submission to government

One need only to turn on the news today or pick up a newspaper to be reminded that we are in an election year.  In November, we will be voting to determine who will be our president for the next four years.  And I’m sure that you, as well as I do, follow closely what is going on in our national politics, as we are aware of the tremendous impact government has on our lives, on our families, on our children’s future and for the direction of our country.

Today we are constantly told of the need for separation of church and state.  The left is afraid that the church is going to try to mandate morality and try to cram it down their throat, and the church is afraid that the government is going to stifle our religious freedoms and tell us what we can and cannot teach and believe.  And yet this tension is not something new.  This see saw has been going on for thousands of years.

In our text today, Paul is going to tell us what our responsibilities are as a church to the governing authorities.  And next time we are going to see what authorities God has given to government and what our response is supposed to be.

But what we need to understand at the very outset is that from a Biblical point of view, the hope for this country, or for that matter any country, is not going to be found in the political arena.  The only hope for the world is found in Jesus Christ.  Only when men’s hearts are changed, transformed to the will of God, by the supernatural power of God, can there be any lasting hope for man.

That is why Paul has spent the first 11 chapters of Romans telling us how we can be transformed by God.  How we must understand first of all that all men are depraved and lost in their sins and in need of a Savior.  And that God made it possible through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross for our sins to be atoned for, so that we who believe in Him will be credited with righteousness as a gift of God.   And how having been made righteous we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, the spiritual presence of God to live in us, so that we might be able to do the will of God.  We become part of the body of Christ, the church.   And the church as the manifestation of Christ is the only hope for the world.  So what exactly is the church?

In Matthew 16:18 Jesus said to Peter, “Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” The church is  God’s spiritual house. The church is the earthly representation of God’s Kingdom of Heaven. Peter says in 1Peter 2:5, “You also, as living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house for a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.” Now that we individually have become transformed into living stones, indwelled by the Holy Spirit, then both individually and corporately we are made into the dwelling of God, to be God’s chosen people, God’s instrument whereby He is made manifest to the world.

Peter goes on to say in 1 Peter 2, “You are A CHOSEN RACE, A royal PRIESTHOOD, A HOLY NATION, A PEOPLE FOR God's OWN POSSESSION, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

for you once were NOT A PEOPLE, but now you are THE PEOPLE OF GOD; you had NOT RECEIVED MERCY, but now you have RECEIVED MERCY.”

See, when God called out Abraham from the land of his pagan fathers and told him that He would create from his seed a chosen people and a chosen race from which the world would be blessed, God was prophesying that 400 years in the future He would bring out a race of people from slavery in Egypt  and separate them from the world.  He would be their God and they would be His people.  He would be to them both God and King.  And this nation was ruled by what is known as a theocracy.  God set forth laws at Mt. Sinai for this people, governing every aspect of the way that they should live. 

But a few hundred years later, Israel rejected God from being their king and wanted to have a king like the rest of the world.  And God warned them of the consequences of that decision, but they insisted in their call for a king and finally God gave them what they wanted. God allowed them to have Saul, and then David, and then Solomon, and there was a certain amount of blessing under David and Solomon.  But after Solomon things quickly fell apart until the kingdom became divided into a northern and southern kingdom, each with their own monarchy, and then eventually the northern kingdom became completely overthrown and the people were taken into captivity and eventually dispersed.  By the time of Christ, there was only the southern kingdom left, basically made up of the tribes of Benjamin, Judah and the Levites, and they were under the iron rule of Rome.

So the Roman Empire really was the governing authority for Israel at the time which Paul wrote this letter.   And I believe it would help us understand this passage if we first of all understand the historical context in which it was written.  Herod was the king of the Jews, and yet He wasn’t even a Jew, He was appointed by Caesar.  And these rulers of that day had practically absolute power.  They were tyrants.  If you remember, at the time of Jesus birth, Herod had every male child under the age of 2 killed throughout all of Israel.  He was able to do this solely by his own authority without any fear of repercussions. 

And Caesar, if you remember just before the birth of Christ, was able to make a decree whereby all people had to travel to their birthplace to register for the census for the purposes of taxation.  And so everyone in the Roman Empire had to make this journey to their homeland.  The Caesar’s had unbelievable authority.   Not only could they do whatever they wanted, but they also were worshipped as a god. 

