Romans 13 Human Governments - David Bercot - Romans Series #14

Well, good morning.

We, as you can see, we'll be talking today about human governance and be from Romans 13. I thought I would jump ahead a little bit after started on Romans a little over a year ago, and it's been all theology. The first section of it, I thought I'd like to hit some of the areas of Romans that talk about Christian life, which tend to be at the end of the book.

Now, there are, well, I guess you could have a lot of views of government, but there's two basic views of government. There's the Christian view, which some in the world would share, but it's becoming less and less common today.

There's the world's view, but this is the Christian view. It's laid out for us, Romans 13, verses 1 and 2. Paul says, "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except by God. The existing authorities are ordained by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will receive condemnation to themselves." So that's the Christian view of authority, which is a very high view of government leaders, of how we are to view them as the ministers of God. This is not to say they are godly men and women, because most of the time they aren't at all, but God has instituted them, and that's why they're called the ministers of God or servants of God would be another way to translate that.

Okay, now we're going to look at the extreme view of the not everyone in the world would hold to this view, but we're going to look at the other extreme, and then, like I say, you're going to see a lot of things in between.

Okay, Karl Marx, this would be in 1848, the Communist Manifesto. I decided to read this a couple of months ago. I was just curious. I'm always hearing things that Karl Marx said or supposedly said, and I thought, as you know, I like to go to the primary source. All right, let me just read some of the stuff he wrote and see what's true, what isn't true.

He says, "The history of all existing societies has been the history of class struggles." It's how he looked at history. It's not how the Bible looks at history, but it's how he looked at history. It's all about somebody is imposing on somebody else. In ancient Rome, we had patricians, knights, plebeians, and slaves.

Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things. So his solution was you take up arms and you overthrow the government, and you overthrow everybody who's had any ruling authority. You don't just overthrow them, you put them to death.

It was carried out not by Marx. He was dead at the time of the Russian Revolution in 1917, and Vladimir Lenin said this: "Every state is a special force for the suppression of the oppressed class." Now, listen to those words in contrast to what we read in Paul, that the governing authorities are God's minister, and he's saying they're a force for the suppression of the oppressed class. Marxism has always taught with the abolition of classes, the state will also be abolished.

Now, those of us living now, we know how true that ended up not being, that in the communist countries, and there still are several today, instead of the state going away, which is what Marx, Lenin, all of those people said, "Oh yeah, the state will disappear. There'll be no need of it." In a Marxist country, the state is more totalitarian than any of the governments they've been complaining about, more oppressive.

It's just the opposite of everything that they preached.

A little milder version of this anti-government philosophy. Here in the United States, Henry David Thoreau, we read this in high school. I don't know if many of you did or didn't. "I hardly accept the motto that government is best, which governs least, and I should like to see it act up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe, that government is best, which governs not at all."

And he ended up saying, "Government is at best, but an expedient." Okay. Now, probably as Christians, we might share some of those opinions that we wouldn't mind the government governing less as much of what it governs tends to go against us as Christians. Not always, though. But I don't think we would ever view the government as an expedient. I mean, what the scriptures teach, it's an institution put in place by God, and if we take a stand against it, we're fighting against God. We're not just fighting against man.

Okay. Now, another view on government, the Christian view, just returning to it, is shown in the exchange between Jesus and Pilate. I think all of you know this quite well. When he was on trial before Pilate, Pilate asked him, "Do you not know," because Jesus was silent, "Do you not know that I have power to crucify you and power to release you?" And Jesus answered him, "You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given you from above." So he wasn't disputing Pilate's power. He was saying the only reason you have power is because it was granted to you from above. It was granted to you by my Father.

And he acknowledged Pilate's power. Of course, he was not trying to get out of being crucified, so that was one reason he didn't make a defense, because, yeah, he came to earth to eventually die after making disciples, establishing his kingdom, and so he wasn't trying to get out of being crucified. But, yeah, he stated an important truth there that, yeah, every government, they would not have power if it was not there from God, even governments that we would consider very corrupt and very wicked.

