Key Truth: In union with Christ we have been given the freedom to submit to human institutions for the purpose of doing good and overcoming evil for the life of the world.   

Introduction:

What is your only comfort in life and in death?

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Philippians 2:5-8

Be Free, Serve God: 

1 Peter 2:13-17

Teach me, my God and King,

In all things Thee to see –

And what I do in anything,

To do it as for Thee.

If done t’ obey Thy laws,

E’en servile labors shine:

Hallowed is toil, if this the cause,

The meanest work divine.

George Herbert, Teach Me, My God and King

What does it mean to be free?

Endure Suffering, Entrust Yourself to God:

1 Peter 2:18-24

“This knowledge that God will ultimately right all wrongs is essential to a Christian response to suffering, for God has put within us all a sense of justice which will not allow us simply to forget wrongs suffered for which we think there will be no punishment for those who have done them.  But committing the situation to God, knowing that ultimately ‘the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality’ (Col. 3:25), means that our sense of wrong suffered can be put at rest, and enables us then to imitate Jesus in praying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (Luke 23:34).  We thus seek for the wrongdoers not forgiveness without cost (which is impossible in God’s universe) but forgiveness paid for by the great cost of the blood of Christ (1 Pet. 1:19).”

Wayne Grudem, 1 Peter: Tyndale New Testament Commentaries

In what ways have you been unjust?  
How has the Lord’s patience with you enabled you to see and repent of it?  
How has the patient forbearance of your friends, family or co-workers enabled you to see and repent of it?

Application:

1 Peter 2:13-25 teaches us that:

- In union with Christ we have been given the freedom to submit to human institutions for the purpose of doing good and overcoming evil for the life of the world.