1st Peter 2:13-17
Peter is telling his readers they have to be good citizens.
He wasn’t alone in this, Paul does likewise in the Letter to the Romans (13) and didn’t Christ himself say, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s (Matt 22)?
We are Christians but we have a responsibility to be good citizens and work within our own society for its good. This has, in previous ages, raised great difficulties because of the nature of the regime (one immediately thinks of any tyrannical regime) but as an injunction it sits well with what Peter was trying to impress upon his reader: we, in the church, have to be seen to be contributing to the good order of society. We have to love and respect all, equally, something that was not part of the social order in the 1st century.
Peter is telling his readers they have to be good citizens.
He wasn’t alone in this, Paul does likewise in the Letter to the Romans (13) and didn’t Christ himself say, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s (Matt 22)?
We are Christians but we have a responsibility to be good citizens and work within our own society for its good. This has, in previous ages, raised great difficulties because of the nature of the regime (one immediately thinks of any tyrannical regime) but as an injunction it sits well with what Peter was trying to impress upon his reader: we, in the church, have to be seen to be contributing to the good order of society. We have to love and respect all, equally, something that was not part of the social order in the 1st century.