So we've been given the view of government from God's perspective, and it's counterintuitive because so much of history, governments have persecuted Christians, particularly kingdom Christians. In fact, that's been the general rule from the time Paul wrote those words and the time Jesus spoke those words. The governments have been persecuting us. So you'd think if there was any group that would be anti-government, that it would be Christians. And yet we're given a very different view of government.

And so for us, there isn't room for differing views. We don't have the right to say, "Well, okay, yeah, I think government's good. It's fine. You think it's bad." We're told these are the facts. This is from God. The reason we have human governments is because God put them there and God wants them there. So, yeah, we don't have the right to say we're anti-government. We might not like a particular president or a particular institution, a particular law, but as Christians, we should never be anti-government. We're going to see how this develops more. Tertullian, he said, "We respect in the emperors the ordinance of God, for God has set them over the nations. We know that in the rulers, there is that arrangement which God has willed."

Now, when he wrote that, this high view that he's talking about the Roman emperors, the Roman government was horribly persecuting Christians, denying them just their basic legal rights under Roman law, torturing them, doing all these horrible things. And like I say, you'd think the Christians would be all involved in how do we overthrow these emperors, how do we subvert the government, and instead, they're the most loyal subjects of the Roman emperor. I mean, it's just an incredible irony that you'd think it would be just the opposite, but it's because they believed what the scriptures say about the governments. So they were, and they point this out, you know, we are your most loyal subjects. You know, you're never going to have treason coming from Christians.

You're never going to have to worry about being assassinated or the government being overthrown by Christians. Of course, these things were happening by other Romans, but not by Christians. Theophilus, who lived in the, oh, about 180, I think is when he wrote, "The king's government is committed to him by God. Accordingly, honor the king, be subject to him, and pray for him with a loyal mind. If you do this, you will do the will of God."

So, yeah, we're to be praying for the governments. We've tried to do it here. How many Sundays? We forgot today, didn't we? And I think, how many Sundays do we forget? I forget along with everybody else that we are commanded to be praying for our government. It doesn't matter who it is. And they're talking about praying for pagan governments, governments persecuting Christians. And when we're given so much freedom, we should certainly remember to do that ourselves.

All right, so why did God institute governments in the first place? If they ended up and have ended up so often persecuting Christians, well, why did he put them in place? I mean, they've done a lot of evil over the years.

What's the point of governments? Well, Paul explains, "For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to evil. Do you wish to be unafraid of the authority? Do that which is good, and you will have praise from him, for he is the minister of God to you for good. But if you do that which is evil, be afraid, because he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is the minister of God and avenger to execute wrath on the one who does evil." So basically, governments are here to establish law and order.

So, yeah, as bad as government, like right now, the whole world is focusing on Russia and what it's doing, which is very evil. And you think, well, yeah, why is someone like that supposedly instituted by God? Well, most of you probably don't remember what was going on in Russia before Putin.

How many of you would remember? Okay, well, some of you do. Yeah, if you're, what, over 30, over. Yeah, I'll just stop there.

So when the Communist Party fell and you finally had democracy in Russia for the first time in, I guess, ever, and Boris Yeltsin, I think, was the name. Did I get that right? Yeah. And yeah, he was a well-meaning guy and all that. And I remember thinking, man, this is so wonderful to have democracy in Russia, and here there had been this Cold War going on. Finally, this Cold War ended that was existing when I was born and raised during it.

But yeah, he wasn't able to keep law in order. And so I remember I had a missionary friend who was over in Russia, and he was telling me just what people were experiencing. If you had a business, didn't have to be a big business, just a little mom-and-pop grocery store, you'd get a caller, and he would hand you a bullet and say, "Oh, you can keep this bullet, but your name is on the next one, and you pay so much protection money, and you're fine. If you don't pay the protection money, yeah, this next bullet is coming for you."

And this was happening to everyone. Extortion. Yeah, people were having to pay out all of this protection money to gangs and this sort of thing. And so, yeah, people wondered, why on earth would they elect someone like Putin? Well, yeah, they were tired of they had more freedom under Yeltsin, but they were tired of the lack of law and order and fearing for their lives all of the time and that. So, yeah, they preferred to have a strong man. Now, they might vote him out of office now. I mean, now the elections over there are rigged and all of that, but when he was originally elected, it wasn't through rigging or anything, and people liked him.

