Audio Transcript

We close the week with a rather technical question. It’s also an important question from a sharp listener to the podcast named Brent. “Pastor John, hello! Can you tell me why modern English translations translate ‘ktisis’ in 1 Peter 2:13 as ‘institution’ or ‘authority’ or ‘ordinance’? Every other occurrence is typically translated, as in the ESV, as ‘creation’ (sixteen times) or ‘creature’ (two other times). To me, based on the context, it seems as though we, as believers, are to submit ourselves, or to be subject for the Lord’s sake, to every human creature. For such a thing we have been freed by the finished work of Christ to do ‘good’ (1 Peter 2:15) and to serve them ‘as servants of God’ (1 Peter 2:16) as we ‘honor everyone’ (1 Peter 2:17). Even Paul’s text on submitting to authority in Romans 13:1–7 broadens quickly to a discussion of how we relate to all people (Romans 13:8). So is Peter’s ‘ktisis’ mistranslated? Or am I missing a nuance here?”

I think Brent is basically right here in drawing our attention to the way Peter unfolds the act of subjection in 1 Peter 2:13 in the acts of doing good (1 Peter 2:15), the act of serving (1 Peter 2:16), and the act of honoring (1 Peter 2:17). I think that’s a really sharp contextual observation to draw those four things together: subjection, doing good, serving, honoring. So let me step back and see whether there are other considerations that might affect how we understand how we translate the word ktisis — or “creation” or “institution,” as it’s translated in so many modern versions.

Subject to Everyone?

The ESV, like most English versions, translates 1 Peter 2:13–14, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good.” Now, that term “human institution” Brent is saying is literally “human creation.” And that’s right — it is. And that’s the most literal translation of it. So, the translation would then be, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human creation.”

Now, before we can even ponder whether that’s right or not, we have to ask what it means, because it’s an ambiguous phrase, isn’t it? It might mean “things created by humans” — so a human creation might be a government or laws that humans have created. Or the phrase “human creation” might mean “humans created by God” — so human beings are God’s human creation. So, 1 Peter 2:13 might mean, “Be subject to whatever man creates,” or “Be subject to the persons that God creates.” Which is it? And I think the answer, if you just take those two questions, would be pretty clear from the use of the word create and creation, the verb and the noun, throughout the New Testament.

Thirty-nine times — I looked them all up — the New Testament uses this word create or creation. And without exception, they refer to God’s act. Never in the New Testament does creation or create refer to something man has made or man does. So, I think it would be highly unlikely that the term “human creation” in 1 Peter 2:13 would refer to something that humans create. Rather, the term very likely means human creation in the sense of humans that God creates. Human beings are God’s human creation.

Now, that in fact is the way Brent in his question is understanding it. And he’s wondering, Why shouldn’t it be translated, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human creation,” or more clearly, “every human creature” — that is, persons created by God. Why isn’t verse 13 to be understood as calling for a kind of submission to all people, all human beings?

Two Pointers to ‘Institution’

Now, whether we’re going to be sympathetic to that possible translation — namely, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human creature” — is going to depend on two things.

First, do we believe that the word “be subject” (hypotagēte in Greek) can mean anything less than “obey” — maybe more, but not less? If we think that this word “be subject” always involves the idea of obedience, then we won’t be able to say with Peter’s intention that we should be subject to every human person, because many humans would instruct us to do sinful things that we certainly should not obey.

And I think it’s fair to say that’s the judgment of most biblical scholars — namely, that being subject does involve the idea of obedience. That’s the first thing that will affect how we translate this.

The second factor that leads people away from translating verse 13 as “Be subject to every human creature” is that the immediate application and perhaps limitation that Peter puts on it is this: he continues, “whether it be to the emperor as supreme, or to governors as sent by him” (1 Peter 2:13–14). So, the argument is that, since Peter is applying subjection to governors and emperors, he doesn’t mean it to apply to all human creatures, but only to those whom God has created to have his appointed authority (as, for example, is clearer in Romans 13:1–4).

Now those two arguments are strong enough to incline me, and most others, not to take issue with the common translation, “Be subject for the Lord’s sake to every human institution” (1 Peter 2:13).

Subject to All in Honor

But like I said at the beginning, Brent is onto something that we really should take seriously because even if it might not be Peter’s primary intention here, it seems to be his and Paul’s understanding of the Christian life to say that there is a sense in which we are to be subject to all people — not in the sense of obeying, but in the sense of serving. That is, be subject in the sense of humbling yourself, and going down low (sub-ject), and getting under another person, and doing all you can to lift them up into truth and righteousness and everlasting joy.

“There is a sense in which we are to be subject to all people — not in the sense of obeying, but in the sense of serving.”

