Radical Christianity - Pt 4

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 steps. He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten, but continued entrusting himself to him who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls. (1 Peter 2:18-25 ESV).

Some would ask, “What about justice?” Our compliance is not an indifference to justice. It is a way of saying that the safest place for retaliatory justice is in God's hands, not mine. If I am to be vindicated, it will be God who vindicates me "when he has tried and purged me duly" through suffering. Let me remind you of three brief comments of application. First, God’s will is designed to be shown in our suffering. I think this text assumes that God sometimes wills for his people to suffer unjustly. God wills this because he knows the best way for us to bring glory to him, sometimes by miraculously escaping suffering, and sometimes (more often) by graciously bearing suffering, that we do not deserve from men, because we trust in God. God often wills that we suffer unjustly and that we bear it by his grace and for his glory. Second there will be justice served for wrongdoing. Justice is in God at the last day. God will settle all accounts justly. No one will get away with anything. Those who hold Christ and his people in derision and do not repent will one day cry out for the rocks and mountains to fall upon them rather than face the wrath of the Lamb (cf. Revelation 6:16). And, God has given a measure of his authority for retaliation in this age to the state as his minister for keeping order and peace in society. So God wills that governments punish those who cause Christians (or anyone else) to suffer unjustly. We may legitimately labor for such a government. But the God-given rights of the state to retaliate and punish does not nullify the God-given calling of the individual Christian to endure unjust suffering patiently. God's glory shines partly through his dispensing of justice through the state. But it shines much more through the patient, God-centered suffering of his people. Finally, our lives are to "proclaim the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness into his marvelous light." These excellencies of God that shine through this kind of meekness and endurance and patience is a very long list. We can only give a start down the list. So when your time comes, keep these great words in mind. Be encouraged by God’s promise, He will never fail you!