I don't know on a fair election if he would get re-elected now or not. But yeah, it's law and order. And so even very bad, oppressive governments are inevitably better than chaos. Because, yeah, in chaos, like I say, people are going to take over, and it's going to be ruthless gangs, and yeah, your life, your property, everything else is not going to be safe. So that's why God has instituted governments and why he wants us to obey the government.

Irenaeus, "God imposed upon mankind the fear of man." It's not a misquote. "The fear of man because mankind did not acknowledge the fear of God. God did this in order that mankind might obtain some degree of justice. This was brought about by being subjected to the authority of man and being kept under restraint by man's law. Through fear of the sword, mankind exercised mutual restraint." So it's, yeah, the problem is mankind does not fear God, and so God put human rulers that they would fear and at least keep law and order where people could enjoy a measure of peace and safety and being able to function in just everyday aspects of life.

This quote from Chrysostom is interesting because it's so different from how people look on authority today. He says, "When there is no hierarchy of order, it usually leads to strife." For that reason, I think I could say it always leads to strife. "For that reason, God has instituted many governments and forms of subjection. For instance, there is that of man and wife, that of father and son, that of old men and young, that of master and servant, that of teacher and disciple, and that of ruler and ruled. For anarchy, no matter where it is, is evil and a cause of turmoil." Now, today, people bristle at those kinds of words that we don't like to hear about subjection, submission to any authority, no matter what level it is.

But God's way is the opposite. And most people back then, yeah, they just this was part of life. They didn't see it as this evil that there was a hierarchy of order. To them, this is what made life work. And certainly, for Christians, they were very willing to be under authority and to submit themselves. They weren't the ones fighting against it all of those years. When the oppressors were finally overthrown, it wasn't by Christians. It was by Constantine and by his pagan soldiers. It wasn't by the Christians who took up arms.

And this is the way it's going to be in eternity. It's, I think, why God wants us to get used to it now. There's always going to be government over us. I'm not talking about here on the earth necessarily.

We don't know what the future is, the millennium and that, but I'm talking about just in the universe. There is always going to be government. There's always going to be God's government. And I'm sure there's always going to be orders of, I mean, Jesus talks about people ruling, sitting down with him and ruling the 12 tribes of Israel, whatever that means, however that will play out. But yeah, it's not like, oh, when we're in heaven that, yeah, now there's no authority. It's just this free for all. It's not going to be that way. So if you don't like government now, if you don't like being under authority now, you're going to be miserable spending eternity with God.

And he's probably not going to want you to spend eternity with him. But it's not just a matter of fear, but also for Christians, one of conscience. Paul says, "Therefore, one must be in subjection, not only to avoid God's wrath, but also for the sake of conscience."

It's like I say, all of this is counterintuitive. If somebody was just studying the history of Christianity, they would say, "Well, there's no way Christians would be teaching this." When they're being persecuted and governments have oppressed them, that not only do they have to fear the sword of the government, that they obey them because they don't want to go to prison, but they fear God's wrath.

And it's on their conscience that even if you can get away with it for man's sake, and often you can, God knows it when you break Caesar's law and you are sinning against God. So yeah, we're not free if there's a lot of areas in life where we can get away with breaking the law, or at least we can attempt to do that. But God is going to hold us accountable because the rulers are ruling by his authority. So when we rebel against them, we're rebelling against God. I mean, it's a sobering thought, but that is what the scriptures teach, and we should recognize and appreciate that. And I think Anabaptists, for the most part, have throughout their history.

They've been very peaceable, submissive subjects. Ambrose answered, "Paul shows them that this is the law of God and that those who by some subterfuge avoid it for a time will not escape God's judgment." So we can come up with subterfuges. We can come up with ways to justify not obeying the government. But he says, "We're not going to escape God's judgment." Yeah, he knows what we are doing.

