Chapter 11: Romans 13. I saw that Romans 13 provided an effective touchstone to reveal just how clear the line was between the two kingdoms in my life. This chapter tests those who make claims to biblical non-resistance. Certainly, belittling of the government, destructive protesting, and anti-authority rhetoric generally finds itself out of place in this chapter. But how should I view these earthly rulers?
Could I deny the fact that God has raised up armies, kings, and powerful men to put an end to such atrocities as communism, Nazism, and countless tyrants throughout the ages? If I admitted to myself that God has indeed used armies and men such as this to accomplish His will, does this mean that God's blessing was on these people? These questions perplexed me, particularly when I weighed the arguments of both sides.
On the one hand, the religious conservatives were trying to tell me that America was God's country, so I should embrace the agenda of the government. Any self-respecting Christian conservative worth his salt would quickly take me to Romans 13. On the other hand, the liberal writers were attempting to advocate some kind of political pacifist ecumenical new utopian government, or global community as they might call it.
As I studied and searched the scriptures, I found Romans 13 to be the dividing line that distinguishes genuine biblical two kingdom theology. Here is the text: "Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God. Therefore, whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers are not a terror to good works but to evil.
Do you want to be unafraid of the authority? Do what is good, and you will have praise from the same, for he is God's minister to you for good. But if you do evil, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.
Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience' sake." In this passage, often quoted by my politically conservative friends, the role of earthly government is said to be "ordained of God." What's more, this passage even calls these rulers "the ministers of God." My friends would often point out that these ministers "bear not the sword in vain." These are strong words.
I wondered how I was ever going to balance these words with the command of Jesus to "love your enemies." Ministers of God. I struggled with this in thought and prayer for some time. I began to read and ask people to explain these verses further to me. I finally got up the nerve to talk to the owner of the local Christian bookstore, who was also a pastor. I told him about my growing convictions for non-resistance, and he stuffed a video in my hand about a Christian policeman.
The policeman in this video was questioning his responsibility if called on to kill people in the line of duty. The movie, basing its claim on Romans 13, explained that this man was a "minister of God." It went on to argue that there were no inconsistencies in the Christian policeman having to kill in this setting because the whole thing was ordained of God. Furthermore, it reasoned that if it is ordained of God, then it must also, therefore, be blessed of God. But this is where I saw the difference.
I asked, "Does being ordained of God also guarantee that something is blessed of God?" Finally, I concluded that it did not. Profoundly, I found this difference unequivocally demonstrated in the life of Jesus. The authority to crucify Jesus. Once again, I considered the scene when Jesus was before Pontius Pilate.
After Jesus' proclamation of His kingdom, Pilate had Jesus beaten, and His soldiers forced a crown of thorns on Jesus' head and mocked Him, putting a purple robe on Him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews." Pilate declared Jesus' innocence as he brought Jesus before the crowd. Then Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, and Pilate said to them, "Behold the man." Therefore, when the chief priests and officers saw Him, they cried out, saying, "Crucify Him!
Crucify Him!" There Jesus stood, the ultimate authority, the King of kings, the Creator of the universe. Bruised, humiliated, beaten, and exhausted, He was shamed before what appeared to be a superior authority over Him. Pilate gallantly boasted his perceived power and authority over Jesus, stating, "Are you not speaking to me? Do you not know that I have power to crucify you and power to release you?" I thought long and hard over those words.
Here Pilate said, "I have power to crucify you and power to release you." Was this true? Did Pilate really have this power? To this affirmation, Jesus responded in words that still amaze me each time I read them. Jesus answered, "You could have no power at all against me unless it had been given you from above." This declaration implied that Jesus had the ability not only to set Himself free but also that He could, at any time, put an end to Pilate's trifling little domain in a moment.
But this I knew: God was more powerful than any human authority. He had demonstrated this kind of power all through the Bible. To me, the most profound thing about this passage was not the proclamation of God's ultimate power over earthly kingdoms but the quintessential thought, the very idea of Jesus being there in that situation before Pilate in the first place.
There before Pilate, Jesus indicated that although it is true that the ultimate authority over this situation was indeed according to the Father's power and will, it also is true, as inconceivable as it may seem, that Pilate, at this time, was given the power and authority to crucify Him. I saw clearly that even though this act was within God's ultimate will, God obviously did not bless Pilate or the centurions for performing it.
With this distinction, the role of human government in general became much clearer to me. When Paul called the ruler the minister of God in Romans 13, I found it instructive to remember just who this ruler was. In Paul's day, it was not a liberal American Baptist from Arkansas or even a conservative evangelical from Texas. In Paul's day, this minister of God, depending on when you date the epistle, was either Caligula or Nero.
In either case, the ruler was one of the most wicked figures in the history of the church. Why? Why? I believe Paul called him the minister of God because Paul clearly understood the emperor's place was in this worldly kingdom and that Paul's place was in another kingdom, the kingdom of God. In the previous chapter, Romans 12, Paul exhorted the church at Rome not to be conformed to the ways of the world.
Elaborating on this, he discussed the need for humility, self-denial, not taking revenge, not rendering evil for evil, and even feeding our enemies. He concluded the chapter with these words: "Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." With such an indictment against the ways of the world, if we are not careful, we could easily deduce that Christians are above the law.
