The Marque of Maturity
1 Peter 2:18-19 Slaves, be willing to serve your masters. Do this with all respect. You should obey the masters who are good and kind, and you should obey the masters who are bad. One of you might have to suffer even when you have done nothing wrong. If you think of God and bear the pain, this pleases God.
Submitting to authority is only really ever a problem, when you disagree with what you’re being told to do. Think about it, most of the laws of the land, we have no problem in keeping. But every now and then, politicians will enact some ass of a law, and we all want to rail against it.
When you were a teenager, the authority of parents and teachers so often seemed unfair. And because we didn’t agree with them, we took that as our license to rebel against their authority. That, I guess, is what immature teenagers do as they are growing up.
But the whole point of authority is that we should submit to it, even when we disagree.
Slaves, be willing to serve your masters. Do this with all respect. You should obey the masters who are good and kind, and you should obey the masters who are bad. One of you might have to suffer even when you have done nothing wrong. If you think of God and bear the pain, this pleases God. (1 Peter 2:18-19)
None of that sounds particularly pleasant. Slaves, really? Slaves(!!) should be willing to serve their masters with respect, even bad masters, even when you have to suffer. That stinks! Yet there it is, in the Word of God.
Not all authority is going to be good and reasonable and fair one hundred percent of the time. And yes, there are times when you have to rise up against authority; against unjust laws, against the oppression of the poor and marginalised. Sure.
But ninety-nine point nine percent of the time, your job and mine is to submit to authority, whether we agree with it or not.
As my hair has greyed, I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that a person’s ability to submit willingly to authority – without grumbling, without complaining, without rebelling or subtly undermining – but rather gladly, with a good heart, is in fact a marque of their maturity.
Submitting to our parents (whom God tells us to honour), the leaders in your church perhaps (whom God also tells us to honour), the boss at work (who, surprise, surprise, God also tells us to honour), the leaders in our government (yeah, you guessed it, God tells us to honour them too) … all of those things, are signs of maturity.
That’s God’s Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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