1 Peter 2 · Passage · Honour
Honour the King
Peter told the scattered churches to submit to the king and his governors, and Paul told the Roman church to submit to the governing authorities and pay what it owed them.
Eusebius, in his Church History (book 2, chapter 25), records that Paul was beheaded in Rome and that Peter was crucified there under Nero.
Treat everyone with high regard: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king.
- The passage
- 1 Peter 2:13 to 17, Romans 13:1 to 7
- Books
- 1 Peter, Romans
- Hold in memory
- Romans 13:1, Acts 5:29
Summary
The apostles taught the churches to submit to rulers because God stands behind the ruler's office. Peter asked it for the Lord's sake, so that good conduct would silence the ignorance of foolish men, and Paul asked it for the sake of conscience as well as from fear of punishment. Honour paid to a ruler is in this way part of a believer's service to God.
- Paul calls the ruler God's servant three times in Romans 13:4 to 6.
- Jesus told Pilate that the authority Pilate held over Him was given from above.
- The midwives of Egypt, Daniel and the apostles each refused a ruler's order that would have made them disobey God.
Submit for the Lord's Sake
Peter's command names the king, his governors and the reason God gives for submitting to them.
Honour the King studies 1 Peter 2:13 to 17 and Romans 13:1 to 7, two of the places where the apostles teach the church what it owes to rulers. It belongs to the value of honour, because both letters name honour among the debts a believer pays to those God has set in authority.
The question it answers is what a Christian owes a ruler and where that duty stops. It reads both passages verse by verse, sets them in the Roman world the letters were written to, and weighs the scenes and the teachers that mark the limit of the duty.
Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human institution, whether to the king as the supreme authority, or to governors as those sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to praise those who do right.The command opens the passage this study reads, and it names every rank of ruler a believer must honour.
For it is God’s will that by doing good you should silence the ignorance of foolish men. Live in freedom, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil; live as servants of God.Peter gives God's reason for submission and guards the freedom of believers from becoming a cover for evil.
Behind the command stands a proverb that joins the two fears: “My son, fear the LORD and the king, and do not associate with the rebellious” (Proverbs 24:21).
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (1871) found the reason in Christ, “who once was subject to earthly rulers Himself, though having all things subject to Him”.
Four Commands and Four Debts
Peter's verse names four duties, and Paul's verse names four debts.
Both apostles use one Greek word for honour and one for fear, and Peter gives the fear to God where Paul gives it to rulers.
| Verse | The Berean words | The Greek word | What the row shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Peter 2:17 | “Treat everyone with high regard” | timaō | Peter's list opens with the honour owed to every person. |
| 1 Peter 2:17 | “Love the brotherhood of believers” | agapaō | Love is owed to fellow believers as members of one family. |
| 1 Peter 2:17 | “fear God” | phobeomai | Fear stands in Peter's list as the debt owed to God. |
| 1 Peter 2:17 | “honor the king” | timaō | The list closes with the verb it opened with, now aimed at the ruler. |
| Romans 13:7 | “taxes to whom taxes are due” | phoros | Paul names the tax first among the debts owed to rulers. |
| Romans 13:7 | “revenue to whom revenue is due” | telos | Revenue stands beside the tax as a second debt paid in money. |
| Romans 13:7 | “respect to whom respect is due” | phobos | Respect is the third debt, owed in the believer's regard for the ruler. |
| Romans 13:7 | “honor to whom honor is due” | timē | Honour closes Paul's list as it closes Peter's. |
Romans 13:7, Romans 13:7
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown read the first verb of 1 Peter 2:17 as “In every case render promptly every man's due” and the last as “Habitually and continually honor the king.”
Paul's Reasons in Romans 13
Paul gives the source of authority, the ruler's work, the believer's motive and the taxes in that order.
Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which is from God. The authorities that exist have been appointed by God. Consequently, whoever resists authority is opposing what God has set in place, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves.Paul grounds the duty in God's appointment, so that resistance to authority is opposition to what God has set in place.
The Greek verb behind submit is hypotassō, which the Translators Brief lexicon of the STEP Bible glosses “to subordinate” and counts 38 times. The word for authority is exousia, which the STEP Bible's lexicon counts 102 times and glosses as privilege and as “delegated influence”.
Matthew Henry, in his Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), wrote that “civil powers are from God's governing power.”
Jesus told Pilate the same truth about Pilate's own office: “You would have no authority over Me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11).
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Do you want to be unafraid of the one in authority? Then do what is right, and you will have his approval. For he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not carry the sword in vain. He is God’s servant, an agent of retribution to the wrongdoer.These verses give the reason a ruler is owed honour, his charge from God to restrain wrongdoing.
The word for servant in Romans 13:4 is diakonos, which stands twice in the verse, and the agent of retribution is ekdikos, an avenger. Origen, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, noticed that Paul repeats the title God's minister “not once, but a second and a third time”. The third is in Romans 13:6, where the word is leitourgos, a public servant.
Therefore it is necessary to submit to authority, not only to avoid punishment, but also as a matter of conscience. This is also why you pay taxes. For the authorities are God’s servants, who devote themselves to their work. Pay everyone what you owe him: taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenue is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due.Paul adds conscience to the fear of punishment as a reason to submit and names the debts believers owe to rulers.
Henry called the fear of punishment “a good argument, but it is low for a Christian”.
John Gill, in his Exposition of the New Testament (1746 to 1748), read the debts of Romans 13:7 as owed “as a due debt, and not as a mere gift”.
Jesus had answered the question of the tax with a coin and the words “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s” (Matthew 22:21).
When God's Servants Refused a Ruler
Scripture shows honour given to a hostile king and refusals made where a ruler's order meant disobeying God.
