08-30-09 Act Free Live Free

1PE 2:13-17 Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right. For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men. Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all men; love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.

For the past several weeks

we have been easing our way into the “how-to” section of 1^st Peter.

Mostly what we’ve done so far

is to look closely at why Peter included these comments in his letter.

And in the time we had together last week

before all the excitement began

we heard Peter telling us

that our greatest defense and protection

against the unjust attacks of the non-Christians around us

is to offer them a quality of life

that silences their lies against us.

1PE 2:12 Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

1PE 2:15 For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.

To be honest, I was able to say most of what I wanted to say last week,

but there were two additional observations I wanted to make

that we didn’t get to.

The first of those two observations

is to point out that Peter tells us

that with each of those “Gentiles” that we encounter

there will come what he calls the day of visitation.

What he wants us to remember

is that with every person on this earth

God is seeking ways of revealing Himself to them

and each of them will have their own personal day of visitation -

a time when God shows them Himself

in a way that calls them to make a choice about Him.

And our role is to live in such a way

that when that day comes

they will want to choose Him

because of what they saw in us.

And the second observation I wanted to make is to emphasize

that it is not our belief system or our doctrine

that we are called to display before a lost world,

it is a changed life.

Not a perfect life,

not even close,

but a changed life - a life that works.

Look at what it is

that we are to make visible to world around us.

...on account of your good deeds, as they observe them...

And obviously these are not “good deeds” as defined by church people,

these are “good deeds” as defined by pagans,

by those whose first impulse is to slander you as evildoers.

And what do they slander us for?

When non-Christians talk about Christians,

when the entertainment industry or the media talk about Christians,

what sort of criticisms do they bring against us?

We’re narrow-minded,

we’re judgmental,

we’re obsessed with MORAL VALUES,

we’re intolerant of those whose lives don’t measure up to our standard,

we’re hypocritical - preaching a standard we never live up to ourselves.

They expect from us

everything they expect from God - judgment and condemnation.

And what Peter is telling us

is that we have the incredible opportunity

of demonstrating to them

what our God is really like.

“Well, I know he’s sort of religious,

but I’ll tell you he’s the best worker I’ve ever had -

he gets to work on time,

his attitude is great,

and I know I can trust him.”

“I’ve never met anyone who seems to genuinely care about other people like she does.

She even seems to care deeply about my children. I don’t know how she does it.”

And here is the great wonder

of the life our God asks us to live on this earth -

we are called to live lives of remarkable personal moral integrity

in a world that is morally corrupt to the core

and yet to do it in a way that does not project judgement or condemnation

onto those who have not yet met our King.

And we do that first of all

by allowing our God to rebuild the moral foundations of our own lives,

and then by simply, honestly loving those He brings to us,

accepting them just as they are right where they are,

knowing that it’s never our job to change them,

but rather to do what we can

to make it easiest for them to find the only One who can rebuild their lives - Jesus Christ.

And the crucial thing I want us to notice here

is that Peter is talking with us

not about living lives that impress the religious folk around us,

but rather living lives that impress the pagans.

And frequently those are two very different things.

It is remarkably easy to live a life that gives us status and prominence and security in the world of religion

if that is our goal.

All we have to do is to learn the language and the rules of the group,

and then faithfully keep the rules

and perpetuate the activities and structure

of whatever religious system we’ve chosen.

But Peter goes to great length

to emphasize that the real test of the quality of our Christian walk

is found not in what the fellow who sits next to us on Sunday morning thinks of us,

but rather it is found in what the fellow who works next to us,

or lives next to us,

or does business with us on Monday morning thinks of us.

And I do find this whole thing to be remarkable.

You see, if we live lives of moral integrity

it will irritate the non-Christians around us,

not because we’re trying to change their conduct

or trying to get them to behave better,

but simply because our lives - our visible morality

shines a light on their own life

and makes them feel guilty.

And there is no way around that -

it is part of the role we serve here on the earth ,

living lives that continually remind the world

that moral right and wrong does exist,

and that we are, by design, creatures called by God to moral living.

And if we choose moral integrity in our lives

the people around us will be troubled by it.

And yet, at the same time,

Peter tells us that even with that huge social stripe against us,

we can still live in such a way

that our lives silence the ignorance of foolish men.

We can live in such away that those around us

...may on account of our good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

And for us to understand how this works

we need to do a little work on restructuring our understanding of true morality.

There is a passage I will share with you in a few minutes

from the writings of Paul,

a passage that, when I finally saw it

brought greater freedom and greater restructuring of my life

than any other passage I’d found up to that time.

But before I share it with you

let me first point out the great Satanic lie imbedded

in so much of what we encounter

in the moral teachings we find in the world of religion.

Most of the moral teachings we find in the religious world

are based on the belief

that God has given us a list of things He likes

and things He doesn’t like.

And then we are told that morality is basically

our choosing to keep that list.

If we do we are then being moral and pleasing God.

If we violate anything on that list

we are then being immoral

and displeasing God.

But the focus is always on the list.

