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SLAVES, YET FREE

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SLAVES, YET FREE

Slaves, in reverent fear of God, submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God. But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. (1 Peter 2: 18-20)

Why did Peter expect such a huge thing of Christian slaves? Surely, they had the right, as human beings, to resist harsh treatment even if they were only slaves? In God’s sight, they had every right to be treated with dignity in the same way as any free person. Yet Peter was telling them to submit to their masters even if they were ill-treated. What good would that do? Would it not reinforce their masters’ attitude that it was okay to abuse them?

It all depends on from whose perspective you look at it. From the world’s point of view, it is perfectly in order to resist abuse and harsh treatment. Whether one goes on strike, joins a protest march or resorts to some form of retaliation, this is the way to go. One has to express one’s dissatisfaction in a way that hurts the employer so that he knows that his behaviour is not appreciated. Accepting to status quo without some sort of protest is considered weakness.

However, if look at it from God’s perspective, we must ask the question, ”In the end, who was the slave serving?” Since everything is about God, through God and for God, doing one’s job is about serving Him.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. (Col. 3:23-24)

Everything we do in life, the way we do it and the attitude we show towards those in authority over us reveals our attitude towards God. It’s all about Him. After all, He treats us according to His own nature and never in response to our good or bad attitudes. Yes, He disciplines us when we step out of line, but not to get even with us, but to purify us so that we can share His holiness.

However, there is a flipside to this kind of situation. The right thing for any slave or employee is to submit to the master/employer, good or bad. Masters are in charge and they choose the way that they will handle their staff but, and here’s the crunch, they are also accountable to God for the way they treat their underlings.

Anyone who does wrong will be repaid for their wrongs, and there is no favouritism. (Col. 3:25)

Slaves and employees are called to act like their Master, who never reacted to people the way they treated Him. He always responded out of who He was, the Son of God, not who they were – enemies. He was accountable to the Father for the right responses to people.

What a difference we could make in the world if we, as followers of Jesus, really got a hold of this principle! When we retaliate, we contribute to the chaos in the world by adding our sin to the sins of those who mistreat us. When we absorb the evil in ourselves by responding with humble submission, we put the cruel master to shame and stop the evil right there.

Paul dealt with this issue in the context of lawsuits. Corinthian believers were taking each other to heathen courts instead of settling disputes among themselves.

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? Instead, you yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? (1 Cor, 6:7-9a)

One thing we must remember – the way an employer treats his employee is a revelation of what’s in his own heart; the way we respond is a revelation of ours! When you squeeze a lemon, lemon juice comes out! If we are truly the sons and daughters of God, we will behave like His children, free from the attitudes that drive the world.

Now that is true freedom!

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

GOD’S PATTERN FOR AUTHORITY

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GOD’S PATTERN FOR AUTHORITY

Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, or to governors who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. (1 Peter 2: 13-15)

Peter, what are you saying? Don’t you know that the emperor thinks he is God? Don’t you understand that he is killing people in cruel ways because they refuse to call him Lord? How do you expect us to honour and obey a monster like that? Shouldn’t we resist him and defy him because he is not God?

No, my dear readers, that is just where you are wrong. The Lord requires you to submit to his authority no matter what he does. But why? Why is it the right thing to do when he does such wicked and evil things?

Human authority – where does it come from? Apostle Paul explains it more clearly for us. God is the supreme authority in the universe. He rules over the earth through human deputies. He delegates authority to people to govern the earth for Him. Ideally, as He taught His people Israel, those who rule are to do it in obedience to His laws. He gave the instruction to His people in His covenant with them:

When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us,’ be sure to appoint over you a king the Lord your God chooses. . .

When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel. (Deut. 17: 14, 15a; 18-20)

Ideally then, all authority is delegated by God and accountable to Him. Yes, even those who do not acknowledge Him are still answerable to Him because they rule for him. It follows then, that whether they are godly or ungodly, they are to be respected and obeyed since they are God’s delegated rulers.

That does not mean than everything they decree is right. They rule according to human wisdom if they do not rule according to God’s laws. Human wisdom – foolishness to God! How can God tolerate rulers who are ruthless and cruel, who make laws which harm his people, and who in the end do what is best for themselves.

First of all, bad rule is better than no rule. Without authority, a country will descend into chaos. When everyone does what is right in his own eyes, the clashes are catastrophic.

Secondly, every country gets the ruler or rulers it deserves, especially in a democracy where the people choose their representatives.

Thirdly, every ruler will give an account of what he did with the authority God gave him. He or she cannot escape, from the king or president down.

But what about those who suffer under despotic governors? Peter said, ‘Submit!’ But that’s hard. God did not say it would be easy, but it is the right thing to do because, in the end our attitude to government reflects our attitude towards God. They rule on His behalf, and by submitting to them, we are submitting to Him. That is why we are to submit ‘for the Lord’s sake.’

When his readers submitted to corrupt government and suffered under injustice, they were to show the ungodly what was right, and shut the grumblers and accusers up.

But what if rulers require or permit God’s people to do evil through their wicked laws? Peter’s contemporaries were expected to offer sacrifices to Caesar and acknowledge his claim to be God. The right thing to do would be to submit to him by submitting to the consequences of their civil disobedience.

