I don’t know about you but I don’t like authority. Or maybe I could be pious and say, “I don’t like unjust authority.” But that might be misleading. I just really don’t like authority very much. Apparently, mine is not an isolated problem. I have a five-year-old in my home who reminds me every day she doesn’t like it either. I also raised six other children who just wanted to do their own thing.

So we come out of the womb chaffing under the yoke of authority. Perhaps with maturity we come to acknowledge that authority is, as the Bible says, ordained by God for our good. Maybe, with more maturity, we can even acknowledge that as dependent and finite creatures we all serve some authority, either to our good or to our hurt. Maybe we even see that to follow Jesus is to be a free servant, that his rule and reign will lead to a new kind of freedom—the freedom to be as we were designed to be.

We are talking about submitting to authority and freedom on Sunday. The way the culture uses the word “freedom” and the way the Bible uses it are very different things. I suppose submitting to authority is viewed by Christians in different ways, as well. Anyway, one thing is clear: the life of God’s people together is the evangelistic event that goes on before the world and the arena where it is being played out is in the mundane—neighborhoods, work places and places we know and are known. Peter gives us the “how to” of resistance in our text for Sunday. Hope you will join us either in person or via live stream!

Blessings,

Jim