If you could be free from all external forces of control and manipulation and coercion and pressure, what would you do? If ‘the man’ had no power over you from the outside and no vice had control of you from the inside, what would you do with your freedom?
Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules.
1Peter 2:16 (MSG)
16 Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as God’s slaves.
1Peter 2:16 (NIV)
As a follow-up from yesterday, in which I was discussing Peter’s challenge for us to live as foreigners here in a way that balances reverence for God and respect for all, there is a little phrase in the middle of our verses from yesterday which are worth separating out. Live in freedom, and live as God’s slaves.
Free people, yet servants of God. I would venture to say that most people outside the family of God do not associate the family of God with freedom. They believe Christianity is all about rules. Follow Jesus and be bound up by the commandments and rules of the church – there is no freedom there.
Freedom, in Peter’s world, is related to the idea of no longer being under the Law of Moses, which was definitely a set of rules Israel must follow. No two ways about it. Under the Law, people were enslaved to the Law. In Christ Jesus, anyone who receives Christ is under grace. If you were under Mosaic Law before, you are free. If you were under no law (in which you become a law unto yourself – Romans 2:14), you are now free.
What will you do with your freedom? That’s the key question in Peter’s writing above. He challenges us to not use our freedom to break rules or cover up evil. Don’t publicly live in the freedom of God’s grace and secretly become enslaved to rules or sin or anything else.
Rather, as free people, serve or become enslaved to one thing only: the service of God. That’s Peter’s only reasonable choice. The pulls and tugs of the world will try to entice you to become enslaved to work or popularity or love or adventure or whatever. When the Master sets you free, Peter would say, serve only the Master.
Good advice.
Amen.
Marc Kinna
marckinna 