Peter’s response to the religious leaders who tried to stop the apostles from preaching and healing in Jesus’s name was clear:

‘Judge for yourselves whether it is right in God’s sight to obey you rather than God. For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard. (Acts 4: 19, 20).

There is no place in God’s book for resistance to authority in any form, whether strikes, marches, or protests. Jesus is our pattern – He willingly submitted to those who abused Him because, through it He brought us eternal salvation.

21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 1 Peter 2:21

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

 

STOP THE POWER STRUGGLE

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STOP THE POWER STRUGGLE

Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, His body, of which He is the Saviour. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything (Eph. 5:22-24).

God never intended marriage to be a power struggle between husbands and wives. In fact, He gave the pattern for marriage at the beginning. He made a man and a woman – the man from the dust and the woman from the man so that they would have the same flesh and be equal in their person and worth before God. He brought the woman to the man, who recognised her as the completion of himself just as male and female creatures completed each other in the natural world.

God taught them that, through their physical union, they would represent and reflect the unity between God the Father. God the Son and God the Holy Spirit in the Godhead.

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh (Gen.2:24).

God intended that they live out a visual aid of unity in their permanent monogamous union. Before the fall and the intrusion of selfishness and sin, it was possible for these two perfect and sinless human beings to reflect the nature of God in their relationship with one another.

In every association of people there needs to be a leader – one who coordinates and shows the way for others to follow. Leadership is not about superiority but about function – creating cohesion and setting the example. God chose men to lead in the home. This is no way demeans or lowers the worth or dignity of any other member of the household. It puts the responsibility and accountability of the family to God, his Creator on the husband and father.

The role of leader in no way makes the husband a despot or the “boss”, like some sort of autocrat or dictator. Unfortunately, humankind in its worldly wisdom and rejection of God has set up a model which conflicts with God’s model of leadership and has turned many leaders into monsters who push people around at will.

God’s pattern for order in the home includes authority and submission – wives to husbands and children to fathers. However, order is much more than the wife kowtowing to the husband at the expense of her dignity and for the sake of peace. Husband and wife are equal partners in this union. The wife has a specific part to play, as does the husband.

The wife’s role is to submit to her husband as she submits to Christ as her head. She must trust him to hear, understand and interpret God’s will for their lives clearly and accurately. That does not mean that he makes arbitrary decisions but that he takes responsibility for the decisions they make together and leads the way in carrying them out in obedience to the Holy Spirit’s leading.

The wife also follows the husband’s lead in training their children in the ways of the Lord. She must uphold his authority in the home and stand with him in the day-to-day decisions he makes for his family, even if she does not agree with him. She must not contradict or undermine him in front of the children. She must not allow her children to manipulate her or her husband by playing the one off against the other.

Children are smart. They will quickly recognise the weak spots in their parents’ relationship and use them to their own advantage. Children can only learn their respective roles in life if their parents model what they are as male and female and what a husband and wife are in their relationship with and behaviour towards one another.

It is not the husband’s role or responsibility to demand submission from his wife. She will gladly submit to him, not if she is forced to but because she wants to obey the Lord and only if her husband fulfils his role as laid down in God’s Word. Harmony in the home only happens when each party falls in line with God’s pattern for marriage.

For the wife, God’s pattern is submission, reflecting His pattern for the church. There should never be confusion about the place of the church, or its leaders, in God’s plan. The church is the bride of Christ.  He is the head and she comes under His authority and protection as His beloved. He cares for her, provides for her, and protects her from the ravages of sin by setting the example and by leading the way to godly and holy living.

When the wife keeps her eyes on Jesus and follows His pattern of submission and obedience to the Father as a perfect son, she will set the tone, together with her husband of peace and togetherness in the family.

However, this is only half the story…

Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my first book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

ISBN: Softcover – 978-1-4828-0512-3, eBook 978-4828-0511-6

Available on www.amazon.com in paperback, e-book or Kindle version, on www.takealot.com  or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

My second book, Learning to be a Disciple – The Way of the Master (Copyright © 2015, Partridge Publishing), a companion volume to Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart, has been released in paperback and digital format on www.amazon.com.

The Purpose Of Discipline

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THE PURPOSE OF DISCIPLINE

Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as His children. For what children are not disciplined by their father? If you are not disciplined – and everyone undergoes discipline – then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in His holiness (Heb. 12: 7-10).

Ignoring God’s directions for life leads to all kinds of problems. He gave us instructions and prohibitions for a very good reason. He knows that life becomes a mess when we ignore the “no entry” signs along the path. One of the huge “no entry” signs is the one about the way we handle our sex drives. This one says “sex outside of marriage is dangerous” but, of course, because we humans think we know better than God, we ignored that one and set up our own rules – which in effect are no rules. Anything goes!

The result is a world of fatherless people, either because the biological father is absent and plays no part in the child’s life or because the father has opted out of his responsibility to father his children. Divorce has ripped families apart, leaving mothers to raise their children while fathers are out hunting for another mate, or at best, absentee fathers who see their children periodically and play no part in their upbringing.

