What does it mean to be servants of God (1 Peter 2:16)?

"Servants of God" (verse 16). This appears to be the last of the appellatives used by the apostle in this chapter, and it would involve all that has preceded it. The word translated "servants" is really "bondmen," and would speak of those wholly devoted to the will of God. How instructive for us to notice the connections in which this description is found, and the injunctions which surround it. "Submit yourselves … to the king … unto governors" (verses 13, 14). "Honour all"; "Love the brotherhood"; "Fear God"; "Honour the king" (verse 17). "Servants be subject to your masters" (verse 18). It is evident that wherever we are, and in whatever sphere we may be found, we should be marked by conduct consistent with our position as "servants of God." Should this at times involve suffering, God will take account of it as "thankworthy."

With the government of the world those who are Christ's have nothing directly to do. They are expressly not of the world as He was not (John 17:14, 16), who refused even to arbitrate when one sought His informal intervention; He would be no judge or divider of inheritance (Luke 12:13-14). "My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my officials fight that I should not be delivered to the Jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence." He was come into the world to bear witness to the truth; and such is the mission of the Christian. The age to come will behold Him and them reigning over the earth when evil shall be infallibly judged and iniquity hide its head. It is now the time to suffer with Him, looking then to be glorified. Therefore should we meanwhile be the more zealous to submit ourselves to every human creation (as it is literally), and not only to a king as super-eminent but to governors as sent from time to time through him for righteous dealing with evil-doers and for praise of such as do well. Our proper interests are on high; but that is our duty for the Lord's sake.

A weighty reason follows. "Because so is the will of God (and are we not sanctified unto obedience — obedience of Jesus?), that by well-doing ye put to silence (lit. muzzle) the ignorance of senseless men; as free and not having liberty as a cloak of malice, but as God's bondmen." How sound, wholesome, unselfish, and godly! The true and comely answer to the spiteful hatred of the world is a godly course of living. For men as such, not some only but all, are senseless if they know not God, and therefore find their malignant pleasure in imputing their own evils to His children. This habitual well-doing is not to give up the liberty wherewith Christ set us free, but as we live by the Spirit, also to walk by it, instead of wearing the liberty as a cloak of malice, which enemies pretended. It is our happiness and cherished duty to carry ourselves as God's bondmen: such we really are; and we find it the perfect law of liberty, as it flows from our new nature.

(1 Peter 2:16,) "As free, and not using your liberty for a cloke of maliciousness, but as the servants of God." Here the Christian gets the place of being thoroughly free, not belonging to the world, but belonging to heaven, and not using his liberty as a cloak of maliciousness, but as the servant of God, seeking only to be a servant. Now a servant's business is simply to follow the will of his master, and God's will is that I should submit. If I take things into my own hands, the Lord says, as it were, "You have taken up the cudgels, and I leave you to fight it out," and the consequence is, when this is the case, we are always beaten.

A matter in this regard is that of submission to ordinances of government, rather than any resistance or complaint, a too prevalent character of man naturally. And this submission is to be "for the Lord's sake," and therefore real and wholehearted. In whatever country it may be, the same was true, though of course that submission is limited in the case of government violating one's conscience toward God. Whether it were the supreme government of a country, or lesser governments, it is the same. For God has established government with the object of punishing evildoers and encouraging those who do well.

Therefore, it is certainly the will of God that the believer, should, in subjection to Government, exhibit the well-doing becoming to his confession, so that foolish men, will have no ground for their ignorant accusations against him. For he is: free: he is not dependent on the government, though he respects it: he depends on God. And such liberty as this is not to be perverted into mere self-will, for it is actually liberty to please God as His willing servants. To honor all is to have proper respect for them as those whom God has created. To love the brotherhood is of course to love the saints of God as brethren, a far nearer relationship than that of creatures of God. " Fear God" is a firm, decided command. This involves standing in awe of His greatness, His glory, His holiness, giving Him His place of absolute supremacy and dignity. And lastly, to honor the, king is to give him the respect due to his position: it is honoring authority, not merely the person who holds it.

(Vv. 13, 14). The following exhortations view the believer in relation to the institutions and authorities of this world. It would be wholly inconsistent for those who take the place of strangers in this world to attempt to form these institutions or appoint the authorities. We are, however, to be subject to them, and this with the highest motive, for the Lord's sake. We are to be subject to subordinate as well as to supreme authorities, and, again, for the reason that we view them all in relation to the Lord. Whether they exercise their authority in the fear of God or fail to do so, we are definitely to view them as sent by God for the maintenance of the government of the world.

(Vv. 15, 16). By subjection to authority, and by well-doing, the Christian would put to silence the ignorance of senseless men, who charge the believer with rebellion against authority (Luke 23:14-15; Acts 24:12-13). We are free from the world, but are not to use our freedom to speak evil of this world's authorities, but rather to devote ourselves wholly to the service of God.