So we have more to fear than the world does. They don't care about what God's going to do to them. They just care whether they're going to get in trouble with the law. We care about that, but we care also about what God is going to think of us and what we're going to have to answer to him for.

Okay, so let's talk about paying taxes. Romans 13:6, "Because of this, all these things he said, that this is God's minister, you also pay taxes for the authorities are ministers of God attending to this very thing." So here you think the world would be the ones, yeah, it's very important we pay our taxes, and many in the world are. But this is something laid on us as Christians, that we honestly pay our taxes even if we can skirt around paying them if there's ways to avoid detection.

We're not going to do that. We are going to pay what Caesar has imposed on us. Now, we can rejoice if taxes are lowered, but we're going to pay them if they're higher. I mean, and as Christians, since we stay out of the political realm, we don't get to have any say. I mean, Caesar doesn't take away our ability to say something, but it's something we voluntarily imposed on ourselves. But even though we don't vote for who's going to be in office and vote on these subjects, we are obligated to God to pay our taxes.

Chrysostom wrote, "Observe the wisdom and judgment of the blessed Paul, for that would seem to be burdensome and annoying, the system of taxation. He turns into a proof of the ruler's care for men. He asked, 'What is the reason we pay tribute to a king? Is it not because he provides for us?'" So it's a different way of looking at government. Instead of always grumbling against the government, it's like, what does the government do for us? And there are laws we don't like. There are laws that oppress us as Christians. We are fairly free in this country. It's worse in many other countries. But even in this country, there are laws that often go against us.

But what Paul wants us to look at is what all the government does for us. Number one, like I say, peace and order. That we are allowed to meet peacefully in this country, but even in countries where they can't openly meet, Christians do get to enjoy the benefit of law and order. We have roads built for us. Just driving here this morning, it was like, wow, it's nice that, man, just a nice road. The roads are clear in the winter, even when we have a heavy snow. I mean, and we're up out in the mountains. I mean, usually within a few hours, they're out there clearing the main highways. And certainly, even where we are by the next day, yeah, our roads are clear, everything but my drive.

That's always my challenge. If I get on my drive, I'm fine because the government takes care of the rest. So it's all these things the government does for us. There's health services. There are a lot of things that we should look at him as God's minister.

Again, we don't have to pay more taxes than what is lawful, but as Christians, we pay what is required of us. He says, "Therefore, render to all their due, tribute to whom tribute is due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor."

Now, Theodoret, he's explaining those words. Now, the translation he's writing in Greek, the translation is using the King James words. And I thought this was very helpful because Paul said to pay tribute to whom tribute is required. What is tribute? What does that mean? Okay, by tribute, the Greek word there is pharos.

Paul means the taxes arising from land. By customs, which the Greek word there is telos, he refers to the excises or duties owed on merchandise. Okay, so perhaps those aren't the best words in English to translate tribute and customs. Customs might, customs duties, that's on imports, but all kinds of taxation. If you had a business back then, if you were dealing with merchandise, there were taxes placed on all of your goods, on your imports, on everything like that. If you owned land or any property, there was taxation on your land. I don't think they had income tax back then. It would be on, like I say, your land and your business or merchandise. Origen sums it up.

The authority is exact tribute from our land and customs from our businesses. So that's what Paul is meaning there in Romans when you read that. Two kinds of taxes, which I think were the only two kinds that they normally had. And then he said, "Honor to whom honor is owed." Now, this was something that you just see when you read literature from ancient times and even from a few hundred years ago. There was sort of that built-in honor that most people had towards the king government leaders. And I think that has been one of the bad things that democracy has brought in. Democracy has brought in a lot of good things, and normally that's all we hear about are the good things democracy has brought in, and there have been many blessings with it.

But I think one of the things is it's stripped the ruling authorities of the honor due to them because these are people we don't like them. The country can vote them out the next election. And in the meantime, while they're running for office, I mean, they're being called every name under the book. They're calling each other names. The newspapers are ridiculing them.

All of this goes on. And so most of the population in most countries where there's democracy, you totally lose respect and honor for the ruling authorities because you're not looking at them as God's servants. You're just looking at them as so-and-so who got elected, and let's get them out of office, or whatever.