Fatherless children grow up hurt and angry because they have no identity, and insecure because they have no one to affirm them and no one to set the boundaries within which they feel safe and free. There is no strong authority figure to bring order and discipline into their lives without which their sin nature plays havoc and leads to broken and destroyed people. Our prisons are full of criminals who grew up without the loving and guiding hand of a father.

It isn’t any wonder that so many of God’s children don’t understand what He is doing when hardships come. Discipline was not part of the equation. Punishment, yes, because many of the fathers were harsh and unpredictable, disciplining according to their moods and whims without purpose.

This writer perhaps experienced a father who loved him and disciplined him as a way of guiding his life towards a productive future. If so, it was easy for him to understand the purpose of hardship and suffering. God is the perfect Father. This writer knew that His people needed to be corralled in order to stay on the path. Without discipline, we lose our way amid the many temptations that appeal to our flesh and pull us away from God’s path through life.

How does God discipline us? He allows us to experience situations that bring the flaws in us to the surface. We bump up against people who irritate us, make us angry, or jealous, or who cause us offence in some way. We blame the other person when, in actual fact, our reaction comes from within us. Unless we own our own fault instead of blaming him or her, the exercise is wasted and God will have to keep up the heat until we learn the lesson.

He also allows us to get into sticky situations that require us to trust Him in the dark. Instead of trusting, however, we often try to fix things ourselves in a worldly way when He has said, “The battle is not yours but God’s. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.” We pray desperately to get out of our problems instead of being still and trusting God in it. Our faith in Him cannot become stronger if the sun shines all the time. We need the storms to teach us how to hold on to Him in trouble.

“God uses hardships to discipline us,” said the writer. He has a goal in mind. He is building a family of sons and daughters who have progressed beyond the infancy, toddler and teenage stages. Each phase has it characteristics of immaturity. He has given us the model of His Son who lived as a perfect son instead of a spoilt brat or a stubborn rebel. His family destined for unity with the Father, sharing His holiness – His separation from and abhorrence for sin.

When we submit to His discipline instead of bucking and whining, something happens inside. A calm descends and a trust grows that God is, after all, in charge, good and moving us towards a desired end. If some earthly fathers did a good job, and they are fallible after all, submitting to and trusting in our heavenly Father will eventually bring us to maturity in this life and perfection in the next.

Is that a path worth following?

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Have you read my new book, Learning to be a Son – The Way to the Father’s Heart (copyright 2015, Partridge Publishing)? You’ll love it!

Available on www.amazon.com or www.kalahari.com in paperback, e-book or kindle format, or order directly from the publisher at www.partridgepublishing.com.

Check out my blogsite at www.learningtobeason.wordpress.com

 

The shepherd Of Shepherds

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THE SHEPHERD OF SHEPHERDS

And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. In the same way, you who are younger, submit yourselves to your elders. All of you, clothe, yourselves with humility toward one another because

‘God opposes the proud but shows favour to the humble.’

Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on Him because He cares for you. (1 Peter 5: 4-7)

Jesus is not only the Good Shepherd, He is also the Chief Shepherd. That means that He is the Shepherd of all shepherds.

Shepherds need a Shepherd just as much as the sheep do. Those who are called to lead are not only accountable to the Chief Shepherd for the sheep with which they are entrusted. They also need a model and a mentor for the responsible task that is theirs. Jesus is both the Good Shepherd to the sheep and the Chief Shepherd to those who are called to care for the sheep.

God had an issue with the shepherds of His ancient people because they failed to fulfil their calling to care for the sheep. Instead they exploited them for their own benefit. Did Peter have these words in mind when he wrote to God’s people?

The word of the Lord came to me: ‘Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Woe to you shepherds of Israel who only take care of yourselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? . . . You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. . .’ (Ezek. 34: 1, 2, 4)

What an indictment against the leaders of God’s people! And yet there are spiritual leaders today who are not different from those who received God’s judgment in Ezekiel’s day.

Peter’s strong counsel is, ‘Don’t do it! You are accountable to the Chief Shepherd for the way you lead His flock.’ Peter himself had received the mandate from the mouth of Jesus: ‘Feed my sheep; tend my lambs; take care of my flock.’

For both Peter and Paul there was the anticipation of a reward for fulfilling their calling. Paul’s crown was a crown of righteousness:

For I am ready to be poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day – and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing. (2 Tim. 4: 6-8)

Peter’s crown was an indestructible crown of glory:

And when the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the crown of glory that will never fade away. (1 Peter 5: 4)

To the flock he wrote: Be humble and submit to your leaders. In this way the unity of the flock will be maintained. There is no place in the company of God’s people for a democratic attitude or for rebels or loners. Harmony is the way of unity. Mutual submission produces harmony when authority is respected and everyone is willing to submit to each other for the common good.

How does one learn to submit? By casting one’s anxieties on God. Whatever your issues, don’t beat the other sheep with them. Roll them onto God and at the right time He will vindicate you.

Cast you cares on the Lord and He will sustain you; He will never let the righteous be shaken. (Psa. 55: 22)

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.