In the time of Christ, slavery was the law of the land.  It was an established and accepted practice and all sorts of abuses happened in the name of slavery.  Taxation was especially oppressive.  Tax collectors like Matthew and Zaccheus were given the authority of the Roman government to collect taxes and to add on exorbitant charges which went directly into their pockets.  That is why tax collectors were hated so much in those days.

And not the least of these abuses of power was the persecution of the church.  Christians were blamed for the burning of Rome and for causing insurrections.  And  as such they were routinely rounded up and thrown into prison or worse, used as entertainment for the Coliseum amusements in which they were thrown to the lions or sent to be butchered by gladiators.   The emperor Nero was one of the worst, he tied Christians to stakes around his palace grounds and set them on fire to illuminate his parties.

And into this cauldron of political excess and abuse of power, Jesus Christ came declaring that the kingdom of heaven was at hand.  At first, there was a great interest by the Jews because they were looking for a Messiah who would deliver them from the political oppression and restore the throne of David to the prosperity and dominance that it once enjoyed under Solomon.  But Jesus never came to bring about a social revolution. His appeal was always to the hearts of men, it was always to the souls of men, not their political freedoms. It was not social justice that Jesus sought. He didn’t participate in civil rights. He wasn’t involved in a crusade to abolish slavery. He preached the gospel and He knew that the only real justice and the only real solutions to man’s problems would come when hearts are changed. He was not interested in a new social order, He was interested in a new spiritual order. And so Jesus didn’t come to establish an earthly kingdom, He came to create the church. 

Jesus was saying earthly kingdoms will come and go.  But the church will endure forever.  Because the church is the spiritual kingdom of God in which He rules in His people.  And as a result of Christ living and ruling in our lives, the world will not only hear the truth, but witness their changed behavior, and that testimony will be to the glory of God, that others might be called to surrender their will to God, by believing in Jesus Christ.

And so in that context we see that this text in chapter 13 concerning political and governing authorities comes out of the previously stated theology regarding the church.  As living stones, as living sacrifices, as temples of God, as God’s chosen people, as the Kingdom of God, we are to live our lives in such a way as to be a testimony to the world, to show them Christ.  By the way, Peter confirms what Paul is saying in 1 Peter 2:“Keep your behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.  Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.”

Today we find ourselves as the modern day church living in a political situation that is not that different from the days of  Peter and Paul and Christ.  If anything, we are living for the moment in a much more tolerant environment, at least here in America. But there are people living in certain places of the world today who are under highly abusive systems. Their problems, and the problems of the people in the New Testament time, and the problems of people who are under severe duress in the nations in which they live are much more severe than ours. We can complain about the way things are in America, but no minority group in America has had their infant children massacred. Nobody in Washington  has made an edict to kill all the baby boys under two, while mothers stood around and wept.

And even those that are struggling with difficulties in life seem to be able to find certain luxuries like a TV set, a hot meal, running water, electricity and transportation that could not even have been fathomed 2000 years ago.  We  cannot allow the fact that everything isn’t the way we would like it to be to cause us to turn our attention away from our God directed responsibility to government to a self directed one. Nor can we turn away from the urgency of the  message of the gospel to a social gospel. We are obviously called to live godly lives in the world. We are obviously called to demonstrate righteousness, to pursue righteousness, call for righteousness, and uphold righteousness. We are obviously called to speak the revelation of God into this society so that this society can enjoy more of the common grace that God provides when people live according to His laws, even non-believing people.

We are obviously called to do all of that. The church is designed to be the very manifestation of divine righteousness in the world, in the culture. But our responsibility specifically to the government is stated here in this text. Be in subjection.  Romans 13:1 “Every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those which exist are established by God.”  Now notice the parallel between what Paul said to what we read earlier from Peter in 1 Peter 2; Verse 13, “Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent by him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right.”

Peter goes on to say starting in vs. 15, “For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.  Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but use it as bondslaves of God. Honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God, honor the king.  Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are unreasonable.”

