04.38. LESSON 38

LESSON 38 The very fact that Christians must be subject to the government under which they live precludes their inaugurating and operating it. Are they not avenging themselves, something God forbids their doing, when they help start or run the state, which God ordained as his "Avenger of wrath"? Furthermore, since "The Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men" (Daniel 4:17), when his over-all government of the earth calls for a Pharaoh, Nero, or Hitler, if Christians try to prevent or overthrow the rule of such men, they fight against God. In the light of these truths how can Christians do otherwise than as Christ and his disciples did?—just ignore civil government, for the most part at least, as a necessary expedient to punish evil-doers, primarily, but useless as a direct agency for spiritual work.

Christians who think they can raise the standard of public morals and civic righteousness, and meet human need generally, by active participation in affairs of state, should remember that the New Testament never even intimates that such effort will succeed. It is not a question of the attitude of Christians toward human need, and good works for its alleviation, but of the means for doing such work. Christ created his church "For good works... that we should walk in them" (Ephesians 2:10); Christians must be "zealous of good works" (Titus 2:14). He said that his disciples were "The salt of the earth" and "The light of the world." By their unceasing Christian teaching and living, Christians pour a living, purifying stream into the putrid life of the world, similar to the power of gravitation in the physical world, which is something that all the non-Christian institutions on earth for the betterment of mankind combined cannot do. Would it not have been presumption had the Jews thought marching around Jericho at God’s command was inadequate, and supplemented the marching with battering-rams? Would God have been obeyed and honored? Would the walls have fallen? Surely, God’s spiritual government is adequate for all earthly human need. When Christians do not live separated, pilgrim lives, however, but compromise and become worldly, they lose their savor, hide their light, and have no salutary power. They need to remember Lot as well as to "Remember Lot’s wife." When Lot, with nothing in him deep and high enough to trust God, went to make his home in Sodom, he not only lost power to help Sodom, but also barely escaped its destruction himself. We never read, "By faith Lot dwelt in Sodom." But we do read of Abraham’s trusting God to fulfill, in his own time and way, his promise to give him Canaan, firmly refusing all compromising connections with the king of Sodom, even declining the gift of so much as a shoelace (Genesis 14:1-24), lest it appear that he, doubting God, took substitute gifts from men. How jealous Abraham was of God’s honor and name! And do not forget that it was Abraham, who lived a sojourner a century in tents, not Lot, who sought convenience in Sodom, that had power with God in prayer on behalf of Sodom in her day of distress (Genesis 18:1-33). How much the church of God loses at any time, because Christians give more of themselves to the state than God’s threefold requirement of obedience, payment of taxes, and prayer for rulers, only God can know. A church may be strong either spiritually or politically, but not strong both spiritually and politically at the same time. The Fulfillment of Law (Romans 13:8-10) By connecting these three verses with Paul’s long discussion of law in Romans and Galatians, the relationship be- tween the law, which was given through Moses and grace, which came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17), becomes plain.

Briefly to summarize: Paul teaches that God embodied his eternal moral law in the special code of Ten Commandments, which he wrote on tables of stone and gave to the Jews to convince them (and through them all other men) that, inasmuch as no man can obey God’s law perfectly, he must look elsewhere for his justification—that is, that legal salvation is impossible. Once convinced of this, earnest men in self-despair are ready to look to Another for salvation. In other words, law was given that grace might be sought; then, grace came that law might be fulfilled. When Christ came therefore, the Mosaic code having done its particular work, was, as a system of religion, abolished.

It is at this level that Romans 13:8-10 fits into Christianity. A Christian is a man who has acknowledged the justice of his being sentenced to death as a law-breaker, and has accepted Christ’s gracious death in lieu of his own death so truly that he dies to self in order to become Christ’s grateful, eager slave, not only to love Christ himself, but also to love everybody and everything that Christ loves, for the same reason and in the same way that Christ loves them. This is the love that faileth not. Such total commitment to Christ is the difference between Saul the Pharisee and Paul the chosen apostle and pattern saint.

Caesar can make good laws, but he cannot gender the love in his subjects to heed them—hence the sword. Law, even God’s law, can but give directives to show what should be done, demand of loveless men the impossible conduct of love, and punish disobedience. Law has no help for the victim of lawlessness; it discovers wounds for which it has no healing. Men cannot climb up to heaven on a ladder of law. The fulfillment of law, which law itself vainly seeks, is found in love, which, as when a tender mother cares for her sick child, turns "hard duty into holy delight." Only when love is absent, is a consciousness of law and duty necessary. A heathen who has never heard of the law of Moses, upon becoming a Christian, should soon have the commandments of Moses written on his heart—an inner Decalogue, so to speak—and through love, without a sense of law, be lawful in his human dealings. "He that loveth his neighbor hath fulfilled the law."

Christians do not need to be under law in order to be lawful. In truth, they can never fulfill law until they are delivered by the power of God from the realm of law and of flesh, and put into the realm of grace and of Spirit. "Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace" (Romans 6:14). "If ye are led by the Spirit, ye are not under law" (Galatians 5:18). "They that are in the flesh cannot please god" (Romans 8:8). Christ does not abrogate law. Love does not disregard it, but, on her magical feet, she outruns law, on her leaden feet, and does the good deed before the law arrives.

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