And of course the source of this list orientation toward morality

traces right back to that thing that happened with Moses

when he went up on the Mountain to talk with God on behalf of the Nation of Israel.

When He came down

he was carrying a list,

a list of 10 requirements,

most of which began with the words “THOU SHALT NOT!”

It sounded very much like a list of things we must fulfill in order to please God.

What God did not reveal to us until after Christ offered Himself for our sins

was that God offered that list in that form

not to show us how we could please Him

but rather to force us to recognize that, on the basis of our performance we never could.

He gave the law in that form

in order to drive the world into sin.

ROM 5:20 And the Law came in that the transgression might increase; ...

He knew that as soon as our rebellious spirits

were confronted with those THOU SHALT NOT’S,

it would ignite our rebellion

and drive us into sin.

And why in the world would He want to do that?

He wanted to do that

so that we would be forced to face the truth of our own rebellion

and recognize that on our own

we can never find our way back to our God.

He did it in order to create within us

a desperate need for some other way.

He did it in order to prepare us

for His offer of eternal peace with God through Christ’s full payment for our sins.

And when His Spirit finally is able to show us our helplessness apart from Him

and we cry out to Him not just as our God, but as our Savior,

He takes us just as we are,

cancels out our entire moral debt to Him forever,

nails our sins to the cross along with Christ,

and gives us a peace with Him that will never end.

ROM 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

OK, now all of that is very straightforward,

but right here is where the enemy steps in

and does some of his finest work.

He knows that, if we ever really gain a glimpse of what our God has done for us,

if we ever realize that we truly have forever died to the law and been joined to Christ (Rom. 7:4),

it will create within us such a freedom,

and such a love response to Christ

that our lives will be transformed forever.

So, to keep us from that realization,

Satan steps in with his religious systems

and tells us that we may have been saved through grace,

but now we must maintain our relationship with God

through continued obedience to the law.

There is still a list,

and God is still the Righteous Judge demanding obedience from us

in order for us to maintain our position with Him.

The last thing Satan wants

is for us to hear what Paul says immediately after he tells us that,

ROM 5:1 Therefore having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ...

Do you what comes next?

ROM 5:2 through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand...

We come to Him by His grace,

and we live with Him every day

by that same grace poured out on us,

and our performance as measured by the moral law of God

can never again separate us from Him or His love or His salvation given to us freely.

Our performance as measured by the moral law of God

can never again separate us from our God.

Let me simplify it.

We have only two possible choices in our relationship with our God.

Either we can attempt to approach Him on the basis of our performance

as measured by the moral law,

and if we do we will stand condemned before Him,

or we can come to Him through faith in the death of Christ for our sins,

and find that all of our sins are forever removed from us

as far as the east is from the west.

Only when we finally get it,

only when we truly understand that we have been forever released from the law

and that it will never ever again stand as our judge,

only then can God reveal to us

the hidden truth, the hidden treasure within His moral law.

Only then can He show us

that His moral law

was not simply an arbitrary list of rules we must obey,

but rather that it was in fact

God revealing to us

the perfect description of how human love relationships are built.

Which brings me back to that passage I told you I would share with you,

that passage that more deeply impacted my thinking

than any other passage I’d ever seen up to that time.

It’s found in Paul’s letter to the Romans,

chapter 13:8-10.

In that passage Paul says,

Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, "You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet," and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no wrong to a neighbor; love therefore is the fulfillment of the law.

In these remarkable 3 verses

Paul reveals to us the underlying purpose

in the moral law given to us by our God.

He tells us

that when correctly understood and applied in our human relationships

the purpose of the moral law was designed to be

this incredible gift from our God that actually reveals to us how to love.

Paul tells us that all of the true moral commandments,

the ones given to us by our God

are summed up in this one statement, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.

And then, just so that we are certain to get the message,

he comes at it from the other direction,

and tells us that if we have truly acted in love toward our neighbor

we have fulfilled the moral law of God.

Now, let me see if I can explain why this passage

impacted me so powerfully.

It revolutionized my thinking in two major areas.

First of all, I suddenly realized that through His moral law

God was revealing to me

how I could go about meeting the deepest need of my life.

The deepest need we have on the human plane

is our need for strong, healthy love relationships.

We need love.

And here was my God

revealing to me exactly how to go about building those love relationships.

But even more than that,

through this passage

I also became aware

of how to test the validity of all of those rules handed to us by the religious world around us.

If the goal, the purpose of the moral laws of God

is to build healthy love relationships,

then that means that each of those rules that I accept as valid

is valid because following it will be a genuine expression of love to another person.

There is nothing arbitrary about them -

they all exists, they are all given to us

because trusting them will strengthen our relationships with those around us

and not trusting them will be destructive to those relationships.

When God told us, you shall not lie,

He was telling us that dishonesty with another person

will always undermine trust between you and the one you lie to,

and it will undermine the very foundation

upon which true love is given and received.

When God said, you shall not covet,

He was telling us that if we choose to elevate our money or our possessions

above a relationship

we may succeed in accumulating a whole bunch of stuff,

but we will loose the one thing that we hunger for more than everything else -

we will loose the love of those around us.