And that may be the world's attitude, but as Christians, it should not be our attitude. We should show honor to all the authorities from the people in the local government, police officers, all the way up to president. That, again, we remember that all of that has been put in place by God. It's not my words. It's the words of scripture, of the Holy Spirit, that these are the ministers of God. So when we look at them, even though we may not like their policies, even though they may treat us rudely and all of that, that we will still honor them. And the one thing I've noticed, if you honor public officials, they often do treat you a lot better.

I mean, I was taught as a little boy, just always show respect to police officers. We were not allowed to call them cops. I mean, they were police officers. And when I talk to a policeman, I always address him, "Officer, so-and-so." I've still dealt with ones that are very rude and all that, but I found usually by treating them with respect that police officers can be nice to deal with.

What did Jesus say about paying taxes? Well, when he was directly asked whether it was right to pay taxes, and this was to a foreign government, a government that had conquered Judea, he said, "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's." He asked for the coin, whose head is on the coin, whose image is on it, it's Caesar's. Okay, give Caesar. He coined the money. It's his money. It's his things. Give him what he requires. And to God, the things that are God's.

Now, I have met liberal Christians who would be called pacifists who decide they're not going to pay taxes because they support war. And they'll do dishonest things like, "Well, 20% of the budget goes to war, so therefore I'll withhold 20% of my taxes." Now, if they do that openly, well, they're going to get assessed for that. They're going to get fined, and they're going to eventually go to prison if they maintain that openly. So it's very easy to do it unopenly, like, "Oh, I'll just cheat." They don't use that word on 20% of my taxes, and it's because it's going to war. Well, most of the budget or the biggest item in the Roman budget was their military.

So when Jesus gave the law to us to give to Caesar what is Caesar's, yeah, it's acknowledging. It's going to pay for the very soldiers who have conquered Judea and are keeping it under their thumb. And he says, "Pay them because that's all part of God's will." But we're going to talk about in a minute to God the things that are God's. Okay, so when man's law conflicts with Christ's law, okay, so we know the general rule is we obey the government, whatever their laws are, but it's not an absolute. Now, Paul presents it. If all you look at is Romans 13, you'd say, "Well, no matter what it is, we have to obey." But you always have to look at the whole New Testament, everything that is said.

In telling Christians to obey the governmental authorities, Paul did not mean that Christians are to obey the government even when Caesar's law violates God's law. In other words, he's God's minister, but if he's telling you to do something that contradicts God's law, well, God's the bigger one, okay?

He's the minister of God. God is the one ultimately in charge. And so if this is going to directly violate the law of God, then we don't obey Caesar. And that's why Jesus said, "And to God, the things that are God's." As Tertullian said, "If everything is Caesar's, then what's left for God?" So yeah, God has his laws that always have to come first.

For example, let's look at how the apostles responded when they were ordered not to preach about Jesus. These were the governing authorities. These were the Jewish authorities. In their case, it wasn't the Roman authorities. They were told not to preach. And Peter and John said, "Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God, you judge. But we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." So yeah, they stood up to the ruling authorities because they had been commissioned directly by Christ to go out and preach about the kingdom and to spread the gospel. And when the Jewish authority said, "You're not allowed to do this," well, they said, "Yeah, we're sorry.

I mean, you judge whether it's right to listen to you or to God, but we're not going to stop speaking about the things we have seen and heard." So they went out and they continued to preach. And then they were arrested all over again, brought before the Sanhedrin. And this time, the apostles answered them, "We must obey God rather than men."

Now, again, you got to put that with Romans 13. So there's two principles here. There's two laws. We obey Caesar unless Caesar's law violates God's law. If Caesar is telling us to disobey Christ, then we obey Christ. Christ's law comes above Caesar's law. Lactantius, when men command us to act in opposition to the law of God and in opposition to righteousness, we should not be deterred by any threats or punishments that come upon us, for we choose the commandments of God over the commandments of men. So the early Christians, we're going to talk in a minute how that applied. They were dealing with this all the time. Origen writes, "What if the law of God commands what is opposed to man's written law?