Wow! Submit, even to a master who is unreasonable, even to a king that’s unreasonable, even to a governor that’s unreasonable. “For this finds favor if for the sake of conscience toward God, a person bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.” Amazing. There is something to be gained for the gospel even when you suffer unjustly in silence, for the sake of keeping a pure conscience before God. You want to be an influence for peace, we read that in Romans 13, you want to do right and thus silence the ignorance of foolish men, do right as that society and as every man knows because right is written in the heart, you want to honor all people, love the brotherhood, fear God and honor the king.

So Peter and Paul agree on this, as we would expect since they are both under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. We have a mandate, a responsibility to live out our justification by grace through faith, our self-sacrificing lives should be models of submission to government authority, no matter whether that government authority is what we want it to be or not. This is a biblical pattern for all people. Our responsibility is to be subject to the higher powers, the governing authorities. 

And the word subject is from the Greek verb hupotasso which means under, essentially a military word which means to line up under a commander, speaks of soldiers lining up under the one who commands them. Get in line underneath the powers that govern the governing authorities, the existing civil government without limitation here, without qualification, whether they be reasonable or unreasonable.

And Peter says in regards to subjection that we are to do it for the Lord’s sake, as unto  the Lord.  Not for our sake.  Our rights may be violated.  Our privacy may be violated.  But we are to render unto kings and authorities the submission due them, as if we were submitting to the Lord.  This can be hard.  It offends our sensibilities.  It sometimes offends our sense of justice, of righteousness. 

We’ve had the luxury in this country in the past of sometimes seeing our values upheld by society as the norm.  And yet today we are seeing our values growing further and further apart from American society.  And yet we are to submit to the governing authority.  That doesn’t mean we are to conform to the world’s values.  No, that would be the direct opposite of the foundation Paul laid in Romans 12:2, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, for this is your acceptable, spiritual service to God.” 

Now there are times when we’re allowed not to obey the government.  In Acts 4. Acts 4 starting in vs. 13, we see Peter and John were told by the Jewish leaders that they were not to speak any more in the name of Christ. verse 19, “Peter and John answered and said to them, ‘Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge. We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard.’” Here is where the authority of the government ends, when the government forbids you to do what God commands you to do, you do what God commands you to do. When the government tells you to do what God has not allowed you to do, that’s where you stop. When the government mandates what God forbids, we obey God. And then accept the consequences. We don’t start a violent revolution, we simply refuse to disobey God. We do what God has commanded us to do and we accept the consequences.

Go to the fifth chapter of Acts for a minute. They brought them before the Council. The High Priest comes in now and is trying to shut them up. They’re preaching Christ. They haven’t stopped. The High Priest says to them in verse 28 of Acts 5, “We gave you strict orders not to continue teaching in this name and yet you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and intend to bring this man’s blood on us.” Not only did they fill Jerusalem with the teaching, but they blamed the Jews for the murder of Jesus. Here’s Peter’s and the Apostles’ answer, verse 29, “We must obey God rather than men.”

You may come to a point where you have to disobey the government when the government tells you to do what God forbids you to do, or mandates that you stop doing what God commands you to do.

But here is the key, as much as it is possible, chapter 12 verse 18;  “If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men.”  So far as it depends on you.  The government is corrupt?  Submit to the government.  The government is unreasonable?  Submit to the government.  The government charges too much taxes?  Submit to the government.  The government demands you stop declaring Jesus Christ?  Obey God, but you still submit to the government in regards to whatever consequences they have for your disobedience. 

Of all the missionary work and travels that Paul did in his life, I would suggest that his greatest work, his most enduring work was done in a prison, shackled to a Roman guard 24 hours a day as he wrote his letters to the churches under divine inspiration.  Whatever consequences we face as Christians, let it be suffering as Peter said for doing right, not for doing wrong.  And let God take care of using those consequences for His glory and to advance His kingdom as He sees fit.

Jesus could have called 10,000 angels to His defense, as he told Pilate, but He submitted himself to the Roman and Jewish authorities and achieved the greatest, most enduring work of creation, the redemption of mankind. 

God’s ways are not our ways.  His wisdom is so far above our wisdom.  He sees the past, the present and the future in a way that we can never even fathom.  And in His wisdom, He has chosen the weak things, and the foolish things to confound the mighty.  So the guiding principle in our life and conduct  is to be like Paul’s found in  2Cor. 12:9            “And He has said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness." Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”