Week 3 Video

You feel it, but you never see it. Someone set the tax rate, you pay it. Someone designed the algorithm that picks what you watch. Wasn't you. Someone chooses the speed limits, you just drive. People have a name for the hidden architecture beneath the world. A name for the system beneath the system, the deep state. [MUSIC] Peter put his finger on a real problem. Christians had a new king and a new identity, but they still woke up every single morning inside the old empire's machine. You can't escape the systems that are underneath the systems. So how does someone who belongs to one kingdom live faithfully inside the structures of another? How should we live in the deep state? Peter has an answer, and he's about to tell his readers the last thing a free person wants to hear. [MUSIC] We're talking about Octavian, right? Becoming us to some of those people. And so they kind of functioned like a god, even though they knew they were human. And then below that, you had elites, senators, equestrian class. And then you had this mass of people that were commoners, low wage workers, the urban war. And then at the bottom of society, the gutter society, you had slaves, criminals, foreigners, immigrants, and disabled people, essentially. And part of being Roman was an ideology of

power, status, and hierarchy, and fear, right? Society had these clear echelons. They're the rulers, and they're the ruled. They're the superior, and they're inferior. Submit yourself for the Lord's sake to every human authority, whether to the emperor as the supreme authority or to the governors. For it is God's will that by doing good, you should silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. Live as free people, but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil. Live as God's slaves. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor. Submit. That kind of sounds like oppression. But Peter is actually subverting the culture he's living in. He starts by speaking directly to slaves and women. That's unheard of. He gives them dignity first. Then he talks about submission, identity before instruction. Submit for the Lord's sake. The emperor, he doesn't deserve submission. The reason is for mission. Doing visible good is how we silence the ignorant talk of foolish people. This submission is strategic, but Peter's critique is actually really sharp. In Rome, the emperor wasn't just a politician. He was a legit God. And the whole society ran on this patron client logic. You honored the powerful patron who supposedly supplied everything, and this divine emperor sat at the very top of this patron client chain. But Peter writes this, "Fear God, honor the emperor. Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers. Fear God, honor the emperor." He's actually demoting Caesar from God to human. The emperor gets honor, the same respect that's owed to

every human, but fear, the awe owed to an ultimate authority belongs to God alone. Peter is speaking into some of the toughest situations. Slavery, suffering, spousal conflict. How should Christians respond? To this you were called because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. Many of the readers of Peter's letter literally could not walk away. In Roman law, a slave wasn't even regarded as a person. Slaves were living property, a tool that happened to breathe. Peter offers them something the empire could never take. The dignity of choosing integrity. Inside a situation they didn't choose. Peter insists that faithfulness is not defeat. It's really a kind of quiet power. One of the hardest realities people face is feeling trapped in circumstances they didn't choose. Whether it's a family system, a workplace, a relationship, or something larger, the experience of powerlessness can reshape What Peter keeps reminding them is who they are, chosen, royal, free. Psychologically, identity becomes the anchor that keeps circumstance from becoming destiny. Red in the wrong light, 1 Peter 2 through 3 sounds harsh to our modern ears. Submit to every human authority. Well, not every human authority, right? What if they are too liberal or too conservative? What if they are communist or a fascist? Submit? What if they are Nero? He was killing Christians. Slaves obey. Wives submit. Is God telling people who are already oppressed to lie down and take it? Chronic powerlessness changes people. When you live under unfair authority long enough, your inner world starts organizing itself around that authority. You rehearse conversations in your head and eventually become consumed by what the other person thinks, says, or does.

Even after the authority is gone, the mentality can still be living inside you. Peter's trying to give these believers back their agency. He's not telling them to pretend injustice doesn't hurt. He's telling them not to let the injustice become the thing that defines them. Most importantly, we ground our posture in Christ, who suffered more unjustly than he did. But there's more to say here. In Peter's day, Christians were living in two houses or two cultures at once. Their Greco-Roman household and this new household of God that they were reborn into. Outwardly, they kept their place in the old house. Inwardly, they belonged to a new one, where slave and master, husband and wife, were now equal heirs. They didn't blow up the old structures. They lived in them differently. And that different way of living eventually led to real and lasting societal change. If you get stuck here, reread this passage carefully and really notice what Peter is saying and what he's not saying, Peter never tells the powerful to dominate others. In a society that would only address masters, he addressed the slaves directly, like their full moral agents. They can choose their response. Peter actually plants an idea, a seed. He treats the powerless as people. Peter planted something that 1,700 years later, William Wilberforce, a Christian, by the way, would help finish. Christians actually helped abolish slavery. But wait, if we stay inside a corrupt system, how is that different from going along with it? Where is the line? The line gets drawn the moment the authority demands what only God can have. Your worship or your obedience and something God forbids. This is where the same apostles say flatly, "We must obey God rather than human beings." Submission is never absolute. The state gets honor, but it never gets to be God. Peter's vision refuses extremes. Not worship of the empire, not war against the empire. Honor what can be honored. Refuse what God forbids and trust that faithful goodness is stronger than coercive power. Peter's confidence wasn't in the empire becoming Christian.

It was in Christians remaining distinct because there is no society so Christian that it no longer needs the church to model the true life that God intends. And the proof that this works isn't a theory. It is a crucified man who absorbed the worst that power could do, made no threats, entrusted himself to God, and walked out of the grave with every authority and power now beneath his feet. Submission was never weakness. In his hands, it was the move that won. The hidden systems that shape our lives are real. Peter knew that, but they are not ultimate. Above every governor, emperor, algorithm, employer, and institution stands another throne. Honor what can be honored. Refuse what God forbids, fear God alone, because only one king sits on the throne.