Does not reason tell us to bid a long farewell to man's written code and to give ourselves up to the true legislature, God? This is so even if in doing so, it means encountering dangers, penal labor, and even death and dishonor." So yeah, we can expect we're going to pay a price if we disobey Caesar. We don't disobey him unless it comes in direct conflict with Christ's law. But then we must obey Christ, but we're not going to get divine protection necessarily from Christ. He has not promised us that. So in fact, he's promised us just the opposite, that we're going to be thrown out of synagogues. We're going to be put to death for his name.

All kinds of things are going to happen to us. So yeah, we can expect to pay a price for that. Now, in the early church, the primary areas where this came in conflict, one was public idol worship. The Romans really didn't care what gods you worshiped. I mean, they had very much freedom of religion. You could worship crocodiles, which some of the Egyptians did. They didn't care. As long as when they had their public ceremonies and the particular gods of Rome, that you worship those gods, then you could worship whoever else you wanted in your private time. And of course, Christians wouldn't do that.

This wasn't in the days of Paul, but later on, emperors wanted everyone to acknowledge them as divine, that they were a god. And if you wouldn't acknowledge that, and as the Christians said, "Hey, we acknowledge you as emperor. We honor you. We obey you, but we're not going to worship you as a god." They didn't cut it. You either worship me as a god or you're going to pay the price.

Refusing to take oaths. This happened more with soldiers who got converted while they were in the military, and then they would not take any further military oaths, and that usually meant death. And then using the sword, the same thing, didn't affect the average Christian, but the ones who were already in the military when they got converted, then they quit being willing to bear the sword, to use their sword. And sometimes they got away with it, depending on who the commander was, but often they end up being martyred as a result.

In fact, eventually, Rome made it illegal to be a Christian. So yeah, just to acknowledge you were a Christian was enough to get the death penalty. Fortunately, they didn't go out and hunt generally Christians, but it was just always there. I mean, in a lot of places, Christians met openly like we're meeting right now. But you never knew. I mean, any minute that door suddenly could open, and here come a bunch of Roman soldiers in here to arrest us all. You could meet in secret, but I mean, like I say, you never knew when it was going to get enforced, but it was illegal just to be a Christian. So of course, they were going to have to disobey Caesar.

Okay. Now, Christians in the first three centuries very much live by exactly what is taught: obeying Caesar, except when his law is conflicted with God's law. Now, when they first compromised was in the late 300s. This was after Christianity became, or quote, "Christianity became the state religion of Rome." And the first compromise on the part of Christians was when they chose to obey Caesar, even when it meant disobeying Christ's law. So in other words, they ended up being more loyal to Caesar than to Christ.

And the one who particularly articulated this as being what Christians should do was Augustine. He taught that Christians must go to war when the king requires it, even if the king is in the wrong. I mean, he taught that war was right because wrong needed to get punished. So here over here, this kingdom, they're doing wrong, and so it's a righteous thing to go to war. Well, of course, that goes against Christ's teaching. So that was his first thing. Okay, so then Christians said, "All right. All right. If it's okay to go to war because the opponent of your ruler is doing something wicked, well, then that means his subjects, his quote, "Christian subjects," they shouldn't go to war because he's wrong."

And Augustine said, "No, no. As a soldier, you don't know who's right or wrong. So you obey your ruler, and you don't bear any consequence." Now, the ruler is going to have to answer to God, but yeah, you're free. Now, that's a nice compound, but it was a very wicked compound because what it meant then was for the next until today, Christian men or yeah, you go to war and like what's happening in Russia and Ukraine right now. Some of those Russian soldiers are Russian Orthodox. I doubt very many of them are devout Orthodox, but some of them no doubt are. They're just obeying their ruler. And over in Ukraine, you have Ukrainian Orthodox, and they're fighting, and you have so-called Christians killing each other, and they're both obeying their government.

And this has been going on for ever since about the year 400 of Christians killing each other, both thinking they're doing something honorable because they're obeying their king. Well, no. I mean, Christ is king, and we're all part of one kingdom as Christians, and we don't go to war against each other or against anybody.