Irritating things such as taxes, customs, bureaucracies, civil honors, and menacing laws can seem beneath the Christian who is a citizen of such a glorious kingdom from above. However, against this mindset, Paul instructs the church to be obedient down to the smallest detail. Therefore, you must be subject, not only because of wrath but also for conscience' sake. For because of this, you also pay taxes, for they are God's ministers attending continually to this very thing.
Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor. I clearly saw that respect, honor, and all the possible obedience I could give should be rendered to my rulers and earthly authorities. However, to enter their kingdom, to take up their causes, their wars, and their weapons was clearly disallowed.
Respect was one thing, but to jump from a teaching on civil responsibility and honor to a total abandonment of the teaching of Jesus was simply illogical, out of context, and perhaps even dishonest. Old Testament ministers. As I studied the Bible, I saw that God actually had always used kings and countries as servants or ministers to accomplish His will, even throughout the Old Testament.
What's more, I found that in the history of Israel, even though God used a king as His minister, God also showed that He certainly did not mean that the king was blessed by Him in any real sense. The book of Jeremiah records a striking example of a king outside God's kingdom being used by God to punish His own people. Significantly, Jeremiah reveals how God felt about them all along. The setting is the time right before Judah was carried off to exile in Babylon for 70 years.
Judah had continually abandoned God's covenant, and now God was going to use the king of Babylon to execute judgment on God's own people.
"Therefore, thus says the Lord of hosts, because you have not heard my words: Behold, I will send and take all the families of the north, says the Lord, and Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, my servant, and will bring them against this land, against its inhabitants, and against these nations all around, and will utterly destroy them, and make them an astonishment, a hissing, and perpetual desolations." Notice the words "my servant." This Hebrew terminology is the equivalent of the word Paul uses in Romans 13
about earthly rulers such as Nero.
The word "minister" used in Romans 13 is taken from the Greek word "diakonos." This word literally means "servant." It is from this word that we get our English word for "deacon." In both the Old and the New Testaments, God used pagan, idol-worshiping kings to execute His purposes, even calling them "my servant," or rather, "my minister." "Ordained of God" does not necessarily mean "blessed of God." But again, how should I think about these kings?
If they are "ordained of God," should I conclude that they are also "blessed of God" and align myself with them? Just three verses later, God reveals exactly how He felt about this king and this kingdom that He used to accomplish His will.
"Then it will come to pass, when 70 years are completed, that I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, says the Lord, and I will make it a perpetual desolation." I saw that Israel's obedience to Nebuchadnezzar was necessary, but to align themselves with Babylon would have been a big mistake. Also, there was the prophecy of Isaiah about the pagan king Cyrus, who was strategically used in the capture of Babylon by damming up the Euphrates River.
God called him "my shepherd." This did not mean that God was pleased with Cyrus' pagan idolatry. It meant only that Cyrus was used by God as a shepherd to do His will. America. So what about me? Could I admit that God has used America and other countries like her throughout time to accomplish His goals? Absolutely. But I could see that to take this fact and allow myself subtly to be led to believe that the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the earth are somehow joined would also be a big mistake.
Tertullian, speaking about AD 190 on these issues, said, "Now inquiry is made about the point of whether a believer may enter into military service. The question is also asked whether those in the military may be admitted into the faith, even the rank and file or any inferior grade, who are not required to take part in sacrifices or capital punishments. A man cannot give his allegiance to two masters, God and Caesar." The price of compromise.
Interestingly, yet tragically, during World War II, when the world trembled under the threat of Adolf Hitler and his tyrannical reign of power and genocidal Holocaust, millions of Americans, including millions of American Christians, decided that to strengthen themselves against Hitler, they would form a league with Joseph Stalin. Later, historical accounts revealed that Joseph Stalin was responsible, quite possibly, for as many as three times as many deaths as Hitler.
Again, the words of Paul come to mind: "Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good." It became clear to me that as far as the affairs of the earthly kingdom were concerned, God does not desire disorder and anarchy. Instead, He ensures that each nation will be ordered, legislated, and governed.
As God said through Jeremiah concerning God's decision to use Babylon for His purposes: "I have made the earth, the man, and the beasts that are on the ground, by My great power and by My outstretched arm, and have given it to whom it seemed proper to Me. And now I have given all these lands into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, My servant, and the beasts of the field I have also given him to serve him." The prophet Daniel proclaimed this fact to all the angels and inhabitants of the earth.
He even added a humbling insight into how God actually looks at these kings.
"This decision is by the decree of the watchers, and the sentence by the word of the holy ones, in order that the living may know that the Most High rules in the kingdom of men, gives it to whomever He will, and sets over it the lowest of men." Or, as Solomon poetically put it, "The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord; like the rivers of water, He turns it wherever He wishes." The difference between "ordained of God" and "blessed of God" became distinct to me.
In obedience to God, I am to obey My authorities, pay My taxes, and submit to their laws so long as they do not contradict God's laws. However, all along, I must realize that this kingdom is not my home. My identity, my goal, and my agenda is to be in Christ and His kingdom.