Now, Peter seems to go in this direction in verse 15 when he grounds the submission to every human creature or institution by saying, “For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people” (1 Peter 2:15). And this idea of doing good turns up again and again and again in 1 Peter. It’s one of his most common and distinctive phrases. It turns up over and over as a general way of relating to all people, not just to those in authority.

And then, even more amazing, Peter says in verse 17, “Honor everyone” (1 Peter 2:17). And in a sense, it’s just as radical to say “honor every human creature” as it is to say “be subject to every human creature,” because certainly there are dishonorable humans just as there are humans we should not obey. So, if there is a way to honor dishonorable humans, then there may be a way to be subject to humans that should not be obeyed.

Then in the next paragraph, verse 18, Peter tells slaves to “be subject to their masters” (1 Peter 2:18). And then in the next paragraph, 1 Peter 3:1, he tells wives, “Likewise, wives, be subject to your own husbands.” And then, to our surprise — my surprise, anyway — he says in the next paragraph, 1 Peter 3:7, “Likewise [that’s the surprising word], husbands . . .” And then instead of saying, “Be subject to your wives,” which he doesn’t say, he says, “Live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life.”

So, he’s not going to say that the role of the wife and the husband are interchangeable in terms of authority and submission. But he is going to say, just like he did back in 1 Peter 2:17 (where it says, “Honor everyone”), that husbands are to honor their wives. And he introduces this command with “likewise” as if it is a kind of repetition of the commands for submission that he’s been giving to us in our relation to government, relation to masters, and relation to husbands.

“Christians, following the example of the humble, sacrificial Christ, should be subject for the Lord’s sake to all.”

And then add to this that Paul says we are to “do good to everyone” (Galatians 6:10), and that we are to be subject to each other (Ephesians 5:21), and that we should “count others more significant” than ourselves in the sense of becoming their servants (Philippians 2:3).

Going Low to Lift Up

In all those pointers, I think, in 1 Peter and Paul, I would say that Brent is onto something when he draws our attention to the fact that there is a sense in which Christians, following the example of the humble, sacrificial, suffering Christ, should be subject for the Lord’s sake to all people — in the sense, not of obeying, but of desiring earnestly to go low and to do what we can to lift them up into the truth, and into faith, and into righteousness, and into everlasting joy.

So, I think we should give Brent the benefit of the doubt here and say that’s pretty sharp. And we ought to really consider that possibility.

Audio Transcript

2022 has begun, and the start of a new year is always a great time to consider our habits, specifically which new ones we want to start. It’s a great time to ask, How can God’s word abide in me more deeply? What can I do? How can I improve here? And the answer — or one of the answers — is found in a sermon clip taken from John Piper’s sermon “If My Words Abide in You,” a sermon title taken from Jesus’s phrase in John 15:7.

The sermon was preached on January 4, 2009 — thirteen years ago, yesterday. It has the New Year in view, as you’ll hear as we now jump into the end of the sermon. Here’s Pastor John now, and he is here talking about Bible holsters. Have a listen.

The Holy Spirit awakens through the word — transforms through the word. “You have been born again . . . through the living and abiding word” (1 Peter 1:23). “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth” (John 17:17). So, new birth and sanctification are the work of God, not any other way than by the word. The word is huge.

Irreplaceable Connection

So you need to ask, “Well, how then does it work?” This is the word. So, I’m going to make a little harness, sort of like a pistol. I’m going to wear this all day on my heart, and I’m going to walk around. Will God sanctify this to me and transform me because I’m carrying it here? What’s the answer? The answer is no.

The answer is no because God created you with a brain. He didn’t have to. He created you with a consciousness. He created you with a will, and emotions, and thought. And the way he ordains for Christ to be magnified through his word is for there to be a connection created with the words of the Bible and our brains. Then the will and the heart. That’s it. If you just try to carry the Bible around and never read it, so there’s no connection between the meaning of these words and your brain, then it has zero effect in your life.

“Nothing can replace Bible memory in forging a connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts.”

“Meditate on the law of the Lord day and night” is because a connection is established. By the connection of the meaning of God in his holy word and my construction of that meaning in my brain, and its effect on my will and my heart, I’m changed by the Holy Spirit’s using all that seemingly natural process for our change.

So, my answer to “What’s all this got to do with memorizing the Scripture?” is this: when we memorize the Scripture, we make that connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts more constant, more deep, and more transforming. I’ll venture this. Realistically, nothing can replace it. Nothing can replace it — Bible memory — in doing what it was designed to do, in forging a connection between the Bible, our minds, and our hearts.