Verses 13 to 17, inclusive, work this exhortation out for us, in its details. These dispersed Christian Jews might very possibly be inclined to resent many of the Gentile authorities who were over them, whether kings or governors, and also the many ordinances and laws and regulations that had been instituted, so many of them very different to what had been given of God through Moses, to which they and their forefathers had been accustomed. Still, they were to submit. Government, they had to recognize, was a divine institution. Hence they and we are to be subject for the Lord's sake. The Christian is of course, free for he stands in the liberty of Christ. Still, he must not use his freedom as "a cloke of malice" — in any way to vent his spleen upon others — but he must regard it as liberty to serve God, and the service of God demands the subjection to rulers which is here laid down.

The matter is tersely summed up in verse 17, and we find what becomes "the servants of God." As to all men — honour. As to the brotherhood, i.e., all believers — love. As to God — fear. As to the king, the representative of all human authority — honour. Carrying out this we do the will of God and silence foolish adversaries.

An independent condition can in no wise be the place of the creature. He is a servant of good or of evil. But his natural condition was that of bondage to sin. Grace, then, has delivered him from that. He has gone forth from the house of bondage; but it is to meet and to serve the God of his salvation. Redemption has made him His.

And now he returns to the great principle of the Gentile condition. If I yield myself to sin, as a slave, to obey it, I am its slave; and sin reigned by death without law being there. Death was the natural and appointed wages of sin, and that as the judgment of God. We could not say obedience unto life; for if we obey, we are alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord, but it has the fruit of practical righteousness. And note the character here of what is opposed to sin; not in itself righteousness - the doing right as known by conscience or law - but obedience. We are alive to God, and that is, and must be always, obedience. We cannot live to God otherwise than in obedience. So Christ lived. He was the obedient Man - came to do God's will. His Father's will was the motive of all He did. He lived by every word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. His path, consequently, was practical righteousness, and the pattern of it. So the apostle thanks God that, whereas they had been slaves of sin, they had obeyed from the heart the form of doctrine delivered to them.

154 And here we learn the spring and character of this obedience. It is the obedience of faith, the reception of the word of God into the heart. This forms the link of obedience between the soul and God. The same reception of the word gives life. Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. It is life, it is an obedient life, in truth, the life of Christ in us; and He is the obedient Man. Thus made free from sin - for this is the great point here - they had become, yielding themselves up to obey, slaves to righteousness (using "slave" as a figure he excuses, for it is true liberty, but to make it plain to flesh's infirmity of understanding); for as they had formerly given up their members as slaves to uncleanness and to lawlessness, only to be lawless, letting loose an evil will which bore no fruit, so now he exhorts them to yield their members (for they were free) slaves to righteousness. But here there was a blessed result, holiness, a separation of heart to God in the true knowledge of Him, the soul brought into His image, as expressed in Colossians 3:10 and Ephesians 4:23-24 (there more in its nature, here in practical growth, but the same general truth).

The apostle continues the figure, and appeals to their consciousness of what had passed. They had been slaves of sin, and in no way subject to righteousness. What fruit had they then in the things they were now ashamed of? It was fruitless wasting of their members in lawlessness, and the end death. But now, free from sin - his great theme, as we have seen - free in the sense of out of bondage, no longer sin's slaves (such alone is the sense of the words here), and become slaves to God, entirely given up to serve Him, we have our fruit unto holiness; not only the end everlasting life, but by the way growing in knowledge of God, and likeness to Him, and separation of heart to Him from all evil, according to what He is. Walking in the path of obedience to Him, and so with Him, the soul is in that delivered from the power of evil, which is in will and lust, neither of which is its obedience.

Having been liberated from the bondage of sin, we have "become the servants of God," to be for His will and pleasure in this world. Formerly, as living in sin, there was nothing in our lives for God; all was for self, as dominated by the evil principle in our nature that hated God and His things. Now it is our delight, as having the divine nature, to come out in the features of Christ, bearing the fruits of His life for the pleasure of God. Under the control of sin there was the hatred of holiness, and we were utterly powerless to be holy or do anything relating to holiness. But the divine nature delights in holiness, and this is the fruit it produces.

This again is another characteristic of Christianity. Christ makes the soul, once the slave of sin, to be free, and calls it to stand fast in His liberty, never again to be held in a yoke of bondage. For there is no middle ground or other alternative. But grace uses this liberty to be so much the more His bondman, free from sin to serve the Lord Christ. It was precisely what He did here below, evermore the true and perfect servant. Into this love always leads. With Him we have communion in this, and in order to express its absoluteness we, however free from our old slavery, are said to be bondmen of Jesus, His will and work, or, as suits the argument here, "of obedience unto righteousness." The Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right, which is pride, independence, or deification of self, but because they are God's will for us. We must obey in order to practical righteousness. How complete the change from all we were! "But thanks to God that ye were bondmen of sin, but ye obeyed from [the] heart [the] form of teaching into which ye were delivered." (Ver. 17.)