And like I say, this has remained the rule today. That's why Hitler, all these Nazis, I mean, most of them would have been professing Christians, Lutherans, Catholics, things like that. Even the Catholic Church, Lutheran Church said, "You obey the ruler. Even if he's wrong, it's not your responsibility. It's all on the shoulder of your rulers." Well, no, as Christians, it is our responsibility, and we can't shove that off and say, "I was just obeying orders." It doesn't work that way.

Now, the second great compromise, that was the first one, of we'll obey Caesar even when he's wrong and do wrong things. The second one came from the Puritans, I should maybe say the Reformed, but the Puritans over in England, they said, "We don't have to obey the ruler if he's a tyrant." Now, Paul didn't say anything about that, but they came up with this thing, "Oh, sure. As long as he's acting as a minister of God, well, then yeah, we obey him. But if he becomes a tyrant, well, then he's no longer the minister of God, so we no longer have to obey him. In fact, we have every right and obligation to overthrow the ruler."

And this is what they did in England, became the basis for the English Civil War. They overthrew the king. This was under Oliver Cromwell. And then later here, a century later in America, the world justified the American Revolution based on natural law, but the Christians, they preached it was okay because the king is a tyrant. So Romans 13 doesn't apply because the king is a tyrant. Of course, then when Anabaptists and other kingdom Christians said, "Well, we're not going to fight in the army because it goes against our conscience." Well, no, Romans 13 says you obey the ruling authority. So it's like, I say, "You're overthrowing this ruling authority, but you want people to obey you as the ruling authority."

It's yeah, was fairly hypocritical. So how do we know that this interpretation was wrong? If the king is a tyrant, that you don't have to obey him? Well, it's very easy because when Paul wrote Romans, the emperor was Nero. Okay, so you have a man who was the embodiment of wickedness. I mean, we don't even know what a wicked ruler is in our present day when we think of our presidents and we say how horrible they are. We don't even have any concept. I mean, this man just murdered and murdered.

You had a nice house that he thought, "I would like to have that house." So he would just have you accused of some crime. You'd be arrested, put to death, and all your property confiscated by the state, which was ultimately him, and he would own your house. And I mean, he put all kinds of people to death. The first one to persecute Christians, ironically, the very ruler that Paul is writing about when he says, "Obey the governing authorities," well, he wasn't talking about just one man. He was talking about all the authorities. But this was Nero when he wrote Romans 13, and this very man is the one who put Paul to death.

But that didn't change what Paul taught. It wasn't like, "Oh, okay, I was wrong about all this. This guy's monster." No, he obeyed Nero up until the end, but on the other hand, he wouldn't compromise and denounce Christ. And so he paid the ultimate penalty for that. So if we are to obey Nero, if you lived in the first century, then yeah, nobody can say, "Oh, well, this guy's a tyrant, so Romans 13 doesn't apply." If it applied to that, it applies to every ruler.

Okay, some of the modern conflicts that have come up, this isn't an issue too much today, or probably not at all today, the Pledge of Allegiance. A lot of Christians have felt they can't conscientiously give their allegiance to any country because their allegiance has already been given to Christ. And there were a lot of court battles fought over this. Today, yeah, I don't know if most schools even have the Pledge of Allegiance anymore. They did when I was a child. Compulsory attendance. They do? They do? Okay. Compulsory attendance of public schools.

Again, in this country, they allow homeschooling. They allow private schools, but that's not always been the situation. I know Radford, you just, yeah, came back from Mexico and visiting your wife's relatives, Hannah's relatives there, and who were from the old colony Mennonites or the Russian Mennonites who immigrated to Canada, and they were given the right to have their own schools when they came there. Well, then Canadian law changed, and they were going to have to go to public school. And some Christians may not have an issue with that, but yeah, they saw how this could affect their children. And so a whole lot of them ended up moving to Mexico just so they would have the freedom to be able to teach their own children in their own schools.