Rehearsing Uncountable Wonders

Closing testimony from Noël and me. On December 21, we celebrated our fortieth wedding anniversary. We went away for two days, and among other things we read — this is funny — Psalm 40 and Isaiah 40. We talked. We talked about the year and the years. That’s what anniversaries are for, right? Past and future, taking stock, regretting, repenting, resolving. And we thought back how many times we had sat at a lunch, say at Eddington’s, or Famous Dave’s, or Leeann Chin, or Jimmy John’s. (This is our style.) We thought back how many times we did our date lunch on Monday and we sat across from each other and rehearsed for half an hour the pain of the years, and the reasons for discouragement now, and we never once quoted any Scripture at all.

Then we read in Psalm 40:5. We paused and we said, “We’ve never done this before. We are going to make a verse our year marriage verse.” We’ve never had a year marriage verse (if we have, I’ve forgotten it). We’re working on memorizing it, and for some reason I’m finding it a tough verse to memorize. “You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us. None can compare with you. I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5).

“You will sink if you only listen to the voices of the circumstances that are giving you problems.”

Now here’s the relevance. The number of the wondrous deeds of God is uncountable. The number of his thoughts toward our marriage —his thoughts as our Father toward us, our children, our grandchildren, our marriage — the number of those thoughts is beyond counting.

And as a husband, though — this is a little tiny exhortation here to the men — I believe those lunchtimes of God’s silence is my fault. The number one responsibility of a husband is to lead with the word of God. When a thousand reasons are being accumulated and moped over for why we are sad, it’s my job to rise and call down some of the wondrous deeds of God, some of the thoughts of God, and proclaim them and tell of them. That’s what we decided we would do. So you can ask us in June or July, “How’s Psalm 40:5 going?” I went to my little Apple computer, and I entered it as a daily reminder for every Monday at 11 a.m. in the year.

His Better Voice

You will sink, folks — you’ll sink in your marriage, you’ll sink in your parenting, you’ll sink in your singleness, you’ll sink in your studies if you’re a student — you will sink if you only listen to the voices of the circumstances that are giving you problems. They speak so loud, and they have nothing good to say.

This is a very thick book. He has so many wondrous deeds and so many thoughts towards his children, hundreds and hundreds of thoughts towards his children. “I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told” (Psalm 40:5). Well, that’s my testimony and our marriage testimony. May the Lord make his word dwell richly this year.

You, like me, have probably watched it happen. A friend or family member gets excited about Jesus, comes alive to his gospel, joins his mission. In their zeal, they make a clean cut with former sins. They gladly associate with God’s church. They evangelize unashamed. They don’t mind looking strange.

But then, slowly, like the Israelites in the wilderness, they begin to cast backward glances, as if Egypt were calling them home. They remember parts of that former life; they want some things back. And though they once didn’t mind looking strange, now they do. They feel drawn to the normal they once knew.

“The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange.”

To bring the point closer to home, you have probably not only watched it happen but felt it happen. Like me, you have probably passed through seasons where you became a little (or a lot) less strange in this world, where you traded your heavenly clothes for garments less conspicuous. You once were quite strange (and happy to be so); then, over time, you became quietly normal.

Christians are, by definition, “sojourners and exiles” in this world (1 Peter 2:11) — strangers. But we do not always live up to the name. We strangers need help staying strange.

Stay Strange

The apostle Peter was a man familiar with strangeness — familiar too with the difficulty of remaining so. As he surveyed his beloved churches, and as he considered his own soul, he saw an array of forces bent on making Christian strangers normal: the unrelenting passions of our flesh (1 Peter 2:11), a surprised and smirking world (1 Peter 4:4), a prowling devil (1 Peter 5:8).

Among these various forces, Peter seems to have been especially sensitive to the normalizing influence of the world — of friends and neighbors and family and coworkers who look at your life and “are surprised” at what you do and don’t do, what you say and don’t say (1 Peter 4:4). As the King James Version puts it, “They think it strange.” They think you strange.

However strong our identity in Christ, Peter knows that quizzical looks, awkward conversations, and constant cultural messaging can take their toll on Christian integrity. The more you feel strange to the people around you, the more help you need to stay strange. And for that, you need other strangers.

And so, amid his calls to Christian strangeness in 1 Peter 4, he describes the kind of community that keeps and cultivates that strangeness. Granted, Peter knows that not even the healthiest community can prevent all apostasy. But he also knows that if strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world. Only together do we stay strange.

So, over against the passions and patterns of unbelieving society, Peter mentions four features of a faithfully strange community — churches that offer a home on the journey to heaven.

1. Strange Posture

Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins. (1 Peter 4:8)

In 1 Peter 4:3, Peter lists the kinds of community sins these Christians once enjoyed and that their neighbors still enjoy: “sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.” His vision of Christian community in verses 7–11 offers an alternative society, a place where such passions are not only renounced but replaced by God-glorifying, soul-dignifying patterns.

