That’s Not Fair! - 1 Peter 2:18-19 Series

1 Peter 2:18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. 19 For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God. 20 But how is it to your credit if you receive a beating for doing wrong and endure it? But if you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God. 21 To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. 22 "He committed no sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth." 23 When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed. 25 For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.

Introduction: Injustice Hurts

They say the worst kind of physical pain there is is childbirth. I can accept that. But let me ask you this – what would you say is the most painful emotion? Would you agree that suffering injustice has to be way up near the top of the list? Getting blamed by everybody for something you didn’t do, and not being able to do anything about it – that is painful. I will never forget my very first major paper in college. It was a study of Psalm 119. I worked on it every day for the whole semester. And the final product was something I was so proud of and so excited about, I could not wait to turn it in. I actually still refer to that paper even today. The professor gave me a D. He said there is no way I could have produced a study like that on my own and so it must have just been copied from some source, and since I did not cite the source, I got a D. But I didn’t use a source – it was all my own work. As I was walking back to my apartment after class I was thinking, “This is going to drive me crazy. I’ve got to get over this.” That was 27 years ago – and I am still not over it! Injustice is just one of the bitterest pills that there is to swallow. Something deep down inside us just reacts to it.

One thing nobody ever has to teach their kids is the phrase, “That’s not fair!” You never have to sit them down and say, “Now, when it seems like you deserve one thing and you get something worse, just say, ‘That’s not fair’.” Just like little baby chicks know how to fly just by instinct – human beings come out of the womb with the ability to react against injustice.

Slavery

We have been studying verse-by-verse through 1 Peter and we come to a section starting here in verse 18 and continuing through the end of the chapter that is all about dealing with injustice. It starts out being addressed to slaves.

18 Slaves, submit yourselves to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.

Learning how to handle unfair treatment is especially important for slaves, because they had no legal rights in that culture. So obviously there was a lot of mistreatment of slaves. So this was particularly pertinent for them. However, after mentioning the slaves in verse 18, in all the rest of this section Peter does not say anything else that is limited to slaves. From verse 19 and on, the instruction applies just as much to anyone – slave or free. And it is obvious that Peter means for these instructions about suffering injustice to apply to all Christians, slave or free, because most of the section focuses on Jesus’ suffering. And Jesus was not suffering at the hands of a slave owner. So this whole section applies to every believer.

Why Doesn’t the Bible Condemn Slavery?

But before we dive in to what Peter is teaching us about how to handle unfairness and injustice, I should probably say a word about slavery. Because a lot of people ask, “Why doesn’t the Bible just come out and condemn slavery? Why regulate it? Why not call all slave owners to repent?” The answer to that is because the institution of slavery is not the problem. There is nothing inherently immoral in it. That is really hard for us to accept, because our conception of slavery is shaped by the slavery that existed in this country in the early 1800’s. Africans were kidnapped, brought here against their will, treated horribly, and forced into lifetime slavery. But it is important to understand that that kind of slavery is strongly condemned in the Bible.