13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right. 15 For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people.

1 Peter 2:13-15

These are interesting verses in light of what’s going on in the world today. If you read or listen to news other than what is in the mainstream, you know there are entire nations at unrest because of what their governments are doing to them.

For example,

• More than 11,000 farms are being seized in the Netherlands to help combat climate change. Naturally, farmers are upset.
• In France, they’ve had the so-called yellow/green vest protesters for 3 years.
• In Canada and the U.S. earlier this year, it was the truckers.
• China is still quarantining entire cities over Covid.
• Sri Lanka just ran their President out of the country because they cannot buy gasoline anymore and food shortages are imminent.

Governments are abusing their power around the world. They are doing things that are actually harming the people they seek to serve. That’s nothing new because they’ve been doing that for ages. However, we’re able to notice some of these atrocities and are left to deal with them.

When Peter wrote this, Nero was in power. If you know anything about Nero, then you know he was downright belligerent towards Christians.

So, how does this all relate to us in 2022?

The same text was written to a persecuted people as it was for us.

• Do we rebel against evil governments?
• Do we rise up?
• Do we right the wrongs they’ve perpetrated?
• Do we just roll over and let government walk all over us?
• Where do we draw the line?

And yet, we read: “submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors…”

The general conclusion I come to is this: as long as the government is not coercing you to do anything against God’s stated moral law, obey, realizing that we are obeying God rather than men.