The first of these patterns is love — earnest, sincere, sin-covering love. Sinful communities like those of verse 3 may know some kind of friendship or camaraderie; they do not know this kind of love. Nor did we know this kind of love when we were living in “malice and . . . deceit and hypocrisy and envy and . . . slander” (1 Peter 2:1). Back then, we stirred up sin in others and ourselves. Now, however, we cover it.

“Love covers a multitude of sins” means that, when wounded, we forgive, overlook, show mercy, refuse to grow bitter. A brother snubs you; you pray, forgive in your heart, and go on loving him. A sister speaks a shameful word against you; you tell her how that felt, gently restore her, and go on loving her. Some sins we pass over; some we confront — all we cover.

Such love is strange in this world. But every time we practice it, we remind each other of the Christ who “suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Sin-covering love not only keeps our strange communities together — it also keeps our communities near Christ, whose nearness makes all our strangeness sweet.

2. Strange Place

Show hospitality to one another without grumbling. (1 Peter 4:9)

Peter’s charge to cover over sins implies we know each other deeply enough to wound each other deeply. It implies relationship beyond acquaintance and fellowship beyond Sunday. Healthy churches know, with Peter, that gathering once a week does not keep Christians strange. And so, throughout the week, we bring our strange posture into a strange place: our homes.

Hospitality (literally “love of strangers”) may have been more common in Peter’s world than it is in ours (at least in the West), but it was not so common that Peter felt no need to command it. Nor was it so easy that he felt no need to add that phrase “without grumbling.” Then, as now, Christian hospitality came with many costs and temptations to complain. If our love covers a multitude of sins, our hospitality covers a multitude of inconveniences.

But when we open our homes to other Christians, especially to those far different from us, we help make strangers feel a bit more at home. We invite each other into a world where, for an afternoon or evening at least, we feel welcomed, at ease, a stranger among fellow strangers — and therefore a stranger among friends. In the home, we catch a small glimpse of Home, and we leave with a little more courage to stay strange.

If our churches are going to feel like a home for Christian strangers, then we will need to open our actual homes — often and without grumbling.

3. Strange Practice

As each has received a gift, use it to serve one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Peter 4:10)

When Peter’s readers moved about in the world, they were allotted a certain place and significance. Their society paid close attention to whether someone was high-born or low-born, master or servant, man or woman, old or young — and assigned value accordingly.

But when Peter’s readers moved about in the church, these wildly different people found themselves on spiritually level ground. Without losing their earthly identities (Peter still addresses servants as servants, wives as wives, the younger as the younger), they gained a remarkable equality in Christ. “Each . . . received a gift,” each became a good steward “of God’s varied grace,” and each was called “to serve one another.”

An unbelieving neighbor observing such a church would have seen society unstratified, partiality put away, as low served high and high served low — each a steward of the King. Our own worthy Lord did not count himself too high for foot-washing. And in a hundred ways, with a hundred gifts — teaching, leading, exhorting, giving, administrating — his church continues to upend social expectations and wash unlikely feet.

Such communities still seem strange, even in supposedly egalitarian societies. No matter how much we prize equality, we each (apart from grace) have categories of people we will not gladly serve — or be served by. But when, in the church, our service extends to all and receives from all, we embody the coming kingdom, reflect the coming King, and minister the “varied grace” we need to stay strange.

4. Strange Perspective

The end of all things is at hand. . . . To [God] belong glory and dominion forever and ever. (1 Peter 4:7, 11)

The church’s strange posture, place, and practice cultivate and keep Christian strangeness, but not apart from the strangest quality of all: our perspective. So, Peter begins and ends this passage by flipping forward a few pages in the story, reminding us of history’s next and last chapter. In the end, we stay strange by remembering that we live in the end.

Christ has come, Christ has died, Christ has risen and ascended — and now no major event stands between us and Christ coming again. “The end of all things is at hand”; the end of this world is at hand. And therefore, the end of our strangeness is at hand as well.

“If strangers do not find a home in the church, then sooner or later they will find a home in the world.”

Faithful Christians cannot help but look strange to unbelievers of all sorts — progressive and conservative, urban and rural, young and old. But that doesn’t mean we fundamentally are strange, not from the standpoint of eternity. No, from the perspective of “forever and ever,” the strangest thing of all is this present world of sin, this God-ignoring age. Such was not the case in eternity past, such is not the case in heaven now, and such will not be the case everywhere soon. “To him belong glory and dominion” — and to him they will always be.

The more eternity rests on our minds, the more this world, which can seem so normal, will begin to look alien, fugitive, dislocated, strange. And so, together, we pray for God’s kingdom to come. We preach and talk of Christ’s return. And we remind each other that this world is not our home. However strange we seem here, we are not strange to God, not strange to the angels, not strange to the cloud of witnesses gone before us.

Stay strange, then, for a few moments longer, for you live on the threshold of home.