Saul was hunting David when he went into a cave where David was hiding, and David “crept up secretly and cut off a corner of Saul’s robe” (1 Samuel 24:4).
So he said to his men, “The LORD forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the LORD’s anointed. May I never lift my hand against him, since he is the LORD’s anointed.”David's words show honour owed to a ruler even when the ruler is an enemy.
Others of God's servants refused a ruler's order outright.
The midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had instructed; they let the boys live.The midwives show that the fear of God can require a servant of God to refuse a king.
Now when Daniel learned that the document had been signed, he went into his house, where the windows of his upper room opened toward Jerusalem, and three times a day he got down on his knees, prayed, and gave thanks to his God, just as he had done before.Daniel shows a servant of God keeping his worship when the law of the land forbade it.
But Peter and the other apostles replied, “We must obey God rather than men.The apostles answered the council's order to stop teaching in the name of Jesus with the rule that governs every such refusal.
Origen read Romans 13:2 with the apostles' rule of Acts 5:29 in view. Paul, he wrote, “is not here speaking of those powers which bring persecutions upon the faith”.
Daniel 6:10, Acts 5:29
The Churches Under Rome
Both letters went to churches that lived under the emperor and the governors he sent.
Peter wrote “To the elect who are exiles of the Dispersion throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia” (1 Peter 1:1), provinces ruled by the governors he names in his command.
He sent greetings from “The church in Babylon” (1 Peter 5:13). Eusebius, in his Church History (about 325), reported that Peter wrote the letter “in Rome itself” and named the city Babylon “by a figure”.
Paul had met Aquila and Priscilla in Corinth after “Claudius had ordered all the Jews to leave Rome” (Acts 18:2).
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote of the great fire of Rome in his Annals, book 15. In chapter 44 he records that “Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations”, the Christians.
Voices on Honour to Rulers
Two voices of the second and third centuries speak to the honour owed rulers.
died 202 · Irenaeus
Irenaeus stands here for the second century's reading of where a king's throne comes from.
“As therefore the devil lied at the beginning, so did he also in the end, when he said, ‘All these are delivered unto me, and to whomsoever I will I give them.’ For it is not he who has appointed the kingdoms of this world, but God; for ‘the heart of the king is in the hand of God.’ And the Word also says by Solomon, ‘By me kings do reign, and princes administer justice. By me chiefs are raised up, and by me kings rule the earth.’”
Irenaeus · Against Heresies Book V · on Romans 13:1Patristic
died 220 · Tertullian
Tertullian stands here for the church of the third century, in a treatise on the customs a Christian must refuse.
“So far as concerns the honors due to king or emperor, we have a clear ruling to be subject in all obedience, according to the apostle's command, to magistrates and princes and those in authority, but within the limits of Christian discipline, i.e., so long as we keep ourselves free of idolatry.”
Tertullian · On Idolatry 15 · on Romans 13:7Patristic
How Far Does Submission Reach?
Three traditions of the Reformation answered whether a Christian may ever resist a ruler.
Luther, Calvin and the Anabaptists of Schleitheim gave different answers to what a believer may do when a ruler commands what God forbids.
Refuse the command and bear the penaltyMartin Luther
Martin Luther, in Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), told the subject whose prince orders him to believe a thing or give up certain books to answer, “I will not obey”. He also wrote that “the governing authority must not be resisted by force, but only by confession of the truth.”
The objection: Calvin held that magistrates set in office to restrain a king betray the people if they leave them to his tyranny.
Magistrates appointed to restrain kings may resist a tyrantJohn Calvin
John Calvin, in the Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), book 4, chapter 20, left private men “to obey and suffer”. He made an exception “when popular magistrates have been appointed to curb the tyranny of kings”. If such magistrates connived at a king's oppression, he wrote, “their dissimulation is not free from nefarious perfidy”. He closed the chapter with the rule “We are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord.”
The objection: Paul's command in Romans 13:1 names no office that may resist the governing authorities.
The sword is God's ordinance outside the churchThe Schleitheim Confession
The Anabaptists who met at Schleitheim in 1527 wrote a sixth article on the sword. It opens, “The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ.” They granted that God ordains the sword and set its use outside the church.
The objection: Paul calls the ruler who carries the sword God's servant and does not forbid a believer to serve in that office.
Honour Paid as Service to God
Honour to rulers ends in prayer for them.
Peter and Paul taught the churches to serve God in the honour they paid rulers and to pray for the men who ruled them.
First of all, then, I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgiving be offered for everyone— for kings and all those in authority—so that we may lead tranquil and quiet lives in all godliness and dignity.Paul names kings first among those for whom the church is to pray.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- STEP Bible, Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament, the tagged Greek text (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- STEP Bible, Translators Brief lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (Tyndale House, Cambridge), CC BY 4.0.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on 1 Peter 2:13 and 1 Peter 2:17.
- Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible (1710), on Romans 13:1 to 5.
- Origen of Alexandria, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, on Romans 13:2 to 4.
- John Gill, Exposition of the New Testament (1746 to 1748), on Romans 13:7.
- Tertullian, On Idolatry, chapter 15.
- Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 5, on Romans 13:1.
- Eusebius of Caesarea, Church History, book 2, chapters 15 and 25, translated by Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, volume 1 (1890)
- Tacitus, Annals, book 15, chapter 44, in the translation based on Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb (1876)
- Martin Luther, Temporal Authority: To What Extent It Should Be Obeyed (1523), in an English translation quoted at under fifty words.
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559), book 4, chapter 20, sections 31 and 32.
- The Schleitheim Confession (1527), article 6, in the English text printed by Rod and Staff Publishers, quoted at under fifty words.
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