“Servants, be subject to your masters with all respect, not only to the good and gentle but also to the unjust. For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in His footsteps.”
– 1 Peter 2:18-21
The job I just recently started comes with a number of frustrations, one of the major ones being a boss who gets angry at seemingly insignificant things and then taking that anger out on whichever employee or employees are nearest. To make it worse is the fact that he attends the same church as I do and acts like a completely different person away from the business. So for the last few weeks I’ve been pondering how it is I should act as a subordinate and a Christian in the position I am in, and the Lord blessed me through a sermon by John Piper on the above section of 1 Peter after a particularly long day at work.
How amazing of a thing it is that we are commanded to be subject and to show great respect to both just and unjust people over us! And for what reason? Because “this is a gracious thing” in the sight of God. This is a thing so far from our natural human reactions, as I can heartily attest from personal experience. If someone is unjustly angry at us our reactions are most often to either be angry in return or to harbor resentment against the person, and here we are called to do the opposite, for neither anger nor resentment have any respect in them. It is one of the wonders of the Gospel, that it demands things from us that seem impossible for to give. God’s Word commands joy in suffering, love of enemies, self-sacrifice even unto death, and here in 1 Peter 2:18-21 it tells us that our call is to follow Christ in suffering. How are we to summon up those emotions of love for those who we should have, or how are we to lead ourselves into suffering and yet rejoice? It is impossible!
And that is why the Gospel is such a glorious thing! It is God himself transforming humans who can not do as he asks and enabling them, by his Spirit, to do what they could not. It is only by God that we can become servants who react to unjust treatment with humble respect. It is my hope and prayer that God would so work in my heart that I would exemplify what it means to live in that way. May others’ anger leave no stain upon my heart, and may my response to injustice against me be a rejoicing in the fact that God has justified me through Christ and saved me from His anger. Christ suffered great injustice so that we might live. Should we not follow in his footsteps and suffer what injustice may come against us so that we may point others to life?
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