Audio Transcript
Have you ever wondered when obedience becomes compromise? There’s a line in the sand we will all meet at some point. The Bible’s teaching on authority and freedom explains where that line is. How do you honor people without betraying God? Today on Ask Pastor John: when obedience becomes evil.
The question is from a young man looking at 2 Corinthians, which is in our recent readings in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan. Join along if you haven’t. Our question is about 2 Corinthians 6, which we read last week. Our young man writes, “Pastor John, I live in India with my parents who strongly insist I marry a non-Christian woman for cultural reasons, but I am a committed Christian. Second Corinthians 6:14 says, ‘Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.’ How can I honor my parents without compromising my faith? If I refuse, they threaten to disown me. Is there ever a point when obedience to parents becomes partnership in their idolatry? What should I do if God’s will conflicts with my culture’s traditions? I presume there are examples of this happening in the Bible. How do I know when obedience would be sin?”
Yes, there are examples in the Bible where honoring proper authority and honoring God come into conflict. But before I mention any of those, it’s really important that we remind ourselves of the biblical framework of who we are as Christians in this fallen world, and how we relate to the world’s social structures, like family or parenting or the state.
Sojourners and Exiles
First, we are fundamentally new creatures, a new creation (Galatians 6:15). We have been delivered from the domain of darkness and transferred into the kingdom of God’s dear Son (Colossians 1:13), which means that in this world — whether in India or the United States — we are “sojourners and exiles” (1 Peter 2:11). This world and its structures are not our primary home, and they are not our primary allegiance.
Then the question is this: How do we relate to structures of this fallen, sinful world — like family or the civil state or business structures or church structures? The basic answer of the New Testament is that we are called to live in the world but not of the world (John 17:14–16). This includes the posture of submission to all rightful authority: families, church, business, state (1 Peter 2:13–3:7; Colossians 3:18–4:1; Ephesians 5:22–6:9). We are to honor our parents (Ephesians 6:2), honor our pastors (1 Thessalonians 5:12), honor real widows (1 Timothy 5:3), and honor the king (1 Peter 2:17).
In fact, according to that same verse, 1 Peter 2:17, we are to honor all men. The word is just all people, which clearly implies there are different kinds of honor that we are to pay to different kinds of people or different roles of people in different spheres of life. You don’t honor a rapist and a righteous king in the same way. You honor the king with respectful deference. You honor the rapist with a fair trial instead of shooting him like a dog. He’s not a dog.
And then this question arises: Are there limits to this honor and this deference to others, especially to authority like parents and the state? And the answer is already built right in, I think, to our identity as exiles.
Peter states the basic reality like this, right after saying that we are to submit to every human institution (1 Peter 2:13). He says in 1 Peter 2:16, “Live as people who are free.” Oh, that’s powerful. Free, which means that we are not submitting to earthly structures like parents and the state because they have intrinsic authority over us. They don’t have intrinsic authority. No, it’s because God has authority, and because of God’s intrinsic authority. He doesn’t borrow it from anybody. It’s in him. Because of God’s authority, he has sent us back into those structures as exiles and sojourners, governed by his will and for the sake of his glory: “Do good.” He wants to get glory by our doing good in these structures, according to 1 Peter 2:15.
So, the answer is, yes, there are limits to the authority of this world, and the limit is the revealed will of God, the word of God. In other words, we do not follow the authority structures of this world into sin. That’s the basic framework of the Christian life, as I see it, in the New Testament.
Kingdom Reality
And now we’re ready for some biblical examples of the conflict that arises between human authority and divine authority. In Acts 4:18, the governing Jewish council in Jerusalem tells the apostles, “You shall no longer speak or teach in the name of Jesus.” And to this, Peter and John answer, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you [decide], for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:19–20). In other words, when human authority contradicts God’s word, the Christians follow the higher authority — namely, God’s word.
“When human authority contradicts God’s word, the Christians follow the higher authority — namely, God’s word.”
The same thing is true of how we are to honor our parents. There are indeed special kinds of respect, esteem, deference that we should always give our parents, even to parents who are unkind, unfaithful, neglectful, abusive. And the reason I say there are special kinds, plural, is that this respect will look different, won’t be the same, for a godly, humble, helpful parent and an ungodly, proud, hurtful parent. There will be a kind of respect, but it won’t be the same. The respect and honor that we give, even to the best of parents, however, will not include submitting to their will if their will brings us into disobedience to God.
Gideon tore down the altar of Baal that his father had just built (Judges 6:25). Jonathan went against his father Saul’s will again and again to defend and protect David against his father’s unjust, murderous intentions (1 Samuel 20:13). Hezekiah was a good and righteous king, unlike his father, Ahaz, who was just about as bad as they come. Hezekiah removed the high places, broke down the pillars, and cut down the Asherah, which his father loved (2 Kings 18:4).
Jesus said, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37). And in Luke, it’s even stronger: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). That does not mean we should have malicious hatred for our parents. It means that, often, we must make choices that the world, and even our parents, will not understand because we’re motivated by Christ, and they don’t get Christ. They won’t understand, and they may even call it hate, because our actions are so contrary to the ordinary human relations they’re expecting. They just don’t understand kingdom realities, kingdom priorities.
Count the Cost
This brings us now to the very issue of a Christian marrying an unbeliever because it’s what the parents want. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 7:39 that a Christian widow “is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” That means only to a Christian: to one who is “in the Lord.” And he says in 2 Corinthians 6:14, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” So, I think the answer is that you count the cost, and you follow God’s will not to marry an unbeliever.
But let me close with this. In my pastoral experience, when we have faced conflicts like this (and it’s pretty common), I have urged young people to pray earnestly that the God who splits the Red Sea, makes the sun stop in the sky, raises the dead, brings out of nothing things that are, creates new possibilities where none seem to exist, that this God — we pray to this God — would actually create a possible way forward that no one presently can see that would enable the relationship to be preserved and God to be obeyed.