Okay, let's talk a second, and then we're almost finished. The problem of using Christianity as a get out of jail free card. I think most of you have played Monopoly at one time or another. You're familiar with a get out of jail free card. Now, we are blessed to live in a country that we don't get out of everything because we're a Christian. Just because a law conflicts with Christ's teachings doesn't mean the US government will give you an exemption. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. But it's easy to start using this as a get out of jail free card while this conflicts with Christ's law. And I'm going to just give you a real-life example.

I'm not going to give you the names or anything, but this was involving a group of Christians who were living in community that I visited. And one of the businesses that they had going was a bakery. And they were showing me the bakery, and I was talking to the leader of the community, and he said, I forget how it came up. I think he just volunteered it. "Well, we obey some of the laws, but not all of them." I may be asked about because if you have a bakery, if you're just selling maybe in your neighborhood, you may not have to have a commercial kitchen. But if you're selling to the general public every day of the week, most states you have to have what's called a commercial kitchen.

It's going to have to meet certain sanitary requirements and things like that because the government is concerned that people don't end up with food poisoning and all that. It's a very legitimate concern. Anyway, so this brother was telling me, "Yeah, they come by and inspect. So yeah, we do a lot of things, but we don't do them all." And I said, "Well, yeah, it was my understanding as Christians, we obey Caesar's law, even if it's things we don't like." And this was his justification for not obeying. "Well, we don't make a distinction between our secular and our spiritual lives. It's all the same." Okay, I think we all agree with that. We don't have a different standard when we're at work.

So to maintain ourselves in this community, we need this bakery. But if we had to obey all of Caesar's laws, then we couldn't do the bakery. It'd be too expensive. And so we couldn't provide for our families. So yeah, to be obedient to Christ, then we have to disobey Caesar.

I didn't argue with him, but it's like, "Well, you can use that line of reasoning to break just about every law." Well, if I pay my taxes, I'm not going to be able to provide for my family. So yeah, I pay what I can, but the rest I hide because first obligation is to my family, and that's part of my responsibility as a Christian.

You could do that on safety laws with the church. Well, if we met all the fire regulations, that'd make the church building too expensive. We're commanded to meet together. So no, that exception that when it conflicts with Christ's law is not a get out of jail free card that, yeah, because we don't like something, because it's going to impose a burden on us along with everyone else, doesn't mean we get to disobey it.

Now, the final one today that has become the big issue, well, until just recently, is with gay weddings. Now, certainly as a church, that doesn't affect us. What the world wants to do is their business.

We don't run the government. But it does affect people's businesses if they have any involvement in weddings, like for example, wedding photography. Probably there's not too many kingdom Christians who do that for a living. I'm sure not at all nowadays because, yeah, if you're doing wedding photography and you advertise that, you don't have the right in this country to say, "I'm sorry, I'm not going to be the photographer at a gay wedding. I don't want to be part of that." You're going to get fined enormously. If you own reception facilities, and this has affected some of our people, they've owned buildings that they rent out for family reunions and wedding receptions and things like that.

If you rent it out for wedding receptions, you don't get to say, "I'm sorry, it's not available for gay wedding receptions." You're going to get fined and shut down. Florists. Again, I don't know of anyone who are florists, but this has come up with other Christians.

One woman in the state of Washington who, yeah, you can buy flowers for a gay wedding, but I'm not going to go and arrange and be the one in charge of doing weddings, flowers for a gay wedding. She got fined something like, seemed like $75,000. I mean, it was something outrageous. Somebody falling their reasonable Christian conscience. And then bakeries of baking a wedding cake for a gay wedding. And this came up a couple of years ago in Colorado, and the brother was sued because he would not bake a cake for a gay wedding. As he told them, "You're welcome to buy anything here in the shop.

We sell to everyone alike, but I'm not going to bake a particular special cake for your wedding." And so they sued him, and he was fined by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. He appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court reversed it, but a very weak decision. I mean, I thought, "I thought for sure that's going to be a no-brainer. That freedom of religion would tramp Trump." I mean, gay rights, that's not in the Constitution. Freedom of religion, I mean, that's the Bill of Rights. That's what this country was founded on. And they gave a very weak one. And in fact, they didn't. They reversed it, and they said, "We can't really legislate where that line is drawn to respect freedom of religion and then respect the rights of gays."