The Apostle Peter probably shocked his contemporary audience when he declared them “a royal priesthood” in 1 Peter 2:9. Can you imagine his converted Gentile audience, who had known only the rule of kings for their entire lives, now hearing themselves described as royalty for the first time? They must have thought, Huh? You talking to me? But then, maybe we react the same way to Peter’s message today. Just like those Gentile converts, we too are royalty. We are kings and queens in the kingdom of God, serving under the True King, Jesus.
If we have such an important role to play in the kingdom, we should probably begin to think about our lives differently. Are we prepared to rule the nations? Are we prepared to preside over the churches? Well, look around, and I think you will get your answer. The nation we live in is coming apart at the seams, and it appears the voice of the Church has been marginalized at best, and where it hasn’t been marginalized, it is because many individual churches are simply saying what the unbelieving world wants to hear instead of teaching what the Bible has to say. When I look around, I am not sure I see a royal priesthood stepping up to tackle all the big problems of the world, and I surely do not see kings and queens on deck just waiting for their chance.
What must change?
Part of the problem is we are supposed to be kings and queens, but we are instead living as slaves. How so? At some point we began to buy in to what the world has to offer. We traded a vision for the good life for something maybe more like the American Dream: everybody gets a bigger house and a bigger car, but it costs us part of our souls.
To riff off Bill Clinton campaign manager James Carvel’s criticism of President George Bush during the 1992 presidential election, It’s the schools, stupid!
Our schools are giving students the education of slaves.
We have grown more concerned with giving students marketable skills than with giving them an understanding of what it means to be human. We emphasize STEM to young people while leaving them in the dark about who they are, where they came from, and how to run the world. We are decent at turning them into cogs for the global economic machine, but we are abysmal at showing them how to operate the machine responsibly.
Where is the art, the music, the poetry? Why doesn’t anyone dance anymore? Why can’t we debate big ideas without hating each other?
We have a generation of kings and queens to educate, a generation that will be charged with taking the Gospel to the nations and ruling in the kingdom of God. Unfortunately, all we give them to work with are lessons on tolerance and hours of test prep for college entrance exams. Kings and Queens must know how to think. They must know the mistakes other nations and governments have made throughout history. They must know something about the structures of governments and economies. But most of all, kings and queens, if they are to be good kings and queens, must have answers to some of the biggest questions that face humanity: What is man? What is man’s purpose? How should men treat each other?
Every lesson, every encounter with a student provides an opportunity to open his eyes to his destiny. The goal alongside getting the homework right or the book read should be to help students understand they are more than cogs in one of man’s machines. They will soon assume responsibility for the machines and what the machines do. Will they know what is important? Will they sacrifice humanity for money? Will they go along to get along? Will they compromise the truth to keep from rocking the boat?
At Trinitas, we are committed to educating kings and queens with a Christ-centered and classical education. Our aim is to graduate ladies and gentlemen who will rule the kingdom of God well as they serve the True King, Jesus Christ.