1 Peter 2:13-16 Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme;… It often happens that apparent contradictions disappear when we reach a purer and higher range of life. Many of the things which perplex us when children, and seem to our eyes to be inconsistencies on the part of our parents, now appear, when we look back on them with the clearer vision of later years, to be not only consistent, but perfectly justifiable. And may that not be the same in all the regions of life? Of course it might be said on a superficial view, that servitude and freedom were inconsistent with one another. But in the larger life I gather that it is not so. The apostle at all events speaks as though a man might be perfectly free, and at the same time be living a life of servitude. I. The first law almost of existence is that which expresses itself in THE STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM. Would you not say that the child that was born but yesterday is very much like a man that has just been drawn out of the water after drowning? All the struggle, all the painful symptoms you notice in that drowned man are the efforts of life, so to speak, to recover itself, and to take possession of those conditions under which its existence alone can continue. The child, in the same way, is not yet, as it were, adjusted to the conditions by which it is surrounded, and the earlier stages of life are the struggle to lay hold of the conditions in which it finds itself. Thus I should say the struggle of all early life is the struggle to get possession of the right of life. And this will become more apparent if we ask ourselves what we mean by freedom. Freedom is the educated capacity to live according to the capacity of our being. The least reflection will show us that this is true. Take, for example, what we know perfectly well, that our struggle as a child turns upon the conception that that is the meaning of freedom. When you take your child and say, "It is now time that it began to learn those little physical exercises, whether you call them calisthenics or dancing classes." You say to yourself: "The child is not yet in possession of its full power. These exercises are to give it mastery over itself with regard to its physical organisation, and we are trying to give it such a mastery that it may be able to use all its physical power according to the order, law, and condition of that physical framework." It is the same when you come to the mental region. The man who thinks freely thinks truly, and a man only thinks freely according to the law and order of thought; and when you take your lad and say, "It is time you were educated," and send him to school, you do so because you know that exactly as physical training is to make him master of his own frame, so the mental training is to make him master of his own intelligence. It is the same thing in social life. The awkwardness which you see in your children is just that which arise out of the fact that they are not self-possessed. But when they go into society and are trained they become, by the education of mixing with their fellow men, possessors of themselves, and what you call ease, manner, grace, is only that the man is master of himself, that the self-consciousness which disturbs his own happiness has vanished in entering into his rightful heritage of being a self-possessed individual. Look at it from the religious point of view. It is also true that religion comes to set a man free. Religion is the great coordinating power of the moral and physical forces of life. It is that which gives us power over ourselves. It sets us free from false conceptions. "Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made you free," means, "Stand fast in the possession of principles which clear your mind from false conceptions." The bulk of men are not to be charged with being slaves of the grosser or more vulgar passions, but they are very much the slaves of false conceptions of life. The competition for wealth, the desire to achieve physical ease, free from the anxieties of life — these things rise up in men's minds, and are fostered by the conditions of society, and man is the victim of a false idea of life. Christianity is sent surely to emancipate men from that, to show men what the real significance of life is, that those are little weaknesses in us which betray us into conditions and surroundings which make us less and lower than we ought to be. Therefore Christianity would not be a complete or valuable system if its only idea were that we should negative the positive sins in the world. No, we must reorganise humanity upon noble lines, make man master of himself and give him a true conception of life, that conception of life which God intends him to take. II. The second stage is THE STAGE OF SERVICE. As truly as the earlier stage is the stage of struggle, so it is true equally that the second stage is a stage of service. It is true in our ordinary life. There is no difference, as I take it, between the religious point of view and the purely natural point of view. The man who is educated to freedom only reaches that freedom in serving. It is true in the fields of nature: you only bring a thing to maturity in making it of service. the corn shall grow by slow degrees. That is the process by which it struggles into its freedom. It struggles first for bare existence and then for conditions under which it may reach its maturity; but the moment that maturity is reached the harvest is come, it has reached the condition of life in which service is absolutely imperative to it. This wheat grain means the law of service; therefore the moment its maturity is acquired it is acquired in order that it may be utilised. This is true with regard to human life. How we dreamed of what we would do when we were twenty-one! And yet, now that the twenty-one years are passed, the man's only freedom is service. He is not content to be a free man. Set him free and he is miserable. It comes in the gentle dawn of new emotions, which lead him to form his own little home nest. tie has parted with freedom to dream of domestic life, a life in which he has pledged himself to service in the great citizenship of the world. Perhaps you are going to make your son a surgeon; you send him to his long training, in which his eye is skilled to perceive the symptom and meaning of every disease, to keep his nerve steady. The very moment the seven years of training are past, what is it that is springing up in his soul? The consciousness of power. But what does that lead him to? The necessity of service. Trained, we must use our powers. Make a man free in his whole nature, and you will make him thirst to lay down those powers for the service of his fellow men. Christ was free, but look at that life of our Lord: precisely because it was free, the whole of it was consecrated to service — so much so that to Him the only idea of human existence was this, that the powers of it should be used in the service of men. "I am among you as one that doth serve." III. THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THESE TWO PRINCIPLES IS THE IMPORTANT THING. It is not simply that we are to live a life of service, nor that we are to seek to be free men. It is because we do not see that there is an indissoluble connection between the two that we sometimes blunder in many of the matters submitted to us. It is the free man who can yield the true service. That is what we want to get hold of. It is not that we want to make men serve one another by compulsion. That would be of no value at all. You do not want the enforced service of your wife or child. What you ask is free service. You speak of a man's freedom because all his actions are free; he is a free man in the use of his powers. You speak also of the charm and the graciousness wherewith a thing is done. The meaning of it is that it is the homage of a free man. There is a difference between the attitude of the slave and the splendid homage of a free man. Make men conscious of their freedom, let them feel that what they do is the free homage of the free men, and you will have from them what is worth more than all the tyranny of law. (Bp. Boyd Carpenter.) Parallel Verses KJV: Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake: whether it be to the king, as supreme; |
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