Have you ever had a person approach you as a friend, asking for your help with something,

but then, once they’ve gotten whatever they wanted from you,

they dropped the friendship like it never existed?

People who use other people for their own ends

may get what they want,

but they will loose what they really hunger for - true comradeship and love.

When God said, you shall not commit adultery

He wasn’t just flinging arbitrary rules about sex at us to ruin our fun,

He was revealing to us that He has carefully designed sex for the marriage relationship

and if we attempt to transplant it into any other relationship

it will always be highly destructive - to us and to every other relationship involved.

It will bring pain and suffering and loneliness and isolation

and shame and regret that never had to exist.

In the end it will rob us of the one thing we long for the most -

strong, deep, secure love relationships.

With every moral commandment given to us by our God,

He was revealing to us how human relationships work

and what true love really looks like.

Once I saw this,

I also realized that my own religious culture

had created a whole bunch of rules

that had nothing to do with loving the people around me,

rules that were simply part of the religious system I was in,

and as such were in no way either from God

or a part of what He was seeking to do in my life.

And with all such rules

the healthiest thing we can do is simply to set them aside.

This is jumping just a little ahead in our study,

but that is at the heart of what Peter is telling us

when he says,

1PE 2:16 Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.

I cannot tell you how much I love that statement.

If we understand it and follow it

the results will be incredibly powerful

in equipping us to proclaim the truth about our God to the world in which we live.

Peter begins that statement with a command,

and what a command it is!

Act as free men!!!

He’s telling us that our freedom in Christ

should be clearly visible to the world in which we live,

a freedom that flows out the security we have

in knowing that our God has not called us to a list of rules we must fulfill in order to please Him,

but rather

He has called us to a relationship with Him

in which He’s literally living His life out through us minute-by-minute,

showing us what love looks like

in each new relationship we encounter.

There is nothing that unsettles the non-Christians around us

more than their being confronted with the freedom we have in Christ.

You know what they expect from us, don’t you - rules, lots and lots of rules.

They expect legalism.

They expect us to huddle under an endless list of things we must do or can’t do because we are Christians.

And Peter wants us to know

that legalism never has and never will proclaim the truth about Christ.

It does a fine job of creating tiny religious sub-cultures within our society

made up of people who all have the same lists,

and all keep the same rules,

and who feel very good about themselves because they do,

and are very quick to condemn all those who don’t,

but who never dare to risk loving another person

in a way that forces them to get involved in the messy stuff in their life

because it might cause them to violate their list.

But don’t you find it fascinating

to discover that Peter commands us to act as free men,

to conduct our lives in a way

that proclaims the endless freedom we have in Christ,

the freedom that can only be found in a life free from the bondage that always comes with immorality,

but even more,

the freedom we have to truly enjoy a religion-free life,

the freedom to be exactly the people God designed us to be

and the freedom to fully enjoy this remarkable world He’s created for us.

In fact, Peter makes it clear

that our freedom is the first thing the world around us should be confronted with.

And then Peter goes on to say,

and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God.

In other words,

always be on guard against those lies

that are still imbedded within your flesh.

True freedom in Christ

is not the freedom to sin,

it is the freedom from sin.

Immorality always brings bondage

and once your Lord has brought you into freedom

treasure it as the great gift it is.

Now, let me close by taking us back to where we started

so that I can share with you the truth that got me headed this direction in the first place.

Peter calls us to ...keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.

In other words he calls us to live lives of true moral integrity

before the non-Christian world around us.

And as we’ve seen,

when we do this

it will irritate many of those around us

because it will stir feelings of conviction

over their own immoral conduct.

But at the same time

at a deeper level our moral conduct toward them,

our honesty, our compassion, our trustworthiness,

our refusal to use them for our own gain

will communicate love to them in a way that most people have never experienced before.

Most of us have learned before we get out of high school

that everyone we meet has an angle.

They have something they want from us,

or something they want to use us for,

or something they want to sell us,

or some benefit they think they can get from us.

They want our money,

or our time,

or our allegiance,

or our commitment to their group or their point of view or their cause,

or they simply want power over us.

Sometimes they simply want our failure

so that they feel better about their own success.

And if we give them what they want

then they give us acceptance in return,

and if we do not,

they reject or discard us.

And it is the nature of all human relationships

that there is always some self-serving motivation

on the part of us toward others and others toward us

because we are all desperately trying to use others

to prove to ourselves that we have value and significance.

But, then, when Christ steps into our life

and tells us who we really are - a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession,

when He tells us the truth about our great value to Him,

when He loves us just as we are, right where we are

it begins to free us to love others in the same way.

Because our God has told us who we are

we no longer need to use others to tell us who we are

and we can honestly, genuinely reach out to them in love

for no other reason than because our God has asked us to

and given us eyes to see their need.

And when that happens

it will proclaim the truth about our God

in a way that...well, in a way that causes them on account of your good deeds, as they observe them, to glorify God in the day of visitation.

And to live a life of true moral integrity in this world

is to love those around us,

and loving them is what changes lives.