Studies in First Peter Part 14
“16Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as servants of God. 17Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king. 18Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable. 19For this finds favor, if for the sake of conscience toward God a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly. 20For what credit is there if, when you sin and are harshly treated, you endure it with patience? But if when you do what is right and suffer for it you patiently endure it, this finds favor with God” (I Peter 2:16-20).
There are so many parallels in Peter and Paul’s expressions of the new covenant. “Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as servants of God” from verse 16 above sounds just like, “For you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not turn your freedom into an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another” (Galatians 5:13).
This concept of turning your freedom into service goes back to Romans chapter 6. Here we are taught that our freedom is not some loose autonomy attached to no one. Rather it is the freedom to choose a new master, to choose whom we serve. In our lost condition we were slaves to sin with no means of escape. Now, as believers in Jesus, we are free to choose a new master, the Lord Jesus Christ.
“Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.”
“What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you WERE slaves of sin, you BECAME obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:11-18).
What a beautiful description of what we WERE and what we now ARE. We are obedient from our new heart. We have the power to choose to obey, choose to serve, choose to love, and choose to worship.
So what does turning your freedom into a life of service look like? It is “honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.” It is a life of lifting folks up through our words and actions. It is treating all people with honor in place of hate, honor in place of judgment, honor in place of ignoring the needs of our brothers and sisters.
And finally, our passage ends with this thought. If you are treated poorly for doing the right thing. If you are treated poorly in return for your kindness. If you are treated poorly for preaching the truth, you are in good company of the kind of treatment Jesus and the apostles received.
However, if you are treated poorly because you act like a jerk, dishonoring people with judgment and criticism; no shock, surprise, or credit for you. Rather, it is something to be expected. Let us use our freedom to honor all whom God brings into our lives.