bond in Christ and our responsibility to support one another however we can. It also emphasizes the familial affection we should have for one another, loving one another as brothers and sisters do in a close family.
This word appears only twice in the New Testament, both of which occur in 1 Peter. The first instance (1 Pet 2:17) emphasizes the need for us to show love to one another, having one another’s back, meeting one another’s needs, being there for one another.
The second instance (1 Pet 5:9) emphasizes the need for us to empathize with one another and show strong support to one another through the experiences of suffering that we go through as Christians. Believers throughout the world and throughout church history have suffered in all sorts of ways. What makes this suffering bearable is when other believers provide you with the strong support that you need.
We show support to one another through prayer and words of encouragement (like in our afternoon Growth Group Bible studies). We also show this support by spending time together (like at Family Camp), building friendships with one another (like at our upcoming hike together), serving together (like at VBS), giving financial aid (like with our deacons fund offering), and giving acts of kindness (such as a ride to church, a visit to the hospital, taking a meal to the home, etc.).
Gang members and politicians, sports teams and soldiers, union leaders and neighborhood watch committees often know more about “having one another’s back” than Christians do. Paul diagnoses this problem in Gal 5:13-15 by warning believers not to “bite and devour” one another. As Christians living in a harsh and difficult world, we don’t need to live in fear of Christian cannibalism! We need to know that we stand together as “one for all and all for one.”
Fear God.
As we show unrelenting, strong support for one another and give respect and value to everyone we meet, we should show ultimate reverence and respect to God above all. He observes and will judge the way you treat other people and especially fellow believers.
When you follow Guidelines 1 and 2, you show strong faith in God. If you suffer as a result of doing these things, then God will make that right in the end. Let’s face it. When you respect everyone and love the brotherhood, you’ll still make enemies. You’ll still face persecution and hard times. These things will not go away. When difficulties arise as you do what is right, you can trust that God as the ultimate judge who always does what is right (Gen 18:25).
Most importantly, when other people, political leaders, and even fellow believers, require you or insist that you disobey God, then in such case you should obey God rather than men – as Peter learned for himself (Acts 5:29). When religious leaders instructed him to stop talking about Jesus, he respectfully and politely replied that he must “obey God rather than men.”
Decisions like this are difficult intersections in life. The key in such instances is to fear God above all else. Do what is right (even when doing so is inconvenient) and let the chips fall where they may. In the end, God will work out all things for his glory and your decision will be vindicated for all to see.
Don’t allow the criticism of fellow believers, the persecution of nonbelievers, or the pressure of government officials deter you from doing what is right. Do right anyway, but in the most loving and respectful way possible.
Honor the king.
This is a tough one, isn’t it? Interestingly, Peter uses the same word for honor in this fourth guideline as he has already done for the first guideline. When you consider your government (whether in America or anywhere else), you should do so with an attitude of respect and high value, just as you should do for any person.
Ultimately, this is the same guideline as the first one because your political leaders are just some of the many people included in the all of the first instruction. You should honor your government officials because they are made in the image of God, are equal members of the human race, and share the same blood as you do.
You should also respect them because they are government officials. This in mind, responding to government officials in a respectful and honorable way does not mean that you must agree with their policies or appreciate their morals (or lack thereof).
Peter and Paul and countless Christians disagreed wholeheartedly with the policies and morals of the Roman Caesars for sure and of the Pharisaical rabbis and Jewish religious leaders. Even so, they followed their laws (no matter how inconvenient), paid their taxes, and spoke of them in respectful terms. Christ himself did the same.
Conclusion
What from this study stands out to you today? How do these principles and guidelines give clarity to your day-to-day choices and relationships in the world and in your spiritual life?
- Do you show equal respect to every person that you meet?
- Do you show strong support in whatever way possible to fellow believers?
- Do you fear God above all else, making difficult but biblical decisions in a loving way when fellow believers criticize you and when people in the world persecute you as a result?
- Do you speak or and respond to political leaders in a respectful way, both as fellow human beings and as governing authorities in the world?
A Word from the Church Fathers
As you consider what Peter wrote in 1 Peter 2:17, it is helpful to also consider what an early church father also wrote. This man was Clement of Rome. He converted to Christianity in the generation following the apostles and served as the lead pastor of the church at Rome.
After hearing that the church at Corinth had dismissed their pastoral leader(s) for inappropriate reasons, he wrote a letter that would urge them to follow their pastoral leadership and behave in a Christian way. He described this problem in this way in the opening chapter of his letter:
We have been somewhat tardy in giving attention to the matters of dispute that have arisen among you, dearly beloved, and to the repulsive and unholy sedition, so foreign and strange to the elect of God, which a few headstrong and self-willed persons have kindled to such a high degree of madness that your name, once respected and renowned and lovely in the sight of all men, has been greatly criticized.
Joseph Barber Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 57, updated into modern English by Thomas Overmiller.
In the second chapter of his letter, he went on to describe their former testimony as the way that a church was supposed to behave towards one another (in contrast to the way they were behaving at the present). This description illustrates the kind of love for the brotherhood that Peter urged believers to have.
"You were all lowly in mind and free from arrogance, yielding to one rather than merely claiming to be submissive, more glad to give than to receive, and content with the provisions which God supplies. And giving attention unto his words, you stored them diligently in your hearts, and his sufferings were before your eyes. Thus a profound and rich peace was given to all, and an insatiable desire of doing good. An abundant outpouring also of the Holy Spirit fell upon all; and, being full of holy counsel, in excellent zeal and with a godly confidence you stretched out your hands to Almighty God, requesting him to be gracious, if unknowingly you had committed any sin. You had conflict day and night for all the brotherhood, that the number of his elect might be saved with a reverential and focused mind. You were sincere and simple and free from hatred/violence one towards another. Every sedition and every schism were repulsive to you. You mourned over the transgressions of your neighbors: you judged their shortcomings to be your own. You repented not of any well-doing but were ready unto every good work. Being adorned with a most virtuous and honorable life, you performed all your duties in the fear of him. The commandments and the ordinances of the Lord were written on the tables of your hearts."
Joseph Barber Lightfoot and J. R. Harmer, The Apostolic Fathers (London: Macmillan and Co., 1891), 58, updated into modern English by Thomas Overmiller.
Does your behavior and contribution to your church resemble the kind of brotherly love that Clement describes? For a while, it became standard practice for early churches to read this letter to their congregations once a year. As such, it served as a helpful illustration of the way that a church should behave towards one another as a brotherhood.
May Faith Baptist be a church like this, and not a church where we “bite and devour one another” and where “a few headstrong and self-willed persons” make us repulsive to both to the world at large and to God in heaven.
